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Lizard Lick, NC, USA - With the Blog (Web Log) being "the latest fad," as my old college buddy Robert Purvis advises me, I should be in the catbird seat. I trawl for appropriate grants to support the journalistic efforts of your World's Magazine these days. My having been called the "Father of the Blog," by a reader in Germany, because of this diaristic column might indicate that I should be considered au courant, if not "pioneering" - as a Scottish journalist referred me to during the last decade. I've seen fads explode onto the Internet before, having occupied the Big Chair here at GENERATOR 21 for nearly a decade now.
The Next Big Thing has come and evaporated so many times that I seldom listen to the latest predictions anymore. I simply soldier on at what we've always done on this Web site: report the news and present commentary about the issues important to people "on the ground" around the world. I shall always be fellahin at heart.
The one reason why we instituted, as part of my usual "three-dot journalism" here, a feature that I hope some of you have found informative and useful. I'm referring to a little feature called ...
NEWS TO ROD
ITEM ONE: Virginia Rodino, co-Director of Democracy Rising and an administrative steering committee member of United for Peace and Justice, produced a piece earlier this month for Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's ever-provocative CounterPunch Web journal about how wrong Bob Geldorf and Bono, the two rock millionaires, were about their "triumph" on the issue of debt relief for the nations of Africa. The facts below are from her commentary and well worth your attention.A professor of development studies at the London School of Economics, Gavin Capps has researched the numbers behind the debt. In an article titled "Redesigning the Debt Trap," he explains the dangerous web that the debt, structural adjustment programs, and capit al flight creates in Africa. He cites Africa Action, a U.S.-based NGO, reporting in 2001 that the ratios of foreign debt to the continent's gross national product increased from 51% in 1982 to 100% in 1992. Africa's debt grew to four times its export income in the early 1990s. Its debt burden is twice that of any other region in the world, it carries 11% of the developing countries' debt, with only 5% of its income. The gross national product in Africa is $308 per capita, while its debt stands at $355 per capita.(Full article can be found here.)The money spent paying back the debt and the interest on the debt expanded from an average of $1.7 billion from 1970-1979 to $14.6 billion from 1997-1999. Africa received a total of $540 billion in loans, paid back $550 billion, and still retained a debt of $295 billion between 1970 and 2002. In 1990 African countries paid out $60 billion more than they received in new loans, and by 1997, this increased to about 162 British pounds. In 2001, sub-Saharan Africa borrowed $11.4 billion, and paid back $14.5 billion.
This catastrophe is played out in the social service and health sectors. Shrinking African national budgets are being spent in greater proportions to repaying Western creditors at the expense of welfare or productive domestic investment. During the 1980s debt service repayments averaged 16% of African government expenditure compared to 12% on education and 4% on health. A decade later, the situation remains appalling, as interest payments are prioritized over human needs. In 1999 the Zambian government was pressured to spend $14 million more in debt service than on its collapsing health care system, in the face of the AIDS pandemic reaching new heights. Also in 1999, 33% of Angola's gross domestic product was spent on debt repayments, as compared to 4.9% of gross national product on education and 1.4% on health. In the whole of sub-Saharan Africa in 2001, debt repayment amounted to 3.8% of GDP, as opposed to 2.4% spent on health care.
... Corrupt leaders skimmed from the top of these profits. But simply attributing capital flight to the greed of African politicians hides more than it reveals. The great powers, the leaders of the G8, propped up African dictators like Mobutu Seso Seko, of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, in order to guarantee Western strategic interests during the Cold War. (Mobutu was installed in mineral-rich Zaire after the CIA-backed assassination of popular radical nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba.) Breaking the pathologyzing myth of corrupt black African leaders, apartheid South Africa enabled an average of 7% of annual gross domestic product to leave as capital flight between 1970 and 1988, a flight whose destination was into the coffers of major Anglo corporations. Such a move defied local capital controls and broke the international sanctions regime on apartheid. Thus, the private "white" capitalists of South Africa and white European business leaders were also in lockstep support of capital flight.
