Non Fiction Authors

"In the summer of 1975, I read Marx’s Economics by Michio Morishima (1973), a Japanese mathematical Marxist economist. I was excited by this book, for Morishima was using the tools I had learned in mathematical economics to study Marxist questions: exploitation, the labor theory of value, the transformation problem."

"The later Morishima’s dissatisfaction with the false sense of completed achievement―and the related smugness―of many pure theorists did make sense, and he was right to emphasize the need to seek constantly a fuller picture which could do justice to the reality around us, rather than seeing their separated investigations as the end of their task. All the constructive insights that the later Morishima offers become relevant when that exercise of broadening is undertaken. And yet, this does not require us to dismiss the nature of the contribution that the early Morishima made, or discard the contributions that old-fashioned economic theory has made and still makes to our understanding of the world. In defence of the latter claim, I offer the fact that even the highly oversimplified General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money of that great abstractionist, John Maynard Keynes (1936), made a significant difference to public policy. I could refer also to the fact that, when Michio was trying to expand the education of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he had no hesitation in bringing in some results of fairly pure Marxian economic theory to the attention of a person with a very powerful voice in the real world; and Robert Runcie himself appreciated this fully. The relation between useful abstraction and underlying reality requires, I would argue, an enduringly dual approach."

"They have their opponents psychologically smashed."

"I was on the Tyrone senior panel for 13 years trying to get my hands on the Sam Maguire. Mickey Harte arrives on the scene and I leave three years later with two All-Irelands."

"For the second week in a row, Kieran Donaghy was better dressed in the studio than Jimmy McGuinness and Peter Canavan wasn't. Last weekend, Kieran gave a detailed analysis of a sending off he hadn't seen."

"For the second week in a row, Kieran Donaghy was better dressed in the studio than Jimmy McGuinness and Peter Canavan wasn't."

"Jesus you put the phone down for an hour and watch I'm a celebrity get me out of here."

"We came down on them like a flood, We went out among their cities, We tore down the idol-temples, We shat on the Buddha's head!"

"Everybody agrees that there is no people on earth in whom generosity is as universally well developed as the Zanj. These people have a natural talent for dancing to the rhythm of the tambourine, without needing to learn it. There are no better singers anywhere in the world, no people more polished and eloquent, and no people less given to insulting language. No other nation can surpass them in bodily strength and physical toughness. One of them will lift huge blocks and carry heavy loads that would be beyond the strength of most Bedouins or members of other races. They are courageous, energetic, and generous, which are the virtues of nobility, and also good-tempered and with little propensity to evil. They are always cheerful, smiling, and devoid of malice, which is a sign of noble character."

"The book is silent as long as you need silence, eloquent whenever you want discourse. He never interrupts you if you are engaged but if you feel lonely he will be a good companion. He is a friend who never deceives or falters you, and he is a companion who does not grow tired of you."

"The Zanj say that God did not make them black to disfigure them; rather it is their environment that made them so. The best evidence of this is that there are black tribes among the Arabs, such as the Banu Sulaim bin Mansur, and that all the peoples settled in the Harra, besides the Banu Sulaim are black. These tribes take slaves from among the Ashban to mind their flocks and for irrigation work, manual labor, and domestic service, and their wives from among the Byzantines; and yet it takes less than three generations for the Harra to give them all the complexion of the Banu Sulaim. This Harra is such that the gazelles, ostriches, insects, wolves, foxes, sheep, asses, horses and birds that live there are all black. White and black are the results of environment, the natural properties of water and soil, distance from the sun, and intensity of heat. There is no question of metamorphosis, or of punishment, disfigurement or favor meted out by Allah. Besides, the land of the Banu Sulaim has much in common with the land of the Turks, where the camels, beasts of burden, and everything belonging to these people is similar in appearance: everything of theirs has a Turkish look."

