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The article discusses the paper "The Role of Public Health in the Prevention of War," by unnamed authors published in the "American Journal of Public Health," focusing on statistics related to U.S. militarism, including the number of military operations launched by the U.S. between 1945 and 2001, the percentage of deaths that are civilians, and U.S. military spending.

The article highlights dangers associated with journalists of the United States. Journalists work at extreme of circumstances and sometimes putting at stake their lives. These dangers do not come from American government but from the overseas. And yet, in some respects, journalism in America may be in greater peril than in some of the more obviously dangerous places that are so clearly inhospitable to the profession. There is a haunting paradox in the notion that, even as journalists abroad are honored for "risking personal and political peril in upholding the highest standards of their profession," their own stories and the stories they cover are increasingly unlikely to lead any of the broadcasts or appear on any news paper's front page.

The article focuses on the importance of tour guides. Much of the business- or work-related travel north of Mexico into the United States is done without the bureaucratic complications of passports, visas, residence cards and so on. People who use this form of travel are known as "illegals," but only to those who are unaware that the U.S. Constitution grants legal status to all persons, even those without papers. Nonetheless, the undocumented traveler will have a more enjoyable and profitable sojourn if he or she is fully prepared, from start to finish, beginning with the cost. Choosing a tour guide, known as apollero or chicken handler, is of utmost importance. The best tour guides depend on repeat business and word-of-mouth advertising.

This article focuses on a march of the black people in the United States, which held on October 16, 1995. Eighty black religious leaders have declared October 16 a holy day. The Association of Black Psychologists has issued an endorsement of the march as a way to focus on black men's personal responsibility to arrest self-imposed destructive attitudes, feelings and behavior. New York's oldest black-owned paper, "The Amsterdam News," dismisses critics of the march as those who will grind their molars into dust. The author says that there is a real and dangerous racial crisis facing this nation, and black men are bearing much of the brunt of this country's worst fears and cruelest neglect.

On the day before Christmas, a U.S. Customs official in San Juan, Puerto Rico, examined the travel papers of a visitor from Haiti who had arrived from the Dominican Republic. Following standard procedure, the official would have checked the computerized watch list for the name of the fellow before him: Emmanuel Constant. There was nothing in the system. Not the information that this Haitian was leader of the repressive, violent, pro-coup Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti. Constant was waved through. He was free to ramble anywhere in the United States, far beyond the reach of the Haitian authorities searching for him. His easy entrance prompts the question: Did it occur as the consequence of a screw-up, or had Constant's handlers in U.S. intelligence abetted his escape? For almost two months, the embassy and the U.S. State Department said nothing publicly about Constant's flight to the United States.

This article focuses on the persona of Marion Barry, a politician, who once was the Mayor of the city of Washington D.C., with specific reference to the decline of the Washington D.C., and the book "Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington D.C.," by Harry S. Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. Jaffe and Sherwood conceived "Dream City," as a biography of Marion Barry, once referred to by the local City Paper as "mayor-for-life." The authors transformed the biography into a history of the city and did so with some success, since the dramatic story of Barry's ascent is the tale of modern black politics in Washington.

The article focuses on Mike Males's paper on teenage sex epidemic in Anacostia in Washington D.C. Males argues that the whole notion of a (black) teenage sex epidemic, born of teenage "irresponsibility," is utterly bogus. If there was an "epidemic" in the growth of teenage parenthood, Males observes, it was mostly in the late 1950s and the 1960s, coinciding with the falling age of puberty, rising postwar teenage populations and the sexual revolution. Births among teenage girls peaked in 1958, declined through the mid 1980s and have since risen, for reasons of youth poverty. Among all age and race groups, higher rates of poverty provoke higher rates of birth. Poverty, not age, is the problem.