ITEM TWO: from the NOT ALWAYS SERIOUS DEPARTMENT: I'm not always so-o-o-oo-o serious - as members of our MAILING LIST can attest. I like a bit of humor as much as the next person. That's why, when my pal DC in Florida sent me this news article about a sushi fundraiser at an aquarium in Tampa, Florida, USA, I laughed a lot. What really got me was this over-the-top quote from one person complaining about the event:
"That's like serving poodle burgers at a dog show,'" said Karin Robertson, manager of the Fish Empathy Project for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. `"Fish,'" said Robertson, who was campaigning in Canada against their consumption when reached Wednesday on her cell phone, "are fantastically intelligent individuals.'" They feel pain, communicate and have cognitive skills. It's bad enough they're not in the ocean, she said. To serve sushi in their midst is wrong.I just report them, I don't explain them ...ITEM THREE: From the 6 August, 2005 edition of the New York Times we lead this:
The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. announced Friday that it would press four American corporations to stop providing military equipment and technology to Israel for use in the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and that if the companies did not comply, the church would take a vote to divest its stock in them.The companies - Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries and United Technologies - were selected from a list of several dozen possibilities by a church investment committee that met Friday in Seattle. The Presbyterians accused these companies of selling helicopters, cellphones, night vision equipment and other items Israel uses to enforce its occupation.
In an effort to appear even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the church committee also included Citigroup on its list of targets, alleging it had a connection to a bank accused of having a role in funneling money from Islamic charities to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The church said it included Citigroup because it was mentioned in an article in The Wall Street Journal.
A spokeswoman for Citigroup called the church's assertion "an outrage," a reaction echoed at several of the other corporations.
The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is in the forefront of a campaign now spreading to other mainline Protestant churches to use corporate divestment as a tactic in the Middle East conflict, a tactic that is roiling relations with Jewish groups.
The Episcopal Church U.S.A., the United Church of Christ, two regions of the United Methodist Church, as well as international groups like the World Council of Churches and the Anglican Consultative Council have all urged consideration of divestment or economic pressure in recent months, though the tone and emphasis of each resolution varies. The Disciples of Christ passed a resolution last month calling on Israel to tear down the barrier it has built to wall off the occupied territories, and other churches are considering similar resolutions.
Some Jewish groups accuse the churches of singling out Israel for blame and failing to address the Palestinians' role in perpetuating the violence. Several have even said they see anti-Semitism behind the churches' moves ... ["Threat to Divest Is Church Tool in Israeli Fight" by Laurie Goodstein]
A small, independent and outspoken magazine like this one can't reach you every week without the support and patronage of its readership. As our way of thanking those who have committed to keep your World's Magazine here on your desktop through their generous donations, we feature their names and cities here in our Roll of Honor.
SUSTAINING PATRONS
RON DIENER,
Wendell, NC, USADARHL STULTZ,
Largo, FL, USAMATT STOWELL,
New Orleans, LA, USATIMOTHY MEADOWS,
Anaheim, CA, USACHERYL HILL NATION,
West Fairlee, VT, USADRAGAN & DRAGANA VICANOVIC,
Belgrade, SERBIALESZEK MICHAELWICZ,
New Orleans, LA, USATERRY TERRIAN,
Sebastopol, CA, USA
Supporting PatronsBARBARA ATWELL,
Berkeley, CA, USA
BECKY ALTEMUS,
Houston, TX, USA
IAN CRYSTAL, Ph. D,
New Orleans, LA, USA
LARS KEFFERSTAN,
New York, NY, USA
MEREDITH TUPPER,
Tampa, FL, USA
NICK ALLEN,
New Orleans, LA, USA
RIC WILLIAMS,
Austin, TX, USA
ROBERT PURVIS,
Montclair, NJ, USA
STEVE VIVIAN,
New York, NY, USA
STUART ALTMAN, ESQ.,
New York, NY, USAWe encourage you to add your name to this Roll of Honor. GENERATOR 21 cannot continue and thrive without your support. Thanks in advance.
