With only rare exceptions, the topics we're interested in do not include Area 51, Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, details you don't really understand about the World Trade Center's collapse, eyeballs inside pyramids, flying saucers, "Holocaust revisionism," Illuminati, Rothchilds, Rockefellers, Skull & Bones phobia, space aliens who walk among us, technologies allegedly suppressed for decades or generations, Trilateralists, or your theories about who killed JFK.

Well, we're rooting for you, but let's get real: This website is published by two people who work for a living, and we put virtually all our spare time into the website and other political activism. We're not your frickin' knights in shining armor, OK? We can nudge you in the right direction, toward the kind of activists who might be able to help you (hint: they're probably listed on our reference page). And if that doesn't work, we can offer a tiny sliver of publicity for your plight -- IF we think your story has merit and IF you do the work of writing it up in a coherent "letter to the editor" format.

With only rare exceptions, the topics we're interested in do not include Area 51, Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, details you don't really understand about the World Trade Center's collapse, eyeballs inside pyramids, flying saucers, "Holocaust revisionism," Illuminati, Rothchilds, Rockefellers, Skull & Bones phobia, space aliens who walk among us, technologies allegedly suppressed for decades or generations, Trilateralists, or your theories about who killed JFK.

Even more important than your topic, though, is the length of what you've written. If you send twenty words about JFK's assassination we might publish it, but if you send hundreds and hundreds of words, or a 15,000-word essay titled "Part One," the answer will almost certainly be NO, even if the topic is something we might care deeply about. Please bear in mind that your readers (beginning with me) have to get to work on time, so keep it brief, and get to the point.

What we will or won't publish is somewhat subjective, but if you're trying to meaningfully and not-too-longwindedly discuss something tangibly related to our general topics of freedom and/or current events, we'll almost certainly publish your comments.

To help understand why this is a problem, here's a common conversation:

READER: You're utterly wrong about Dwight Eisenhower ...

UNKNEWS: Huh? We haven't published or linked to any recent articles about Eisenhower. Please send the URL of the page you're responding to, so we'll know what you're talking about ...

READER: What's an URL?

UNKNEWS: It's a web address, that long string of characters near the top of the screen in most browsers. Our URLs all start with http://www.unknownnews ...

READER: You don't know your own web address?

Oy. We're sorry, dear reader, but if you don't include an URL and/or we can't quickly figure out what you're responding to, we have to hit the delete button and move along.

Similarly, if we're chatting with you by email, please don't "tidy up" your email by deleting our earlier comments. We're old, none too bright, and we receive hundreds of emails daily. If you remove everything that might remind us of the previous conversation, we just plain won't remember what you're talking about.

• forwarded emails

• emails addressed to someone else

• press releases, petitions, mass mailings, etc.

• advertising disguised as dialogue (believe me, we can tell)

• entire articles or lengthy excerpts you've cut-and-pasted from elsewhere

• lunatic emails or material that's wildly off-topic (unless it makes us laugh)

• "Johnny One-Note" stuff
(serialized emails reiterating the same points over and over again)

• comments that amount to endorsements of the status quo
(hint: the status quo isn't working)

• comments that are utterly obvious, like "What an ass" or "This President is an idiot," without any further comment.

• today's amusing anecdote that's already in everyone's email in-box and on-line at 171 websites

• anything with more than 3-4 links, unless you've coded the links yourself (coding long lists of links takes time we don't have)

• long and/or rambling commentary unrelated to anything on this site (e.g., your lengthy opinions about the Vice President's wife's new dress, or elaborate theories about who really killed JFK or engineered 9/11)

• anything else, if we don't see your point, or if we don't see what it adds to the dialogue ("conversation between two or more persons").

We also recognize, sadly, that many people are too stubborn or simply too stupid to discuss political issues cordially. Our standards aren't particularly high, but we utterly, absolutely, and wholeheartedly reserve the right to put troublesome types out of our misery.

