You might not see things yet on the surface, but underground, it’s already on fire. - Indonesian writer Y.B. Mangunwijaya

The surface reports of the recent Quebec City trade talks belie their real import. The mainstream media reported on the heads of state, the official pronouncements, free trade as if it were. The U.S. president declared the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is about “liberty and democracy.” We saw images of the police fighting protesters, the tear gas, and the fence “protecting” those gathered to negotiate an agreement.

Nowhere in the mainstream media did we read substantive stuff of the drama. No one mentioned the power being wrested from sovereign states, giving corporations the right to sue governments when health or safety or environmental policies limit their capacity to make profits. Nowhere was there debate about the proposed expansion of corporate power to challenge governments’ “monopoly” on public services. Nowhere was there a call to accountability for the fact that under NAFTA the U.S. has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, while Mexican workers’ wages have fallen even lower than pre-NAFTA earnings.

Dear Editor:

In the Winter 2001 issue of the Free Press, P. Thomas Harker wrote on “The Scoop on Proficiency Tests.” In short, he disapproved of the present statewide testing system. One of several reasons Harker gave, “Schools cannot mass produce uniform children . . .”

This taxpayer is a proficiency test supporter, of a sort. Accordingly, I’ll offer a different viewpoint.

Most people will agree that, strategically speaking, having a successful public school system is very simple. First, citizens collectively define what the students should learn. And, then teachers teach this curriculum to their students. The purpose of testing is to see if, in fact, the kids have learned the stuff they are supposed to. If not, the students restudy what they missed on the test. Then they get retested. Etc., etc.

Silent Night

Nuclear Annihilation

Atomic Radiation

Eroding Nation

Sighing in relief

As it welcomes Armageddon

Holy Night

No-Fly Zone

Somalian Bones

Palestinians Stoned

Indians Alone

And hear the cries of the Natives

As they perish in the hive of the WASP

All is Calm

L.A. Riot

Jury Quiet

Media Diet

Suicidal Pilot

That ignites the blazing inferno

destroying everything in its path

All is Bright

Unfathomed Illiteracy

Racial Bigamy

Sexual Indiscriminancy

Government Secrecy

Obscuring the views of its toy soldiers

As they ride off into the darkness of the dawn

Round yon Virgin Mother and Child

Duke of Sales

Mendacious Tales

Polluted Wells

Permeating Smells

Choke the smiles of innocent consumers

Who unsuspectedly greet the silent killers

Holy Infant so Tender and Mild

Menacing AIDS

Asexual Plays

Incestual Gaze

Abortive Phase

Choosing the rights of another

Sometimes when I watch television or browse the shelves at the supermarket, I start to feel like the old man played by Edward G. Robinson in the movie “Soylent Green.” Although the movie takes place in some near distant future when the global environment has been pillaged and abused to the point where even the ocean is barren and the masses of people are left eating green wafers made out of recycled people, the old man, I figured, was born around 1950, which is also my birth year. I shutter to think that this could be the future-my future-our future?

Hiding behind the rhetoric of free enterprise, major campaign donors to George W. Bush have reaped billions of dollars from the president’s refusal to cap wholesale electricity prices during California’s deregulation crisis. They stand to make billions more at the expense of consumers and the environment if the crisis is used as a pretext to pass upcoming federal legislation promoting fossil and nuclear fuels.

Indeed, based on fears generated by the power crisis in California, energy bills now barreling toward Congress would drill the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, lift environmental regulations on burning fossil fuels, promote new nuclear power plants and hand still more consumer and taxpayer billions to the producers of electricity.

But there’s something dreadfully wrong with this picture.

Namely: the electricity crisis in California has been a contrived, corporate-driven epic that has socked ratepayers and taxpayers with a staggering double-whammy, destabilizing a huge energy delivery system that had functioned reliably for nearly a century.