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The G21 READERSHIP POLL
As noted in our 2004 year-end Person of the Year poll, there are people making positive contributions to life on Earth. All-too-often, we focus far afield in those types of surveys rather than close to home. So this poll asks you to reverse that trend.THE POLL QUESTION: What five people in your personal life or community have had the greatest impact for good for you and/or your family and neighbors?
DEADLINE: 15 AUGUST, 2005. The responses and results will appear at the end of the month. Thanks in advance!
ITEM FOUR: Novelist E.L. Doctorow writes in part:... But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.You can read the full text by following this link: The Unfeeling PresidentThey come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life ... they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
LIFE OF ROD
11 August 2005: I haven't said very much about me lately, have I, Darling? Not in any direct way. Well, it's been intentional. I reached the conclusion early this year that, perhaps, I have been too directly personal with you here.And not much has changed about my interior life. I still miss Lynda, I still battle bouts of deep depression and sadness about the nature of the Empire. I still wonder if there is a possibility of finding some way to "fit" in this world ...
Elizabeth, the new Memory Machine upon which I now produce this enterprise, and I are coming to terms but I am also still mourning the loss of my longtime companion, Victoria. I have files on Vickie's hard-drive, including Mpush's address, now lost, that I need to recover whenever I can come up with the money to facilitate the infusion.
My housemate and benefactor, RON DIENER, will celebrate the anniversary of his birth on Saturday.
I look in the mail every day to see if some member of my "Fan Club" has seen fit to send a donation. I send out copies of my resumé to the faceless companies advertising for help in the Raleigh News & Observer, on CraigsList.org and Yahoo's Hot Jobs. I have been devoting as much time as I can to reading up on private foundation support for the investigative journalistic projects that I have on the agenda for your World's Magazine and, perhaps, financing a trainee or intern to take over when my run as Editor and Publisher here is over.
That last came to me on a day I was fasting and "crying for a vision," as Russell Means has put it. I finally knew that the answer to my burning question was What must I do to keep the G21 going? Groom a successor. I must pray that I shall have the time to garner a grant or fellowship to do just that.
Other than that, my life out here in the woods goes on. G21 is a machine, at this stage, that practically produces itself. I have the editing and design chores, of course, joyous hours of my life, but I no longer have the added chore of seeking out writers and contributors.
AND, every now and again, some of our efforts get noticed. I was solicited by a writer in London this month to provide an interview for a book project he is doing on my former friend, the jazz musician Clifford Thornton. I have referred him on to my dear friend, the great musician Salvatore d'Alessandro, through whom it was my privilege to meet Cliff. That Clifford's talent and genius is finally being recognized by a new generation of jazz aficionados warms this old man's cockles.
13 August, 2005: Alone today.
Matt called today and we talked for over an hour. He reported on all the doings of my friends in New Orleans, which only served to remind me how I miss having any semblance of a social life in my isolation out here at "Green Acres," as Matt has dubbed my exile here in the woods. Oh well. I count my blessings. There is food, a roof over my head and a means of communicating with you, my little loves. That is a lot.
But I do miss seeing and laughing with people ...
Thanks for coming back this week. Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.
THINGS I PRAY FOR THIS WEEK
1 - That elusive job that I can enjoy as much as it enjoys me.
2 - A social life.
3 - A girlfriend.
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "
Love,
Rod
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was 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 Internet 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.
In 2002, he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. He did stints as the Resident Philosopher at three separate gin mills in that city in the French Quarter and the Marigny, earning his stripes during two successive Mardi Gras seasons. 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.
Our Resident Philosopher has exchanged his legend mobility for a means of keeping your World's Magazine. Now he must become earnest about gaining a financial underpinning for this enterprise. (Read: Buy back his freedom.}.
In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider. 
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.