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Most people who know me – even in passing – know of my profound interest in Soviet and Russian history. Back in June of this year, my years of interest and study culminated in the completion of my self-published book project, Red Youth: Young Heroes of the Great Patriotic War. The book chronicles the life and martyrdom of Zoya Kosmodemyanska, one of the best-known and most loved heroines of the Soviet Union’s war against fascist Germany. Regular readers to this site know that I had a lot of help on this project and a lot of support for my efforts as well.
In the months that have followed since the initial release of the book, I have received kind words and encouragement from many different places in the world and I have shipped copies all over the United States and as far away as the Middle East and Australia. I also shipped a copy to Peyman Piran, one of the Iranian students to whom the book is dedicated. Last month, I filled a wholesale order for Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Baltimore and they are now selling copies online and in their store.
I am, of course, very happy to sell copies of the book to anyone with an interest in Zoya’s story. But one of the greatest honors thus far just happened this week. My friend Nina Lebed lives in Russia and she was kind enough to take a copy to the Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Museum in Moscow. On Tuesday November 24, 2009 she presented a copy of the book to Museum Director Natalia Valentinovna who will place the book into the collection of materials at the museum.
To have this book placed upon so many important documents and exhibits related to Zoya and her brother Shura is one of the most tremendous accomplishments of my life and I am grateful to Nina and everyone else who helped to bring about this honor.
Museum Director Natalia Valentinovna holding the Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Museum’s newly acquired copy of Red Youth.
The book will be added to this case which contains works about Zoya from around the world.
Red Youth sits atop Zoya’s primary school desk.
Closeup of Red Youth on Zoya’s desk.
Red Youth: Young Heroes of the Great Patriotic War is available for purchase through Erythrós Press and Media.
You don’t have to be a Marxist to appreciate the fact that few people have ever been so skilled at building polemic arguments as V.I. Lenin. Consider this passage from his 1915 work New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture in which Lenin set out to refute the assertions of a prominent Russian economist of the day:
All these assertions are monstrously untrue. They are in direct contradiction to reality. They are a sheer mockery of the truth. Their incorrectness ought to be explained in detail for a very good reason…
The argument that follows this introduction is as painstakingly detailed and spot-on as required, which is a necessity given the subject matter at hand. From the caustic polemic follows a methodical deconstruction that is then buttressed by a wealth of relevant statistical data. The balance of the piece is a resounding quod erat demonstrandum.
Such an introduction to a complex and multifaceted debate immediately compels the reader to accept the infallibility of the forthcoming counterpoint(s). It’s a methodical attack, meant to undermine the fallacious claims of an opponent while simultaneously and explicitly asserting the validity of the immediate arguments.
This method is among the more useful and effective tactics in both the most simple and complex of political debates.
Signifying a sharp turn in working class movement in Sri Lanka, the plantation workers of Balmoral Estate in hill country recently took a bold step forward to establish an action committee. After weeks of preliminary strike actions which were, in turn, met with numerous betrayals by reactionary trade unions, Sri Lankan workers are still engaged in an important struggle.
The Balmoral Estate Action Committee recently published an appeal to all workers which includes a bold vision statement and call to action:
We, the workers of the Balmoral Estate in Agarapathana, have formed our own Action Committee to fight for our rights and call on workers throughout the plantations and other sections of industry to do the same.
We have taken this step because we have no faith in any of the trade unions that have sold us out time and time again. All the plantation unions are working with the employers and the government to force us to accept another two years of poverty-level wages.
The organization of the Balmore Estate labor force constitutes an important development not only within Sri Lanka but on an international scale as well. Working people and students everywhere can learn from the bravery and vision of these plantation workers. Their struggle exemplifies the vision of Indian political theorists like D.D. Kosambi who captured the very essence of workers' movements in the conclusion to his 1939 piece The Kanpur Road:
My place was not with the heroes, but with the rabble, with the men who had been pressed into the ranks by force of arms, or force of hunger, with nothing to fight or work for and little to gain; whose function in the epics was to be slaughtered by the heroes; whose role, according to the historians, was to provide a mere background for the deeds of great men. The heroes of a money-making society rose from the people, at the expense of the people; I could rise only with the common people.
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally managed to find some
time to add some new content to our archive of materials dedicated to Zoya
Kosmodemyanskaya.
