Clash of Civilizations?

As a reporter who lived in the Middle East for three years I find Prof. Huntington's tract hollow at the core. What is happening is a clash of absolutism (across beliefs) with the global stumble toward democracy. Some of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons are repugnant to me, yet I still say ‪#‎JeSuisCharlie‬, while respecting too the view here of my former colleague Sandip Roy: #JeSuisCharlie? No, I'm Really Not Charlie Hebdo: Here's Why 
You can read the essay here:
http://newamericamedia.org/2015/01/jesuischarlie-no-im-really-not-charlie-hebdo-heres-why.php

I am Charlie Hebdo in San Francisco

Tonight hundreds of people in San Francisco joined millions all over the world in sadness, and commemoration of the journalists who died. 

We sang the Marseillaise, hummed the Ode to Joy, held pens in the air like the peaceful weapons they are. 

     Some faces twisted in what looked like an effort to keep back tears.

 

 At the moment it does not seem enough, but what else do we have?Except to rise again in the morning and write, and draw, again.

Questing the Sacred Book

In Chichicastenango, shunning the famous market, I embark on a quest...

Entering the nearby Indian municipal office, whose elders represented the Maya community, was like crossing into a world where straightforward questions were out of line. An ordinary calendar hung alongside a Maya calendar, its outside round made of glyphs to represent the year's twenty months, an inside circle turning within the first, carrying the bars and dots that numbered a Maya month's thirteen days. Thirteen, the Maya power number...

Now on Perceptive Travel -- Click here

Beautiful Baja

It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.

---John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

 

Beyond Sister Act

Maryknoll sister Dr. Mary Annel

Here is the first in a series of three profiles I am writing about Catholic nuns who operate in rough terrains. Enjoy, and be inspired!

Click here: In El Salvador: Maryknoll, physician, and HIV/AIDS activist

Coming upon the Massacred Jesuits

On a morning 25 years ago, just after curfew lifted, I and three other reporters jumped into a jeep pocked with balas perdidas -- stray bullets -- to follow a tip, and became the first journalists to arrive at the massacre site of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in San Salvador.  
Here is what I saw: http://ncronline.org/news/global/clear-voices-silenced-remembering-murder-six-jesuits

photo: Luis Galdamez

Sainthood is Not Enough for El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero

My Los Angeles Times Opinion Page commentary--Click Here: Archbishop Romero"Romero's brother bishops...have dragged their feet or blocked progress toward legal redress for Romero's killing and the rest of El Salvador's wartime crimes."