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SUSSEX, ENGLAND, UK - The old tale of Pericles, Prince of Tyre (adapted by Shakespeare and another) opens with the wily King of Antioch setting the fresh young Prince a riddle; if Pericles solves it he will win a bride, if not he will have his head chopped off. This story is refreshed in me every time an Arab diplomat says that the United States will not be loved until it has solved the Israel/Palestine problem. Mr. Bush, who is popularly supposed to be extremely ignorant in general and of all things Middle Eastern and Islamic in particular, is thus being deliberately posed a riddle which it is assumed he cannot solve. You would have to call this cynical if it were not silly. The only riddle solving equipment which Mr. Bush is supposed to possess is his armed forces and his aid budget but he is routinely chided for using these as foreign policy levers. At the very least, then, we are faced here with some special pleading.

Mr. Bush - let us put this bluntly now to save misunderstanding later - is being asked by a gaggle of corrupt, dictatorial fissiparous quasi-nations to use the threat of reduced aid to weaken the democratic state of Israel in the name of the United Nations which, a sad harbinger, created it but did not have the power to guarantee its security within secure borders. ... MORE





by ROD AMIS

NEW ORLEANS - 14 May, 2003: In the harshness of the urban environment, parks are one of our last refuges. I first learned this during the time I was homeless in the early '90s in San Francisco. Parks are about the only place in the city you can go and not expect to be hassled because you aren't doing anything. In a park, it's called "communing with nature," where everywhere else it's considered "loitering," a criminal offence because you might happen to impede the wheels of commerce.

I think of this sitting in the relative calm of Louis Armstrong Park on one of the benches that face Satchmo's statue. The statue is placed in a circle before the Armstrong Fountain Aqueduct in Congo Square. The aqueduct knifes through this side of the park imitating the way the Mississippi River knifes around the Crescent City.

I am writing longhand with actual pen and paper, something I have not done since being in London nearly two years ago. I was either sitting in a park there or a pub the last time I did so; I barely remember the last instance I was forced to decipher these chicken scratching which pass for my own hand. ... MORE

by MPUTHUMI NTABENI

QUEENSTOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - "Now's the time to make real the promises of democracy..." - Martin Luther King Jnr

The comfort of death is that it offers the survivors a chance to evaluate not only the deceased life but their own lives also. If to live is to find oneself forced to interpret life, to die is to cauterise oneself from that life and others. This leaves others with a wound that demands evaluation. It shakes their own value of selves to the core. With that it's appropriate to evaluate our lives through that of Walter Sisulu who died on the 5 May 2003.

There are men in whom the concatenation of subliminary events coincides with the testing of the steadfastness of their beliefs. Man whose beliefs are also their incorrigible way of life who can stand any form of test against their principles. It feels justified when they're called the founders or protectors of national liberty in their countries. They remain triumphant even after they're silenced by their enemies. Such men, for a black American are of the calibre of Dr Martin Luther King. For us in South Africa the late Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, and very vital Nelson Mandela fill the role. ... MORE

NEW ORLEANS - This is the story of my time in prison. Certain names have been omitted or disguised in order to protect the identities of people in harm's way.

29 May, 2003: An inmate at the Orleans Parish Prison (O.P.P) provided me with the opening line for this story: "American Justice? Look around you: it's just us." He was correct. In the tier I was sharing with him and thirty eight other men in the Templeman One facility of O.P.P. there were only two men who were not Black. The same had been true of the Receiving facility I had ended after being arrested on Sunday evening, 18 May, 2003, the majority of the inmates - at a ratio akin to 14:1 were all Black males. That is the color of what passes for justice in New Orleans. If you're Black, that's "probable cause" enough for any policeman to hassle you.

What was I in for? As far as I was concerned, as far as my roommate who was also arrested that night was concerned, as far as my attorney is concerned, my crime was Walking While Black. The arresting officers charged me with "Possession With Intent to Distribute Cocaine" despite the fact that I actually possessed no cocaine. In fact, all I did possess at the time of my arrest was thirteen dollars and a pack of American Spirit cigarettes.

But the New Orleans Police Department doesn't have to let little details like facts get in the way of arresting you if you are a Black man..... MORE





by KIMBERLY BLAKER

NEW BOSTON, MI, USA - As June approaches, the gay and lesbian community and their Christian right adversaries will be prepping for victory or defeat, accordingly, for a possible Supreme Court decision that'll finally determine the fate of antisodomy laws in America. Such archaic statutes still exist in 14 states (though not necessarily because they were simply never erased) carrying penalties ranging from 6 months in jail and a $500 fine to the outrageous - life imprisonment.

The case that finally made it to the high court, after a 1986 Supreme Court ruling upholding antisodomy laws, is Lawrence v. Texas; it was heard in late March.

In response, Senator Rick Santorum, a Catholic extremist, told the Associated Press, "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.".... MORE


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