Poor minorities live in a new age of Jim Crow, one in which the ravages of segregation, racism, poverty and dashed hopes are amplified by the forces of privatization, financialization, militarization and criminalization, fashioning a new architecture of punishment, massive human suffering and authoritarianism.

In some cities such as Washington, DC, that 75 percent of young black men can expect to serve time in prison.

The present generation has been born into a throwaway society of consumers in which both goods and young people are increasingly objectified and disposable.

Symptoms of ethical, political and economic impoverishment are all around us.

War provides jobs, profits, political payoffs, research funds, and forms of political and economic power that reach into every aspect of society.

The alternative position to whether torture is acceptable - that's not an alternative position, that's barbarism. The question here is not whether torture is acceptable or whether it works. It should be simply seen as a war crime. There's no other position on torture.

As the pleasure principle is unconstrained by a moral compass based on a respect for others, it is increasingly shaped by the need for intense excitement and a never-ending flood of heightened sensations.