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Craig Murray was the United Kingdom's Ambassador to Uzbekistan who was removed from his post on October 14, 2004.
While in office, he criticised the Karimov administration of human rights abuses, which he argues was against the wishes of the British government and the reason for his removal.
Murray claims he complained to the FCO in November 2002, January or early February 2003, and in June 2004 that intelligence linking the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to al-Qaeda, suspected of being gained through torture, was unreliable, immoral, and illegal.
He accused Her Majesty's Government of "selling our souls for dross".
In October 2002 Murray made a controversial speech at a human rights conference in Tashkent, in which he claimed that "Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy" and the boiling to death of two members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, "is not an isolated incident." Later, Kofi Annan confronted Uzbek President Islam Karimov with Murray's claims.
He was summoned to London and, on March 8, 2003, he was reprimanded for writing, in a letter to his employers, in response to a speech by George W. Bush, "when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in the international fora ... I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the U.S., at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan."
Murray was removed from his post in October 2004, shortly after a leaked report in the Financial Times quoted him as claiming that MI6 used intelligence provided by Uzbek authorities through torture. The Foreign Office denied there was any direct connection and stated that Murray had been removed for "operational" reasons. It claimed that he had lost the confidence of senior officials and colleagues.
The following day, in an interview on the Today programme, the BBC's flagship political radio show, Murray countered that he was a "victim of conscience," and in this and other interviews criticized the Foreign Office.[ A few days later he was charged with "gross misconduct" by the Foreign Office for criticizing it in public. Murray resigned from the Foreign Office in February 2005.
The threat of legal action has resulted in significant publicity along with a very large number of people mirroring the documents on their own websites, releasing them via peer to peer networks, and making them available various filesharing services. Including Empire Burlesque.
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Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D., is a Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. He also teaches in the American Studies and Science, Technology, and Society programs at PSU.
Email: mcs2@psu.edu The US Traditional Values Coalition calls Mel a "Leftist" Web Site Writer and Homosexual activist who sees the Traditional Values Coalition and other religious organizations as a major threat to freedom in the United States for some of his past writings which simply called for equal rights for all American - including gays.
B.S., Pennsylvania State University
M.A., University of Hawaii
Ph.D., University of Essex and Cambridge University |
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Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank.
Since 1982 he has been working as a professional bilingual journalist (chief editor, managing editor, editor, reporter, interviewer, media coordinator, translator, columnist and editorial writer) of Arabic and English print and electronic media in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine.
As a bilingual (Arabic-English) translator he translated and co-translated several books that were published in Beirut and Amman0
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He can be contacted at: nicolanasser@yahoo.com |
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William Fisher has managed economic development programs in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development. He served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy Administration
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Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central
America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. His column appears Mondays on
Truthdig.?
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Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst, current events observer, Internet columnist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com.
The novel is now available on Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, as well as other online book sellers. If preferred, the novel can also be ordered at any local brick and mortar bookstore worldwide through the book’s ISBN number, 1418489905.
His articles appear regularly at his blog, http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/ and at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe.
His unique style and powerful writing is read internationally and seeks to expose truths and realities confronting humanity today. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. A collection of his work can be found visiting his archives and by searching the Internet
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Rod Amis is a professional writer, editor, and publisher "...walking the earth like Kane in the television series 'Kung Fu'." (A tip of the hat to screenwriter Quentin Tarantino.)
Rod claims that he lives entirely on the Internet.
He was a weekly editorial writer for IT Manager's Journal and wrote the first 382 daily editorials . He wrote for two years at Andover News Network on Web Design and Development in his "Working the Web" column. He is listed among the ten IT columnist's worth reading by About.com. His views on "New Media" have appeared in MethodFive's (now acquired by Xceed.com) "Hyper" newsletter.
Earlier in his career, Rod worked for the Rocky Mountain News, Austin American-Statesman, and the West County (Contra Costa, CA) Times. He composed the FAQ for the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online BBS and was instrumental in its early beginnings.
G21 was the in-house Internet publication for the Bay Guardian and Rod wrote on political topics there. He has had seven plays produced, published numerous articles, a couple of short stories, some poetry, and a smorgasbord of candid expression in G21 'My Glass House' and the pioneering Web site NRV8.
His latest column here is called "Smoke & Mirrors." We DON'T call it S&M.
