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Kerry should reconsider

To the Editor:
      I believe that John Kerry should reconsider his concession in light of  mounting allegations of fraud and abuse in the presidential election in the United States. In many states and especially in the swing states of Florida and Ohio, thousands of affedavits have been filed regarding voting irregularities and an outright effort by partisan election officials to surpress the vote. There is already a  recount underway in Ohio and if Kerry withdrew his concession, his action would add legitimacy and weight to the proceedings in such a way that the mainstream media would be forced to report on the story .  So far, inexplicably, they have basicaly refused to cover it.  If they did, and if the American people were informed about what could amount to massive election fraud in election 2004, we might see them spilling into the streets the way people  in the Ukraine have. They might decide not to tolerate the assult on their democracy that a rigged election represents.  

Katie Jacob
Birmingham, MI

The problem of American torture

AUSTIN -- It is both peculiar and chilling to find oneself discussing the problem of American torture. I have considered support of basic human rights and dignity so much a part of our national identity that this feels as strange as though I'd suddenly become Chinese or found Fidel Castro in the refrigerator.

One's first response to the report by the International Red Cross about torture at our prison at Guantanamo is denial. "I don't want to think about it; I don't want to hear about it; we're the good guys, they're the bad guys; shut up. And besides, they attacked us first."

But our country has opposed torture since its founding. One of our founding principles is that cruel and unusual punishment is both illegal and wrong. Every year, our State Department issues a report grading other countries on their support for or violations of human rights.

The Right Wing on College Campuses and the Battle of the Frame

Liberal Arts faculties at most universities are politically and philosophically one-sided, while partisan propagandizing often intrudes into classroom discourse. It is appropriate for faculty to want open-minded students in their classes, not disciples." This dire quote about academia is on the webs ite of a group called Students for Academic Freedom, a Washington D.C.-based group supported by rig conservative activist David Horowitz. What the quote doesn't say is that the group only approaches this issue from one side and that the group's mission is to win the war of words on this issue using a tactic called "framing."

In a 1993 scholarly article one of framing's chief theorists, Robert Entman, defined framing as, "to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described." Like a picture frame, framing shows some parts of the world outside the window, but not all. Framing is successful when it becomes part of the media discourse.

In Search of The Living Buddha

Shovels ground into the four-foot high mound of mud in the road. Several cars were piled either on top or in front of the lump, freshly formed by a sudden landslide following a rainstorm. This was only a minor obstacle in our two-day journey through Sichuan Province to Da Ze Temple ("Temple of the Great Rule"), a small monastery in a remote region bordering Tibet. Our group consisted of over 20 people, mostly educated young or middle-aged professionals from Shanghai and Sichuan, all devout followers of a Living Buddha, or Huo Fo, whom they called "master."

They represented a growing contingent of people in Chinese society who have both the resources and the will to pursue something beyond material existence. Overwhelmed or disappointed with the influx of material wealth, people who came of age in the Reform Era are moving away from the drive toward wealth and toward another type of success, in which the profit margin is serenity and the chief asset is contained not in a bank but in a spiritual vision.

Seeds of Power

Settled amid rows of urban housing and apartment buildings on a busy thoroughfare of Milwaukee's north side is the Growing Power Community Food Center. What at first glance appears to be a modest roadside produce market and aging greenhouse - the last of its kind, standing in an area that was once the thriving agricultural center of the city known as Greenhouse Alley - is a pioneer meeting place and educational facility, committed not only to growing food but also to growing communities.

Nine years ago, Will Allen, a local farmer and co-director of Growing Power, Inc., tapped into a movement that was emerging from beneath the shadows of waxy apple towers and pallid wilted greens of mega-markets across the nation. However, the vision of providing a community-based education center was never a part of his original plan. "I bought this place for my own selfish reasons, to sell my farm produce," he explains. His main desire was to expose his family to the pride and integrity he associated with farming, as he had experienced it first-hand as a child growing up in rural Maryland.

