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Featured Editorials

Friday Open Thread: "What are you reading?" edition. ~ Young Men and Fire

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On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy. Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.

"A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."—from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992

"A treasure: part detective story, part western, part tragedy, part elegy and wholly eloquent ghost story in which the dead and the living join ranks cheerfully, if sometimes eerily, in a search for truth and the rest it brings."—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune

"An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character.... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory."—Timothy Foote, USA Today

"Beautiful.... A dark American idyll of which the language can be proud."—Robert M. Adams, The New York Review of Books "Young Men and Fire is redolent of Melville. Just as the reader of Moby Dick comes to comprehend the monstrous entirety of the great white whale, so the reader of Young Men and Fire goes into the heart of the great red fire and comes out thoroughly informed. Don't hesitate to take the plunge."—Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World

"Young Men and Fire is a somber and poetic retelling of a tragic event. It is the pinnacle of smokejumping literature and a classic work of 20th-century nonfiction."—John Holkeboer, The Wall Street Journal

"Maclean is always with the brave young dead. . . . They could not have found a storyteller with a better claim to represent their honor. . . . A great book."—James R. Kincaid, New York Times Book Review

"We have to remove Trump by any means necessary"

"We have to remove Trump by any means necessary"

I like Noam Chomsky a lot, and tonight, I listened to an interview he gave in which he waggled his finger at the Left and pointed out how our refusal to compromise will literally bring about the end of human civilization. Chomsky is a hard-core leftist, but there’s no denying that he’s making liberal talking points here. We have to remove Trump by any means necessary. By any means necessary. I’ve uttered those words myself at one point.

Hot Air


My Santa Cruz 4 Bernie Campaign Report for UCSC Campus Organizing 2019
or
A Case Study in How the Left Cannot Work Together

If we want to change the world via local elections, it is important to put aside personal differences so we can work together to make a more just world, to create the change we want. It is in our interest to be pragmatic and to prioritize things, even, at times things one may not want to do.

I, like many, was hopeful that Bernie Sanders could become the Democratic nominee for President. I, like many, am completely disillusioned with the political process.

Julian’s Extradition Show Trial Resumed on Monday Sept. 21 [Updated]

with reports from Tues. and Wed.

‘Explosive evidence from Trump insider, Assange dragged from embassy “on the orders of the president”, Laura Tiernan and Thomas Scripps, 22 September 2020, wsws.org (with permission & my bolds)

Assange arrested by the British police on April 11, 2019

“Alt-right media personality Cassandra Fairbanks’ witness testimony was read out in court yesterday, providing evidence that Julian Assange’s April 2019 arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London was politically motivated and directed by United States President Donald Trump.

Fairbanks testified that Arthur Schwartz, a wealthy Republican Party donor and key Trump ally, had told her that Assange was taken from the Ecuadorian Embassy “on orders from the president.” The conversation between Schwartz and Fairbanks occurred in September 2019 and was recorded by Fairbanks.

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