The index page of the archive now features a new collage of
images from Zoya’s life and beyond.Also featured on the page is a banner ad for the book Red Youth, which
is still on sale from Erythrós Press and Media.It’s also worth mentioning that Red Youth recently received
a very favorable review from The Marxist-Leninist, which is one of the better
political blogs on the Internet.You can read the review here.
We have added a few images to our Post Card Gallery of
single-issue cards and selections from sets.The new images in this gallery include:
- A Soviet-era card from around 1943, likely one of the earliest post cards featuring Zoya’s image.
- A card from the 1950’s which features both a black-and-white portrait of Zoya and an artist’s depiction of her speech before her execution at Petrischchevo.
- An undated color print of what appears to be an oil painting of Zoya, dated 1953.
Tanya
Solomakha
Also in this image gallery is a new favorite of mine, a 1964
artist’s depiction of Young Pioneers laying flowers at the base of a statue of
Zoya.I happened upon this by
complete accident on eBay one evening.Although the card was not specifically listed as being related to Zoya,
I noticed the Russian inscription of her name at the base of the statue and
thought this would be a great piece for our collection.
Finally, we’ve posted a series of photographs taken by our
friend Nina Lebed during her trip to the Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Museum in Moscow
earlier this year.The pictures
show some fantastic exhibits of property, documents and literature related to
the Kosmodemyanskie.Of particular
interest to me was the picture of Tatiana
"Tanya" Solomakha, the heroine of the Russian Civil War whose
story was especially important to young Zoya both in childhood and as a young
partisan.All in all, these are
great photos of a place that I very much hope to visit someday.Many thanks to you, Nina!
As I've noted before, one of my favorite things to do as a parent is to share interesting and unusual books with our girls at every possible opportunity. Sometimes, the results aren't terribly well received, like the time I read aloud from an old inductive logic book over dinner or the night I shared some passages from Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Other times, the girls are genuinely interested in what I am reading and they ask me to share a bit with them. I have, of course, obliged on a number of occasions, sharing pieces from books like Chaim Potok's The Chosen and Richard Poe's Afrocentric historical study Black Spark, White Fire.
There was also the wonderful evening when I received a rare first printing of Voltairine de Cleyre's Selected Works in the mail and the girls sat by and watched closely as I carefully opened the book, showed them de Cleyre's portrait and read some of her poems for them. (To this day, Baby Z. says she will someday have a daughter named Voltairine. Really.) I must say that it's nice to help our girls to develop interests and knowledge that extends beyond the limitations of mass marketing and popular culture.
Last Friday afternoon, I was sitting on the swing in front of my in-laws' house enjoying a rare, gentle July breeze as I relished the end of the workweek. I took advantage of this down time to read some of Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children which I had started a week or so prior. My rather busy schedule had prevented me from spending more than a few minutes every few days with the book.
After a short time, the girls noticed that I was sitting outside and Baby Z. ran out to join me. She scrambled up into the swing next to me, grabbed a hold of my arm and laid her head on my chest. She looked down at the book and said, 'Read that book to me.” I had just finished the section in the book in which Mother Courage's son Swiss Cheese was executed, so I figured that the next few pages might be rather unremarkable.
So, I started reading to Z. from the beginning of Scene Four but about halfway down the page, I realized that I had indeed come upon some subject matter that wasn't entirely age-appropriate for my young, audience. This scene featured a young soldier who was furious with his captain and was looking to exact some revenge. I stopped reading as I scanned the remainder of the page to see what I had gotten myself into and I silently read the following:
YOUNG SOLDIER: Screw the Captain! Where is the son of a bitch? Swiping my reward, spending it on brandy for his whores, I'll rip his belly open!
AN OLDER SOLDIER (coming after him): Shut your hole, you'll wind up in the stocks.
YOUNG SOLDIER: Come out, you thief, I'll make lamb chops out of you! I was the only one in the squad who swam the river and he grabs my money, I can't even buy myself a beer. Come on out! And let me slice you up!
I wasn't entirely sure what to do at this point, as Baby Z. seemed fairly interested in the subject matter and I have to admit that it's awfully nice to have my little one cuddled up next to me, intent on sharing in what is so obviously rather interesting to me. So I substituted my own "revised” version of the passage and said something like this:
"Well, ummm…See, this young guy is mad at the Captain – really mad, see – and he wants to get the Captain really, really badly because the Captain took his money….or something. And he's really going to get him, I guess. And then this other guy comes along and tells him to be quiet, but the young guy won't because he's really mad. Yeah."
