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Thursday, January 5, 2012 - 21:50
I approached him at the party
Because I didn’t know anyone,
Because he looked harmless,
Because he stood alone,
And I introduced myself.
I said,
You must know a lot of these people,
And he looked straight ahead and said,
...
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Thursday, December 29, 2011 - 10:52
Having spent the better part of two months as an embedded reporter with Occupy OKC's camp in Kerr Park (aka Poet's Park) I have often praised both the city and police department. Oklahoma City's occupation has so far managed to avoid the mass arrests and police brutality seen in...
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Friday, December 23, 2011 - 01:23
Dear friend, timing is everything these days.
But if we wait for the "right moment" we might lose the day.
I have been wondering, of late, what the 60s have in store for me,
as I am done re-inventing myself.
But there is an essence, a honeyed core
...
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Friday, December 23, 2011 - 01:16
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Thursday, December 22, 2011 - 12:56
Predator Odrona is about to sign a military authorization bill [Carl Levin's S-1867] that puts every one of us at risk of being detained by our own military. If the government decides that you are a terrorist threat, the military will be able to kidnap you and deny you the right to...
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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 10:38
Lahore -- Ever since 9/11 and the subsequent 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the US, Pakistan’s world has been in turmoil.
Officially America’s ally in the so-called War on Terror, Pakstan has actually been one of its biggest victims. Just recently, Pakistan was...
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Monday, December 19, 2011 - 13:07
Islamabad -- This past June I posted an article by Anatol Lieven on Facebook. For those who are not familiar with his name, Anatol is from the UK and numbers among the few journalists whom I always enjoy reading. I have met Anatol a few times and he is the kind of person...
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Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - 14:38
At the beginning of the twentieth century the United States was engaged in a long and brutal war of aggression against the Philippines, which led to between 200,000 and 1.5 million civilian deaths. It was a colonial war against independence fought by the US with patriotic zeal and...
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Friday, December 9, 2011 - 09:22
This article originally appeared in The Pitch, a Kansas City alternative newspaper. ThisCantBeHappening! normally does not reprint other publications' material, but this story about Kristi Neuhaus, a heroic doctor who has fought for women...
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Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - 18:33
What will we do when the gates go up?
Here is the dream: Consumers with money. A virtual middle class.
Cash and stuff. Jobs and cash. Benefits! Security.
Is there any way out?
Is it too late...
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Friday, December 2, 2011 - 08:37
This is Part II of a series of reports from our traveling correspondent in the American heartland. Part I covered the arrest of 10 Occupy OKC protesters as they “mic checked” a local Walmart on Black Friday. Part II...
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Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 23:23
Oklahoma City – In the early morning hours of Black Friday, 10 members of Occupy OKC discovered that chanting “Buy local!” in a crowded Walmart is an arrestable offense in the United States...
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Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 08:28
The mainstream media likes to claim that Occupy Movement is comprised of aimless activists without concrete goals. They should go ask Martha and Lorena Reyes, two recently fired Hyatt housekeepers who know exactly why the 1% who run everything need to be occupied and what the 99%...
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Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - 11:48
You say you feel my pain
But
You don't even know what pain is.
– Untitled final poem by Street Poet
Oklahoma City -- After spending the last three weeks in Oklahoma City covering...
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Saturday, October 22, 2011 - 19:09
It is the end of the day.
The trouble is we are dying. . .
Nobody talks like that,
But surely the setting sun understands this language.
But the wind,
If you want the wind to hear now, you shout.
The wind is busy mocking the weather report....
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Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - 21:18
"There are combustibles in every state which a spark might set fire to."
-- George Washington's letter to General Henry Knox concerning the
Shay's Rebellion, 1786
One month ago, a group of some 1000 demonstrators...
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Monday, October 17, 2011 - 07:39
He hunches alone behind
His gray beard
From Idaho
He hasn’t read any best sellers
He dresses in shades
That make gray
Look like a rainbow
His name is a name
Out of a brief story
About someone whose
Jump off
A trestle...
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Friday, October 7, 2011 - 12:51
Check out this cartoon by Portland, Ore. film company Softbox of Dave Lindorff being interviewed by Flashpoints host Dennis Bernstein on how the US spends 53% of...
