Free Republic

Jim Jones’ sinister grip on San Francisco How the Peoples Temple cult leader ensnared Harvey Milk and other progressive icons “Season of the Witch,” the new book by Salon founder David Talbot, tells the story of the wild and bloody birth of “San Francisco values.” The following excerpt – Part 1 in a three-part series -- recounts one of the darker dramas before the ultimate triumph of those values. Jim Jones, the strange and charismatic leader of Peoples Temple, proved a master at politically wiring San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The driven preacher had begun his climb up the political...

Brave New World (is Here!) If Orwell’s “1984” is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily stave off aging, jet away on exotic vacations and procreate via test tubes. They have access to “Feelies” similar to IMAX 3-D movies, no-strings-attached sex, anti-anxiety pills and abortion on demand. They also venerate a dead high-tech genius, saying “Ford help him” in honor of Henry Ford just as today we practically murmur “In Jobs We Trust.” In many...

Remembering Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass' By Hilda Pierce November 9, 2007 Crystal Night is a beautiful name for an evil event that took place in Austria and Germany on the night of Nov. 9, 1938. It was orchestrated on the orders of Adolph Hitler's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels. Adolf Eichmann also had a part in organizing the “Night of Broken Glass,” the night of burning synagogues, smashing windows of Jewish stores, looting, killing or torturing Jews on the streets and in their homes, 69 years ago today. It is a historical date because it was also the...