It was at this point that Baby Z. hopped down from the swing abruptly and said, "Okay…Can we do something else?” I asked her if she wanted to know what happened to Mother Courage and she said, rather matter-of-factly, "That book is boring.” Then she toddled off to the garage to get her tricycle so she could ride it in the driveway for a while. Ah well, it was nice for a moment, anyway.
I wondered if Brecht is really boring to a 5 year-old or if it was just came across as boring because I dumbed it down. Whatever the case, I always appreciate the candor of our girls and I figure that someday when they come back to these authors and books of their own accord, they might feel a small spark of recollection and ultimately end up with some greater appreciation for what we've tried to share with them along the way.
With my attention divided amongst a host of real life and net-based endeavors, I have been slow to comment on the situation in Iran despite the fact that I have a great deal of interest in the developments which continue to unfold hour upon hour. I am following the news as closely as possible, reading accounts through the mainstream media as well as the host of user-generated news sources on the Internet. My dear Iranian brothers and sisters -- those within Iran and throughout the world -- are never far from my thoughts these days.
The current situation in Iran is one that should surprise absolutely no one. From the egomaniacal and demagogic mullahs to the courageous workers and students who now fill the streets of Tehran and other cities in protest, surely they must have all known that history would bring them face to face at this particular juncture. Indeed, what is occurring in Iran right now must happen. Irrespective of the outcome this time around, it is the Iranian people who must move forward in pursuit of a better quality of life and a collective existence that is free from the scourges of oppression and intolerance that were foisted upon them after Political Islam's betrayal of the 1979 Revolution.
One of the most particularly interesting dimensions of the international response to the current events in Iran has been the fact that American progressives and liberals must now come to grips with the despotic nature of Ahmadinejad and Iran's ruling clique. For some time, a number of currents and tendencies of the American left have stood firm on a shameful and baseless conviction that Ahmadinejad is the peace-loving face of the anti-imperialist movement. Now, as the brazen chicanery of the theocracy's election fraud proceeded by its brutal and reactionary response to democratic and popular dissent is exposed to the world, those who have ignored and obscured the true nature of Political Islam must now face the reality of the horrors which they have tacitly and implicitly endorsed through their silence, including the slaughter of left opposition activists and Marxist dissidents, oppression of women and religious minorities and the torture and murder of homosexuals and labor leaders.
In a discussion of previous elections in Iran back in 2001, the late Mansoor Hekmat shared his enthusiasm that the Iranian people might someday mobilize and wrest political power from their oppressors. He said:
"Now, it is reaction that is against the mainstream and it is we who represent the majority. Victory is possible and achievable. This is the essence of the current political situation in Iran." (full text)
As enthusiastic as these words were eight years ago, they ring true today as the people of Iran stand just one great stride from a new direction forward. History is on their side as the people of the world support them in their struggle for freedom and equality.
Aluta continua! Personal postscript: For the past several months, I've been wrapped up with a handful of projects, some of which are serious and others…well, they were not so serious. In any event, I've resolved to return to some of the things that have been so important to me over the past several years, including my writings on greeklish.org as well as a few other web-based projects. Just this week, I've resumed work again on the development of an archive of the works of Josip Broz Tito, adding a short excerpt from a 1955 interview with Radio Belgrade. More works from 1941-1961 are forthcoming as are additional documents for one of my favorite subject archives of MIA, the Yugoslavia Subject Section.
May 1st is May
Day, which is also known as International Workers Day. This
holiday is observed in many countries and locales, in
recognition of the achievements of the working people of the
world.
May 1st
also marks the anniversary of the beginning of the 1886 nation-wide
strike in support of the eight-hour workday. In Chicago, a
mass meeting in support of the workers' movement ended tragically with
the "Haymarket Massacre" on May 4.
From 1880 on, I became wholly engrossed in the labor movement. In all the great industrial centers the working class was in rebellion. The enormous immigration from Europe crowded the slums, forced down wages and threatened to destroy the standard of living fought for by American working men. Throughout the country there was business depression and much unemployment. In the cities there was hunger and rags and despair. Foreign agitators who had suffered under European despots preached various schemes of economic salvation to the workers. The workers asked only for bread and a shortening of the long hours of toil. The agitators gave them visions. The police gave them clubs.
