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NEW ORLEANS - 19 April, 2003: Gandhi said that poverty is the cruelest form of violence. Can I get an "Amen"?. I know that better than most, having endured poverty for more years of my half-century life than abundance. My friend, Raoul Tesla , out in California says that I don't make decisions, I make choices. He considers that a noble attribute, I say it makes me the King of Pain

As you read this, I am becoming a Spirit of the Air again. I have lost my Hobbit Hole of an apartment and am couch-surfing. Maybe I should join the "movement" of urban squatters. I told you I was so poor I couldn't pay attention. During this chronicle you will learn exactly what I meant. But I also need to talk to you, my love, about a world falling apart that is not part of my own personal tribulation. We will go to Zimbabwe and to Iraq, among other troubled places... MORE





by KEVIN CAREY

SUSSEX, UNITED KINGDOM - KEVIN CAREY says that many unpleasant consequences may flow from the war in Iraq but the Coalition did the right thing for the wrong reason; and the opposition to war and intemperate media coverage have weakened future opposition to wars.

Even if I have made this point before, notably just after 9/11, it needs to be made again in the light of the coverage of the war in Iraq. Free will makes causality in human affairs much more complex than in the chemistry laboratory. So, just as some perceived flaw in United States policy towards the Middle East did not "cause" 9/11, the American occupation of Baghdad did not "cause" the indiscriminate looting of Iraqi cities. It created conditions in which looting took place but it was not inevitable as is the reaction between sodium and water. Iraqis could have chosen not to loot at all; or they could have chosen to loot commercial and government premises but not hospitals; or they could have chosen to loot buildings but not dig up and carry off water supply pipes; they could have left the museum alone.

I make these simple points here because I have not seen them written nor heard them said anywhere else. There has also been precious little discussion of why this looting was so indiscriminate. Might it not be that people robbed of moral choice for so long has lost its moral bearings; that exploitation breeds exploitation; that violence breeds violence? Such notions are almost unquestioned in the analysis of individual and family behaviour, so how far do they hold for polities? And if freedom is greeted with such indiscriminate communal self abuse, what does that tell us about the extremity of the regime from which they were freed?.... MORE





by MPUTHUMI NTABENI

QUEENSTOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - With my childhood friends we've developed a ritual of meeting in our small township on Easter holidays. That is when we were urbanites living in big cities. As urbanites we developed tastes that could not be easily satisfied by our small town. This introduced the first strain in these gatherings. Sometimes the issue verged on the ridiculous, like when one of my friends became hysterical because he couldn't find a place that sold "decent calamari that didn't taste like rubber in the whole f*#k'n town." Talk about Jonnies-coming-late-to-Johannesburg (arriviste).

About a year ago we met as usual at the house we've been meeting in since our varsity years. The house belongs to some of our friends whose parents died around those years. Since then it has served more or less as our base, a jam huis in South African parlance. Things were simpler then. We were all still on the same side of genteel poverty as township life. But thanks to the former Bantustan (Transkie Homeland) our lots improved. [Don't tell I said that. It's not politically correct to say anything good ever came out of the Bantustans.].. .MORE

THE WORLD - From Wesley M. (No City or Country Provided):

SUBJECT: G21# 348: Active Vision

Bit of a long haul eh' love

thats alright we figure some shit out won't twe woman.. MORE

We welcome a new link partner for your visits... MORE

NEW! DHAMAKA NEWS: Our News Partner from New Delhi, India, offers weekly stories of import. THIS WEEK'S FEATURE: Is North Korea Reprocessing? by KIM KONG HU.

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(KEVIN CAREY on America's responsibility to control its Imperium in DAY ONE; the lastest on SARS in our new DHAMAKA NEWS feature; and much more!)

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