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Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - 12:37
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Saturday, October 1, 2011 - 14:50
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Saturday, September 24, 2011 - 15:20
Click...
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Friday, September 23, 2011 - 18:50
(Third in a series of Rediscovering America)
“How are you?” a perky, young female clerk asked me as I walked through the front door of the odds and ends shop in Upper Dublin, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia.
I was taken aback by her forthright...
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Saturday, September 17, 2011 - 13:21
Hvalsoe, Denmark--It was with joy that I watched television coverage of election day, September 15. According to all the nine political parties running, and the mass media, there were no wars in the world and Denmark no longer was involved in three wars—Iraq, Afghanistan...
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Monday, August 29, 2011 - 08:01
Newfane, VT -- A classic David vs. Goliath battle is taking shape in the courtroom and in the streets and fields of Vermont as Entergy Nuclear of Louisiana tries to overturn Vermont law in the federal courts.
The state has thoughtfully and repeatedly voted no to...
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Saturday, August 27, 2011 - 17:54
Second in a series: "Rediscovering America"
Leading black-skinned representatives of the “hegemon”, as Cynthia McKinney calls President Barak Obama and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, could hardly expect to win any votes from the standing-room-only...
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - 17:09
Journalists from ThisCantBeHappening! took on the Philadelphia Inquirer. the nation's third-oldest surviving daily, this morning, conducting a leafletting “happening” in front of the paper’s soon-to-be-sold headquarters building on Broad Street.
A one-...
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Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 17:37
Back in the 50s
We were served up this warm vision
Of sculpted cloud-high bubble-cities
Catered by sloe-eyed robots.
How far that silvery angel has fallen!
Far below
Where Dick and Jane are playing hop-scotch
In the rocket graveyard.
...
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Saturday, August 6, 2011 - 21:41
(This is the first of a series of impressions of Ron’s return to the Belly of the Beast)
“We’re making a killing” read signs held in front of the permanent war profiteer, Lockheed-Martin, overlooking the King of Prussia Mall.
...
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Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 08:00
Fifty-eight years ago, on July 26, 1953, 160 Cuban rebels attacked Moncada Barracks near Santiago de Cuba. Had the rebels been able to take the fort with 1,000 troops—a good possibility—it would have started a revolution that might well have defeated the dictatorial regime of...
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Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 08:30
Years ago while studying in Zurich to be a Jungian analyst, I was exposed to an aura of this great person, Hearing the recounting of some of the exotic dreams of my fellow students only made me more awestruck. It therefore came as a shock when in that setting I dreamt of...
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Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 12:05
An old rock song plays
Distantly in my head
Behind three waterfalls.
The first waterfall, my tinnitus,
The second,
My faded memory of the song,
The third waterfall, my indifference. . .
I find that new songs don't age well...
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Monday, June 27, 2011 - 20:36
You learn many interesting things traveling on public lands following the wild horse issue in the American West.
You learn that after standing in sub-zero temperatures, attempting to document winter roundups, that returning to the relative warmth of your parked vehicle can...
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Sunday, June 26, 2011 - 20:29
(This article is Part III of journalist Ridenour’s political autobiography, Solidarity and Resistance: 50 Years With Che. Click here for Part I and here...
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Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 08:26
A boy is traveling
in the back seat of the family car,
a beige Rambler
driven by God
(who, just for now,
is his mother and father).
The boy is looking out the window
ecstatically
at everything that passes
along the road of life....
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Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 09:22
“Pakistan must do more.”
That statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has become a laugh line in Pakistani drawing rooms.
The 9/11 attacks resulted in 2,996 deaths -- 246 on the planes,2606 in towers and on ground, 126 at the Pentagon. The attacks justified an...
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Monday, June 13, 2011 - 10:33
As a boy I knew old Lonnie Chase, who clammed for a living in the waters of Cape Cod. Not known for his erudition, his words were short and pithy. I remember his response to my question regarding the weather. After gazing skyward, seeming to be pondering the clouds, he would...