If your comments amount to nothing but "Fuck you," we might delete and permanently block your emails instantly, or we might (if we're in a playful mood) try to coax something coherent out of unreasonable emailers. But even if we try, we won't try for long. Three strikes you’re out, and remember, utter idiots are not guaranteed three strikes. If you're an especially smelly ass, you might be out and ejected with your first rude comment.

We don't enjoy knocks on the door from the Secret Service, so we won't publish or tolerate "jokes" about killing the President (or anyone else), ambiguous calls for the people to rise up in violent revolution, etc. Yes, we're willing to be imprisoned or killed for the things we believe, but we're not eager to be imprisoned or killed ... for the things you believe.

• What you're saying appears in plain text, with occasional italics or bolding for emphasis

• Lengthy quotes are usually indented. If you're quoting someone else from dialogue, it'll be in italics; if you're quoting from some other source, it will be in plain text.

• Our responses appear in bold type.
Coding to generate graphics, animation, sound, or change font color or size, etc., is not allowed, and it'll get your email automatically deleted.

With only rare exceptions, the topics we're interested in do not include Area 51, Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, details you don't really understand about the World Trade Center's collapse, eyeballs inside pyramids, flying saucers, "Holocaust revisionism," Illuminati, Rothchilds, Rockefellers, Skull & Bones phobia, space aliens who walk among us, technologies allegedly suppressed for decades or generations, Trilateralists, or your theories about who killed JFK.

Please bear in mind that your readers (beginning with me) have to get to work on time, so keep it brief, and get to the point.

What we will or won't publish is somewhat subjective, but if you're trying to meaningfully and not-too-longwindedly discuss something tangibly related to our general topics of freedom and/or current events, we'll almost certainly publish your comments.

We don't enjoy knocks on the door from the Secret Service, so we won't publish or tolerate "jokes" about killing the President (or anyone else), ambiguous calls for the people to rise up in violent revolution, etc. Yes, we're willing to be imprisoned or killed for the things we believe, but we're not eager to be imprisoned or killed ... for the things you believe. If you violate this rule your email will be blocked, with no second chances.

• Like any reader, we're far more likely to take an article seriously if it's written and presented seriously. Please use standard spelling and grammar rules for American English.

• Please proofread your article before sending it. We recommend reading your article to yourself, out loud. If you don't spellcheck or proofread, and you send an article full of exactly the sort of mistakes these simple tasks catch, we will understand that you don't give a damn about your writing (or our time).

• Please use common, everyday English, not lots of insider jargon or gobbledygook. If complicated terms are necessary, define them in your article.

• The first time you mention someone, tell us who he/she is. For example, "Albright said ..." is wrong and confusing unless you've established that you're referring to Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

• Similarly, all unusual acronyms must be defined the first time they are used -- don't tell us about the FYWZGG without telling us what it is.

• We welcome criticisms of the world's so-called leaders, but prefer they be referred to by name, not by infantile insulting nicknames. The Vice President, for example, is Dick Cheney, not SuckMyDick Chainy. We don't refer to President Bush as Bushie-Gooshie-Between-the-Ears. This has nothing to do with "respecting" such leaders, as most deserve no respect at all, but it has everything to do with respecting our readers. Criticism requires thought; insults do not.

• We have fully functional funny bones, but we're usually in "serious mode" while working on the website ... so if you're sending something that's intended as satire, parody, or comedy, please don't assume we'll "get it." Tell us, flat out and up front, "This is satire."

• If you'd like to say a few or a few dozen words "about the author," please do. If you'd like your email address published, so readers can contact you, just let us know. Elsewise, we generally publish articles as "by first-name last-initial," with only our email address for feedback.

So if you're sending something that's already on-line somewhere else, or something you've submitted somewhere else, please send the URL, not the article.

The bare-bones basics of journalism is: who, what, when, where, why and how. We're amateur journalists, but that doesn't have to mean half-assed, so if you're participating here, we do ask that you provide the basics.

If you're quoting someone, we'll need to know who.

If you're saying something, we'll need to know what.

If you're referencing a website, we'll need to know what website.

