Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Articles”
Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they …
The Israel Lobby and its associated neocon war criminals will block if they can the nuclear energy agreement, worked out by Putin, Iran, and Obama, which has the promise of bringing to an end the US orchestrated crisis over Iran’s development of nuclear energy. As a signatory to the nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty, which Israel is not, Iran has the …
Why has withdrawal always been so foundational to spiritual transformation? Why do we go on retreat? Retreat not just physical retreats but the notion of going inwards has to do with letting go of all the surface distractions in our lives. It allows the minor irritants and frustrations that create a little static in our hearts and minds to fall …
Angus Maddison has noted that India was the richest country in the world and had controlled a third of global wealth until the 17th century. The village was the centre of a rural economy that was an economic powerhouse of entrepreneurialism. The British Raj almost dismantled this system however by introducing mono crop activities and mill made products, and post independent India has failed to repair the …
We live in a time of what might be called The Great Burning. However, we tend to ignore the tremendous inferno blazing around us. Most of the combustion occurs out of sight and out of mind, in hundreds of millions of automobile, truck, aircraft, and ship engines; in tens of thousands of coal or gas-fired power plants that provide the …
Thanks to policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and embraced by the domestic government, the Caribbean nation of Jamaica—saddled with poverty and international debt—has the most severe austerity budget on the planet, a new report from the U.S.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research reveals. Entitled Partners in Austerity: Jamaica, the United States and the International Monetary Fund, the paper …
RECENTLY, THERE HAS BEEN a growing discussion of climate change as a moral issue, both in academia and in religious communities. This past fall I spoke at three religion and climate change conferences in as many months, including a conference at Harvard Divinity School, “Spiritual and Sustainable: Religion Responds to Climate Change,” and in June 2015 I will join many global …
In February, the Director of National Intelligence issued a report summarizing the changes that President Obama has implemented since pledging major surveillance reforms in January 2014. The report chronicles a dizzying number of developments and contains links to several hundreds of pages of supporting documentation. But does this impressive accumulation of activity translate to meaningful reform? The report makes clear that the big picture …
The quest for Ukraine’s legendary black earth is almost complete. To the dismay of French, Polish, German farmers, the multinational agricultural corporation Monsanto, as well as DuPont Pioneer and John Deere, have all lobbied for access to the largest agricultural market in Eastern Europe. This will soon reshape the market for agricultural products in the EU and spell ruin for …
Statesman Journal, Apr 6, 2015: BREAKING NEWS Scientists detect Fukushima radiation on North American shores — Seaborne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has reached North America… cesium-134 and cesium-137 in a sample of seawater taken in February from a dock on Vancouver Island… It’s the first time radioactivity from the March 2011 triple meltdown has been identified on West Coast shores [see: April 2011 …
