The Rise and Fall of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a "Parable on Populism"

The Secret of Enough: "Chapter Excerpt from 'Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight'
by Thom Hartmann"

Home from Iraq: "I could go into a long litany of the ways in which the American military has treated journalists in Iraq. Recent actions indicate that the U.S. military will detain and/or kill any journalist who happens to be caught covering the Iraqi side of the militant resistance, and indeed a number of journalists have been killed by U.S. troops while working in Iraq. This behavior at the moment seems to be limited to journalists who also happen to be Arabs, or Arab-looking, but that is only a tangential story to what I'm telling you about here."

The Raw Story | Rep. calls for deeper inquiry into secret Iraq attack plan: "Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for answers on secret Iraq plan
RAW STORY "

"The Oklahoma City Bombing and The Politics of Terror" 1: Also, my book was just acclaimed by Gore Vidal in September's Vanity Fair
as the best and most complete book on the Oklahoma City Bombing!
--
David Hoffman

(DV) Sanders: The "Freedom" of Afghanistan's Women: "In its 2004 report on human rights practices in Afghanistan, released on February 28, 2005, the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor paints a far-less rosy picture of the state of women in Afghanistan. According to the report, Afghan women continue to be raped, beaten, and kidnapped on a large scale. Precise numbers were impossible to tabulate as victims of rape in Afghanistan are stigmatized. Not only are they stigmatized, but, according to Amnesty International, Afghan women are frequently prosecuted for the rapes and sexual assaults committed against them. In Afghanistan, being raped constitutes the crime of 'zina,' or unlawful sexual intercourse.
Those women guilty of 'zina' may wind up in prison. Lucky for them, there are separate prisons for women in Afghanistan. The conditions of those prisons, however, according to the State Department, are worse than the prisons for men, which themselves are beneath international standards.
Further distinguishing women's prisons from men's is that many women in those prisons are there at the request of a family member. Their 'crimes' range from marrying a man of their own choosing to being accused of adultery. Other women are imprisoned for bigamy, which in Afghanistan means their husbands either divorced or deserted them and then changed their minds after the women remarried.
This is not to say that all women imprisoned in Afghanistan were convicted of being raped or were sent there by their families. As it turns out, some Afghan women are in prison voluntarily. According to the State Department, they chose prison over enduring rampant domestic violence or being forced into arranged marriages. Without shelters for battered women in Afghanistan, prison becomes a viable option.
Prison's not the only option, however. According to the State Department's report, a growing number of Afghan women are opting for self-immolation. By the end of 2004, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission investigated 300 cases of self-immolation. Think about it, Afghan women would rather set themselves on fire than endure their new-found freedom so lauded by the Bush administration."