Politics
-

Iran News Links
32 reported dead. New protest builds as Iranian government expands crackdown. “The photos coming out of Tehran demonstrate, movingly and beautifully, that women are on the front lines of the protests taking place there, veils and all.” More pictures of…
-

Two-for-One at the Pyramid of the Sun
David Lida’s book about Mexico City, First Stop in the New World, contains a really impressive chapter which traces the history of daily commerce in the capital from the vast Aztec market of Tlatelolco and the tianguis — temporary open-air…
-

Why we need newspapers: They stand against tyranny
In the 1960s and 70s, Central and South America were rife with dictatorships which used secret police, the military, right-wing death squads and tight control of the media to quash dissent and keep power. One of the most egregious of…
-

Sunday Iran News Links
The Iranian government arrests over 100 opposition leaders. It looks like this might get really, really violent. Talking Points Memo has a photo gallery of what’s happening. After all other forms of communication are cut, there are reports of Twitter-organized rooftop…
-

A Titanic for these times
The June issue of the Atlantic has a look at the mind-blowing “Oasis of the Seas,” a gargantuan ocean liner forthcoming from cruise company Royal Caribbean International. Its unprecedented scale of apparent luxury surely required feats of engineering. But any…
-

Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994
When my son Josh was thirteen he got braces on his teeth. His orthodontist’s office was in the same building as the Preterm clinic where John Salvi shot and killed Lee Ann Nichols on the morning of Friday, December 30,…
-

Chinese Government Remembers Tiananmen Square with War on Internet, Umbrellas
Twenty years ago today, June 4, 2009, the Tiananmen Square massacre took place in Beijing, China.
-

From The History File—A Mad Hatter!
It’s true: the mercury made Boston Corbett crazy. But not before he shot the man who shot Lincoln. On April 26th, 1865, he was among the 16th New York Cavalrymen sent to track down John Wilkes Booth. Corbett got a…
-

Send Them to Sudan
Longtime 826 Valencia volunteers Nicki and Ryan Moore are ready and willing to travel to Sudan this summer to assist in the opening of a new secondary school in Marial Bai, Sudan, but they need your help! The Valentino Achak…
-

Hersh Inaugurates Center for Investigative Reporting @ BU
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour “Sy” Hersh presided over the inauguration of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University, a non-profit, university-based organization dedicated to training the next generation of investigative reporters.
-

Murdoch and Me by Jill Sobule
Last year, I was invited to play the All Things Digital conference. My opening act was… Rupert Murdoch—how many female singer-songwriters can say that? Now as most people know, I am a bit of a lefty—my record company is “Pinko…