Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - 13 February, 2003: Millions of average people - working people, students, laborers, activists, politicians (for a change), industrialists, housewives, clerics, intellectuals, professionals, academicians, economists - are going to streets this weekend to send a message to George W. Bush and Osama bin Ladin.

The message? "George, Osama, we want no part in your Dance of Death.

"Neither your born-again Christian ideology that saved you from cocaine addiction or your fundamentalist ideology that saved you from being just another privileged Saudi potentate mean bat-guano to us. We don't want your Armageddon! Go away.

"In your symbiotic relationship of death and destruction, you are bringing our lives to the brink of madness. We don't need duct tape or jihad. We just need to muddle along and raise our families without you madmen attempting to shape history. Go away."

Please note that I did not mention Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the foregoing. Odious as he is, Saddam no longer has anything to do with the imminent war or the real battle here. He's just a patsy. He's an easy way for His Fraudulency to deflect attention from the fact that he didn't bring Osama back "dead or alive", as he swore.

Meanwhile, Osama is praying every day that Georgie Boy attacks another Islamic country.

It's win-win for these two fanatics and lose-lose for the world.

Germany, France (who is too easily ridiculed) and Belgium have shown the good sense to try to apply brakes to this disaster.

The so-called "alternative press" in the United States (Village Voice, Media Whores Online, et alia) are more concerned that Fox News channel's Bill O'Reilly used the term "wetback" last week than that we are looking at the possibility of a protracted, expensive and catastrophic war. Few, if any, are saying anything about the death and devastation that will result for the average Iraqi working stiff - if he/she is working, they're not part of the 50% unemployed in that country. If he/she is working, even as a surgeon, they are making $4 - $8 (USD) a week.

I've lived in countries that were bombarded by both the United States and Israel during the last thirty years of my life. It is not a pretty sight. I know what "carpet bombing" means and how non-surgical "surgical strikes" really are. Get a passport, my love, and see was the USA has wrought.

It's one thing to see network news pictures of crying people in refugee camps and quite another to see the victims of our bombings "up-close-and-personal" or to see ground and pavement stained with human blood.

I wish with all my heart that you could talk to the people I've talked to who have been at the other end of our smart-bomb, surgical, no-civilian target devastations. Then you'd know why more and more nations are turning against us. Then you'd stop the jingoistic "We're Number One" bullshit. We have been mass-murderers, pure and simple.

When I was in Yugoslavia, two years ago, I learned that - as a sign of protest - people would put targets (like on an archery field) on the chests of themselves and on their children. They did this because of the indiscriminate NATO bombing. If you were a Serb, you were automatically a target. In their crude irony, they decided that wearing targets on their chests would make it easier for the American pilots to know where they were.

But you wouldn't know, would you? You have never been on the other end of one of our "precision" bombings. It's never your child in hospital without an arm or a face.

You stay safely in the suburbs of this country and enjoy your barbecues, Costco and Super Wal-Mart, Home Depot, McDonald's, yoga classes, horticulture, Pier One, music by Yani, Limewire, Nieman Marcus, Macy's, the new Hummer, CompUSA, season tickets at the local stadium, your SUV, Playstation, sinsemilla, cocaine, Prozac, "Law & Order", Viagra, your chiropractor, the health club, your personal trainer, plastic surgery, US magazine, "reality TV", tax shelters, a good cellphone plan, "The Simpsons", "Insomniac", "The Antiques Road Show", a DVD player, volume discounts, toilet snakes, "The Daily Show", Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. (Yes, they are all of a piece to me, Baby!) You could give a damn about the other people on this planet.

Hail, Caesar!

END OF RANT.

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In two separate e-mails today, from people on opposite sides of the world, the word "Armageddon" was mentioned.

This gave me pause. I thought, Is that the Christian Right/Republican Party objective? You know I'm not a conspiracist, but I do remember things. Like Secretary of the Interior James Watt, during the Reagan administration, claiming that we didn't need to save anymore trees because "Jesus is coming any day now." (I thought it was a wacky statement at the time and still do. But it gave me an insight into how these right-wing Christian ideologues think.) So, along this thought-train, I asked myself if His Fraudulency, like any new convert, was going overboard in his religious fervor. Maybe he could be thinking that taking Iraq would provoke "the final confrontation" over Israel prophesized in the Book of Revelations of the Christian Bible and that would make Jesus come down and establish the New Jerusalem that Christians all long for.

