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City Green

When I joined the Greens it was 1991(or some time around this date) because of the value system the Greens were working on at the time. The Ten Key Values is what made me believe that this movement can succeed where others have failed. Why did I feel this way? Ten years of Voodoo and Deep do-do(Reagan and Bush) had bushed me to the brink of just tunning out everything having to do with baby boomers and their fucked up way of avioding socail responsibility for screwed up policies. The generation that had seen the coming of age of several movements pretended for all of the eighties and part of the nineties that the issues of racism, gender, and class were the burden of some "others", but certainly not theirs. There is alot more I could go on about but the point is that in the mist of all this madness the greens looked a whole lot better than what was currently available.

Media Year 2002, R.I.P.

It's impossible to adequately sum up any year, and 2002 is probably more difficult than most to grasp. Bursts of militaristic fervor bracketed the 12 months, which began in the terrible aftermath of 9/11 with the United States waging a fierce war in Afghanistan. Now, an even larger war against Iraq seems about to begin.

We can try to remember the nonstop avalanche of media that came between New Year's Day and late December, but most of it is forgettable -- if we're lucky. This is a more or less constant problem in our lives as we avail ourselves of daily mass communications. Whether the medium is television, radio, print or the Internet, the vast majority of what passes before our eyes and gets into our ears is not worth remembering.

The end of a year lends itself to introspection and reminders of mortality. We don't have time to waste, and we may fear that we're wasting it anyway! An old TV Guide or a pile of yellowing newspapers is testimony to the brief shelf-life of media sizzle.

There's no doubt that the new media technologies have opened up

What the hell will they do to us next?

AUSTIN, Texas -- I got out the quote-box for today's column, on the theory that we could all use a little more insight and humor at this season than one measly journalist can provide. I suppose you could call this a cheap column, but I prefer to think of it as sharing some of the gifts of 40 years of reading with you. Happy holidays to all.

Margaret Thatcher cited this tablet from ancient Egypt as a model of bureaucratic brevity: "Apollonius to Zeno, Greeting. You did right to send the chickpeas to Memphis. Farewell."

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people." -- Abraham Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature, January 1837.

Rep. Emmanuel Cellar would intone: "Consistency is like a stagnant pool. It breeds vipers in the mind."

"Any idiot can face a crisis: It is this day to day living that wears you out." -- Chekhov.

"Neither charm nor patience nor endurance has ever wrested power from those who hold it." -- Frederick Douglass.

Do You Have a Story to Tell about Lack of Health Coverage?

Universal Health Care Action Network of Ohio (UHCAN OHIO) needs your help. During March 10-16, 2003 UHCAN OHIO will be supporting Covering the Uninsured Week. This is a major national project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and sponsored by a coalition of diverse national partners (see the list below) . Lack of health insurance is a dilemma facing 41 million Americans. Over 100,000 of them live right here in Franklin County. UHCAN Ohio is committed to making Covering the Uninsured Week a major opportunity to educate the public about the crisis of health care coverage, but UHCAN Ohio needs your help.

During Covering the Uninsured Week, community events will be held to focus attention on the problems faced by uninsured Americans. Also, newspapers and radio and TV reporters will be interested in talking to people without health insurance. These events will only be as strong as the people who contribute their stories of lack of coverage to the events. IF YOU LACK HEALTH COVERAGE OR KNOW SOMEONE WHO DOES and are willing to tell your story please contact Kathleen Gmeiner. You can reach her at (614) 443-2845 or

After Gore

What an irony! In the opinion of many, it was a Third Party candidate, Ralph Nader of the Greens, who doomed the Democratic candidate in 2000 and ensured victory for George Bush. Just over two years later, that same candidate, Al Gore, all but guaranteed there will be a third party challenger in 2004, maybe even Ralph Nader.

On Sunday, Dec. 15 of this waning year, Al Gore announced that he was no longer a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2004. He'd come to that conclusion, he said, in the green room at NBC's studios in New York, waiting to go on "Saturday Night Live." Liberated from the burden of candidacy, Gore duly put on one of the better performances of his career in public life.

So why did he stand down, and what does his exit portend in the political battles ahead?

