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A tribute to one man’s best friend

My dog Champ, a best friend for about 12½ years, died unexpectedly on Sunday (probably just into the ‘wee hours’ of Mon, 3/5), The ‘Little Booger,’ Champ, had kinda dug his stubborn little doggy toes into the Martha Walker Garden Club, the DooDah Parade, The Community Festival, AntiFest, HOT TIMES, and loads of other Community escapades. They will forever be linked to my memories of him.

I was lucky that he was around during the onset of my major depressive swings, mainly in the early Summer of ’97, when I was clueless as to what had hit me. Champ was that little pal, so totally faithful, with that unquestioning love & affection that most dogs, cats & horses have toward their humans (well, assuming that the animal was raised by a humane person). He was always there, sleeping right at my feet, depending on MY love & affection, and always needing to be fed. He was a sentient being. He was there to hang onto when so much else was unclear.

I often wonder how well I’d have hung on without him.

Green Lifestyle 2001

What is the Central Ohio Green Education Fund (COGEF)?

The Central Ohio Greens formed a 501(c)3 charitable organization in 1991. We were a founding member of Greater Columbus Community Shares in 1993 and remain active members. COGEF sponsored several Earth Day celebrations and hope to do more in the future. Our information table is at every the Community Festival in June. We have held Chemical-Free New Year’s Eve parties and facilitated many a meeting between different groups who needed experienced peacemakers.

Stop the FTAA

Trade ministers from 34 Western Hemisphere countries will meet in Quebec City April 18-22 for essential negotiations on a new international trade agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA. This particular meeting marks the first formal gathering of the ministers, who have been meeting since 1998 with executive branch trade representatives and corporation representatives in nine working groups. Originally the target date for ratification was 2005, but according to a story aired on Marketplace, a public radio program, on 3/30/01, the intent of negotiators now is to have the basic outline of the agreement in place by the Quebec summit and to implement the agreement by 2003. Congress will have authority to ratify or deny ratification, and that will be citizens’ “formal” chance to impact the outcome.

WHAT ARE THE KEY ISSUES REGARDING THIS NEGOTIATION?

  • The agenda, pure and simple, is driven by large corporate interests to privatize, deregulate and ensure “free trade.” In the words of Lori Wallach of Public Citizen, “Trade uber alles.”

Tragedy in Santee -- killing public schools with poor policies

Another shooting in blue-collar Santee, California, and another in a parochial school in the Williamsport, Pennsylvania, bring school violence back into the news. Though media coverage exaggerates school violence, both safety and education demand “preventive” measures that will not increase violence. There is no educational problem that policy cannot worsen.

Every preventive or punitive action is an instructional method that teaches someone something. Because we do not think of safety measures as lesson plans, we seldom evaluate whether the intended consequence is achieved, and we are unaware of unintended results. After Columbine, the most common actions were patently ill-conceived and the unintended learning was more than schools can take in the present political climate.

Natural Raised Killers

A while back some angry kids went on a killing spree at their school, and the nation went on an hysterical binge. How could children - “good,” wealthy, white children for-God’s-sake - go on a violent rampage? It was un-American, unthinkable!! Everyone wanted an explanation of the inexplicable. About the best they could do was to lean on the “Goths” and other “misfits” who “obviously” suffered prominence-envy in comparison with their social betters. Here and there around the country diligent up-scale school officials imposed “zero tolerance” and took advantage of the immediately available psychological profiling programs so as to identify and label the potential “killers” and, thereby, provide a sense of security, responsibility, and hope.

The Gulf War never ended

U.S. policy in Iraq, as reported in the mainstream news, amounts to “we liberated Kuwait” and Saddam “kills his own people.” Saddam Hussein has been so vilified that when we think of Iraq, we fail to think about the millions of Iraqis who unfortunately have no more control over the actions of their dictatorship government than we have over our “democracy.” The mainstream media plays almost exclusively to our fears of “weapons of mass destruction.” With rare exception, the suffering of the Iraqi people is largely an untold story in the U.S. The Gulf War and the sanctions imposed on Iraq for the last 10 years have caused the deaths of over 1.5 million people in a once thriving country of about 22.5 million people. Many people, including the former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq , Denis Halliday, call this genocide. The sanctions themselves have become the new weapon of mass destruction.

The blood still flows

The School of the Americas is now a sad and dismal part of American history. The institution was formally closed on November 15, 2000. Col. Mark Morgan told Congressional aides at a Defense Department briefing this was necessary because, “Some of your bosses have told us that they can’t support anything with the name ‘School of Americas’ on it.” But wait. A clone appears on the horizon. Yes, the School of the Assassins reopened as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) on January 15, 2001.

What that name change means:

The atrocities continue as names of School of the Americas (SOA) graduates continue to turn up wherever there are human rights violations in Latin America. The year 2000 saw former Guatemalan dictators Efrain Rios Montt and Fernando Lucas Garcia brought into court on genocide charges. During their regime thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands forced into refuge or exile. Both men, and a number of their high-ranking cabinet officials, were SOA-trained.

On pies and Rhodes

I still remember the shock of May 4, 1970 after hearing the news of the shootings at Kent State – the unnerving feeling that they were coming for me and my friends next -- as a Detroit 9th grade hippie greaser/MC5 listener/White Panther Party supporter. My rage grew in high school fueled in part by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Bad news bears change tone of media script

When the Ameritrade company launched a $200 million marketing drive to explain the joys of online trading in autumn 1999, a barrage of TV commercials invited viewers to join in the fun. The news was bullish, and the firm's motto -- "Believe in yourself" -- provided an upbeat message. Tech stocks led advances in self-affirmation.

A senior vice president at Ameritrade proclaimed that online investing "empowers individuals to take control of their financial lives." Within several months, the Nasdaq composite index nearly doubled. When spring 2000 began, plenty of satisfied new customers were glad to be playing the click-and-invest game.

Now, four seasons later, the Nasdaq is less than half of where it was. Losses have been particularly devastating for many of the investors who'd found the get-with-it advertisements and other media hype too irresistible to resist a year ago.

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