Legacies of Resistance: A History of Community Based Organizations in the U.S.

It happens somewhere in America almost every day. On Chicago's South Side, dozens of elderly folks gather outside the power company's gates before dawn to block utility trucks from going to shut off poor people's electricity and are arrested. In Los Angeles, African-American, Latino, and Korean bus riders, all wearing yellow t-shirts and chanting, march one week against poor public transportation, and the next against the war in Iraq.

Despite the supposed lack of class conflict in the United States, hardly a day passes without angry crowds of ordinary people confronting the elites whose decisions affect their lives. In organizing terminology, these groups are frequently called community-based organizations, or CBO's. From national networks like ACORN and the Industrial Areas Foundation to locally based groups like Direct Action for Rights and Equality in Providence or the Bus Riders' Union in Los Angeles, these groups share a particular set of organizing methods first developed in the 1930s.

Warren County, Ohio: most successful voter registration drive in American political history, or stuffing the ballot box

Warren County, a traditional Republican stronghold northeast of Cincinnati, came to national attention on election night. While the nation awaited returns from Ohio, the state that would decide the election, county officials locked down the administrative building and prohibited all independent observers from watching the vote count.

An analyst who has all the vote data for 2000 and 2004 by precinct in several Ohio counties did a detailed analysis by precinct of the huge increase in Bush votes and margin in Warren county. This county first did a lockdown to count the votes, then apparently did another lockdown to recount the votes later- resulting in an even bigger Bush margin and very unusual new patterns.

Several very unusual patterns were evident in the history and the vote totals by precinct. The analyst concludes:

Doing What Comes Naturally

Food and its distribution have been the spark for more riots, revolutions, and political movements than anything else you can name. Still, in a rich country such as ours, food can ebb and flow as a political issue. The mid-1970s, however, was a time when food was in the forefront of many people's political work. Rainbow Grocery Cooperative started as part of an ambitious food system in 1975 that sought to incorporate collective stores, producers, and distributors into one big counter-cultural network that would destroy corporate agribusiness by providing healthier, less processed, cheaper food alternatives.

While almost all of the food collectives that made up that network have collapsed over the last 30 years, Rainbow has survived, becoming the largest natural foods store in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has gone from an all-volunteer staff to a 200-person worker cooperative, still dealing with the ongoing issues of how to best support its community - and who their community actually is.

Economic Power

Hooray for Jesse Jackson!

I can't tell you how thrilled I am that someone with some stature has finally said it out loud in the press that the election irregularities in Ohio and Florida are unacceptable and need to be investigated.  That the mainstream media continues to pooh-pooh the idea is frustrating beyond belief.  I have never much followed Jesse Jackson, but he is my new hero!

  I have hope again!   I'm going to send a check to your CICJ Election Protection fund to help the cause.  We can't give up!  It's too blatantly obvious that they toyed with those machines to get the outcome to contradict the exit polls.  I won't believe George Bush is my president until it's proven to me with hard, cold, TRANSPARENT polling evidence.  We need to eliminate the paperless voting machines in all future elections.  Is anyone working on that?

Politicize the CIA? You've got to be kidding!

No alien penetration, or treachery of double agents, has ever done nearly as much damage to the CIA as the infighting consequent upon the arrival of each new director, charged by his White House master with cleaning house and settling accounts with the bad guys installed by the previous White House incumbent.

            Bush's new director, former Republican Florida Rep. Porter Goss, and his team of enforcers are on a rampage through the corridors of CIA headquarters at Langley. Goss was once an undercover CIA officer, so there's probably a personal edge to his mission of revenge, as he strikes back at the dolts who nixed his expense accounts or poured scorn on his heroic endeavors in the field.

            But Goss's most pressing task is to exact retribution for the stories emanating from the CIA in the months before the election suggesting that the agency's measured assessments of the supposed WMD presence in Iraq were perverted by the war faction headed by (Vice) President Cheney.

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