Particularly the city of Chicago was the scene of strike after strike, followed by boycotts and riots. The years preceding 1886 had witnessed strikes of the lake seamen, of dock laborers and street railway workers. These strikes had been brutally suppressed by policemen’s clubs and by hired gunmen. The grievance on the part of the workers was given no heed. John Bonfield, inspector of police, was particularly cruel in the suppression of meetings where men peacefully assembled to discuss matters of wages and of hours. Employers were defiant and open in the expression of their fears and hatreds. The Chicago Tribune, the organ of the employers, suggested ironically that the farmers of Illinois treat the tramps that poured out of the great industrial centers as they did other pests, by putting strychnine in the food.
The workers started an agitation for an eight-hour day. The trades unions and the Knights of Labor endorsed the movement but because many of the leaders of the agitation were foreigners, the movement itself was regarded as “foreign” and as “un-American.” Then the anarchists of Chicago, a very small group, espoused the cause of the eight-hour day. From then on the people of Chicago seemed incapable of discussing a purely economic question without getting excited about anarchism.
The employers used the cry of anarchism to kill the movement. A person who believed in an eight-hour working day was, they said, an enemy to his country, a traitor, an anarchist. The foundations of government were being gnawed away by the anarchist rats. Feeling was bitter. The city was divided into two angry camps. The working people on one side hungry, cold, jobless, fighting gunmen and police clubs with bare hands. On the other side the employers, knowing neither hunger nor cold, supported by the newspapers, by the police, by all the power of the great state itself.
The anarchists took advantage of the widespread discontent to preach their doctrines. Orators used to address huge crowds on the windy, barren shore of Lake Michigan. Although I never endorsed the philosophy of anarchism, I often attended the meetings on the lake shore, listening to what these teachers of a new order had to say to the workers.
Meanwhile Vile employers were meeting. They met in the mansion of George M. Pullman on Prairie Avenue or in the residence of Wirt Dexter, an able corporation lawyer. They discussed means of killing the eight-hour movement which was to be ushered in by a general strike. They discussed methods of dispersing the meetings of the anarchists.
A bitterly cold winter set in. Long unemployment resulted in terrible suffering. Bread lines increased. Soup kitchens could not handle the applicants. Thousands knew actual misery.
On Christmas day, hundreds of poverty stricken people in rags and tatters, in thin clothes, in wretched shoes paraded on fashionable Prairie Avenue before the mansions of the rich, before their employers, carrying the black flag. I thought the parade an insane move on the part of the anarchists, as it only served to make feeling more bitter. As a matter of fact, it had no educational value whatever and only served to increase the employers’ fear, to make the police more savage, and the public less sympathetic to the real distress of the workers.
The first of May, which was to usher in the eight-hour day uprising, came. The newspapers had done everything to alarm the people. All over the city there were strikes and walkouts. employers quaked in their boots. They saw revolution. The workers in the McCormick Harvester Works gathered outside the factory. Those inside who did not join the strikers were called scabs. Bricks were thrown. Windows were broken. The scabs were threatened. Some one turned in a riot call.
The police without warning charged down upon the workers, shooting into their midst, clubbing right and left. Many were trampled under horses’ feet. Numbers were shot dead. Skulls were broken. Young men and young girls were clubbed to death.
The Pinkerton agency formed armed bands of ex-convicts and hoodlums and hired them to capitalists at eight dollars a day, to picket the factories and incite trouble.
On the evening of May 4th, the anarchists held a meeting in the shabby, dirty district known to later history as Haymarket Square. All about were railway tracks, dingy saloons and the dirty tenements of the poor. A half a block away was the Desplaines Street Police Station presided over by John Bonfield, a man without tact or discretion or sympathy, a most brutal believer in suppression as the method to settle industrial unrest.
Carter Harrison, the mayor of Chicago, attended the meeting of the anarchists and moved in and about the crowds in the square. After leaving, he went to the Chief of Police and instructed him to send no mounted police to the meeting, as it was being peacefully conducted and the presence of mounted police would only add fuel to fires already burning red in the workers’ hearts. But orders perhaps came from other quarters, for disregarding the report of the mayor, the chief of police sent mounted policemen in large numbers to the meeting.
One of the anarchist speakers was addressing the crowd. A bomb was dropped from a window overlooking the square. A number of the police were killed in the explosion that followed.
