Hey --
Yet another Sunday but the last one of 2013. Happy New Year to all of our readers, those who love the site, those who like it and those who hate it but can't seem to stop reading for whatever reasons.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
The last edition of the year and what did we come up with:
WSWS Bill Van Auken gets another truest as the year draws to a close.
Sibel Edmonds' gets one as well. We saw her article on Global Research's site so we linked to it and to Boiling Frogs, for any wondering why there are two links.
We had no editorial. We assumed we'd do Iraq. We are all tired. Exhausted. It was Dona who said, "Person of the year? When you think about it, that's really a commentary on the year itself. Can we call it our editorial?" We will. And Lynne is our person of the year.
I (Jim) knew Ava and C.I. would choose to go in a different direction after the massive popularity of their work last week but I wouldn't have guessed this. It's a primer, it's a footnote, it's an examination and so much more.
Black Agenda Report, more than other outlet in 2013, was indespensible. We thank Glen Ford, Bruce A. Dixon and Margaret Kimberley for their hard work and the high benchmark they set for everyone else to strive toward.
Napster had nothing on the NSA. It's the end of the year. Last week, Ava and C.I. turned out an edition in about five hours. That was with them doing all the fact checking as well as typing. We wanted it to be that kind of an edition. And we wondered how? By doing a list of 2013!!!! Sadly, that did not make the edition run any quicker.
I like this piece. Rebecca, Betty, Ava, C.I. and I think Wally were the ones who came up with this and argued for it. I don't think any other left outlet will write anything like this. I think it will just be us. Good for us.
Ava and C.I. had one message to pass on regarding last week when the rest of us took off and they were left to do the edition and read all the incoming e-mails (thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com): What is the Toyota commercial everyone's griping about in e-mails? It's this one and it's pretty much universally hated.
Dona said, "We forgot the whole Beyonce nonsense!" And we had. Betty's working on the topic at her site. She looked at a draft she'd done and cut out some of it. She then copied and pasted it and said we could have it. This is Betty's rough draft writing with the rest of us smoothing it over. Big thanks to Betty.
What a smug prick Henry is. And this is how we justified no editorial. The editorial would have been on Iraq. Ty and Dona pointed out that we had this and that Ava and C.I. tackled Iraq in their media comentary.
Ava, C.I. and Mike insisted on this. We had finished the edition and were about to publish as soon as Jess finished typing up Person of the year (the last thing we wrote). That's when Mike asked if we were going to do anything on Nikita. I said, "No. Why would we?" Ava and C.I. took up the issue then and this was really written by them and Dona with Ty agreeing to type it.
I wrote this early in the edition. It's not done. Why? Ava and C.I. had finished their commentary before I was done. Read this to grasp that after I started it, Ava and C.I. started their piece. Now go eyeball their piece, don't read it, come back to my piece and grasp how quickly Ava and C.I. write. They did all of that in the time it took me to do this tiny piece.
Repost from from Great Britain's Socialist Worker.
Repost from Workers World.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
And those are just two archives.
We hope everyone has a happy new year and we pray for peace, democracy, justice and our beleaguered Constitution in the new year.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.