Et cetera. Whether intended as news, commentary, or dialogue, emails lacking the bare-bones minimums of journalism will be disregarded.

What this means is, we don't have time to interrogate emailers who play cryptic games, who allude to more information than they can reveal, or who otherwise don't or won't provide the simple basics.

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Authors "roll their own" bylines, and we don't keep records of who's who, so please tell us your desired nom de plume, each and every time.

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Readers who raise thorny personal or philosophical questions but don't want their comments published will almost certainly get only a brief reply, if that. We're sorry, but we simply can't be electronic penpals. Our replies are usually brief.

When we receive especially compelling, heartfelt personal emails that require a long, heartfelt response, they go into our "urgent, must reply" file ... and we sincerely hope we'll get to them ... but we rarely do. Personal correspondence is not our strong suit.

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Authors retain the copyright on their works. We hold only the right to on-line publication and -- someday, eventually -- an off-line "best of" collection for fundraising purposes.

Sometimes, love is not forever, but once you've sent something, you can't take it back. This means that if or when we write or publish or link to something that offends you, we're not obligated to take a day off work and promptly wipe the website, deleting each and every word you've ever sent, just because you demand it.

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Please don't send multi-part emails, serialized articles, or anything that won't make sense all by itself (without referring to background material sent separately). We're far too disorganized to keep track of more than one email at a time.

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Some of our readers and writers fear their government, as anyone who knows anything about government should. For this reason, we keep no records of who’s who or how to get in touch. We have no files to seize.

This puts some people's minds at ease, but it also means we can’t forward emails to our authors. So if you’d like to get in touch with one of our writers, or if you’ve written something we’ve published and you’d like to follow the feedback, the dialogue page is your best bet.

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We won't tolerate hate material (i.e., all or most ____________s are lazy, sick, inferior, or deserve a lesser lot in life). And we'll be the judge of what's hate material.

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We can't guess why, but some websites prefer to hide their internal URLs, or change their articles' URLs after a few days, or even a few hours. The Canadian news site "canoe" is a perfect example; most articles people find and send from "canoe" are long gone by the time we get your email.

If you've found a good article at a rapid-shuffling URL site, you must either figure out the super-secret, internal, long-lasting URL, or tell us plainly how you got to that internal page.

We really don't have time to play hide-and-seek, so if we can't find what you're quoting or referring to, and find it quickly, at the URL you've sent, we'll honor what seems to be such sites' intent, by not putting up a link.

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This website is our hobby and our passion, but we do not post everything anyone sends. We're not stenographers.

If you're sending more material than we use, you're probably sending too much.

If you're sending a parade of links that all lead back to one or two sources, that's just advertising.

If you're sending an extended series of commentaries about the excessive tow fees in Raymond, Missouri, please die.

We sometimes need to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom, so we can only publish the items that interest or infuriate us most, or make us chuckle loudest.

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If you have completed serious, credible investiagtive journalism, we'll cerrtainly consider publishing it.

Sadly, though, time precludes us from conducting in-depth investigative journalism about each and every atrocity known to humanity. There are lots, but we can't live our lives, prep and publish this website, do our real-world activism, and pretend we're investigative journalists.

We're Helen & Harry, not Woodward & Bernstein.

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Tragically, we are fluent in English, and no other language.

Some people are offended by naughty words, such as fucking asshole or dicklicking shithead. We're not easily offended, and we consider such words part of the poetry of the American language.

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We don't have length limits, because when you need 10,000 words, you need 10,000 words. Generally, though, briefer is better, and more people will read a few hundred words than a few thousand.

Also, please remember that we're not your employees: The longer your submission, the longer it will take me to prep and code it. At some unpredictable point, if what you're written isn't excellent enough to justify my extra time and work, submissions may be delayed or discarded.

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If you're sending several link suggestions, please send them all in one big email, instead of several little ones. Quality trumps quantity, though. If you're sending more than 3-4 link suggestions daily, unless we're using virtually everything you send you're probably sending too many, or too many reruns.