"The whole question of blackness was discussed in a special essay by Jahiz of Basra (ca. 776-869), one of the greatest prose writers in classical Arabic literature and said by some of his biographers to be of partly African descent. Entitled "The Boast of the Blacks against the Whites,"" the essay purports to be a defense of the dark-skinned peoples-and especially of the Zanj, the blacks of East Africa-against their detractors, refuting the accusations commonly brought against them and setting forth their qualities and achievements, with a wealth of poetic illustration... To those who ask, "How is it that we have never seen a Zanji who had the intelligence even of a woman or of a child?" the answer, says Jahiz, is that the only Zanj they knew were slaves of low origin and from outlying and backward areas. If they judged by their experience of Indian slaves, would they have any notion of Indian science, philosophy, and art? Obviously not-and the same is true of the black lands. Jahiz also defends the equality of blacks as marriage partners and notes the paradox that discrimination against them first arose after the advent of Islam: At is part of your ignorance," he makes the blacks say, "that in the time of heathendom [i.e., in pre-Islamic Arabia] you regarded us as good enough to marry your women, yet when the justice of Islam came, you considered this wrong.""

"A noble man need not pretend to be virtuous, any more than a well-spoken man feigns eloquence. When a man exaggerates his qualities it is because of something lacking in him; the bully gives himself airs because he is conscious of his weakness. Pride is ugly in all men … it is worse than cruelty, which is the worst kind of sins, and humility is better than clemency, which is the best of all good deeds."

"The IMF leadership, and almost all of the 189 member countries — including U.S. allies such as Germany and Canada — are ready to allocate the aid that Congress is considering. The reason it hasn’t already been approved at the IMF is that the U.S. Treasury has said no, and the U.S. — alone — has a veto at the IMF on this matter. .. [I]t’s not at all clear why the Treasury is blocking this desperately needed aid. … Nor is there any reason that it should be a partisan issue … Of course the Congress has a lot on its plate, and is having trouble passing further relief that millions of Americans need to pay their bills and for many, even have enough to eat. But all indications are that Congress will pass major spending bills before the end of the year, including funding to avoid a government shutdown. It would take almost no effort to include the House or Senate bill that would unblock Treasury’s hold on the IMF funding… ” (10/1)."

"If you had the opportunity to save a million people from preventable death, would you do it? … This is not merely a rhetorical question, but one that members of the Congress will have to answer in the present. … Right now, legislation has already passed the House of Representatives that would do just that. And it was included in the newly released COVID relief bill that is being negotiated between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. It would require the Treasury Department, which represents our government at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to support a multi-trillion dollar relief package from the Fund. These funds are not loans and therefore will not have to be repaid. They have no conditions attached to them. And they do not cost the U.S. government anything at all — not now, and not at any time in the future."

"Why do Trump & co. have crippling sanctions on Iran, making sure that many more people die from coronovirus than otherwise would? Its collective punishment, this piece from Human Rights Watch shows what monsters Trump and Pompeo and gang are..."

"Economic sanctions, as the U.S. is applying against Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries, cause immense harm... there is no doubt that Iran's capacity to respond to the novel coronavirus has been hampered by the Trump administration's economic sanctions, and the death toll is likely much higher than it would have been as a result... There can... be no question that the sanctions have affected Iran's ability to contain the outbreak leading in turn to more infections, and possibly to the virus' spread beyond Iran's borders... If the U.S. government is going to assist other countries, let alone provide some kind of leadership role during this global crisis, the first thing it should do is 'cause no harm, "Economic sanctions, as the U.S. is applying against Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries, cause immense harm."

"Bolivia has descended into a nightmare of political repression and racist state violence since the democratically elected government of Evo Morales was overthrown by the military on 10 November last year. That month was the second-deadliest in terms of civilian deaths caused by state forces since Bolivia became a democracy nearly 40 years ago... Morales' government was able to reduce poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60%... The November coup was led by a white and mestizo elite with a history of racism, seeking to revert state power to the people who had monopolised it before Morales’ election in 2005. The racist nature of the state violence... all of the victims of the two biggest massacres committed by state forces after the coup were indigenous."

"Social security should really be a prominent issue in this presidential campaign. Despite the fact that about one-sixth of Americans get a check from social security – and millions more, including poor children, are helped immensely by it – the nation’s largest anti-poverty program remains vastly misunderstood by most of the country."