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Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - 07:49
Cupar, Scotland--This county town of Fife, is not exactly a news hot spot. Probably the last big story here was the landing of Italian balloonist Vincenzo Lunardi nearby in 1785 at the end of a 43-mile flight from Edinburgh.
However the small town’s sleepy Sheriff...
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Monday, May 23, 2011 - 10:12
Forty-seven governments on the Untied Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) will discuss and decide, beginning at its May 30th session, what to do about an unusually candid and truthful report in the world of international politics.
The Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel...
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Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 10:59
Beware of Americans...Bearing Gifts
By Shaukat Qadir
I am sure everyone knows this but merely to ensure we are on the same grid, a policy has one or more aims to be achieved in a specified period and spells out how...
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Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 11:44
The stunning victory in last week’s elections by the pro-independence
Scottish National Party was a result which was supposed to be
impossible.
Scotland, after all, ceased to be an independent country in 1707, when it was
...
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Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 16:40
Berlin -- The debate continues: Was the killing of Osama bin Laden justified? Perhaps a rather useless debate since he is now most certainly dead. But despite their distance in time and space some flashbacks insist on recurring, right next to terrible images of those two planes...
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Saturday, May 7, 2011 - 16:29
Back in the 1980s, before the Cold War gave way to the War on Terror, American money and supplies helped Osama Bin Laden create Al Qaeda and build it into one of the world’s most successful terrorist organizations. And without the close alliances between Al Qaeda and our “allies”...
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Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - 12:40
Lahore, Pakistan -- I am incredulous!
I’ll say one thing: this US Special Forces operation deserves a standing ovation for immaculate execution. Except that some details do get confusing.
Maybe I’m just slow, but truly, viewing the still pictures of the...
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Monday, May 2, 2011 - 08:53
THEY say he’s dead, that they killed him for justice yet they do not release photographs or any evidence of his death.
THEY say they buried him after Islam custom by dumping him in the open sea. But Islam says a body must be buried in the ground if the person did not die at sea.
...
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Friday, April 29, 2011 - 10:36
(This article is Part II of journalist Ridenour’s political autobiography, Solidarity and Resistance: 50 Years With Che. Click here for Part I)
Wilfred Burchett was a key...
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Sunday, April 24, 2011 - 12:38
When it was suggested the war in Iraq was about oil, Tony Blair,then the British prime minister, had this to say on February 6,2003
“Let me just deal with the oil thing because… the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The...
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Sunday, April 17, 2011 - 19:20
(This article is the first of seven pieces dedicated to the Cuban revolution and its defeat of the US imperialist invasion 50 years ago, April 17-19, 1961, and embraces my half-century struggle.)
I. Sharing Che’s Activism
...
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Thursday, April 14, 2011 - 21:56
Bukowski loved the idea of poetry wars. Even at the lowest level of mimeo magazines, when he was co-editing Laugh Literary & Man the Humping Guns with Neeli Cherry, he jumped in guns blazing ready to take on the world. “Poetry,” he always said, “is a poor country...
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Saturday, April 9, 2011 - 13:57
We are now on the brink of the mother of all meltdowns in more ways than one.
Last weekend, The Times quoted Alan Hansen, a nuclear engineer and executive vice president of Areva NC, a unit of Areva, a French group that supplied reactor fuel to the Fukushima...
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Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 12:46
The Statue of Liberty and...
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Saturday, March 19, 2011 - 12:11
Isabel Wilkerson’s first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, couldn’t have come out at a better time for black New Orleanians, who as 2010 statistics confirmed, but our own hearts knew, lost more than a third of our community in...
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Sunday, March 6, 2011 - 09:32
Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.
I know not what I was playing
Or what I was dreaming then,
But I struck one chord of music
Like the sound of a great Amen....
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Sunday, February 20, 2011 - 12:38
The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) has set April 2011, the 50th anniversary of the revolution’s victory over the US-Cuban exile mercenary force at the Bay of Pigs, for its 6th Congress. I follow this process with special attention, in part, because I participated in the PCC’s 4th...
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Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 10:18
(Exclusive to ThisCantBeHappening!)