Far out, I know. But this man's brain has been eaten away by his years of coke addiction. He's a puppet who might be convinced to believe anything. For all we know, he might actually think that Osama bin Ladin is the Anti-Christ, rather than just his evil twin.

Nyahh!

(And don't tell me you haven't had similar thoughts these last two weeks! The world is getting to be a scary and absurd place.

One question: Did you actually go out and buy duct tape?)

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14 February, 2003: I consider Senator Robert Byrd, with whose votes and views I've often disagreed, to be the Dean of the Senate. He has certainly been braver than most of his colleagues in speaking up about the pitiful silence of this Congress about the current situation. Follow this link to read what he had to say just this past week on the subject. I hope you'll agree with me that he's a reasonable and informed voice in the midst of fear-mongering and demagoguery.

I would give you a quote here, but I think it important you read his entire speech. He brings up more than one "talking point" that you should consider. Most importantly, he points up the fact that over 50% of the Iraqi population is under the age of fifteen years. We are making war on a nation of children. How brave! How noble! How "moral", Mr. Bush.

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SPEAKING OF THE ABSURD I have to get back to that duct tape thing for a moment. Any reasonably intelligent person has to realize that duct tape will protect you from a biological or chemical attack in much the way jumping under a table would save you from a nuclear blast: it won't. So then we have to ask ourselves: How much money did Mr. Bush tell us we needed to spend to create a whole new Big Government bureaucracy to make our homeland more secure? Where has most of the money gone - besides the special break to Eli Lilly? What tangible security has it provided us? What are the people of the Department of Homeland Security doing besides coming up with color codes for alerts?

I have to ask those questions, at least. Maybe you should, too, if you're not too busy duct taping your windows.

When London received a terror alert last week, the British people could see tangible results: a thousand more police on the streets, military units at Heathrow and other airports. Here in the United States, the government says: "Hey, it's on you, Baby! Go out and buy yourself some duct tape and cellophane and batteries. Good luck!" What isn't wrong about this picture?

As I write this, the BBC reports that approximately 150,000 to 200,000 people have taken to the streets of Melbourne, Australia, to begin this weekend of protests against the proposed war in Iraq. According to BBC, this is largest anti-war protest that city has seen since the Vietnam War era. What is most striking to This Editorialist about this weekend's protests is that this is largest mass movement I can recall against a proposed war, a war that hasn't already started. I doubt that it will have an iota of affect in Washington, but it may give other world leaders pause about the proposed adventure in Iraq.

LATER: BBC estimates, as this day closes for me, are that ten million people will take to the streets tomorrow. These will be people from five continents, including American scientists on Antarctica.

Months ago, in this space, I wrote that I felt the United States, under this administration, was on the wrong side of history. Apparently, thankfully, there are at least ten million people on this planet who feel moved enough to take to the streets in agreement. If you are a political dissident, you cannot see this as but one of the best weekends of your lifetime. I do.

Good night, my love. March tomorrow!

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17 February, 2003: SAN FRANCISCO, where this magazine was born, because San Francisco always wants to feel special did not join the rest of the world in protesting on the same day. It waited until Sunday. How precious! Nonetheless, the organizers estimated they drew a quarter of a million people and the police estimated 200,000. You should know the drill by now, the organizers estimate up and the police and the Mouthpiece Media estimate down.

The "newspaper of record" here in the United States, the New York Times, made short shrift of the weekend's worldwide demonstrations and estimated down consistently. Meanwhile, and to its credit, the Los Angeles Times did a comprehensive piece on Sunday on the worldwide protests and estimated up. The BBC took the protests seriously, as well, considering that in London alone approximately one million people took to the streets to say "NO!" to Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. Indymedia has a series of dispatches from actual people around the world, including videos and interviews, who took part in this weekend's actions. It's worth a look if you have the time.

I'm still floating in a sense of euphoria about it all. Approximately twelve million to thirty million (depending on who you believe) people got together this weekend, incredibly amicably and peacefully, to say NO to war and death. I'm chuffed! (The one lamentable example of violence to mar the face of this wonderful weekend was, of course, San Francisco. So-called "Black Bloc" thugs broke windows, spray-painted buildings and fought with police after the official action was over. The San Francisco Comical ... ehm! Chronicle was at least gracious enough to acknowledge that these hoodlums were not part of the actual demonstration.)