When Gore took his stance against the attack on Iraq he was parting ways with a group that has underwritten his political career these past 30 years, a group among whose prime features has been unswerving advocacy of the most hawkish Israeli positions, as expressed by Gore's tutor, Martin Peretz, Harvard fixture and sometime editor-in-chief of the New Republic.

Feed the hungry

AUSTIN, Texas -- Cheap irony and Christmas don't go well together. Christmas and war is another bad combination. But there it is. The only president we've got went down to the Capitol Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C., the other day for a photo op with people who can't afford to eat.

"I hope people around this country realize that agencies such as this food bank need money. They need our contributions. Contribution are down. They shouldn't be down in a time of need," said GeeDubya Bush.

Right away, we notice real progress. When Bush was running for the presidency in 2000, the feds released their annual report on hunger in America, and Texas was once again in its perennial spot at the top of the list, No. 1 in Hunger.

Sean Penn in Baghdad -- Image gives way to substance

When they realized that Sean Penn had arrived in Baghdad unannounced, the Western journalists in the city were taken aback. But they ultimately seemed more surprised by the great distance between media images and the man they actually met.

Quite a few other famous actors in the United States have expressed strong opposition to the impending war against Iraq. But so far, only one has traveled there so that actions and words could speak loudly together.

What Sean Penn said is still resonating.

After accompanying Penn to Baghdad and joining him on a wide range of visits -- including with UNICEF workers, Iraqi officials, patients in hospitals and young children in schools -- I sat with Penn as he wrote on a pad at a restaurant inside the Al-Rashid Hotel. Hours later, he was reading his words aloud at a news conference overflowing with reporters, photographers and TV crews from all over the world.

"I am a citizen of the United States of America," he began. "I believe in the Constitution of the United States, and the American people. Ours is

Book Recommendations

AUSTIN, Texas -- All right, fellow procrastinators. Of course, we have days to go before Christmas -- no point in precipitously plunging into purchasing yet. On the other hand, it is not too soon to begin thinking about just how long we can put it off. And following our customary habit of last-minute, one-stop shopping for all, check on the location of your nearest independent bookstore. Failing that, fall back on a chain. The bookstore is where you can't go wrong on everyone from Great Aunt Pearl to the new in-law who plays golf.

Among the year's special picks:

-- "War Is a Force That Gives Life Meaning," by Chris Hedges. A war correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, Hedges understands on a visceral level what war looks like and does to people. But this book is more important for his extraordinary intellectual struggle to understand the phenomenon. He may not have all the answers, but he sure has some. Heartbreakingly intelligent.

But Strom Did in '48

It's one of the staple and indeed few remaining pleasures of American political life. A Republican taken with drink, speaking unguardedly near a live microphone, or in Trent Lott's case, coasting through a ritual farewell speech on automatic pilot, dropping a racist gibe or fond salute to America's dark past. The rituals of outrage, apology, self-abasement, renewed outrage, deeper self-abasement, forgiveness or rejection duly follow.

Sometimes, the sinner is ceremoniously booted into oblivion, as happened with Richard Nixon's secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, or Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt. Sometimes, as is now happening in Lott's case, the Democrats give him a thumping while hoping that in the end Lott will hold on to his post as Senate Majority whip, the better to remind black voters that this is the true face of the Republican Party, featuring the Klansman's robe, the burning cross and the lynching tree.

Thoughts on the question of war with Iraq

Some resent the term "class warfare," but what a great description for our headlong rush to war with Iraq: Class Warfare. Ask yourself, "Who will benefit and who will pay?"

While there is no evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaida, there ARE many indications that war with Iraq will energize Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Why would anyone want that?

Plans were prepared for a war with Iraq BEFORE the attack of September 11. How could those plans result from an act of terrorism which had not yet occurred and which, by its own statement, the administration could not have anticipated?

If America's goal is to protect Iraq's neighbors, why are all its neighbors except Israel against the war? If our goal is to protect the larger world from a mad man, why has the rest of the world been so loath to support us?

Should young American men and women - most of whom are NOT from the privileged class - suffer or die in a war which will not reduce domestic terrorism, which will alienate the Arab world, which is at best only nominally supported by our allies, which will kill and

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