Volume 269 | No. 17

Sun, May 4

1990—Six-inch flames shoot from Jesse Joseph Tafero’s head as Florida’s “Old Sparky” takes three jolts and seven minutes to kill him. 1989—Ollie North is found guilty for four Iran-Contra felonies. He later skates because Congress screwed up. 1981—“Inchon!” premieres in D.C. Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who funded the flick, claims MacArthur endorsed it from the grave. It flops anyway. 1970—In Haymarket Square, Chicago, a new cop statue replaces one destroyed by a bomb months earlier. This one gets blown up, too, months later. 1970—Ohio National Guard troops fire on a crowd of protestors at Kent State; 13 are hit, four of them die. 1961—The Freedom …

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Genocide. Genocide. Genocide.

To the Editor: Three words about Gaza haunt my mind: GENOCIDE. GENOCIDE. GENOCIDE. Who has supported Israel unconditionally? In 2021, it was Biden, Harris, Blinken, Austin, and Sullivan, and in 2025, it is Trump, Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, and Waltz. All are most certainly war criminals. According to the media source Mondoweiss, Israelis have now dropped more explosives in Gaza than fell on London, Dresden, and Hamburg combined during the Second World War. The respected British Lancet organization reports that hundreds of thousands of Gazans have most likely been killed. California Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a general trauma and critical care surgeon, traveled to Gaza in 2024 …

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The Uselessness of Words

for the innocent in Gaza,the Occupied Territories,and throughout the world How does one respond to such destructionwith a poem? Can poetry outweigha 2,000-pound Mark-84 bomb,save the life of a single wounded child,put an end to the hatred and madnessand inhumanity of those who dothe butchery? Might just as well bepissing up a rope as thinking poetrycan matter where it really countsthere among the dead and dying,armless, legless, homeless, starving,families shattered, orphaned children,misery without hope of ever ending. And here I sit in safety half a worldaway. My tax dollars buying bombsmy government supplies to those whodo the killing. How can one be silentin the face …

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100 Down, 1,359 To Go

The first 100 days of this thing we’re all experiencing came to an end on Tuesday. Let’s look on the bright side. At least we won’t have to go through them again. Well, so much for the good news. Unless the Giant Meteor comes along to bless us with an intervention, we have another 1,359 days of this—for the sake of propriety, let’s just call it ‘this’—to wade through. Some of our readers, battered by recent events, may not feel they’re up to grappling with what they have good reason to suspect will follow herein. For them we’ve prepared the following one-paragraph summary: Grover Norquist’s …

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