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SHORT STORY | "THE PREMONITION"
BY JULIE BERNHARDT
My ex-boyfriend, Jason, grins at me. His perfect smile, minus the front teeth overlapping slightly, is all too familiar... | read |
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IDEAS | "THE INADEQUACY OF TREATMENT" BY TREVOR ABES
So there's this guy named Charles Leale, who's dead but is in many respects still here. He was the first doctor to touch Lincoln after he was shot... | read |
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SHORT STORY | "DON'T GET COMFORTABLE"
BY WILLIAM FARRANT
On a date I was asked what I thought the most important thing in life was. I struggle with questions that have over-arching, deeper meanings to them... | read |
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POETRY | "BEESWAX VOCAL CHORDS" AND OTHER POEMS
BY CAROLYN McGEE
We sing, voices together feeling the resonance with our blind sight one that comes only with sweet harmony... | read |
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SHORT STORY | "THE FATE OF THE ALPHA"
BY KIM BANNERMAN
A miserable wind slapped, pummeled and bit at the doctor as he climbed from the deck of the SS Joan onto the bobbing rowboat... | read |
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PROSE POEM | "PET POEM"
BY JANIS BUTLER HOLM
This poem wants to howl until you return. This poem wants to jump up and down as you open the door... | read |
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SHORT STORY | "BIG TALKER"
BY ERNESTINE LAHEY
"Shoot him", she thought one day. "Shoot the bastard, then he'll shut up." Her first thought was to aim for a shoulder or a foot. But she put that thought right out of her head... | read |
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POETRY | "HAPPINESS" AND OTHER POEMS
BY TAYLOR GOULD
Mom your son is home. Dad your son is home. Ten months gone fighting the good old war... | read |
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SHORT STORY | "UNLIKE THE BURBS"
BY DANIEL PEARLMAN
Francesco at thirty-five loves his job, loves his life, and on his way to work he whistles to the sparrows on the telephone wires and wishes he could stroke the soft red breast of that hungry little robin pecking around on Mrs. Alvarez's lawn. It's nice living only ten minutes from your job, unlike his relatives out in the burbs... | read |
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POETRY | "FOG-BORN"
BY DAVIDE TRAME
These words of doubt in the mind
and silence, looking
out of the train window... | read |
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PEOPLE & TIMES | "THE STORY OF KIM FROM THE VIETNAM NAPALM PULITZER PHOTOGRAPH 1972"
BY ROY BERGER
I first saw Kim in the summer of 1972. I didn't know her name then. June, 1972 is not a difficult time for me to remember. I turned sixteen. After school finished for the summer myself and a few tens of thousands of others took to the road and hitch hiked through county, country and province until all maps were worn and every penny long exhausted on the path to find ourselves, to challenge truths, to think about what we'd seen and heard... | read |
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SHORT STORY | "WRENS"
BY LORRI RUPARD
There was no rain for five days; everything in Georgia turned to dust. That's all it ever took. And Jan has zero common sense. She drove to Wrens right alongside a dirt devil in a dormant field, flattened the grass by parking next to the lot and picked three buckets of strawberries with four girls at the height of the heat... | read |
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POETRY | THREE POEMS
BY CATIE KING
New Day, Life Amongst Children, Dear Brother | read |
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WORLD | "PERCEPTIONS OF TERRORISM: POST 9/11"
BY ERIN McIVER
The September 11th attacks were a tragedy that affected most Americans. It put terrorism on the national stage as a hot button issue. However, it also put a face on terrorism: one of Middle Eastern descent that practices Islam... | read |
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HISTORY | "MORALITY IN MEDIEVAL ECONOMICS"
BY MIKE MERCER
A study on usury | read |
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IDEAS | POWER AND POLITICS
What is power in politics?
| read |
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IDEAS | "SEPARATION OF STATE AND BUSINESS, ISN'T IT TIME FOR BUSINESS TO MIND ITS OWN?"