"All this [in Ecuador] is taking place under a government – elected in 2017 on a platform of continuity – that seeks to reverse a prior decade of political reforms. These reforms were, by measures of economic and social indicators, successful. Poverty was reduced by 38% and extreme poverty by 47%; public investment – including hospitals, schools, roads, and electricity – more than doubled as a percent of the economy. But the prior government was a leftwing government that was more independent of the US (by, for example, closing down the US military base there). One can imagine what this looks like, as the Trump administration now gains enormous power in Ecuador... Lenín Moreno, has aligned himself with Trump’s foreign and economic policy... his government is persecuting his presidential predecessor, Rafael Correa, with false charges filed last year that even Interpol won’t honor with an international warrant.... Since Washington controls IMF decision-making for this hemisphere, the Trump administration and the fund are implicated in the political repression as well as the broader attempt to reconvert Ecuador into the kind of economy and politics that Trump and Pompeo would like to see, but most Ecuadorians clearly did not vote for."

"The American right has always hated social security, from its origin in the New Deal of the 1930s. Social security is based on an ethic of solidarity: we are all in this together, so it is in our collective and individual interest to pay into a social insurance fund when we are young, healthy and working, and draw upon it when we need it. This does not fit well with the rightwing narrative of society as a collection of atomized, self-interested individuals. In the 90s... many liberals began to accept, and even promote, the arithmetically false, rightwing talking points that social security was going broke. The verbal and accounting tricks were swallowed by much of the media and proved effective... Hardly anyone, outside of those of us who looked at the numbers, seemed to notice that this is just one side of the balance sheet. The other side shows that productivity and wages also grow, and hence it takes fewer workers per retiree to finance any given level of benefits. That’s one reason why, for example, the ratio of workers to retirees fell from 8.6 in 1955 to 3.3 in 1999 and nobody missed a social security check. And people accepted that payroll taxes increased, because their wages increased vastly more. The “granny-bashers”, as we affectionately called them, created a phony intergenerational war out of something that was very much a war waged by the rich against all generations"

"What has received even less attention is the role of the Organization of American States (OAS) (with headquarters in Washington, D.C.) in the destruction of Bolivia’s democracy last November. The wheels of justice grind much too slowly in the aftermath of US-backed coups. And the Trump administration’s support has been overt: the White House promoted the “fraud” narrative, and its Orwellian statement following the coup praised it: “Morales’s departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard.” According to the Los Angeles Times: “Carlos Trujillo, the US ambassador to the OAS, had steered the group’s election-monitoring team to report widespread fraud and pushed the Trump administration to support the ouster of Morales.”"

"Seeking to foment a military coup, a popular rebellion, or civil war, the Trump administration has made it clear that the punishment will continue until the current government is ousted. “Maduro must go,” said U.S. Vice President Mike Pence yet again in early March."

"The Trump administration is repeating the collective punishment strategy in Venezuela with a crippling financial embargo since August 2017 and, since January, a trade embargo. The financial embargo has prevented any measures that the government might use to get rid of hyperinflation or bring about an economic recovery, while knocking out billions of dollars of oil production. The trade embargo is projected to cut off about 60 percent of the country’s remaining meager foreign exchange earnings, which are needed to buy medicine, food, medical supplies, and other goods essential to many Venezuelans’ survival."

"All of this is illegal under numerous treaties that the U.S. has signed, including the charter of the United Nations, the charter of the Organization of American States, and other international law and conventions. To legitimize this brutality, which has likely already killed thousands of Venezuelans by reducing access to life-saving goods and services, the Trump administration has presented the sanctions as a consensus of the “international community”—similar to what George W. Bush did when he put together a “coalition of the willing” of 48 countries to support his disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq."

"The cast of characters supporting this regime-change effort, whether in Washington or among some of its closest allies, should underline what is already obvious: The United States’ attempt to oust Maduro has nothing to do with democracy or human rights."

"Consider a recent IMF loan. In March, Ecuador signed an agreement to borrow $4.2bn from the IMF over three years, provided that the government would adhere to a certain economic program spelled out in the arrangement... The program calls for an enormous tightening of the country’s national budget – about 6% of GDP over the next three years. (For comparison, imagine tightening the US federal budget by $1.4 trillion, through some combination of cutting spending and raising taxes). In Ecuador, this will include firing tens of thousands of public sector employees, raising taxes that fall disproportionately on poor people, and making cuts to public investment."