Rod has published G21 in its various forms (print, BBS e-zine, and now Web magazine) for over sixteen years. He is celebrating ten years of editing The World's Magazine on the Web. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine. He was the US-based Technology Reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television based in London, UK, until May, 2001. Rod was visiting lecturer (via the 'Net, of course!) for the Novi Sad School of Journalism.
He lived, worked and played in New Orleans where he worked housing renovation jobs when he could find them. He was formerly Union Organizer for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN.) His assignment was to organize the Deputies of the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Department, a thankless job.
Once a socialist, always a socialist.
His "soul journey" (hejira) has most recently taken him to northern California, where he looks at the edge of the world. He is a regular columnist for IT Manager's Journal and NewsForge, dealing with technology topics and a contributing writer at EnterpriseLeadership.org on business issues, and provides un-bylines pieces for Slashdot.
Oh yeah! He's part of new California venture checking other journalists, and deciding what is good journalism, called NewsTrust... as well as here at Atlantic Free Press.
He is author of the new book Katrina & The Lost City of New Orleans available from Lulu.com and Amazon.com. At the end of 2005 he released one additional title under the G21.net imprint, Africa Fresh: New Writing from the First Continent. He is still working on his oft-promised "My Glass House" book.
He chases women like a fly chases a spider. He keeps hoping to meet one like Erykah Badu ...
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Ingmar Lee has crawled through the desecrations of industrial logging as a professional treeplanter for 21 years. He has planted more than 1,000,000 trees throughout British Columbia. Over the years, he came to realize that planting trees in logging wreckage is a government and industry Greenwash SCAM to legitimize the scandalous farce of the “Sustained Yield” liquidation/conversion scheme by which British Columbia’s forests are managed.
To work off the dreadful karmic load he has accumulated, he has become a tenacious primaeval forest protection activist and has confronted the industrial logging menace at numerous blockades, treesits and other non-violent civil disobedience actions. He believes that any further logging of Earth’s final primaeval forests is a despicable crime against nature. His particular focus is on the voracious depradations of the American logging giant, Weyerhaeuser.
Ingmar has travelled extensively in Asia since his first overland trip to India from Europe in 1977 at the age of 17. He has trekked throughout the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayan mountains, and has travelled far off the beaten path in Burma where he lived for a year. Ingmar is shocked and disgusted by the violent, ignorant and rapacious behaviour of the USA under the illegitimately “elected” fascist Neocon cabal of oiligarchs led by George W. Bush. He is equally ashamed by the USA-grovelling, quisling compliance of Canada’s newly elected Neocon government.
He is now living in Pondicherry, India.
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Brian Barder's writings can be found at Barder.com
Retired from Diplomatic Service ('65–’94) and Civil Service (’57–’65). Former member (resigned) of SIAC.
Interests: international affairs, civil rights, and the Labour Party, warts and all. One of 52 ex-ambassadors who signed the letter on the middle east to T Blair.
Cycles slowly in London traffic, listens addictively to classical music, obsessively writes letters to the newspapers (quite a few of which get published) and occasional articles (ditto).
Spends far too much time at the computer sending out innumerable e-mails designed to assuage his morbid fear of being out of touch. Joined the ranks of septuagenarians in 2004.
Happily married husband of one, father of three, grandfather of two. |
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Mike Whitney graduated from St. Michael's College in English Lit in 1975. Since then he has been running his own landscape company in Snohomish, Wa for the last 23 years. He has two children, both of whom are attending Western Wa University in Bellingham, WA. Currently, he is Program Director of the Snohomish County Democrats but, he admits that his interest in politics only began with the appointment of GW Bush as President.
Like many other regular Americans, he has understood from the very beginning the global aspirations of the Cabal that presently occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and the threat they pose to the world. It is a threat that is as real and as far reaching as any we have seen since the rise of Fascism in 1930s Germany (The author's description of himself).
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Richard Kastelein - the designer, CMS architect and co-founder of Atlantic Free Press (with Chris Floyd) is the technical guru and art director of the site.
Kastelein's company, Expathos (www.expathos.com), specialises in Open Source Content Management Systems for bloggers, online social groups and communities.
His choices for open source solutions are more commonly used in Europe, therefore unique in the US market, giving his work a unique stamp in the American digital landscape. He prefers staying away from cookie cutter, proprietary software solutions such as Moveable Type and blog hosting services such as Xanga, blogger.com and Live Journal. By using Open Source Content Management System software such as Joomla, Drupal and Postnuke, not very common in the blogging world, his work is unique.
