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Sitting Shiva, A Novel by Elliot Feldman

Published by: Foxrock Books (Dec. 2002)
Paperback: 201 pgs., 10 illustrations by author: $12.95

It didn’t take me seven days, the length of mourning for the dead in Judaism, to read Sitting Shiva – more like seven hours straight. But it was time well spent with the first book of Elliot Feldman’s Detroit trilogy. There’s a dash of Elmore Leonard here, mixed with a pinch of Bukowski’s realism, but I like to think of the terse prose as Hemmingway on acid.

Not that Feldman wrote the book on acid, but it reads like a Woodstock generation acid flashback. Feldman’s been a cartoonist since the 60s, appearing in the early underground press including Detroit’s legendary Fifth Estate. His ten illustrations give the book that 70s Hunter S. Thompson/Ralph Steadman feel.

Having worked 20 years in Hollywood crafting one-liners and game shows for TV producers, Feldman doesn’t waste prose. When he’s funny, it’s often poignantly so. The lines are honed into gritty, tragic humor reflective of the fate of my hometown, the Motor City.

Cut funding for new nuclear weapons

The Senate is expected to vote on its version of the energy and water appropriations bill (S.1424) in September, after the August recess. This bill includes funding for the Department of Energy's (DOE) nuclear weapons programs. The Administration is seeking $15 million to fund continued research on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or nuclear "bunker buster," and $6 million for research on other advanced nuclear weapons concepts.

On Friday, July 18, the House passed its version of the energy and water appropriations bill. In a courageous move, the House cut most of the money requested ($10 million of the $15 million request) for a new "bunker buster" nuclear weapon and all of the $6 million allocated for Advanced Concepts for nuclear weapons. This was a great victory for arms control. However, for this victory to be solidified, the Senate must act with the same conscience

ACTION: Please contact your Senators. Urge them to vote for amendments to block funding for new nuclear weapons.

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Workers at Women's Institute organize, seek solidarity

The Instituto de las Mujers, D.F. or Women's Institute was formed in 1998 as a result of pressure by the women's movement and the international commitments of the Mexican government to improve conditions for women, to eradicate violence, and to promote public policies to provide for equal opportunity, the full exercise of rights, conditions which make the absence of discrimination possible, and equitable participation by women in the social, economic, political, cultural and family arenas.  It is the only organization of its type in Latin America, providing direct services to women including legal and psychological assistance in cases of divorce or domestic violence and group services and trainings to assist women in learning about and exercising their rights.

In July, 2002, the 200 predominantly women workers at the Women's Institute initiated an organizing campaign through the services union which is affiliated with the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT).

They encountered a serious legal barrier when the Mexico City labor board held that it did not have jurisdiction over their case.  However, the union appealed, and in May

July-August 2003

While the war still rages, even though the White House would like us to believe that it's over, the Free Press's new print issue spans articles by Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, Norman Solomon and a variety of other local and national authors.

Check out the selected articles below:

YES! YES! YES! THE CIRQUE IS IN TOWN!!!

DRALION: Cirque du Soleil
At the Arena District

Used to be, going to "the circus" meant the smell of sawdust, roasted peanuts and elephant droppings everywhere. There were funky ringmasters, fat ladies, trapeze artists and burbling snotty children running wild.

Such shows do still exist. They may, indeed, be with us forever, their hokey charm and cheap admission price hopefully proving sufficient to sustain them in a jaded, high-tech age.

But as everyone knows, there's a new circus in town---the Cirque du Soleil, a $500 million multinational mega-monster on the brink of establishing its own Las Vegas venue (as opposed to CircusCircus, which is SO 20th Century). Right now the Cirque plays Treasure Island, which also features an hourly pirate show on the strip.

But one of its many travelling affiliates has set up shop in the Arena District, right where the old Ohio Pen used to sit. It's playing to justly packed houses, to the extent that---despite its pricey admission tab--- its stay here is being extended.

A tent it has, one that indeed seats 2500 people. Sawdust? Elephants?

Photos from Hookaville

Marcus Celio provides three images from Hookaville.

The Wexner War

We can only imagine Limited founder and apparel mag- nate Leslie Wexner’s consternation over the leaking of a document entitled, Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003. The report was prepared for the Wexner Foundation and provides insight into Wexner’s relationship with the state of Israel. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted, Wexner keeps his personal life “under padlock.” But what has surfaced over the years simply adds to his mystery. In the Shapiro murder file, personally ordered destroyed by Columbus Chief of Police James Jackson, Wexner is listed as an alleged organized crime associate. A December 1995 Architectural Digest article and a follow-up 1996 New York Times report detailed the inner sanctum of Wexner’s former Manhattan townhouse, one of the largest in the city.

Tilting Democrats in the presidential race

The corporate Democrats who greased Bill Clinton’s path to the White House are now a bit worried. Their influence on the party’s presidential nomination process has slipped. But the Democratic Leadership Council can count on plenty of assistance from mainstream news media.

     For several years leading up to 1992, the DLC curried favor with high-profile political journalists as they repeated the mantra that the Democratic Party needed to be centrist. Co-founded by Clinton in the mid-1980s, the DLC emphasized catering to “middle class” Americans — while the organization filled its coffers with funding from such non-middle-class bastions as the top echelons of corporate outfits like Arco, Prudential-Bache, Dow Chemical, Georgia Pacific and Martin Marietta.

     In a 1992 book, Who Will Tell the People, political analyst William Greider noted that the Democratic Leadership Council’s main objective was “an attack on the Democratic Party’s core constituencies — labor, schoolteachers, women’s rights groups, peace and disarmament activists, the racial minorities and supporters of affirmative action.” During the eight years that followed, President

Iraq: The peace from hell

I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell, but I’d rather not see my prediction come true and I don’t think we have much time left to avert it. That the occupation is not going well is apparent to everyone but Donald Rumsfeld. If this thing turns into Vietnam simply because that man is too vain and arrogant to admit that Gen. Eric Shinseki was right when he said we would need “several hundred thousand soldiers” over there, I hope Rumsfeld rots in a hell worse than the one he’s making.

Now is not the time to stand back timidly hoping it will work out well in the end. The population of Baghdad is broiling through the 115-degree summer without electricity or water for much of the time. Given the background poverty and generally hideous conditions, the place is a major riot waiting to happen.

Call it what it is: Nazi-style propaganda

While the mainstream media debates whether the President was misinforming, exaggerating or misleading the U.S. public, they miss the bigger story – their obvious complicity with the Bush administration’s Nazi-style propaganda prior to the war.

George W. Bush and his administration deliberately undertook a massive campaign to wage illegal and aggressive war against the people of Iraq. The narrow focus on one fraudulent claim in the State of the Union address regarding Iraq buying uranium from Africa ignores the much broader campaign of falsification used to whip the people into a war frenzy.

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