The city went insane and the newspapers did everything to keep it like a madhouse. The workers’ cry for justice was drowned in the shriek for revenge. Bombs were “found” every five minutes. Men went armed and gun stores kept open nights. Hundreds were arrested. Only those who had agitated for an eight-hour day, however, were brought to trial and a few months later hanged. But the man, Schnaubelt, who actually threw the bomb was never brought into the case, nor was his part in the terrible drama ever officially made clear.
The leaders in the eight hour day movement were hanged Friday, November the 11th. That day Chicago’s rich had chills and fever. Rope stretched in all directions from the jail. Police men were stationed along the ropes armed with riot rifles. Special patrols watched all approaches to the jail. The roofs about the grim stone building were black with police. The newspapers fed the public imagination with stories of uprisings and jail deliveries.
But there were no uprisings, no jail deliveries, except that of Louis Lingg, the only real preacher of violence among all the condemned men. He outwitted the gallows by biting a percussion cap and blowing off his head.
The Sunday following the executions, the funerals were held. Thousands of workers marched behind the black hearses, not because they were anarchists but they felt that these men, whatever their theories, were martyrs to the workers’ struggle. The procession wound through miles and miles of streets densely packed with silent people.
In the cemetery of Waldheim, the dead were buried. But with them was not buried their cause. The struggle for the eight hour day, for more human conditions and relations between man and man lived on, and still lives on.
Seven years later, Governor Altgeld, after reading all the evidence in the case, pardoned the three anarchists who had escaped the gallows and were serving life sentences in jail. He said the verdict was unjustifiable, as had William Dean Howells and William Morris at the time of its execution. Governor Altgeld committed political suicide by his brave action but he is remembered by all those who love truth and those who have the courage to confess it.
A few months ago, Iranian student and activist Peyman Piran finally escaped persecution in Iran after enduring a protracted campaign of political persecution. He left his home in hopes of being granted political asylum in a more progressive country.
At the moment, Peyman sits in a detention center in Norway awaiting a decision which could ultimately return him to Iran. If – like many other refugees – Peyman is returned to Iran, his life will be in grave danger once again. Please send appeals to the headquarters of the Norwegian Refugee Council and other diplomatic representatives of Norway accredited in your country.
Norwegian Refugee Council: PO Box 6758 St. Olavs Plass, 0130 Oslo Phone.: +(47) 23 10 98 00 Fax.: + (47) 23 10 98 01 E-mail: nrc@nrc.no
Royal Norwegian Embassy in Washington (US) 2720 34th Street NW Washington, DC 20008 Tel: (202) 333-6000 Fax: (202) 337-0870 E-mail: emb.washington@mfa.no
Royal Norwegian Embassy (UK) 25 Belgrave Square London SW1X 8QD Telephone 020 7591 5500 Fax: 020 7245 6993 E-mail: emb.london@mfa.no
For a complete list of contact information for Norway’s embassies and Consulates General, visit this link: http://www.norway.info/splash.aspx
During World War II, filmmaker Frank Capra directed a series of films commissioned by the U.S. Government. The series was called Why We Fightand the films proved to be an effective tool to combat the far-reaching propaganda machine of Nazi Germany. I have to admit that I still enjoy watching a couple of the episodes from Why We Fight every once in a while. I am particularly fond of The Battle of Russia with its detailed assessment of the Soviets’ defense of the USSR including some decent segments regarding the battles at Leningrad and Stalingrad. The Battle of China is very interesting as well and it even includes some brief yet rare film footage of Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
Some recent news about new events in Afghanistan and Iraq have led me to reflect a little on what it might look like if someone set out to compile an updated edition of the Why We Fight films. I think it would be a very different and a very sobering experience given what I have read as of late.
Here’s a bit on the “improving” situation in Afghanistan:
A controversial law condoning marital rape and reintroducing Taleban-era rules for Afghan women has been shelved after an outcry in the West.
The Afghan Foreign Ministry said that the law had not been enacted, while Justice Ministry officials said that its contents might be reconsidered. The legislation was put on hold pending a review.
“The Justice Ministry is reviewing the law to make sure it is in line with the Afghan Government’s commitment to human rights and women rights conventions,” Sultan Ahmad Baheen, a spokesman for the ministry in Kabul, said.
The British Government expressed alarm at the law, which applies to the 15 per cent of the Afghan population that is Shia Muslim. President Obama called the law “abhorrent” at the Nato summit in Strasbourg last week.
[...]