He also helps authors layout, design and publish their works using on-demand printing solutions such as Cafe Press and Lulu.
Bucking the traditional publishing paradigm (writer-agent-publisher triage) by using new developments in technology and distribution, Kastelein's company works with expatriate and 'dissident' writers such as Chris Floyd, Will Charlesworth and others.
Hailing from the Canadian Pacific Southwest - Richard grew up on the fringes of Vancouver, a liberal and progressive city often noted as one of the best places to live in the world by such publications as the Economist and the UN.
Packing his bag at 19, he left the city in 1986 and has lived overseas most of his adult life, choosing the life of a sailing vagabond over immediate college.
After sailing the Atlantic with a clan of Viking Norwegians, hailing boats in Thailand and Malaysia and sailing the Pacific, he published his first series of articles called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Seas" in 1991 in the UK in an array of international adventure travel magazines.
He then went on to Art College in Victoria B.C. where he studied Photography and Journalism at the Western Academy of Photography to hone his writing and visual skills. Kastelein's first job out of college was reporting for a weekly newspaper in a small enclave of 3000 people, Fort Smith, in the Canadian Northwest Territories.
After two years in Fort Smith, Kastelein went back to sea and ended up in St. Maarten in the Dutch Caribbean where he spent almost ten years, on and off, working as an editor and reporting for the local media as well as serving stints in the marine industry as a sailboat skipper and marketing director for two multinational marine chandleries.
In 1994-95 Kastelein sailed from Crete, Greece to the Caribbean with his wife and two friends on a 38 foot Morgan sailboat.
He has created two print publications from conceptualisation, design, content production, layout, distribution and solicitation of advertising in the Caribbean - What's ON St. Martin and The Limin' Times as well as provided hard news for St. Martin's Week as English Editor and Today St. Martin as an investigative reporter.
Kastelein returned to Europe in 2002 to start life anew with additions to the family along with the desire to live in the First World once again.
He now develops websites, manages a boatbuilding operation in Brazil and writes.
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Jason Leopold is an award-winning reporter who currently works for Truthout.org and he is also the author of the 2006 memoir News Junkie. Leopold spent two years covering California’s electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. A Lexis Nexus search shows that Leopold has written more than 2,000 news stories on the issue and was the first journalist to report that energy companies were engaged in manipulative practices in California’s newly deregulated electricity market.
Mr. Leopold has also reported extensively on Enron. He was the first journalist to interview former Enron President Jeffrey Skilling following Enron’s bankruptcy filing in December 2001.
Mr. Leopold has broken numerous stories on the financial machinations Enron engaged in and his investigative pieces on the company have been published in The Nation, Salon.com, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, CBS Marketwatch, Entrepreneur, Utne Reader and numerous other national and international publications.
Mr. Leopold was also a regular contributor to CNBC and National Public Radio and had also been the keynote speaker at more than two-dozen energy industry conferences around the country. Mr. Leopold has been writing about foreign and domestic policy online for publications such as Alternet, CounterPunch, Common Dreams, ZNet, Z magazine, The Raw Story, Counterbias, Scoop and Truthout.org.
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Charles Sullivan is an architectural millwright, photographer, free-lance writer and social agitator residing in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at: csullivan@phreego.com |
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Tom Burghardt is a
researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to
publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global
Research, an independent research and media group of writers,
scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read
on Dissident
Voice, The Intelligence
Daily and Pacific Free
Press. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S.
Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
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Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. His articles have appeared in newspapers and periodicals across the world, including the U.S., Canada, South Korea, Great Britain, France, Zimbabwe,
Yugoslavia, Russia, Denmark and Australia.
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Stuart T. Noble is an American writer and political analyst living in Denmark. A Transatlantic resident since 1993, Noble received his BA in History from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Currently pursuing a masters degree at the Center for American Studies, University of Southern Denmark, Noble specializes in comparative US/EU political and governmental studies, and the relationships between technology, civil society and democracy. His most current project involves exploring political theory models of online political activism. He is also a regular blogger at The Agonist, the leading progressive blog on international affairs.
