Four weeks ago I wrote:

For the past month I’ve had a job writing for two newsletters at a company based in Washington, D.C., one newsletter for union leaders and one for management. I’m the third person on two three-person staffs. The other writers/editors write for one newsletter or the other. I switch back and forth. When I write for unions I almost enjoy it. There’s not much original reporting involved, not much of a challenge, mostly re-working other people’s read more

Walking through downtown D.C. in recent weeks, it was hard to miss the Verizon workers picketing in front of the building they worked in before going on strike for decent pay and a decent chance at keeping their union alive in newly developed parts of the newly re-named company. The banner that hung from a window promoting this glorious company seemed a little ludicrous in light of the marching and chanting going on beneath and the long string of cars honking in support as they passed.

But it read more

Back when the press was smart enough to take the governing of a nation more seriously than the sexual adventures of an elected representative, the public would have really cared had it been informed of some of those adventures. Now the public is smarter and the press dumber, only the public can’t seem to grab the microphone away.

So we diverted millions of dollars and all kinds of political energy to the analysis of a few blowjobs. The blowjobee was condemned for lying about the blowjobs read more

Imagine a community where people of all ages, nationalities and genders, can come for short stays and enjoy friendship and relaxation — a place that teaches love and kindness, encourages a strictly vegan diet, and demonstrates healthy ways of cooking and exercising. In this place troubled people develop confidence and wisdom while enjoying all sorts of massages, therapies and exercises. They learn to care for their bodies and to care for other people. They are exposed to the ideas of read more

The “negotiations” between the town and county governments over how to provide water and sewer service to a bunch of non-existent but hoped-for customers just outside the town may have been going on for six years now, but you couldn’t prove it by the infantile display of power-grabbing put on in the Culpeper Regional Hospital board room last week. The county declared what it wanted, and the town what it wanted. “Is there anything you agree on?” one member of the read more

The kinds of crimes that most disturb me are crimes against people. What other kinds are there? Well, there are crimes against non-human animals and against the environment – which greatly disturb me as well. There are even some crimes against companies that we should worry about.

But what to make of Virginia’s ban on “crimes against nature”? Who is “nature” and why should I care about crimes against him or her? If “nature” is a mythical religious read more

The only thing we have to be angry about is anger itself. We encourage each other to be angry and to seek to satisfy our anger with revenge. This does not work, but it makes us angrier. It pisses me off.

I suppose I should be pleased that the seasonal discussion of capital punishment has taken one more upswing in popularity and that DNA proof of innocence is a prominent feature of the chatter. I’m not.

Capital punishment is a sexy topic relevant to a tiny fraction of prisoners, guilty read more

(Published in the Culpeper News, 8 June 00)

I took him four months, but Governor Gilmore has now decided to grant a request for DNA testing that could for the first time release a wrongly convicted Virginian who spent time on death row, namely Earl Washington. At the same time, Texas Governor George W. Bush – whom many accuse of denying DNA testing in cases of dubious guilt and going ahead with executions – has for the first time blocked an execution until testing can be done.

“Any read more

Many people, even residents of Culpeper County, Va., are shocked to learn that public school students in the county are routinely taken out of class to be proselytized with Christianity. “That’s illegal!” everyone exclaims. If more people knew about this practice outside of Culpeper and other counties where it goes on, I imagine it would receive as much attention as proposals to have a “moment of silence” or post ten ancient orders on a wall. On the other hand, read more

(published in the Culpeper News, 1 June 2000)

I’ve lived most of my life in the United States, and the rest of it – for various periods at various stages in my life – in Italy. The U.S. is my home, but sometimes I tend to think it is almost exclusively the daily use of the English language that I refuse to part with. I find so much about life in Italy preferable that if I could have my mother tongue there there’d be no question about where I’d want to live.

Of read more

We published several weeks ago in the Culpeper News a letter rightly condemning our Governor’s misguided declaration of “Confederate History Month.” The flood of letters defending Robert E. Lee and so forth was predictable up until May 25, when we printed a letter from Lorie Brown of Tombstone, Arizona, which – in so far as sense can be derived from it – appears to defend slavery (before making the usual assertion that slavery had nothing to do with the war).

The read more

A World Bank/ United Nations study to be released in September, 2000, reports that half the planet’s wetlands and forests were lost during the 20th century, and 20 percent of freshwater fish are extinct, threatened or endangered. According to the EPA, one of the worst areas for wetlands loss in the U.S. is a part of Virginia that includes Culpeper.

Is everyone aware of this? Surely our local governments are aware and doing everything they can to prevent further destruction.

Actually, no. read more

(published in the Culpeper News, 29 June 2000)

What motivates every single county supervisor and town council member in Culpeper to advocate “growth” or “development”? Many people in Culpeper with whom I’ve spoken don’t favor this. They don’t vote or organize or write letters to the editor, but when you ask them they say they don’t favor this.

To our north are populations brimming over with regret and desperation and candidates running on anti-growth read more

According to the World Health Organization, very basic health care could be provided to everyone in the world lacking in it for a cost of $10 billion per year over what is currently spent. Experience suggests that the resulting drop in infant mortality would slow the population explosion because people would not hedge their bets by producing so many infants.

Ten billion dollars is 4 percent of what the world spends each year on cigarettes. It’s what the world spends every four days on read more

According to a poll done in late April, 2000, Green party candidate Ralph Nader had 6 percent of the presidential vote, Pat Buchanan 3 percent, and a vast majority of Americans wanted Nader to be included in debates with George W. Bush and Al Gore. According to a study of the integrity of the presidential candidates, only Nader was given a rating of 100 percent.

I am convinced that Nader’s percentage of the vote will be much higher come November if more people become aware of his campaign. read more

At a gas station on South Main St. shortly after I began working at the Culpeper News in August, 1999, a man approached me and asked “Are you a college student?” “No,” I said, “why?”

It turned out he had seen a “Darwin” bumper sticker on my car and wanted to know if I really believed in such stuff. I told him that Darwinism wasn’t something one “believed in” like a religion, that it was just biology, and we ended up having a read more

(published – in a horribly censored version – in the Culpeper News, 22 June 00; also published – in what form I don’t know – in the Fairfax Journal in July 2000.)

I grew up in Reston during the years in which it most resembled its founder’s original conception. Reston was a planned community with loads of recreational facilities, walking paths, tunnels and bridges, lakes and local shops, a mix of income levels, and untouched woods and fields. Robert E. Simon, read more

Publications Essay Question 2000
Please write a one- to two-page essay on how you would address the following problem:

The essence of PIRG is political. To put it crudely, bad things are happening in our society because people in power gain by allowing them to happen. In order to reform society, we need to not only expose and document the problems and figure out how to solve them, we also need to fight like hell against the powers that be to make reform possible. To put it another way, we need read more

The cover story in the Washington Post Magazine of Oct. 22, 2000, illustrates the following familiar and troubling points:
1) Legal systems in the United States, and often “counselors,” encourage and do little or nothing to oppose the idea that those suffering due to crimes will feel better if they hate and inflict suffering.

2) This idea is incorrect.

3) The media refuses to direct the conversation of this topic to what social scientists overwhelmingly agree would be the most effective, read more

David Swanson
23 October 2000

To:
Culpeper News
Culpeper Star-Exponent
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Washington Post
American Civil Liberties Union
People For the American Way

In Culpeper County, Virginia, elementary school students are taken out of class during school hours to a bus parked a few feet off school property. The county school system claims to know and to want to know nothing about what the students are taught on the bus. Some students choose not to participate in this activity, read more