BY DANIEL BOIS
In regards in running our lives in a spiritual sense we rely on our "church", in regards in running our lives in a civic sense we rely on our "state" and in regards in running our lives in a materialistic sense we rely on our "business". Isn't it time for Business to mind its own and allow the State to govern? | read |
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WORLD POLITICS | PEACE AND WAR, WAR AND PEACE
Why does the international peace sometimes facilitate the break out of war? | read |
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IDEAS | "SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, DIDN'T THE STATE GET THE MEMO"
BY DANIEL BOIS
Separation of Church and State? Well, the State has got to respect that as well. | read |
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IDEAS | LAW, POWER, AND FREEDOM
The long Eastern history of despotic governance contrasts with the long Western tradition of aristocratic rule. The peculiar in East idea of the omnipotence of the ruler, the cultivated sense of respect and submission to human authorities has never been a significant part of the Western political culture... | read more |
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POLITICS | OIL AND DEMOCRACY
In 2001, Michael L. Ross raised an important question: Does oil really have antidemocratic properties? | read more |
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IDEAS | UTOPIA A OR B
Two visions for the future | read more |
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BOOKS & THOUGHTS | "WHY DO SOME PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND JACQUES ELLUL?"
BY DANIEL BOIS
Jacques Ellul wrote a book about propaganda, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes
. This book is unique because it talks about long term propaganda and most of the books today on this subject tend to speak on short term or obvious forms like advertising. Ellul says many things in his book, it is quite dense and full of information... | read |
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WORLD | ECONOMIC FREEDOM INDEX 2010
The Asian countries are on the top of the index. North America remains the biggest territory with free economy. The European economic freedom leader, Ireland, is with the highest budged gap for 2010 among the European countries... | read |
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IDEAS | "TOCQUEVILLE AND MARX, A DIALOG"
BY MIKE MERCER
This is a fictional dialog between Alex de Tocqueville and Karl Marx. It is set in a small Parisian café in the year 1844. During that year both men were living in Paris, Tocqueville was a leading figure in the liberal newspaper Le Commerce, he had published volume 1 of Democracy in America in 1835 and volume 2 in 1840. Marx was writing for the Jahrbucher, he had yet to produce his most revolutionary works, although he was making a systematic study of political economy at the time... | read |
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IDEAS & POLITICS | IN DEFENCE OF PERPETUAL PEACE
Kant begins his philosophical sketch To Perpetual Peace with the argument that the political theorist is more honest than the politician is and the motives of both in explaining and thinking the politics are different. Of course, the politician has always something to conceal...| read |
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IDEAS & POLITICS | THE USE OF VIOLENCE
Mike Mercer argues that man's actions can be controlled by violence but their minds can not, thus violence is no real solution. | read |
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IDEAS | A CAPITALIST WORLD
Everyone knows that Marx does not offer a clear vision for the future. His social and economic critique is a success in the interpretation of the world, but it is huge a failure in the most important thing - the real change of the world... | read more |
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IDEAS | ESTRANGED LABOUR TODAY
Today, Karl Marx's theory of estranged labour is still applicable. In this article, The Montreal Review explains the "estranged labour theory" with contemporary examples from China, Canada, and Silicon Valley... | read |
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BOOKS | AWARE OF THE WONDROUS
The diary genre has specific qualities that distinguish it from all other literary forms. It is the most honest genre, especially if the diarist had no intention to disclose his thoughts and feelings to the public. The reader of a diary always appraises the intimacy and spontaneity of the writer, and joins a journey in which both author and reader do not know how it would end. Victor Klemperer's diary is special... | read |
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IDEAS | STATE AND LIBERTY. DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
Is the state an enemy of individual liberty? | read |
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BOOKS | "THE ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR"
BY T.S. TSONCHEV
Perhaps one of the most important questions that a man can ask is about the origin of conflict... | read |
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BOOKS | TOCQUEVILLE'S DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
In "Tocqueville's Discovery of America" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 304 pages, $27.00) Leo Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, explores the life of the great French aristocrat who wrote the classic in political genre "Democracy in America." | read |
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HISTORY & POLITICS | THE POPULISM OF EVIL
Jacques Seguela, the famous political advertiser of the French president François Mitterrand, author of the 1980's leftist slogan "La force tranquille", once said that you cannot "sell" a politician if he has no real "market" value. In other words, you cannot persuade the voters to vote for a party or a leader if there is no real reason for its existence... | read |
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HISTORY & IDEAS | END OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
"I liberated the Republic which was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction..." These words were inscribed on a bronze pillar before the mausoleum of a man who ruled the most powerful Empire in human history, who was called Pater Patriae and Divi Augusti, the first Roman emperor, the Princeps of Rome. But in this inscription, there is an irony. This man had liberated something that, in reality, was not any longer existent - the republic... | read |
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POLITICS & IDEAS | THE POLITICAL CHANGE IN DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM
We must be sure that if post-war Iraq were able to achieve an even partially democratic political system, like those in Turkey, it would be more stable than the present Iran under the ayatollahs... | read |
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IDEAS | THE FUTURE OF HUMANKIND
Prophets are always passionate. From Isaiah to Marx we see ethics and morality blended with reasoning and judgements... | read more |
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HISTORY & IDEAS | WILHELMINE GERMANY (PART TWO)
The Second Reich's politics (Imperial Germany from 1871 to 1918) can be generalized in two main points: demagogy at home, and menacing stand abroad... | read more |
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HISTORY & IDEAS | WILHELMINE GERMANY
How did German politics change with Wilhelm II? | read more |
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WORLD & POLITICS | THE WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN - IMPERIAL PROJECT OR SECURITY EFFORT?
