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Reflecting on September 11th

I find minority is a state of mind

when the TV feeds your child always on hate and lies
with a veiw that might only actually epitimize
your own life and times and what for
to buy just one more line 'round before you die

Like a drone with a bad stagger you swagger
right to your knees into a stagnant pool
you soil the tip of your own dirty white silk tie

you long to lie so you can with a frown
wrythe and drown and purge your mind
and burst your lungs you reemerge
with a life full of rehydrated thoughts and style

You regurgitate this sticky love hate
as you force your mind from state to state
then you wait for the tide to rise so
you can help yourself float off on your very own
live reality slot of weekly televised time

and only just then can you grow
your own wings that carry you to fly
cross an entire ocean oasis
to a sandy palm covered isle

to live above these swine
in this overcrowded underpaid
shallow shadowed fucking sty
you live to linger a while
to stay way up on high a mile

American Indian Student Concerns at Ohio State

I am writing this on the behalf of my fellow American Indian students and myself who are tired of being ignored, silenced, and dismissed with words of support that those in the position to help us feel we want to hear but do not follow through with positive actions. This year has been one of the toughest to be an American Indian student at The Ohio State University. Originally I was looking forward to this academic year. We had made a lot of progress in the previous year in having our first American Indian Month of events and all of our hard work to bring the Memorial Day Powwow to campus was met with success. Yet this academic year has been nothing but a slap in the face.

Stop Bush’s Aggression Against Cuba

To READ THE STATEMENT condemning Bush's new aggression against Cuba, go to www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/cuba/index.html

To see the INITIAL LIST OF SIGNERS, go to www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/cuba/signers.html

To SIGN the statement, go to www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/cuba/sign.html

Urgent KFC Campaign Update

Greetings, Activists!

Please read this ENTIRE e-mail message, as it contains important, detailed information regarding our KFC Campaign, which is NOT being called off. In fact, it’s going full speed ahead. Please continue to organize as many demonstrations as you possibly can, write letters, and so on. The pressure must continue!

As you may have heard, KFC’s president, Cheryl Bachelder, recently flew to PETA’s hometown of Norfolk, Va., for a meeting with PETA president Ingrid Newkirk and Bruce Friedrich to discuss our demands of KFC. As a result of the meeting, KFC has pledged to make several important improvements in the way chickens are treated. Here’s what KFC has pledged to do:

·       put cameras in all U.S. slaughterhouses to help discourage the sadistic abuse of chickens and to help catch and punish any employees abusing birds

·       implement humane mechanized chicken-gathering at one-fourth of all U.S. slaughterhouses by the end of next year

·       increase the amount of living space for each bird by about 30 percent

Cheney’s Old Company Continues To Break Law’s While Profiting From Terror

Halliburton Corp., the second largest oil services company in world, is the poster child for corporate greed and terror. And it seems that nothing will stop Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company from repeatedly breaking the law to save and earn mountains of cash.   

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week, Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton unit that won a controversial no-bid contract to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires, disclosed that it paid $2.4 million in bribes to a Nigerian tax official to obtain favorable tax treatment in the country where it’s building a natural gas plant and an offshore oil and gas facility.   

The bribes were paid between 2001 and 2002 to “an entity owned by a Nigerian national who held himself out as a tax consultant, when in fact he was an employee of a local tax authority,” the company said in the SEC filing, which was discovered during an internal audit.   

Introspective media not in the cards

A new poll tells us that -- by a two-to-one margin -- Americans "use clearly positive words in their descriptions of the president." The Pew Research Center, releasing a nationwide survey on May 7, declared "there is little doubt ... that the war in Iraq has improved the president's image" in the United States.

Such assessments stand in sharp contrast to views of George W. Bush overseas. In mid-March, the Pew center put out survey results showing that "U.S. favorability ratings have plummeted in the past six months" -- not only in "countries actively opposing war" but also in "countries that are part of the 'coalition of the willing.'"

So, why do most Americans seem at least somewhat positive about Bush, while the figures indicating a "favorable view of the U.S." are low in one country after another -- only 48 percent in Britain, 31 percent in France, 28 percent in Russia, 25 percent in Germany, 14 percent in Spain and 12 percent in Turkey? In large measure, the answer can be summed up with one word: media.

Overall, the American news media do a great job of telling us how

Bush is a liar

AUSTIN, Texas -- "We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and be proud, and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies, and say, 'Damn, we're Americans!'" -- Jay Garner, retired general and the man in charge of the American occupation of Iraq.

Thus it is with a sense of profound relief that one hears the news that Garner is about to be replaced by a civilian with nation-building experience. I realize we have all been too busy with the Laci Peterson affair to notice that we're still sitting on a powder keg in Iraq, but there it is. In case you missed it, a million Iraqi Shiites made pilgrimage to Karbala, screaming, "No to America!"

Funny how media attention slips just at the diciest moments. I doubt the United States was in this much danger at any point during the actual war. Whether this endeavor in Iraq will turn out to be worth the doing is now at a critical point, and the media have decided it's no longer a story. Boy, are we not being served well by American journalism.

Anent the current difficulties, Newsweek's May 12 report on

Those damned six-breast martinis

Not so long ago, I commented on a column by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair, in which this well-known toper addressed himself to the theme of "How To Make Drink One's Slave and Not One's Master." Having already had rich sport with Hitchens's bizarre excursus on this theme I'll confine myself here to a sentence in that same column that was widely quoted as an example of Hitchens' trenchant wit.

It dealt with the matter of how many dry martinis should a prudent drinker confront at cocktail time.

Here is what Hitchens wrote: "On the whole, observe the same rule about gin martinis -- and all gin drinks -- that you would in judging female breasts: one is far too few and three is one too many ... When you get the shudders, even slightly, it's definitely time to seek help."

Discussing this passage back in February of this year, just after his Vanity Fair column was published, I decided to pass lightly over the issue of the shakes. The portly scribbler I had observed a little more than a year earlier on a Nation cruise experienced some difficulty bringing

Plastic flamingos

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- In Pensacola, Fla., a crowd of pink, plastic flamingos on the lawn means someone is having a birthday. The flamingos are usually for a major, zero-ending birthday, so on the day you turn, say, 50, you walk out of the house, and there are 50 pink flamingos to greet you. I report this to prove that travel is culturally broadening.

Also on the Redneck Riviera, an annual sporting event I trust will soon attract national television coverage: the Mullet Toss. Kenny Stabler, formerly with the Oakland Raiders, throws out the first mullet in the yearly fish fling, and then, less famous mullet chuckers compete.

Near as I can tell from a quick visit, the major problem along the Florida Panhandle is rapid development. Same old same old, except that both the old-timers and the newcomers have a strong interest in preserving the natural beauty of the place. By now, everyone knows what happens if you don't control growth. The phenomenon known as "strip commercial" appears -- endless stretches of tacky, plastic, franchise food joints.

Maybe this conflict should be covered by sports reporters: the

'glad to see the site!

I am so glad that I found freepress.org. You are a breath of fresh air - and thanks to Peter Werbe - as I heard about you today from his show.

Thanks again!

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