Salt City Sinner

posted 4/8/2013 by the Salt City Sinner Baroness Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, passed away Monday morning at the Ritz Hotel in London, following a stroke. The "Iron Lady" will be remembered as a pioneering visionary in both economics and human rights, having been declared Hero of the Soviet Union (Герой Советского Союза) by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee in 1980. Working-class people in Great Britain remember Baroness Thatcher for her commitment to social justice -- under her leadership, public funding for higher education soared as did approval ratings among young people. Thatcher managed to carefully balance her embrace of trade unions with a steadfast refusal to exploit racial tensions surrounding immigration in Britain. Her policies led to increased wages for workers and a robust standard of living for Britons of all walks of life. Famously, she rejected the extr...

posted 9/14/2012 by Flora Bernard Larry Gibson and Tim DeChristopher ignoring the "No Trespassing" sign on Kayford Mountain, WV What do you have, in your own circle of life, that is so precious that you cannot put a price on it?  What would it be?  And if someone tried to come and take it from you, what would you do... how far would you go, to stand for it?  For me, it was my land. For me, it was my mountain. --Larry Gibson   A couple of years ago, I took a road trip to West Virginia with some close friends, one of whom was incarcerated environmental folk hero Tim DeChristopher . Tim was born in West Virginia, and watched his mother fight mountaintop removal mining through his early upbringing through every legal channel. After lobbying, petitioning, appealing permits, and otherwise doing her damndest to create the political will necessary to stop MTR for as many years as she could stand, she moved her family out of West Virginia. Decades later, coal c...

Christopher Hitchens, contrarian's contrarian, atheist, truth-teller, arrogant bastard and fierce mind, is dead. He was one of my idols. People say "too soon" but to paraphrase some fruity British comic book guy , Hitch got what we all get: a lifetime. No more, no less. I'm heartbroken, and mourn his passing, but I'm confident that Christopher's intellect, and his contributions to any number of debates, will ensure that his name is still being lofted around (and often cursed) for longer than most of us will ever live.

R.I.P., Howard Zinn. If you don't know who Howard Zinn is, I highly recommend you pick up any of his books, probably starting with this one . We've lost a great historian.