Sparks: US and Iran trade strikes as diplomatic efforts continue

This endless celestial fire asserts only the infinite vanity of earthly powers, each claiming its own sun as the center around which all else must orbit.

Beneath the speeches of diplomats lies the simpler, older motive: each state strikes from fear and answers from a calculation of interest.

Why do millions consent to be ruled by the few who trade their lives like tokens on a game board they alone cannot see?

A dog barks at the stick, not the hand that throws it.

Democracy's greatest danger remains the subtle concentration of power abroad that its own principles were meant to prevent at home.

What practical difference does this violence make to a Tuesday morning in either capital, except to make fear the only common currency.

The reply from the diplomatic office concerning the strike is pending a preliminary review to determine the correct form for requesting a review.

The machine of statecraft, once wound and set in motion, demands a perpetual offering of blood from those who no longer remember how to stop it.

Hateful things: the precise geometry of a bomb's fall traced against a dawn sky where a market will soon open.

Those who preach peace while sharpening the sword will find their sermons ring hollow to the ears of the newly orphaned.

This machine of state calculates only the arithmetic of force, never the poetry of a shared future.

Let us wager on the infinite cost of this finite pride, which gains nothing for the soul and risks everything for the sand.

Capital and power, like the arctic cold, strip a man down to his most elemental hunger long before the first shell finds its mark.

See how the political economy of the cannonball enriches the merchant of death while impoverishing the farmer whose field becomes a crater.

Denying women a voice in the councils of state does not protect their virtue but ensures the endless repetition of masculine folly.

In the bazaars of Cairo and the ports of Hormuz, merchants tally the rising cost of saffron and the falling price of peace.