Jul 31, 2004

Not another Hiroshima
Unruly women

Uptown youth
China and socialism
Insecurity
Communists and religion

Of these two hypothetical scenarios, which seems more believable? Offhand you might feel that number two rings the credibility bell. After all, number one is simply outrageous: a team of gung-ho guys establishing their own prison in Kabul for no other reason than to help fight terrorism. With no resources other than their own. And no profit to boot. But when you think about it, if number one comes after number two, they’re both believable!

I want to point out how two pieces of popular technology have contributed to the exposure of the lies and attempted cover-up of the misdeeds of two U.S. presidents, and to urge you to use your vote to oust Bush in 2004.

In Arthur Miller’s classic play, “Death of a Salesman,” aging traveling salesman Willy Loman pleads for his job with the son of the man who hired him and is about to fire him. Exasperated and fearful, Willy shouts that “promises were made across this desk!”

Back in the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee was running wild. It was blacklisting journalists, militant unionists, authors, playwrights and anyone who opposed the Korean War or signed the Stockholm Peace Pledge to outlaw the atomic bomb.

Book Review

Health Care Meltdown: Confronting the Myths and Fixing Our Failing System
By Robert H. LeBow, M.D.
Alan C. Hood Co., 2004
Softcover, 304 pp., $15.00

“America is the only developed nation that fails to guarantee access to needed care for all its citizens and the only advanced country that permits someone to go bankrupt because of poor health.”

Recognized as the greatest Spanish male dancer of his generation and an even greater choreographer, Antonio Gades died of cancer in Madrid on July 20. He was 67.

CHICAGO – Five Chicago-based movies are part of this year’s Black Harvest Film Festival scheduled here Aug. 7-19 at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Of the 18 features and six shorts, all but one will be Chicago premieres.

Aggressive legal tactics by the Bush administration have deliberately undermined a landmark 1997 civil rights settlement with African American farmers, turning the claims process into another chapter in a long history of discriminatory treatment by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.