Dear Harvey,
I am a friend of Bob. I met you at a Free Press et. al conference pre-last presidential election. While I have admired your work for years, it took your article on Shakespeare and Co to move me to contact you.

I, too, left a part of me that still inspirits the streets of Paris. As I read the first few paragraphs of your article, I thought immediately of my own experience (not as grand as yours) and, of the recent Woody Allen film. How delighted I was to read on and find your reference to "Midnight in Paris." And, what a beautiful symmetry was felt in your remembrance of your first stay and the juxtaposition of your last return; the kindness of the gentleman who let you stay and then the kindness of your message to him, now upstairs where you had been.

I remember years ago seeing a documentary about the first owner of S&Co along with her lesbian lover. I also remember the simple act of kindness that was extended to James Joyce when no one would publish his novel Ulysses. The owner said, "Would you like me to publish your book, James?" It was so sweet, so unassuming, so considerate.

As activists and journalists debate whether Homeland Security and the CIA are actively involved in the recent domestic crackdown on the Occupy movement, evidence mounts that the progressive populist movement is being targeted by COINTELPRO style repressive tactics.

Four of the seven Occupy Columbus activists who were arrested on November 15 appeared at pre-trial before a Franklin County municipal judge on Thursday, January 5, 2012. The four had pled not guilty after being charged with “negligent trespassing” for entering the lobby of a US Bank. The activists were touring Columbus banks to inquire about their banking policies. Two of the Occupy activists have pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor trespass charge, and one has not entered a plea.

At the January 5 hearing, the four turned down a plea deal from the prosecutors and received a continuance. They will reappear for another scheduled pre-trial on February 9.

At this moment the four appear ready for a full blown trial that may possibly reveal ties between federal and local police authorities regarding surveillance of the Occupy movement.

Exercise. Lose weight. Be nicer. Work with not just this year but many future years and generations and centuries in mind.

Work with an international perspective as much as possible. Collaborate internationally as much as possible.

Work to turn last year's Arab Spring into this year's Worldwide Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.

Help to create a worldwide movement against plutocracy and violence.

Stop thinking of defeating horrendous proposals as the only kind of "victory" possible.

Within the United States, help to advance the organization of a student loan debtors union large enough and strategic enough to both refuse payment and to build a campaign that will make education free going forward — in the United States and around the world.

Help to advance a nonviolent resistance campaign to halt foreclosures on homes, one by one, and through legislatures and courts.

I stopped by a corporate chain bookstore this week and checked out the "Current Affairs" section. I was a little surprised to discover that according to a dozen or more books dominating the display we are all under a vicious life-and-death assault from a raving, drooling mob of communist devils led by that well-known pinko guerrilla Barack Obama.

Of course, further investigation tends to reveal that the crimes of this mythical nouveau-Soviet assault by Democrats in D.C. are a combination of tasks performed for their masters on Wall Street and tasks they would never perform even under enhanced interrogation technique. The Obama-gang of rabid leftists stands accused of bailing out banksters and mega corporations, as of course they have eagerly done, just as have their Republican partners in crime. And they stand accused of taxing the rich and cutting the military while providing healthcare, education, retirement security, renewable energy, and affordable housing to the least well-off among us, as of course they will do the day Newt Gingrich turns monogamous.

It took two stolen US Presidential elections and the prospect of another one coming up in 2012.
For years the Democratic Party and even much of the left press has reacted with scorn for those who've reported on it.
But the imperial fraud that has utterly corrupted our electoral process seems finally to be dawning on a broadening core of the American electorate---if it can still be called that.

The shift is highlighted by three major developments:
1. The NAACP goes to the United Nations

In early December, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest civil rights organization in America, announced that it was petitioning the United Nations over the orchestrated GOP attack on black and Latino voters.

In its landmark report entitled Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, the NAACP directly takes on the new Jim Crow tactics passed in fourteen states that are designed to keep minorities from voting in 2012.