The article presents information on several socio-political developments from across the world. The decision of three U.S. Court of Appeals judges that former U.S. President Richard Nixon should be paid for the U.S. White House tapes seized by the government may be legally correct, but it flouts justice and common sense. It also reduces to absurdity the shaky "custom" under which Presidents are granted ownership of their papers. The tapes, which contained revelations about the Watergate cover-up, were seized by order of the U.S. Congress, along with other materials, to prevent tampering. As the international community concentrates its efforts on tightening the sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro, it is ignoring a crisis in neighboring Macedonia that threatens to plunge the entire southern Balkans into war.

According to the author, just the other day he saw in the paper that a black college in the South, about to name a dorm after U.S. clergyman Ralph Abernathy, decided not to do so, apparently because of what he had written in his autobiography about Martin Luther King Jr.'s sexual behavior the night before he was assassinated. This and much else going on in black and civil rights circles in relation to King and Abernathy are absurd but revealing. It tells people something about themselves, both as Americans and as liberals or leftists. The author thinks everyone, even King's followers, owes Abernathy a debt of gratitude, if he was telling the truth. The author would name the dorm for him, after all. He's not bothered by the fact that King was immersed in life, whatever shape it may have taken, a few hours before his death, according to him.

The article focuses on the popularity of the "New York Times," newspaper in the United States. Few regular readers have the chutzpah to snub the paper entirely for a day, never doubting they will be punished in some mysterious way, yet few can get through it without psychic confusions about what to skip, whether to read at the expense of earning a living, vacuuming the rug, writing a letter to the phone company, etc. The author says that "The Times," is not the most incredible 30-percent buy in New York, but it is at a perilous subjective cost. There is a crisis at the New York Times. If a reader feels that only by brilliant eye-editing he can reach the last page without putting a sixty foot trench in the middle of the day, something is gravely out of whack.

The article focuses on the book "The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA," by Jonathan Kwitny. The book is about the Nugan Hand Bank, founded by Michael Hand, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative from the Bronx, and Frank Nugan, the 30-year old playboy heir to a modest Australian fruit-processing fortune built on Mafia connections. The bank collapsed in 1980, not long after Nugan was found dead in his Mercedes, a rifle in his hands and a hole in his head. He had a Bible with him. Slipped into that Bible was a piece of paper on which were written the names of Representative Bob Wilson of California and William E. Colby, former director of the CIA.

"New York Times" correspondent E.J. Dionne Jr. took great pains to stress that the average Italian was cheering lustily for the United States president Ronald Reagan and his war on terror, notwithstanding the anti- American fulminations of such regularly conservative papers as "Corriere della Sera." One can readily understand the delight of the Israeli government and its United States supporters at the consequences of the "Achille Lauro hijacking," probably "masterminded" by Mohammed Abbas.

The author decries the inadequate social programs for the U.S. poor as of 2013. She points out that diapers, a crucial element in raising a healthy child, are not covered by social programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is the U.S. food stamp program, or the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) feeding program. The author further criticizes U.S. Republican legislators' plan to cut the enrollment of the SNAP program despite taking hefty government subsidies for other things like agriculture.

In this article the author discusses race and racial identity in the United States. The article was written in light of the U.S. census and president Barack Obama's decision to identify himself as black on his census form. The author discusses the reluctance of white persons to identify themselves by race. She refers to the paper "Reinventing the Color Line: Immigration and America's New Racial/Ethnic Divide," by sociologists Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean. She notes that American identity has always been a composite creation.

The article discusses the ways in which the U.S. financial crisis has affected the U.S. newspaper industry, which include budget cuts and demands on labor unions. The author discusses how the New York Times Company has threatened to shut down the "Boston Globe" newspaper if it cannot produce millions of dollars in savings. The article states that U.S. Senator John Kerry is supporting a bill that would make papers such as the "Boston Globe" nonprofit enterprises.

The article discusses July 11, 2008 when the stock price of seven major U.S. newspapers dropped to an all-time low and the reaction from bloggers. According to blogger Alan D. Mutter, this was the worst day for U.S. newspapers in U.S. history. Blogger Kevin Roderick, writer of the blogsite "LA Observed," stated that after staff cuts, newspapers will still produce a paper that subscribers are abandoning. Lee Abrams stated that most U.S. newspapers sound like National Public Radio Inc. (NPR).