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Award-winning investigative reporter Dave Lindorff has been working as a journalist for 33 years. A regular columnist for CounterPunch (www.counterpunch.org), he also writes frequently for Extra! (www.fair.org) and Salon magazine (www.salon.com), as well as for Businessweek, The Nation and Treasury&Risk Management Magazine. In the late 1970s, he ran the Daily News bureau covering Los Angeles County government, and in the mid-'90s, spent several years as a correspondent in Hong Kong and China for Businessweek. Over the years he has written for such publications as Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Village Voice, Forbes, The London Observer and the Australian National Times.
Author, with Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for Impeachment: Legal Arguments for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, June 2006), he is also the author of three earlier books--This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy (Common Courage Press, 2004), Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For Profit Hospital Chains (Bantam, 1992), an investigative report on the for-profit hospital industry, and Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003), the only independent examination of this important capital case.
A two-time Fulbright Scholar (Shanghai, China and Kaohsiung, Taiwan), he is a 1975 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and received a B.A. in Chinese in 1972 from Wesleyan University. In October 2004, he was awarded a coveted "Most Censored Story of 2003" award by Project Censored (for his Oct. 16, 2003 story in Salon about the Pentagon's quiet efforts to gear up the machinery for a return to the draft). A founding member of the National Writers Union, and a member of the steering committee of the NWU Philadelphia local, for the past nine years, he has lived with his family just outside Philadelphia.
In addition to writing, Lindorff is an accomplished folk musician (guitar, vocals and saw). |
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Glenda Ferris is a long-time environmental activist and one of those rural B.C. homesteaders unlucky enough to find herself in the pipeline development cross-hairs.
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Bob Geiger is a writer, activist and Democratic operative in Westchester County, NY.
He is the award-winning author of the Yellow Dog Blog and BobGeiger.com and specializes in coverage of the United States Senate. Bob began his political career at San Francisco State University where he served as a representative on the student legislature and received a degree in Economics, while minoring in Journalism.
As a writer, he won the 2005 Weblog Awards prize for Best New Blog and was a finalist in the Koufax Awards in 2005 for his column "I Know This Little Boy in New Orleans."
He is a contributing writer to The Huffington Post, Alternet, Democrats.com and Democratic Underground and has made appearances to comment on Senate activity on numerous radio programs.
Bob lives just north of Manhattan with his wife and son.
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Joshua Frank was born and raised in Montana and and now lives in New York. He is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush published by Common Courage Press (2005) and the forthcoming Red State Rebels to be published by AK Press in March of 2008.
He has appeared as a political commentator on MSNBC as well as numerous radio programs.
His investigative reports and columns have appeared in many publications, among them: CounterPunch, Z Magazine, Guerilla News Network, Lew Rockwell, Common Dreams, Antiwar.com, Clamor, Metro New York, Green Left Weekly, Left Turn Magazine, and Anderson Valley Advertiser.
He has also contributed essays for several books: Dime’s Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils published by CounterPunch/AK Press (2004). Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate published by Haymarket Books (2006). Beyond Borders published by Worth Publishers (2006). As well as the Introduction to Ward Churchill's forthcoming book, Speaking Truth in the Teeth of Power, to be published by AK Press in early 2007.
He edits BrickBurner.org.
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Mickey Z. is a self-educated writer/martial artist/vegan who lives with his wife Michele in New York City.
Likes: sunsets, rainbows, and anarcho-syndicalism
Dislikes: mean people, traffic, and factory farming
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Roland Sheppard is a retired Business Representative of Painters Local # 4 and District Council #8 in San Francisco. He has been a life long social activist and socialist. Prior to his being elected as a union official, he had worked for 31 years as a house painter.
He became especially interested in the environment when he was diagnosed with cancer due to his work environment as a painter.
When he first got a computer, in 1998, he learned how to write on his word processor in order to put together all the medical legal arguments on his breakthrough workers’ compensation case in California, proving that his work environment, as a painter, had caused his cancer. After a five-year struggle, he won a $300,000 settlement on his case.
He has led a unique life. He is one of the few people remaining who were at the Audubon Ballroom when Malcolm X was assassinated.
Now retired, he is interested in writing about his experiences as a socialist, as a participant in the Black Liberation Movement, the Union Movement, and almost all social movements.
The following essays are based upon his involvement in the struggle for freedom for all humanity. He hopes that his essays, based upon his life’s experiences will help future generations of Freedom Fighters.