"Apply yourself fully to the introspection offered here. It is good for all seekers... This self-inquiry is your internal work. Internal work – eternal satisfaction. Internal work revealing timeless Self."

"The Absolute is not revealed through human effort. At the appointed time, presence simply begins merging in it. If you try to force this, you will bring the mind and person in again. It will seem as though the mind has accomplished something tremendous, but it will be a fake realisation, a mere mental state."

"Today he’s no longer Tony Moo-Young – he’s Mooji, a spiritual teacher and guru with hundreds of thousands of followers across the world, people drawn to his quest to discover secrets to a more meaningful, less troubled life. A disciple of an Indian teacher called Sri Harilal Poonja, Mooji holds retreats, gives talks and runs an ashram. His philosophy is simple: if we connect to our true nature or self, we can live a true and meaningful life. His events pack in the crowds, and he performs what looks a lot like a public therapy session, homing in on individual issues and giving feedback. Meeting him, you can see his appeal: he’s one of those people who focuses in on you, making you feel like you really matter. To sit with him, they say, is to be at peace.... he’s based in Portugal where he set up his ashram in the southern hills, and welcomes followers from around the world."

"Identification with the body is a state that consciousness needs to experience for a while. But eventually, grace will compel consciousness to transcend this severe limitation and guide it home to its original nature."

"What we are is consciousness. The body is the vehicle through which consciousness can taste experiencing. And in the human form, consciousness has the capacity and opportunity to realise its own source and thus come into a direct experience of this."

"Self-inquiry begins by looking to discover whether the personal identity, with all its conditioning and idiosyncrasies, is who we truly are. And it ends as a mirror in which the timeless is reflected."

"Mind in its natural, intuitive function is a higher power than the personal mind mode. The natural mind operates in a much broader way. It is not obsessed with activity or identity. It is clean and clear, empty and fresh, so life simply unfolds. One stays in complete harmony without strain or effort. The natural mind is in a state of grace."

"The greater Truth is that you are the awareness within which the idea of yourself living a life and having awareness is appearing. In other words, the ‘person’ we take ourselves to be is an idea emerging in consciousness as an expression of consciousness."

"We are all living in time-bodies. From the birth of this body, each of us is like a candle that has been lit and is burning down throughout the course of our lives. And at some point, the flame of the body will go out. But you are not essentially the body, the senses, or the mind, because they all report to something that observes them."

"Remember, the presence ‘I am’ is the Godly principle. ‘I am’ is the Christ light, the Shiva being, the Krishna consciousness. It cannot be dispelled as mere illusion. It is the active God-Self, the dynamic expression of absolute awareness. Without it, there can be no experiencing, nor can there be the realisation of the Self."

"For thousands of years, human beings have been exploring the nature of who we are and the purpose of our being here on this planet. Many found what they were searching for, but billions of forms who were once called “people” are no longer here. They are gone. And now it is our turn – we are the living wave. We entered into manifestation to walk on this planet as contemporaries and to take our chance at finding that which is imperishable in us. All of us have this opportunity to find true freedom, and no one is exempt, no one is disqualified, because the light of consciousness burns in everyone."

"All we ever need is to be found in the Self. All that we seek in this world that is truly lasting – true happiness, joy, peace, light, space – are inside of us. They are ever present, but for a while we don’t see them because we search for fulfilment in the field of the ephemeral, the changeful. Only at the eleventh hour do we turn to the Self. Such procrastination is not wise, though it is common."

"The world encourages us to look from the limited sense of personhood – a very unstable standpoint from which we are always trying to find balance on very shaky ground. But you must learn to look from your source Being. Your Being is vaster than sky, greater than space – and it is already here. Look from your stillness, not from your agitation."

"In 1993... I was quite spiritually naive back then – I knew nothing of gurus, spiritual paths, or meditation, and certainly nothing of Advaita. I only knew the divine love of Christ and Sri Ramakrishna."