The article discusses U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich's announcement that U.S. President George W. Bush should be impeached. The author points out that U.S. President Richard Nixon resigned well into his second term, and impeachment papers were filed against U.S. President Harry Truman. The U.S. Senate even considered removing U.S. President Andrew Johnson in the final year of his administration. Kucinich's charges include disregard of U.S. Congress's authority to declare war.

The article reports the background story to reports that on November 6, 2007, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign asked a college student if she would be willing to ask a particular question during a political rally at a biodiesel plant in Newton, Iowa. The story was originally reported by Patrick Caldwell for the college paper, "Scarlet and Black," of Grinnell College.

This article takes a look at the struggles faced by mass media. Everywhere, mass media seems to be in crisis. NBC slashed its news-gathering operations and plans to shutter its MSNBC headquarters. New York Times Company profits were 39% lower than a year before. The "Boston Globe" and other smaller papers are suffering, and "Business Week" is shedding editorial staffers. Internet is the reason. Young people don't buy newspapers or watch the news, they turn to the Internet, Blogs that are sometimes more reliable, and Google.

In this article the author discusses what he calls the undeclared war on the media conducted by the administration of President George W. Bush. The F.B.I. is conducting an investigation into the papers of the late journalist Jack Anderson, files thought to contain leaked classified information, and will prosecute the Anderson family under the 1917 Espionage Act if access is not granted. The author notes that administration officials have leaked classified information.

The article comments on the need for examination, reform, and oversight of the national voting complex, and concern of irregularities in the November 2 vote. Two minor presidential candidates, David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party, requested a recount in Ohio. E-voting--particularly with machines made by Diebold, a firm headed by a GOP fundraiser that refuses to disclose its source code--stir skepticism. But suspicion needs reality checks. Stolen election proponents point to Warren County, Ohio, where Bush bagged a net gain of 41,000 votes and where local officials barred reporters from the counting room on election night, claiming the Feds had warned of a terrorist attack. Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania wrote a paper claiming that discrepancies between the media consortium exit polls and the vote count in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania were a "250 million to one" shot. But "systematic fraud or mistabulation," he wrote, "is a premature conclusion." He urged investigation. On the other hand, pollster John Zogby says his exit polls had Bush leading in Ohio and Florida. A recount in Ohio is well and good. But it probably won't change the results, and it surely won't fix the deep flaws of a system that does provoke justifiable suspicion.

Observes apparent contradiction between two reports in the "Times" newspaper. Claim that Democratic nominee John Kerry had prepared to use the personal life of Mary Cheney in a response to a question about same-sex marriage in a Presidential debate; Later report in the same paper that two debate officials claimed never to have heard Cheney's name used during debate preparations.

The article discusses the media's coverage of the United States presidential election of 2004 between President George W. Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry. One problem with trying to write critically about the 2004 presidential election coverage is that by choosing any single aspect of its manifold failures, one automatically does an injustice to the full scope of its immense, almost stupefying awfulness. When the New York Times ran its May 26 admission that it gullibly swallowed the Bush Administration's deception about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, which helped win support for a ruinous war, the story was, according to the invaluable Media Matters, reported thirty-eight times in U.S. newspaper and wire reports during the following forty-eight hours and seven times on cable news. It was entirely ignored on Fox News Channel. By contrast, in the forty-eight hours following CBS's admission that it "should not have used" memos critical of Bush's military service because of questions regarding their provenance, the story was reported 167 times in U.S. newspaper and wire reports and fifty-seven times on cable news broadcasts. Times columnist William Safire has played a powerful role in misinforming the paper's readers about a meeting he alleges took place between Al Qaeda terrorist Mohamed Atta and the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Prague, in April 2001. The meeting is, according to all available evidence, entirely made up. CBS's slip-up was such big news because it fit the right-wing script designed to shield the Bush Administration from democratic accountability.

