"Dr. Martin Luther King: He Gave His Life Serving Others." At the end, he just wanted people to know that he tried to love somebody. To this day, King remains a symbol of the African-American civil rights struggle, revered for his martyrdom on behalf of nonviolence.

Biographic notes, photographs, a photo-gallery and videos are included.

"The Place of Agency and Norms in Psychoanalysis." The present role of agency, free will, norms and values in psychoanalysis is the topic of this Philoctetes Center Roundtable Discussion, with Jorge Ahumada, Akeel Bilgrami, Arnold M. Cooper, Garrett Deckel, Peter Kramer, and Bernard Reginster.

The video of the roundtable discussion is included.

An audio-clip of a phone conversation between Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover was released last week. The context of that exchange is Nixon's fury about publication of The Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War. The government made great effort to suppress publication, attacking freedom of expression in America.

Photographs and a video are included.

WordPress.com cans one of its main forums moderators, because he doesn't toe the line. So much for internet freedom at WordPress. Read about it here, before WordPress deletes any mention of this incident.

"The Berlin Wall, June 2007"

At first glance, this may look like nothing more than a rather nice urban photograph. But that’s not just any bit of battered concrete, it’s the Berlin Wall. Dividing East and West Berlin for 28 years, the Wall symbolized the cold war in action within a single country.

The East sought to stop its citizens from leaving for the West, where it was believed there were fortunes to be made. Its eventual destruction, and the freedoms that followed, was a defining moment in the late 20th century and marked the death knell of the cold war.

"Victory in Massachusetts!"

Thursday, June 14, 2007

The Boston Globe reports this morning that a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, which has been advanced by social conservatives, was soundly defeated today by a joint session of the Massachusetts Legislature. The vote was vote 45 to 151, eliminating any chance of getting it on the ballot in November 2008.

A popular Egyptian blogger who is widely known known for his withering criticisms of the government has been forced to give up writing after becoming the latest victim of the Egyptian state’s muffling of political dissenters. Recently, Egypt has handed down severe jail sentences in order to silence to dissident Egyptian bloggers.

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers in Iraq to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer. Failure to do so, the document adds, could result in court-martial, or "administrative, disciplinary, contractual, or criminal action." The directive, first issued April 19, 2007, is the sharpest restriction ever placed upon troops' online activities. Access to official documents provided.

Dr. X, the author of the highly esteemed blog, " Dr. X’s Free Associations," clued me in on this developing issue. It seems that a growing number of blogs are discovering that they’ve been banned in China–-including mine! Me, why??? 107 year-old blogger Olive Riley has not only become an instantaneous international sensation, but she’s also readily available to viewers in China! So, again, why not me? Why do I have to suffer this indignity at the hand of Chinese censors?

Okay, Dr. X has speculated to me semi-privately that perhaps my subversive psychological articles about persecution and resignation don’t sit very well with these Chinese censors. I think Dr. X may have a valid point.

Further, perhaps they don’t like my posting of Annie Leibovitz’s photographs of nudes, or of my photographic slideshow of pictures taken by well-known photographers such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Andrew Wyeth of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the “buff” (during his early New York City “frisky” years). And maybe they don’t like my Anna Nicole shrine pages. I just don’t know why for sure–that’s part of the mystery surrounding being banned.

The article provides a link for you to check on whether your blog has been banned too!