The arts often realize human truths well before other branches of human endeavor.

It wasn't a direct route. I began as a freelance reporter. That's an important distinction, because people who rise through the ranks of The New York Times become vetted, conditioned, harassed, and shaped by the institution. That never happened to me.

War in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics.

The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism

We live in imaginary, virtual worlds created by corporations that profit from our deception.

Again, although I'm not a particularly religious person, I go back to the religious left that I come out of: There are moral imperatives to fight back. As Daniel Berrigan says, "We're called to do the good." And then we have to let it go. It's not our job to know where the good goes.

We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill, and lie to make money. They throw poor people out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars for profit, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power.