When I told my friend Matt, on Friday evening, that even New Orleans would be joining the protests - even though they were occurring on the same day as the Krewe du Vieux parade, which kicks off the Mardi Gras season - he gibed, "Yeah right! What will it be, about fifty old hippies getting together at Jackson Square?"

Thus, I was more than pleased to report to him, after talking to my friend Ava, from Berlin, who carried a banner at the head of the march, that approximately a thousand people turned out and marched down Canal Street. This gave him pause. But, Matt being Matt, and more than willing to denigrate anything that doesn't involve him personally, made it a point to drop down to The Cat yesterday. He said he had thought about it over night and decided "So what? That's only what part of one percent of the population to show up?"

My response: "What part of what percent of the entire population is above the 50th percentile in intelligence tests, Matt? There are lies, damned lies and statistics. What matters is that one thousand people in New Orleans thought it was more important to speak truth to power rather than just hang out in another damned bar. For New Orleans, that's something."

Sometimes I have to remind Matt that it is possible that not everyone except he and a couple of his pals are complete morons.

But I didn't let him get me down. I didn't even let the weirdness at work get me down. The whole world was not just watching this time. The whole world was taking to the streets, as we exhorted only months back, to speak for the causes of sanity and compassion.

Those committed to war have not stopped planning, of course. They might grudgingly accept a delay, but even that is doubtful. We must prepare our own next efforts. The action is just beginning.

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SADLY, WHILE ALL THIS WAS GOING ON and filling my radar screen, I also knew that La Paz, Bolivia, was burning. The president of that country, at the behest of our good friends at the International Monetary Fund(IMF), had decreed that income taxes would be raised to a backbreaking level. Result: the police went on strike and rioted in the streets. The army came out to stop the police and gunfire was exchanged.

In short, the IMF had provoked what amounted to a civil war in that country. The Mouthpiece Media didn't want to tell you much about that, either. It was relegated to the back pages. As Linda Ellerbee used to say, "And so it goes." ...

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DO NOT TAKE THE FOREGOING TO MEAN that I want to solve all the problems of the world, my love. I shall restrict myself to the larger ones. (Just kidding!)

In earnest, it is part of the mission of this magazine to help make you more aware of the world around us, both the good and bad that happens. You cannot understand something you don't know. So we try to bring you the voices of the people around the world that we can. I regret there are not even more voices here. My largest lament right now is that we have not had a voice from Asia in months.

As to my personal life, which I have not focused on in this week's entries, it remains hard and confusing. I am hoping that today's shift at work and The Rod Show will finally allow me to pay the remainder of my rent. I am distancing myself from certain of my friends for the moment. I am trying to suss out who is and is not my real friend. Yes, on certain levels, I am withdrawing from the world.

Do not be distressed by this. It is only for a time.

We had one wonderfully warm day this weekend in New Orleans, but now it is cold again. These radical weather changes keep us all on edge or ill. I am running my little, expensive space heaters again to keep the one main room warm. I sleep restlessly because of the full moon and my many worries and doubts.

18 February, 2003: THE LANDLORD WAS AT MY DOOR at 10:09 this morning. I had gone down to his office at 10:00 a.m., when it was supposed to open, so I was prepared. I had $240 (USD) in cash in my pocket waiting for him. BUT, because of the $3/day (illegal) penalty that he tacks on top of the late charge, I am still short. I need to give him fifty bucks after my shift at the bar tonight. Oh joy!

If you know the $3/day is illegal, why don't you do something about it, Rod?

I'm surprised it took you so long to ask.

What would I do, my love? Sue? Report him to the government of Haiti? I've effectively become an indentured servant. It's eat the vig' or go back to couch-surfing and I think I've just about run out of couches in this town. I'm stuck. Now do you understand why I refer to it as "The Black Hole of New Orleans"? The legend says that thousands of Brits died in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Much as I hate to admit it, Brit blood flows in these veins.

Anyway, got to get this edition out before they turn my telephone and electricity off. As Tupac said, "It's a cold world. Niggaz got to make they own heat." Pray I'm good at rubbing two sticks together.

Things I Continue to Want This Week

1. The ability to pay my bills.

2. A girlfriend.

3. Escaping the Black Hole of New Orleans.

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Thanks for coming back this week.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod

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ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

Last year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now our Resident Philosopher has joined the pantheon of New Orleans bartenders and still doesn't know when he'll have a "permanent residence" that he likes.. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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