With profound sadness, I report we have lost a true friend, and one of our longest tenured contributors, Mary. Mary Beth Perdue left us on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2011.

What could possibly make a human being torture another human being?

That’s a question that, as a young boy, I recall asking my grandparents—Holocaust survivors—after they described to me in vivid detail the torture they and other members of my extended family were subjected to by the Nazis during World War II.

It’s a question I returned to earlier this year when I had the opportunity to interview a veteran of the US Army Reserves who was torn up about the torture he says he witnessed and participated in against some “war on terror” detainees while serving as a guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. [That guard, Pfc. Albert Melise, has since been barred from reenlistment for speaking to me.]

This is not right. You are not alone. This must change. With these three phrases, the mighty are brought down and the lowly lifted up.

On this Thanksgiving Weekend, I am thankful for all who stand up to bullies.

Over the last few days protests have been growing in Egypt in response to the continuing control of the government by Mubarak era military forces.

Only eight days away from parliamentary elections which activists believe are being subverted by the military to protect their continued control, activists are back in Tahrir, Alexandria and Suez demanding democratic control of the Egyptian government.

And not all of us can have 19 children or have the stomach to force one of them into pageants so we can get on Toddlers & Tiaras; and the competition is getting fiercer for those slots.

We live in a culture that is more comfortable asking rape victims “why did you let yourself get raped?” than asking their attackers “why did you rape?” After a Toronto cop’s remark seemed to put the responsibility for rape on how a victim dressed, it lit a fuse of anger that has spread around the globe.

Slutwalk. “Because We’ve Had Enough”

It’s coming to Kansas City today, and maybe to your city next.

Lost in the dust of the national debt this week was a Texas execution. While every execution is an egregious violation of human rights, this was distinguished in it blatant disregard for not only human life but for the rule of law.

Our relationship to readers reading in our presence is awkward. The reader is mysterious. She sends few physical cues of the sort we search for, consciously and unconsciously, in others. We abhor a lack of information about those in our midst, so we fill in the blanks. Seeing a reader alone in a restaurant, for instance, some no doubt think, “The poor soul must be lonely.” The reader, though, has ten thousand friends.

It’s a shocking historical juxtaposition. The pro-democracy movement known as the Arab Spring is in significant part a consequence of rising literacy and declining birth rates in the Mideast. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Right is mounting a direct assault on education and a renewed war on contraception. This ought to tell us something.

One of the tradeoffs made by the US administrations to gain support for entering into Free Trade Agreements is that these agreements impose certain standards on the parties – to protect the environment, human rights and union rights.

So what will the Obama administration do when the terms of one of those agreements are blatantly violated?