Stan retired as a Master Sergeant from the US Army in 1996, his last assignment being 3rd Special Forces Group.  He entered military service January, 1970, and his first assignment was as an infantryman with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam.  His service took him to seven more conflict areas after Vietnam, including Guatemala, Grenada, El Salvador, Peru, Colombia, Somalia, and Haiti.  His assignments included 2nd Ranger Battalion, 1st Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, 7th Special Forces, the Jungle Operations Training Center, and the US Military Academy at West Point, where he taught military science.

He is the former Organizing Director for Democracy South and is currently a freelance writer, speaker, and consultant. He is on the coordinating committee of Bring Them Home Now, a campaign of Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out, both of which he is a member. He is the author of two books, one about the 1994 US military intervention in Haiti, called “Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti” (Soft Skull Press, 2000), and one about the Bush Doctrine and the military called “Full Spectrum Disorder – The Military in the New American Century” (Soft Skull Press, 2004).

Comment: Stan is such a brilliant and passionate writer that I frequently have to sit down and smoke a cigarette after reading one of his stories. For me good writing is nothing without passion and good journalism becomes great journalism when passion turns the mechanics of journalism into the art of true teaching. This man is deep and human and trustworthy and my friend; a cross between Jackson Browne, Clint Eastwood and the big brother with a heart every kid should have.

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ” --RFK

“Happiness is not amusement. It is good activity.” –Aristotle

“The Whistleblower is a political person in an apolitical world.” – C. Fred Alford

And here's Shakespeare on Bush:

A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket …

A king of shreds and patches.

Julian Darley MA, MSc, is the author of High Noon for Natural Gas, forthcoming from Chelsea Green Publishing Co ( http://www.chelseagreen.com ). He is also the director of the Post Carbon Institute, http://www.postcarbon.org )

More information and live interviews about global oil peak and North American gas peak can be found at http://www.globalpublicmedia.com.

Comment: Don't let the short bio fool you. This loquacious and charming Brit expatriate who lives in Vancouver can talk your ear off and leave you asking for more. He truly understands energy and he walks the way he talks. When mankind comes to see that having less will mean survival, it will be people like Julian to show us how to do it.

Michael Kane, 25, is a Social Sculptor working in the tradition of Joseph Beuyes, the artist who declared "everyone is an artist". He fronts the progressive hip-hop group CLARITY whose latest CD "THIS IS NOT A TEST" features the song "buddy buddy" detailing the morning of 9-11-01. Kane reluctantly stepped into journalism as one of a handful of independent researchers to honestly investigate the 411 Blackout. This culminated in a public comment given in front of the U.S-Canadian joint task force to investigate the blackout in New York on December 5, 2003. Currently he is working on a book titled What's the 411 Blackout? - War Games, and 9-11.

Kane is the only journalist actively covering the New York 9-11 Truth Movement. This group has been at the footprint of Ground Zero every Saturday since January of 2004. He is an associate producer for Shadow Government Television, the production team that produced "BUSH KNEW", which was a finalist in the Move On "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad contest. Kane has also worked with Public Citizen's "Water for All" Campaign on a CD Rom which details the facts surrounding the world water crisis.

Comment: There's too many “old” people around this place. The world that's coming is the world that needs to be seen through the eyes of the young. Mike Kane is a gregarious and truly perceptive talent, just starting out as a writer the same way I did; not out of choice but out of necessity. He's someone who has looked at the world around him and said, “I have to do something about this.” A year and a half ago I saw that he was someone to be watched and supported. He has the makings of a leader and a teacher, and the energy to do great things.