Kvetcher in the Rye
by Greg Palast
In the sixth grade, the Boys' Vice-Principal threatened to suspend me from school unless I stopped carrying around The Catcher in the Rye I think because it had the word "fuck" in it. Since the Boys' Vice-Principal hadn't read the book - and I don't think he'd ever read any book - he couldn't tell me why.
But Mrs. Gordon was cool. She let me keep the book at my desk and read it at recess as long as I kept a brown wrapper over the cover.
I think J.D. Salinger would have liked Mrs. Gordon. She wanted to save me from the world's vice-principals, the guys who wanted to train you in obedience to idiots and introduce you the adult world of fear and punishment. Mrs. Gordon wanted to protect the need of a child to run free.
That's, of course, how the word fuck got into Salinger's book. For the 5% of you who haven't read it, the main character of the book, Holden Caulfield, tries to erase the f-word off the wall of a New York City school. He doesn't want little kids like his sister Phoebe to see it, that somehow it would trigger an irreversible loss of her childhood innocence:
PermalinkZionists are trying to intimidate me
Salim Nazzal
At the beginning I got “strange” e mails which hint towards assassination and the alike. The Zionist character in these e mails was obvious .I simply paid no attention. I know Zionists fear of the voice of the victims. My voice is the voice of my people who were murdered and uprooted from their home country. My voice is the voice of my nation surrounded by cemented walls and 620 checks points. My family is an old Galilean family fled to Lebanon after my village was severally attacked and bombed twice by Zionist planes. Several persons of my family were killed, and in Lebanon, I was born and brought up as a refugee without home, without rights, without future, but with the hope that justice will prevail one day. The intimidation e mails never stopped. And each time I change my e mail they continue intimidating me in the new e mail and sending virus almost all the time my computer is on.
Searching for the Significance of a Life and a Death
by SYITS
Yesterday, a man set himself on fire outside Ungar Furs, and burned himself to death. We know his name now: According to the Alliance, it was Daniel Shaull. And we know that he did what he did appears to have been in solidarity with the animals who continue to die horrible deaths, day after day after day, to keep Nicholas Ungar in business. We know that, even as he was on fire and undoubtedly in terrible pain, he mustered great strength and tried to go inside the fur store to spread the flames to the coats and garments and blood-stained profits of the last fur store in Portland.
Does President Obama Really Want a “Better Approach” to Fix Health Care?
By Kevin Zeese
Obama keeps saying he wants better ideas, but then will not meet with doctors desperately trying to let him know a better approach
Last Friday when President Obama vanquished the entire Republican Caucus in question time in Baltimore he said:
“Now, what I said at the State of the Union is what I still believe. If you can show me and if I get confirmation from health care experts, people who know the system and how it works, including doctors and nurses, ways of reducing people's premiums, covering those who do not have insurance, making it more affordable for small businesses, having insurance reforms that ensure people have insurance even when they've got preexisting conditions, that their coverage is not dropped just because they're sick, that young people right out of college or as they're entering in the workforce can still get health insurance -- if those component parts are things that you care about and want to do, I'm game.”
Dem Bones is Connected To De Debt Bone
By Robert Singer
How are the Bonesmen getting wealthy off this money that doesn’t exist?
It is an understatement to say we are experiencing an unprecedented financial crisis along with our world-wide environmental crisis. Neither crisis needs an Austrian economist to explain it. We live in a consumer society and consumers “use things up.” In recent history, this useless, toxic “stuff” comes from China, and this sad state of affairs is so simple to understand that even a child can follow. Just watch the, “Story of Stuff,” a web-based documentary about the dark underside of consumption.
Remembering Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010)
by Stephen Lendman
Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010)
Distinguished scholar, author, political scientist, people's historian, activist, and son of blue-collar immigrant parents, Zinn was born on August 24, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York and died in Santa Monica, CA of a reported heart attack while swimming on January 27. He's survived by two children, Myla Kabat-Zinn and Jeff Zinn, and five grandchildren.
He was 87, and a valued guest several times on The Lendman News Hour and Progressive Radio News Hour. He'll be sorely missed.
Writing in CounterPunch on January 28, journalist, author and activist Harvey Wasserman called him "above all a gentleman of unflagging grace, humility and compassion."
Interviewed on Democracy Now, his former student, author Alice Walker, said "he had such a wonderful impact on my life and on the lives of the students of Spelman and of millions of people....he loved his students."
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