If you're unsure what we're looking for, don't be shy about asking.

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We don’t publish everything we write or find, so we can’t promise to publish everything you write or find. We’re low-level worker-drones doing the website in our spare time, and time is limited.

We receive literally dozens, sometimes hundreds of link suggestions daily, and we're always in a rush, so if you're sending an article that's subtle, or requires a reader's slow, thoughtful rumination, we probably won't "get it" unless you write a paragraph or two yourself, and explain why this article is worthwhile.

For example, a link to an article headlined "Gummi bear sales projected to decline" is a link we probably won't follow to an article we probably won't read unless your email tells us why we should.

Similarly, if you're sending a link to something long or complicated -- the complete text of a legal document, a Congressional bill, transcripts of an obscure subcommittee's hearings, etc. -- please summarize it in your email, or tell us why you're sending it, or we might miss the significance of Section 14, subsection B, Item 17.

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Folks unfamiliar with the work of web-coding sometimes think it's an instantaneous process, as easy as cut-and-paste. It's not. HTML coding can be a little tedious, and we do it by hand, with no prep-aid software. It can take half an hour (or longer) for us to proofread, edit, prep, and HTML-code an average, uncomplicated article for publication. An article with lots of special effects (bolding, italics, or links to insert) takes longer ... sometimes much longer.

And we're happy to do it, but please don't ask us to do this work twice. If you send rewrites, or have a change-of-heart and ask us not to publish something after we've prepped it, you're taking large chunks of our time and flushing that time down the toilet.

Of course, we understand that these things will happen, but if these things happen repeatedly with the same author, we're likely to ... remember the source.

We reiterate:
Please don't send what you've written
until you're done writing it.

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We won't link to nutball sites. This includes:

• sites with permanent pictures of space aliens on their main page, or prominent illustrations of an eyeball in a pyramid

• sites with names like TinFoilHat, or my-dentures-pick-up-shortwave-broadcasts.com

• sites where a recurring theme is the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs, how the planets control our lives, the Trilateral Commission, the wit and wisdom of Lyndon LaRouche, or anything else which falls beyond the realm of things which make sense

• sites where the agenda is offensive, or where we can smell an agenda but we can't quickly figure out what it is, or where we get a gut feeling they're bonkers

• sites where the layout or lack-of-proofreading debunks the text

• sites that seem less than credible for any reason.

Even if it looks genuine, we will not present news from sources that induce snickering. No exceptions.

And your credibility is on the line, too. Once you've sent us "news" that Drew Barrymore shot JFK, it's unlikely we'll take your next suggestions seriously.

We won't knowingly link to websites that spam us. And you bet your ass, that specifically includes weblogs that add us to their daily mailing list without asking us.

We won't knowingly link to websites that do automatic downloads, publish ads designed to look like internal warning messages about your computer, disable the 'back' function, try to reset your home page, or do any such dirty tricks.

Sorry, we can't link to 'Geocities' or other sites which allow free web space but severely constrain the number of visitors allowed, because ten minutes after we put up the link, the bandwidth limit is exceeded and further connections are blocked for the day.

We won't knowingly link to websites that publish hate material.

We won't link to articles in Arab News detailing how bad Jews are, or articles in Jewish News detailing how bad Arabs are, or etc. Everyone's entitled to hate to their heart's content, but we're not interested. Booooring.

We won't link to "think tanks" or advocacy sites designed for "true believers." There's nothing unexpected at i-love-guns.com or guns-are-bad.com; you know what the article's going to say as soon as you see the web address.

If any of this crap slips by us, please do let us know.

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The time we give the website is huge but never as much as we wish it could be. For this reason, we're impatient with wingnuts -- an old-school term for the deluded and dingbatty.

If you send "link suggestions" to deluded or dingbatty sites (the Martians are coming, RFK shot JFK, racial or religious or ethnic or gender supremacists, advice straight from God, etc.), with notes suggesting that you take such stuff seriously, we'll never take you seriously again.

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