"Although I grew up in a Christian tradition, the wisdom of the Hindu saint Sri Ramakrishna was so universal that it touched and conquered my heart. His every word resonated deeply inside my being and was perfectly timed, as I had been waiting to find a voice that would confirm the profound experiences I had been having at the time. What I learned later was that Sri Ramakrishna was not only a great devotee – a bhakti saint – but also a completely liberated sage from the perspective and experience of the non-dual jnana path – the path of pure self-knowledge."

"Destiny’s path brought me to meet my master, Sri H. W. L. Poonja, lovingly known as Papaji. And only through the grace and presence of Papaji, who is a direct disciple of Sri Ramana Maharshi, was I somehow able to read and to understand Sri Ramana’s teachings inside my heart. What I came quickly to see and understand was that self-inquiry is the most direct approach to Truth. And it had to be direct, because I have a very short attention span and am only attracted to what is straightforward, immediate, and simple."

"You don’t have to go even a fraction of an inch away from where you are right now to find the silence and stillness of your Being. And from here you can observe the energetic streams that are pulling your attention to go out into the field of noise and personhood, where beings are suffering from person-poison, from the toxicity of ego."

"Amongst all the activities that we do, we rarely give enough time to sit quietly by ourselves. I would like to introduce to you not just to sit alone, but to guide you into your inner Being. What you truly are is not merely what we think we are, not merely what we have been brought up to believe we are. Actually, surprisingly, beautifully, we discover a level of peace and natural well-being-ness, joy, and silence. And right here, in the depth of our Self, you will discover a great calmness. And I want you to know that, this, that we are going to find today, you will see that it is always here. And the most wonderful thing about this is that you are about to discover that which has always been here. It has never left you!"

"Namaste. Good day to you. Today, this morning, I would like to introduce you to a very simple guided meditation which can be for everyone, or anyone. Wherever you are, it is a good time now, because many, many people around the world, most people around the world, are compelled to be at home for some time. We are calling it a ‘global quarantine’, but I would like to introduce another word, which is a ‘retreat’. A retreat, for me, means to be with yourself."

"I often say to my students, when they first come and they begin to feel the infiniteness, the joy and the deep peace, and they feel very happy, I say to them, Don’t just joy ride. Be quiet. Be one with this. Know that this is beyond belief. This is direct experience. But because this is taking place in you, a storm is coming. And this storm is the storm of ego! The storm of ego is going to come to crush what you have discovered, to bring fear in you, to make you feel that you are making a mistake, to bring in states of confusion. And some of you may give in to that and run away, and feel, ‘No, I must not do this anymore!’ But I want to encourage you. This exercise, this ‘meditation’, you may call it, comes from the very core of your Self. It comes from the God-place in you. And this tendency to run comes from the negativity, the toxicity that we have picked up in life. That is going to come up as though it wants to ruin your Garden of Eden inside your heart. I am telling you ahead of time that all beings who awakened to their true nature experienced these types of resistance, this type of aggression from the mind."

"It is time to leave behind childish attitudes and begin to pay a little more attention to what is really here. This is a time-body, a mortal body, but an immortal presence is moving in it. While the body is still warm, use this bodily life to rediscover your timeless Being."

"After a powerful experience with a Christian mystic in 1987, my life underwent many changes, inwardly and outwardly, which culminated with my giving up teaching art at the local college. One day I was drawn to enter a spiritual bookshop in central London. I was not accustomed to reading books, but I was instantly attracted to a picture of Sri Ramana Maharshi on the cover of one book. His face radiated a warmth and light that immediately touched my heart. However, when I opened the book, my reaction was, Whoa! What is this?! His words felt very intellectual and noisy to me – so much so that I actually thought the printer must have made a mistake and put the wrong cover on the book. The picture emanated such profound serenity, silence, and peace, but the concise instructions of self-inquiry within couldn’t enter my being back then. So I closed Sri Ramana’s book and put it aside. Instead, I found another book in the same shop entitled The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, which spoke to me immediately."

"Everything you can perceive comes and goes, including your own body. You are the one looking at time, objects, and even thoughts and emotions."