We return this week to the conservative crusade to destroy the reputation of financier and philanthropist George Soros. He has turned his attention to the United States, where he is spending as much as $15 million to help various liberal groups improve their efforts to expose the malfeasance of the President George W. Bush Administration and defeat it in the elections of 2004. The Republican National Committee has circulated a briefing paper on Capitol Hill in which Soros is referred to as "Lord of the Democrats" and the "Daddy Warbucks" of the drug legalization movement, and which highlights what it deems to be his controversial positions on abortion, gun control and the right to end one's own life. In Richard Mellon Scaife's NewsMax magazine, a writer named Richard Poe has extended the attack against the "somewhat loony" Soros, who, he says, "hates America" and is seeking to engineer a "coup" against Bush. Using unmistakably anti-Semitic tropes and metaphors, editor Tony Blankley appeared on Fox's Hannity & Colmes to call Soros a "robber baron" and "pirate capitalist." All of the above bespeaks the desperation that Republicans apparently feel at the prospect of being challenged by someone with the resources to make a difference in an election in which polls show that a majority of voters disapprove of Bush and that a plurality plan to vote for his opponent.

Should the government bring back the draft? Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has been talking it up, and it has captured the imagination of many liberals and leftists as well. Last year antiwar Representative Charles Rangel of New York and Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina introduced proposals to restore the draft as a way to build opposition to the war: The draft, Rangel argued, would spread the burden of war throughout society and force war supporters in the upper classes to put their children where their mouths are. On paper, it's a tempting argument. In theory, the draft would give us an army of "citizen soldiers," young men--and probably women--drawn from all parts of society, instead of the current Army, which draws heavily on military families and poor people. For many, the draft summons up ideals of valor, adulthood, public service and self-sacrifice--shared self-sacrifice. Those are all good things, but the draft is still a bad idea. Given our ever more stratified and atomized society, why expect the draft to be equal or fair? The main effect of bringing back the draft would be to further militarize the nation. If we want a society that is equal, cohesive, fair and war-resistant, let's fight for that, not punish our children for what we have allowed America to become.

The author claims that the administration of President George W. Bush sanctioned the use of torture in interrogating Iraqi detainees. So there were WMDs in Iraq after all. They're called digital cameras. Partly because of them, the United States faces one of the most humiliating defeats in imperial history. But there's also a clear paper trail. Not just the long and copiously documented record of US torture, with many of its refinements acquired by the CIA from the Nazis after World War II, but the more recent lineage of encouragement. Within a few days of the Trade Towers going down in September 2001, a vacationing FBI agent told an acquaintance of mine in Puerto Vallarta that detainees in the United States were being tortured. By October of 2001, public opinion here was being softened up for the use of torture. It was not far into the Afghan war that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made plain his views on prisoners, after horrifying accounts began to surface of the treatment of Taliban POWs. He first said the United States was "not inclined to negotiate surrenders." From spring 2003, the Red Cross was complaining to US Army commanders in Iraq, and later to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in Washington, about frightful treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

This section presents news and commentary briefs. We welcome Air America, the new liberal radio network, which was up and talking on March 31. Air America will challenge the notion that liberals can't do talk-radio. Arthur C. Danto, The Nation's art critic, has been named a finalist in this year's National Magazine Awards, the second time he has been so honored. On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Roldo Bartimole resigned from the Cleveland bureau of the Wall Street Journal. It was his 35th birthday. The murder of Dr. King, he noted recently, combined with the general ferment in American society, "made it impossible for me to remain a neutral observer." From 1968 until his retirement a few weeks ago, Roldo was the conscience of Cleveland journalism, the closest thing the city had to a Lincoln Steffens or an Izzy Stone. Scientific manuscripts are the latest target of Patriot Act-inspired surveillance and interdiction. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces trade embargoes against Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan, says US scientific societies could get into big trouble (million-dollar fines, ten years in prison) if editors of their journals suggest ways for authors of papers from those countries to improve their contributions. Leading journals now say they will turn back submissions from the embargoed countries without review.

