Imagine if Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria gave a press conference. What would it sound like?

Beria, as you may remember, was head of Stalin's secret police during one of the most infamous periods in Soviet history, the Great Purge of 1938. As head of the NKVD, or Soviet secret police, he was responsible for carrying out a massive political repression that was nominally focused on a series of "enemies of the people," such as the intelligentsia, professionals and rich peasants. In reality, however, the bloody purge - and others Beria oversaw for Stalin in later years - were simply a means for Stalin to ruthlessly consolidate his power by vanquishing his political enemies through show trials, forced labor camps, torture and, when all else failed, murder.

Climate Crisis coalitionists rallied with peace and poverty activists last night, braving an unexpected ice storm that laid a sheet of ice on roads and sidewalks.  With megaphones, signs and a flag of global Earth, 25 activists regaled holiday shoppers with parodied Christmas songs, asking them to "rethink" their consumptive habits.

Columbus joined the international community in urging the US to begin reducing carbon dioxide emissions.  Rallies across the country were held in solidarity with activists who demonstrated outside the Montreal Summit on Global Warming.

Holiday Hoppers received energy saving tips to reduce their personal contriubition to global warming. Tips included: plant a tree - which consumes CO2, instead of buying plastics that use oil to make and transport; drive 55 instead of the 65 mph maximum, and donate money to homeless shelters and food banks, instead of buying fabricated gifts.

City planners were urged to bring clean energy light rail to discourage auto use, and to provide tax rebates to hybrid car buyers.

Robert Greenwald's WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price is a potent and timely effort to awaken our inner conscious consumer. But the corporate ethics malfunction that we are experiencing goes far beyond Walmart, and pervades every aspect of our lives. There is nothing new about any of this. Arundhati Roy has worked tirelessly to point out that our spending habits play a significant part in supporting corporate empires and folks like Ralph Nader have been begging us to pay attention to our complicity in corporate plundering for years.

As we stumble through the holiday season, mindlessly maxing out our credit cards, it is high time that we re-examine our own complicit spending and consuming habits. The reality is that we do have the power to commit change in the way we spend our money, not only during the holiday season, but also in the purchasing choices we make every day. There is no shortage of companies that are poster children for the bad corporate citizen award. But perhaps we can chose a few that many of us use every day, and make the choice to pick alternative products until these companies take substantive

To the Board of The FreePress,
 
Please answer me this one question, " Why is it, when it comes to Ultra-Liberal Leftist manifestos,
invariably there is a highly-visible Jewish cadre' and leadership? In your organization 11 of 19 or 57%!
 
Please(!), I beg you DO NOT cut me off!
 
Not just your organization, but so many others. A couple others - in particular; the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Teacher's Association (more so in the leadership), and the like.
 
What is it all of your heritage see that the rest of the ethnic groups in the world are blind to, for which "your people' need to make us see to all that is going on around us?
 
I know your fervor Is More than the Torah's account of God's chosen people! Is it the Holocaust alone that have lead the 'Whole of You'  to the Communist economic, political, and social philosophy of how a Nation and it's people should exist as one coordinated synergy?
 

AUSTIN, Texas -- Fellow procrastinators of the world, unite! Now is the time to begin thinking about Christmas shopping. We still have a few days left, so there's no rush for those who have been known to do it all on Christmas morning at the Jiffy Mart (everyone appreciates a nice can of WD-40).

For those who consider it wussy to begin shopping before the 24th, here's the annual Christmas book list -- the best one-stop shopping in town, items to suit all ages and personalities.

We prefer, of course, to shop at independent bookstores, but if a chain store is all that's available, it will do. Though there are no guarantees on the quality of the Christmas help: I once heard a woman ask for "The Odyssey" by Homer, to which the high-school honey hired for the holidays replied, "Uh, Homer Who?"

A fun book for almost anyone on you list is "Seabiscuit, An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, $24.95). Unless you're a horse person, you probably think you don't want to read the biography of a racehorse, but you do want to read this one. It's a love of a book about a love of a horse.