One of the most controversial articles stipulates that the wife “is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires”.
Later the law explicitly sanctions marital rape. “As long as the husband is not travelling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night,” Article 132 says. “Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband.”
Article 133 reintroduces the Taleban restrictions on women’s movements outside their homes, stating: “A wife cannot leave the house without the permission of the husband” unless in a medical or other emergency.
Article 27 endorses child marriage with girls legally able to marry once they begin to menstruate.
The law also withholds from the woman the right to inherit her husband’s wealth. (full article)
It is, of course, good news that the government of Afghanistan is now "reviewing" their newest incarnation of Sharia law after facing an unprecedented criticism from virtually every corner of the globe. But some things are not so easily undone with a simple campaign or a review. Consider the recent tragic events in the “new” Iraq:
Six gay men were shot dead by members of their tribe in two separate incidents in the past 10 days, an official with Iraq's Interior ministry said.
In the most recent attack, two men were killed Thursday in Sadr City area of Baghdad after they were disowned by relatives, the official said.
The shootings came after a tribal meeting was held and the members decided to go after the victims.
On March 26, four additional men were fatally shot in the same city, the official said, adding that the victims had also been disowned by their relatives.
The official declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
Witnesses told CNN that a Sadr City cafe, which was a popular gathering spot for gays, was also set on fire. (full article)
Are the above developments acceptable examples of what it means to be “liberated” in the 21st century? Ask the oppressed men, women and children of Iraq and Afghanistan why we fight. They’ll tell you the truth…but you might not like the answer.
Baseball season is almost here, and at Fifth Third Ballpark in Comstock, Michigan, the West Michigan Whitecaps and their ballpark owners Fifth Third Bank are rolling out a new item at the concession stand this year. The "Fifth Third Burger" boasts 1.66 pounds of beef (that's 5/3 pounds, folks) and it's topped with 5 slices of cheese, lettuce, tomato, salsa, sour cream, chili and Fritos. It takes a whole pound of dough to make the eight-inch sesame seed bun. All together, the Fifth Third Burger is around 4,800 calories, which is something like two days worth of the recommended caloric intake for a 20 year-old with an average build.
So, is this the best time to tout our own decadence given our current situation? Before you make the drive to Comstock for your own Fifth Third Burger, here are a few things to contemplate:
The global financial system is still on the brink of collapse as the world economy continues to contract. Our financial institutions are in a state of ruin. Fifth Third Bancorp (a.k.a Fifth Third Bank, if you're keeping tabs on this stuff) lost over $10 billion in the past 12 months.
In early March 2009, American unemployment hit a 25-year high. According to a recent article from cnnmoney.com, more than 3.3 million jobs were lost in the past six months.
Addiction and depression rates are continuing to rise as economic conditions worsen.
Adults and children continue to suffer from treatable illnesses while our healthcare system remains in a seemingly perpetual state of disrepair.
Well, despite all of the information above, if you're bold enough – and hungry enough – to step up to the plate and gorge yourself in the spirit of excess and gluttony, the Fifth Third Burger is your destiny. For those who are able to polish off this slop bucket on a platter all by yourself, a free t-shirt is the much-coveted prize that awaits you.
And given the current course of our economy, that t-shirt will come in quite handy when all you have left are the proverbial "clothes on your back."
The argument that follows this introduction is as painstakingly detailed and spot-on as required, which is a necessity given the subject matter at hand. From the caustic polemic follows a methodical deconstruction that is then buttressed by a wealth of relevant statistical data. The balance of the piece is a resounding 
As I've noted before, one of my favorite things to do as a parent is to share interesting and unusual books with our girls at every possible opportunity. Sometimes, the results aren't terribly well received, like the time I read aloud from an old inductive logic book over dinner or the night I shared some passages from Marcuse's 
So, I started reading to Z. from the beginning of Scene Four but about halfway down the page, I realized that I had indeed come upon some subject matter that wasn't entirely age-appropriate for my young, audience. This scene featured a young soldier who was furious with his captain and was looking to exact some revenge. I stopped reading as I scanned the remainder of the page to see what I had gotten myself into and I silently read the following:
With my attention divided amongst a host of real life and net-based endeavors, I have been slow to comment on the 
A few months ago, Iranian student and activist Peyman Piran finally escaped persecution in Iran after enduring a protracted campaign of political persecution. He left his home in hopes of being granted political asylum in a more progressive country.