The author comments on claims by U.S. conservatives that they are being unfairly attacked by liberals. What's the matter with conservatives? They have the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and more money than God. They rule talk-radio and the TV political chat shows, and they get plenty of space in the papers; for all the talk about the liberal media, nine out of the fourteen most widely syndicated columnists are conservatives. What I want to know is, Why can't they just admit it, throw a big party and dance on the table with lampshades on their heads? Why are they always claiming to be excluded and silenced because most English professors are Democrats? They've taken to lecturing the opposition on manners whenever it shows signs of life. Ted Kennedy says the Iraq war was "a fraud made up in Texas" and Bush complains that he's" uncivil." As "New York Times" columnist David Brooks, at least, acknowledges, the right is in a weak position when it claims to be shocked, shocked, shocked by liberal speech today. Well, they wanted state power, and thanks to the Supreme Court Five, they got it. But unfortunately, running the country turns out to be harder than it looked when Bill Clinton was killing off Hillary's lovers between Cabinet meetings. He made it seem so easy! Now, unemployment is way up, the government's awash in red ink, Iraq is a mess. So, everything has to be someone else's fault -- mean liberals who really, really want to win in 2004, Osama loving pranksters who forward e-mail jokes about the President's IQ, Bill and Hillary, still magically pulling the strings three years after leaving the White House, having thoughtfully arranged for 9/11 before they departed. They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.

Spurred on by post--September 11, 2001 fears, more than a dozen states, from Colorado to Delaware, have passed or are considering restrictions on issuing driver's licenses to noncitizens. Some, like Georgia, Minnesota and New York, may tie license expiration dates to the expiration of immigration papers, as Florida, New Jersey and Kentucky do now. Florida's Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles now sends records of all its transactions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation every night. A Michigan bill would authorize DMV staff to contact federal authorities if there is "reasonable cause" to believe an applicant is an illegal alien.

While some new security measures are obviously necessary, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration's zeal to shut down the free flow of information goes well beyond any legitimate need. Consider November's Executive Order 13233, which eviscerates the nation's access to its own history, effectively overturning the Presidential Records Act of 1978 by fiat. Current law insists that all presidential papers be declassified within twelve years, with an exception made for those whose publication could demonstrably affect the national security. Bush now wants to allow Presidents to refuse to declassify the decision-making process virtually forever. This is a catastrophe not only for historians but also for history.

The article discusses the paper "Bowling Alone," by Robert D. Putnam. He quotes approvingly a passage from an oral history of the war: "you just felt that the stranger sitting next to you in a restaurant, or someplace, felt the same way you did about the basic issues?" Like the importance of keeping black people out of that very restaurant, perhaps, and of putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps. As for war bonds, one has to be a true masochist to buy war bonds today, given that U.S. President George W. Bush has just engineered, under the guise of economic stimulus, another gigantic tax cut for wealthy corporations and the rich, and an airline-bailout package that underwrites the multimillion-dollar salaries of industry executives while offering nothing to the nearly 100,000 who've lost their airline jobs.

The article presents information on national and regional events in the U.S. Information on "Review of Radical Political Economics," Special issue on "Urban Political Economy," Papers in Honor of Matthew David, "The Four Faces of Silicon Valley-Mia Gray, Elyse Golob, Ann Markusen and Sam Ock Park. The article also includes documentary video screening, "You Know What I'm SayIng: Drugs, AIDS and the Politics of Survival," directed by Emily Fisher and Frizzi ManigIlo and discussion on "Harm Reduction and Human Rights" at Jay College in New York.

This article presents views of Professor Linda J. Waite, on the benefits of marriage, on the basis of her paper at the Population Association of America's annual conference, "Does Marriage Matter?" As she has discovered, marriage is good for a person. Married people have more money, more sex, more satisfaction and, longer lives than those who are unmarried. Certainly there is no need for sociology to tell that two people pooling their resources and facing life together can reap benefits closed to those who are single or who live together but keep their resources separate. This would probably be true in any society, but is particularly the case in the U.S., where for millions of people, marriage is the only social-welfare system.