Islamabad--By now journalists everywhere (except in the US) have come to the conclusion that there is far, far more to Raymond Davis than is being revealed by the US or by Pakistani officials. That he was...
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Sunday, February 13, 2011 - 10:53
Lahore, Pakistan--You cannot open the TV, or read a paper here without more and more news about Raymond Davis and his murderous act. His killing on Jan. 27 of two young Pakistanis has created international waves, too, plunging the Pakistan-America relationship into stormy...
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Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 17:11
As things now stand, the United States appears ready to have Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak tossed out in exchange for his newly-named Vice President, Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian spy master. That is, maintain the status quo by swapping one dictator for another.
Of course,...
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Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - 15:20
One of my grandsons recently asked me, “What is wisdom?” After some discussion, we together concluded that wisdom comes only with experience.
When it comes to war, though, living in a country that has not experienced a war on its own soil since 1865, Americans, other than...
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Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - 10:44
Long time in the making! Long time suffering poverty, inequality, official murder-torture-imprisonment, despotism, fundamentalism, and governments lackeyed to US/Western powers.
I am no expert on Arabic/Middle East history or politics, other than knowing that US/Israel-led...
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Friday, January 28, 2011 - 07:15
Woodrow Tom Thompson was once a big player in the LA news scene . He began
in Yuma, Arizona at KBLU, doing sports radio and TV. After a stint at CBS station KOOL in Phoenix, he reinvented himself with a career in print journalism as news editor for the LA Free Press...
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Thursday, January 27, 2011 - 11:17
“Pariah” Makes Friends
Hearty applause, cheers, and a standing ovation met the team of “Pariah” following this morning’s 8:30 a.m. showing at the Sundance Film Festival. A product of the Sundance Institute’s screenwriting and directorial labs, with...
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Monday, January 24, 2011 - 11:08
By an historical coincidence, both Julian Assange and Luis Posada Carriles were brought before Western courts around the same time in late 2010 and early 2011—Assange in Britain and Posada in the United States. The contrast in their treatment by the U.S.-Anglo system of justice...
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Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 10:39
(NOTE: A copy of this letter to the commandant of the Quantico Marine base where Army Specialist Bradley Manning is being held in conditions of torture on orders of the Pentagon and the White House, first ran on David Swanson's ...
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Monday, January 17, 2011 - 11:10
It's all too appropriate that on the day that we celebrate the birthday of one of history’s most notable civil rights leaders, Arizona is in the national news spotlight. Arizona,one of the last states to recognize Martin Luther King Jr's birthday as a federal holiday only began doing in 1992...
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Monday, January 3, 2011 - 18:12
Performed at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, New York
One of the biggest challenges for modern people trying to understand history is to conceive of the past beyond stereotypes. When we use Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of Civil Rights resistance, we must also...
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Thursday, December 30, 2010 - 18:33
Am I the only queer person in the country that is sad about the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell"? I know the long-delayed bill just signed into law has destroyed my plan to avoid any future military conscription.
Let me explain. Many of my male friends in college photodocumented their...
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Sunday, December 26, 2010 - 15:34
As Christmas is celebrated in Incarceration Nation, it’s worth remembering certain things about the two figures who dominate this holiday.
As more than 3,000 American sit on death row, we revere the birth of a...
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Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - 21:13
One and a half years of medical school has at least taught me one thing: medicine is all about getting the right diagnosis. Sure, there are important things like treatment, but honestly, evidence based treatment guidelines and experiential wisdom can all be looked up. And as people realize...
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Friday, December 17, 2010 - 08:56
Julian Assange, key initiator of Wikileaks, has been granted bail despite the British government’s appeal made in behalf of the Swedish government. A British district court judge had waited two days before approving bail in the amount of $ 316,000, on the condition that Assange wear an...
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Monday, November 1, 2010 - 15:40
Santa Cruz -- “Are you planning to vote on Tuesday?” I asked. The food checker at our local natural food store was cheerful and friendly. But she was a little befuddled by the question.
“I don’t know where to vote,” she confessed.
“Have you gotten your sample...
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Monday, November 1, 2010 - 13:42
Oh, what to do about unemployment?
