"We're always trying to find ways that we can disturb power," says the co-founder of Code Pink.read more

Vandana Shiva is a burst of creative energy and intellectual power. Born in India in 1952, she is one of the Third World’s most eloquent and passionate voices on the environment, women’s rights, and sustainable development. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in New Delhi. In 1993 she received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize.
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Amartya Sen of India won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1998 for his pioneering work on development issues. He has focused attention on the social sources of famine, poverty, and inequality, and he has highlighted the need for women’s empowerment.
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More than a decade after she burst onto the world literary scene with The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy is again working on a novel. She wouldn’t say much about it, other than that Kashmir figures in it. She once told me, “Fiction is the truest thing there ever was.” But she is also drawn to write about politics.read more

"When you have a liberal class that no longer functions, then you cede power to very frightening, deformed figures."read more

“Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him,” says the writer.read more

Bruce Cockburn has won practically every music award that his native country, Canada, has to offer. The recipient of multiple Junos (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys), he also has been honored with the Order of Canada. In more than three decades, he has recorded twenty-seven albums, the latest being You've Never Seen Everything. read more

"The premises are accepted, and within that framework you can have criticism," he told me. He advises citizens to break down the embedded assumptions. Few have been doing that for so long and with such consistency as Chomsky.read more

He was chain-smoking Pall Malls throughout the afternoon we spent together in his living room. When I pointed the obvious out to him, he said, “I’m trying to die. But it’s not working.” And then he laughed.read more

For most people, Danny Glover's name conjures up the Lethal Weapon series of movies. But when he was on C-SPAN recently, he was identified as "actor and human rights activist."read more

Ahmed Rashid is a journalist based in Lahore, Pakistan. He has been covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia for more than twenty years for The Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph. He is the author of Taliban (Yale University Press), a book that has sold a million copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages. His latest book is Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (Yale). Recognized as one of the leading authorities on the Taliban, he has been in high demand since 9/11. He has appeared on many radio and TV news shows, has spoken at universities around the world, and has even consulted with the State Department.read more

Tariq Ali was born in 1943 in Lahore, in what was then British-controlled India. He was educated in Pakistan and then at Oxford. His opposition to the military dictatorship in Pakistan during the 1960s led to permanent exile in Britain. He was active in the anti-war movement in Europe during the late 1960s.read more

Urbane and sophisticated, Edward W. Said is in many ways the quintessential New Yorker. His love for the city is palpable. "New York," he says, "plays an important role in the kind of criticism and interpretation which I have done." He mirrors the city's restless energy and diversity. In addition to his great love for literature and his unflagging interest in politics, he is an inveterate devotee of opera and classical music. An accomplished pianist, he opens his home on New York's Upper West Side to artists, writers, and musicians from all over the globe.read more

Urbane and sophisticated, Edward W. Said is in many ways the quintessential New Yorker. His love for the city is palpable. "New York," he says, "plays an important role in the kind of criticism and interpretation which I have done." He mirrors the city's restless energy and diversity. In addition to his great love for literature and his unflagging interest in politics, he is an inveterate devotee of opera and classical music. An accomplished pianist, he opens his home on New York's Upper West Side to artists, writers, and musicians from all over the globe. He's been a New Yorker since 1963 when he accepted a position at Columbia, where he now holds the position of University Professor. Born in Jerusalem and educated at schools there and in Cairo, Said came to the U.S. in the early 1950s and attended Princeton and Harvard. read more