This article focuses on the announcement by the U.S. President Bill Clinton about the health care plan. The President has cut out on his pledge to be a leader in this area and a free for all is about to ensue. Telling the U.S. Congress to craft a law that embodies ideas he presents in his plan look for more than 200 pages of pointers is close to handing blank paper to special interest lobbyists. Health care reform targets an industry that, at $900 billion a year, is triple the size of the military industrial complex. Changing the system to reduce or transfer costs means taking money out of someone's pocket, and the people attached to those pockets will descend upon Congress in a way that would make a vulture blush.

The article comments on politics in the U.S. Political candidate David Gergen joined the Nixon White House in 1971. The following year, according to heretofore unpublicized papers in the U.S. President Richard M. Nixon archives, Gergen was part of a White House attack group run by Charles Colson, the President's special counsel, later convicted of obstructing justice. After Nixon won re-election, Gergen remained at the White House to the bitter end. Gergen busily reviewed Nixon's statements on the controversy and made notes and comments that indicate he knew Nixon was not telling the truth.

For days, witnesses, members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and director Robert Gates himself quarreled about the intelligence-production process at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Two former analysts at the Office of Soviet Analysis credibly maintained that Gates blocked reports that challenged the hardline view and that he promoted shoddy intelligence that supported the Russians-are-coming position, such as a paper that argued that the Soviet Union backed the 1981 assassination attempt against the Pope. The hearings disclosed that within the CIA., analysts who strayed from the reigning dogma worried about being labeled Communist apologists.

The article presents conversations between two C.I.A. agents concerning the situation in the Middle East, between two U.S. senators took place in the Senate cloakroom, between two members of the House of Representatives concerning the recent budget negotiations took place outside the House chamber. One of the C.I.A agents stated that the main danger for America in the Middle East, I think, is to be perceived as a paper Tigris. He further stated that it did not look good for the President, in the midst of this crisis, to be off playing Gulf.

Terrel Bell, U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Education from 1981 to 1984, calls them zealots with radical and off-the-wall ideas. They are the self-styled "movement conservatives" affiliated with such right-wing organizations as the Heritage Foundation, Free the Eagle and the Free Congress Foundation. Reagan has increasingly allowed a small group of New Right luminaries to exercise a virtual veto over appointments for Federal positions. When U.S. President Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, most people in the United States were under the impression that he had relinquished all powers and perquisites of office, but twelve years later the Justice Department contends that in at least one particular, Nixon is still President, in essence the department claims Nixon, private citizen, may invoke executive privilege at his discretion to deny researchers access to almost any of his White House papers.

Presents tributes to author George Plimpton, who died on September 25, 2003, and to lawyer Arthur Kinoy, a contributor to "The Nation" who died on September 19, 2003. George Plimpton wore lightly his New York upper-class WASP heritage, but it was the real thing. Scorning entitlements of birth, he followed the young writers' trail to Paris in the 1950s and co-founded "The Paris Review". Thanks to Plimpton's dedication and perseverance, it survived and continues to set the gold standard for literary magazines. Meanwhile, Plimpton was becoming a celebrity by acting out sports fantasies and writing up his experiences in bestselling books. Though basically nonpolitical, he was a friend of "The Nation"; volunteering to emcee fundraising events. Arthur Kinoy never really believed that lawyers bring about social change. The lesson he took from years in Southern courtrooms fighting segregation and defending civil fights activists was that "legal battles to enforce freedom and equality had potential only when they were intertwined with the daily struggles of black people and their supporters to transform these constitutional promises into reality." It was in the defense of civil rights groups and local desegregation campaigns--SCLC, Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party -- that Kinoy helped shape a revolution. In 1966 he helped found the Center for Constitutional Rights, which carries on his fight.

Several letters to the editor are presented in response to articles about the book "American Rebels," by Jack Newfield, which appeared in the July 2003 issue, including information on journalist I. F. Stone and Bella Abzug, founder of the Women's Environment and Development Organization.