Try as it might to pump money into the economy and spur hiring, the Fed’s policy ain’t working. Don’t blame Keynes. For the stim to be effective, the cash needs to get to small businesses: the primary source of jobs in our country. Trouble...
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Saturday, October 30, 2010 - 21:29
In 1945, as World War Two was winding down, Edmund Wilson wrote two
critical pieces dealing with the mystery novel. He was troubled by the rise in sales of a
form he thought commercial and crude. Indeed, in an earlier article writer about west
coast writers’ “The Boys in the...
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - 07:20
Berlin -- What do the USA, China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and North Korea have in common?
The answer may surprise you.
The European Parliament answered this question on October 2nd with passage of a resolution singling out that seemingly disparate list for criticism....
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Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - 09:11
Jefferson County, KS -- It’s too late for Mr. Goldsmith, for former Kansas City, KS Police Detective Max Seifert and hundreds of thousands.
Bank of America and several other giant banks last week announced they are halting foreclosures across many states.
But we have...
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Monday, October 4, 2010 - 13:11
The Democrats keep calling me. They’re asking for money. It’s understandable, I guess. Ever since voting for Dick Gregory’s Freedom and Peace Party presidential campaign in 1968, I’ve pulled the Democratic lever and even actively campaigned for Gore, Kerry, and especially for Obama.
...
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Friday, September 24, 2010 - 17:23
The Republican right’s Pledge to America is widely being compared with Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. But for those of us with long enough memories, it more clearly harkens back a decade further, to the early days...
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Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - 14:25
Dancing for...
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Friday, September 3, 2010 - 09:04
Dirty Jews and Ragheads:
If Modern America Resembles Weimar, the Tea Party Resembles...
By Betsy Rossinsky
I learned I was Jewish the hard way. Soon after my mother died, her ex-husband (my father) took me away to live with him. I was seven at the...
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Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 22:22
Can a song played at rush hour over the Islands of Hawaii cause car crashes?
Can a song make you suddenly sob and shake and weep and completely lose control of
your automobile while you are driving from Honoka’a to Kona on the Big Island of
Hawaii?...
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Monday, August 23, 2010 - 10:10
President Obama’s Deficit Commission is all smoke and mirrors. Its members are making a big show of laboring over ”painful” choices and considering all options in their quest to bring down the deficit. But inside the Beltway everyone knows what’s going to happen: The commission will reduce the...
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Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 20:34
Have you ever, like me, found yourself wondering, while watching or listening to politicians on what passes for the news these days, “Who are these people?” Have you ever found yourself wondering what makes them tick?
Trust me, you're not alone. Inquiring minds want to know.
...
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Thursday, August 12, 2010 - 21:25
I'm a 1K flyer, meaning I fly over 100,000 miles a year with United, and consider myself fairly inured to the indignities of travel by now. But, going through my first Whole Body Back-Scatter X-ray at the Denver airport recently took frequent flying to a whole new level of creepiness.
...
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Thursday, August 12, 2010 - 21:24
I'm a 1K flyer, meaning I fly over 100,000 miles a year with United, and I consider myself fairly inured to the indignities of travel by now. But, going through my first Whole Body Back-Scatter X-ray at the Denver airport recently took frequent flying to a whole new level of creepiness....
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Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - 10:40
The way the Washington Post reported the story, Congress has finally pushed through “tougher” off-shore drilling regulations for oil companies.
Two key Senate committees approved...
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Sunday, June 20, 2010 - 13:25
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Friday, June 18, 2010 - 07:54
Yahoo News points out that more recently, McClatchy Newspapers reported that this last year, Agence France Presse has written about it and Afghan President Hamid Karzai himself has boasted of the nation’s wealth . Afghanistan’s mineral reserves were mapped by the Soviets during their occupation...
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Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - 10:48
General Fonseka quit the military after the May 2009 defeat of the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and ran for the presidency in January, 2010. He came in second, losing to the incumbent, Rajapakse. The former war hero was then promptly arrested and remains in military detention,...
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Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - 10:12
From Unsilent Generation
On June 5, 1944, the eve of the largest invasion in history, General Dwight Eisenhower visited the English airfield where paratroopers were...
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Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - 08:28