We hear loud voices in media who argue that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the U.S. is waging in the recent decade, are imperial offensives... | read more |
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POLITICS & IDEAS | PRESERVING DEMOCRACY
Tiberius Gracchus and Caius Gracchus. Two brothers from a prominent Roman family. Tiberius's life finished prematurely, killed with a piece of chair on the Capitol, close by the statues of the kings, his body was thrown in Tiber River... | read more |
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ART & MONEY | "PROFILE OF BELLA PRINCIPESSA"
"Profile of the Bella Principessa" is one of the biggest art surprises in 2009. In 2007, the Canadian art collector Peter Silverman bought the painting from a New York art dealer, Kate Ganz, for about $ 19 000 on behalf of anonymous Swiss collector... | read more |
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WORLD & HISTORY | THE COURAGE TO CONFESS: WHY WAS THE VIETNAM WAR DOOMED TO FAIL?
There are truths. One of them is that everything conceived in a lie has no future... | read more |
In 1965, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, recuperating from gall bladder surgery, raised his shirt to show his scar to assembled reporters. David Levine immortalize the moment with a caricature popular as "The Vietnam scar." Levine's drawing originally appeared with Vietnam: The Turning Point in New York Review of Books, May 12, 1966 |
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WORLD | IRAN - AN UNHAPPY FAMILY
The opening sentence of Nabokov's "Ada" is "All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike." We can apply this insight not only to the families, but also to the nations... | read more |
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IDEAS | IS AMERICA THE NEW ROME?
There are astonishing similarities between the rise of the American state and power and the upsurge of Roman Republic.. | read more |
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BOOKS | ROTH'S "INDIGNATION"
We choose to read a book because somebody told us something about it, because of its cover, or because of the short reviews and lofty recommendations on its back cover... | read more |
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IDEAS | LESSONS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
The Treaty of Versailles was unfair to defeated nations. If all sides were responsible for the outbreak of the war, why Germany, Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria, and in lesser extend Turkey, should pay the full price for the calamities? Allied powers did not care about this question. They continued the tradition of offence - their fears, their troubles, and their wartime sacrifices must be redeemed by their foes... | read more |
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IDEAS | THE JUDGE AS A LAWMAKER
This essay is about the role of judges in the development of the law. This essay may begin with a clear enumeration of the tasks, which the judge performs, with the qualities he must possess to execute successfully his profession, or with a historical account about the court institution and its development...| read more |
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IDEAS & WORLD | THE FALL OF COMMUNISM
Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell and Eastern Europe knocked off the irons of communism. This was a memorable time of hope and excitement...| read more |
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IDEAS & HISTORY | THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
The creation of an empire is like the formation of atmospheric air tides. The whirlwind comes from nowhere; it grows fast and changes the weather over vast territories... | read more |
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IDEAS & HISTORY | THE PEACE THAT LED TO WAR
Why did Europe enjoy peace in the most part of the 19th century? The school of political realism insists that the international system is always anarchic...| read more |
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