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Gail Dines received her Ph.D. from Salford University in
England. She is Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Wheelock College in Boston. Dr. Dines is co-editor of the best-selling media textbook, Gender, Race and Class in
Media (2nd edition, Sage, 2002), used in over 200 colleges
across the country. She is co-author of Pornography:
The Production and Consumption of Inequality (Routledge, 1998).
Her numerous articles on pornography, the media and violence have appeared in
academic journals and books, as well as in magazines and newspapers such as
Newsweek, Time, Working Woman, New York Times, Boston Globe, USA Today, Daily
Mail (England). Dr. Dines has also been on shows such as Donohue, Sally Jesse
Raphael, Entertainment Tonight, and is a frequent guest on radio shows across
the country. She is featured in a number of documentary films, including The Strength to
Resist: The Media's Impact on Women and Girls from Cambridge Documentary
Films. |
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Remi Kanazi was born in a small town in Western Massachusetts surrounded by crazy white people. He moved to New York City six years ago after the stock market bubble burst and recognized that his narcissism and republican nature just wasn't cutting it anymore. So he traveled to the Big Apple to be an actor. After six months of failure (goddamn 8 am auditions) and eating pasta everyday, Remi came to terms with being poor. Coincidentally, he fell into progressive politics. Then 9/11 occurred and he realized, "Hey, those guys kinda look like me."
The more Remi delved into American and Mideast politics, the more enraged he became. So he picked up a pen and pad to express himself. All the while, Remi's slacker brother Ramzi became more fascinated and involved with web design. One day, Ramzi said to Remi, "Hey, we should start a website." And that's how Poetic Injustic was born. Two and half years later, the site is thriving. Today Remi lives in New York City as a writer, poet, and performer.
Ramzi Kanazi. founder and webmaster: ramzi@poeticinjustice.net
Remi Kanazi. founder and main contributer: remi@poeticinjustice.net
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Russ Wellen is a senior editor at Freezerbox.com and
OpEdNews.com.
His areas
of concentration are nuclear weapons and national security.
"Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not
being distracted by the Internet."
-- Cyrus
Farivar
"In this interregnum, morbid phenomena of the
most varied kind come to pass."
-- Antonio Gramsci (courtesy The
Rootless Cosmopolitan
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As the sacred cows set themselves up for slaughter each night at six, America cries out for a man with the aim, strength and style to swat the partisan political piñatas upside their heads. Will Durst is that man. Sweeping both sides of the aisle with a quiver full of barbs sharpened by a keen wit and dipped into the same ink as the day's headlines, Durst transcends political ties, last year performing at events featuring Vice President Al Gore and former President George HW Bush, also speaking at the Governors Conference and the Mayors Convention cementing his claim as the nation's ultimate equal opportunity offender. Outraged and outrageous, Durst may mock and scoff and taunt, but he does it with taste.
A Midwestern baby boomer with a media induced identity crisis, Durst has been called "a modern day Will Rogers" by The L.A. Times while the S. F. Chronicle hails him as "heir apparent to Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory." The Chicago Tribune argues he's a "hysterical hybrid of Hunter Thompson and Charles Osgood," although the Washington Post portrays him as "the dark Prince of doubt." All agree Durst is America's premier political comic.
As American as a bottomless cup of coffee, this former Milwaukeean is cherished by critics and audiences alike for the common sense he brings to his surgical skewering of the hype and hypocrisies engulfing us on a daily basis. Busier than a blind squirrel neck deep in an almond sorting warehouse, Durst writes a daily Internet column, was a contributing editor to both National Lampoon and George magazines and continues to pen frequent contributions to various periodicals such as the New York Times and his hometown San Francisco Chronicle.
This five-time Emmy nominee and host/co-producer of the ongoing award winning PBS series "Livelyhood" is also a regular commentator on NPR and CNN, and has appeared on every comedy show featuring a brick wall including Letterman, Comedy Central, HBO and Showtime, receiving 7 consecutive nominations for the American Comedy Awards Stand Up of the Year. Hobbies include the never-ending search for the perfect cheeseburger, while his heroes remain the same from when he was twelve: Thomas Jefferson and Bugs Bunny.
Listen to his bi- weekly commentaries @
audible.com |
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Jayne Lyn Stahl is a widely published poet, playwright, screenwriter,
and essayist whose posts appear regularly on The Huffington Post, OpEd
News, and other Web sites; links to her articles have appeared on
Yahoo news, Google news, and The Washington Post. Ms. Stahl is a
full member of PEN USA, and PEN American Center in New York.
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