From Carma S., [NO CITY PROVIDED,] CA, USA:

Subject: True Democracy

Rod,

Can we really achieve a "True Democracy"? I don't think so, not with the two party system we have now. The Ultra conservatives and Christian Coalition have merged. It makes for a volative mixture. How can the people of any country kill and destroy their friends, neighbors, homeland all in the name of religion?

I enjoy reading your articles. You speak frankly and plainly. So, there are some that are going to be pissed, but some of us delight in hearing the unvarnished truth.


ROD RESPONDS: Carma, thanks for remaining a Loyal Reader and for taking the time to write in. It's much appreciated. I agree that achieving democracy is no easy task. Half the time I feel like Cicero, ultimately poking fun at and castigating a situation detined to get even less like the hallowed res publica. That's when I pick up some Noam Chomsky and remind myself that we are not alone in this struggle.


From Diamond D., Higganum, CT, USA:

Subject: Kosovo Triangle

hey!, that was a great issue!! you weren't lying ; )

shout out to the writers for me!! -Diamond-D


From Jean L. H. [NO CITY OR COUNTRY PROVIDED:

SUBJECT: Snide? Never!

First time on your website, and it certainly won't be the last. Terrific! Intend to pass this URL on to everybody on my list.
--
Jean L. H. The Sheila Casey Mysteries http://www.olypen.com/jeanhohn


ROD RESPONDS: Jean, thanks for visiting the G21 and for writing. That's our motto around here, you know: "Tell ALL your friends."


From Jean L. H. [NO CITY OR COUNTRY PROVIDED:

SUBJECT: Great Site, Rod!

First time at your site, and it's terrific!

Now, then, a comment you might find interesting, considering how long-in-the-tooth I am. As a kid, probably six or seven, I remember sitting in the middle of the floor while a couple of neighbors who had just returned from "the old country" told with anguished voices, the wringing of hands, and true fear evident with every word about their trip.

They had been born and lived much of their lives in Germany, having moved to the United States right after they were married and quickly become citizens. Still, they missed the relatives, friends and even the country. So now, probably in their early sixties, they decided if they were ever to go back and visit, it had better be now. I'd guess this was about 1936.

It was a revelation. Nothing was as they remembered it, their friends -- one and all -- loudly praising the "savior" who had lifted them from the grinding depression following World War I and become their leader. We all know who that man was.

The one memory that so transfixed Mrs. Vogt was the day the relatives persuaded them to attend one of the many spectacles with Der Fuerher as the centerpiece so they, too, could see the rightness of his plan. She said that evening, tears streaming down her face, she suddenly discovered that she along with everyone else was jabbing a stiff arm upwards, screaming "Sieg Heil!" right along with them. It positively terrified her to discover how mesmerized she had become.

Mr. Vogt said "Something has to be done to stop this maniac!" And my father replied, "But it isn't this country's problem! We have to stay out of European troubles! We already learned that once."

Well, that was a common thought. But it was our problem, and we learned that, too.

Looks sorta familiar, doesn't it?

Keep up the good work, Rod.

-- Jean L. H.


ROD RESPONDS: Jean, Thanks for sharing this with me.

I despise Milosevic, but I'm not too quick to jump to the Hitler analogy because ten years ago Gaddafy was Hitler, then nine years ago it was Saddam Hussein. Our propaganda machine tends to call any "Enemy of the Week" a potential Hitler to start up the drumbeat of war fever.

To paraphrase Bentsen to Quayle, "I'm familiar with Adolf Hitler and Slobodan..."

That "Bumper Sticker" Installment of FN still Rules...

I used to have a bumper sticker that read. "I'm just looking for a nice girl that doesn't mind cleaning up vomit."

Bob

The World's Magazine: The World's Mailbox...

fight the power!!!

Price of a gallon of gas in Southeastern CT on 4/6/99 - $1.12

Hi!

I have received several of these this week. I decided to retype because it took me 4 pieces of paper to print it out.

THE GREAT GAS OUT!!

It is time we did something about the price of gasoline in America! We are all sick and tired of high prices when there is literally millions of gallons in storage.

We found out that if there wa just ONE day when no one purchased gasoline, prices would drop drastically. The so-called oil csartel has decided to slow production by some 2 million barrels per day to drive up the price. I have decided to see how many American we can get NOT TO BUY GASOLINE on one particular day! Let's have a GAS OUT! Do not buy gasoline on APRIL 30, 1999!!!! Buy on Thursday before or on Saturday after. Do not buy Gasoline on FRIDAY, APRIL 30TH!!

WANNA HELP!! Send this messsage to everyone you know. Ask them to do the same. All we need is millions of people to participate in order to make a difference.


From Carma S. [NO CITY PROVIDED], CA, USA:

Rod, I received this information from another online member that has access to some students in Kosovo. I get the feeling they are not getting all the news from America that is worth reporting. How does this girl's report measure with your source?

Dear Friends:

This is from our member in Greece who sent you all via this Newsletter her reaction to what is going on in Kosovo. As you may recall she is from Montenegro and is studying at Gnosis University in Patria. Some of you have here e mail address, but she is studying hard and has withheld her screen name. But anything I get from you I shall send on.

sincerely, land, Democracy Via The Web www.dvw.net

Dear Members of Democracy and the Rights for women and religions via the Web:

First thank you for your notes passed on by your secretary. We are so happy and disappointed at the same time that your Cable News Network reported wonderful news, but did not report it for awhile in the broadcast. As you say on Saturday Night Live. Hello is anybody home?

Do CNN not realize that Slobodan Milosevic in saying he is unilaterally withdrawing from Kosovo is close to a panic?

Yes, of course it shoud be dismissed by your president and by NATO and Greece TV as not nearly enough and probably a propaganda. But do you not see, does your Cable News Network not see that this is the biggest news of the day.

Here at my University we run up and hug one another, boys and girls, Muslims, Christians, Orthodox and gays and say wonderful news.

Now you in American just get to work because if you think you can make democracy with the Kosovo Liberation Army you have another think coming as your comics say.

KLA are one step away from Iran and two steps away from the Kaliban in Afghanistan as one of your members wrote to me and I couldn't not agree more.

President Clinton and the other fine people in NATO must put their foot down and say no rights for women and religious minorities then no protection when you return.

That is it. As one of your members also said so beautifully wrote to me and I shared with Muslims, Christians, Orthodox and gays after world war second you put your foot down and made instantaneously and until this day Japanese and Germans democratic.

So my friends, my dear friends at Democracy thru the Web....get on your horses and let your president and your Governor Bush know what must happen if there is ever to be peace. As for my country, Montenegro, as soon as I get back I shall e mail you our plans. greater Serbia is now Lesser Serbia thanks to democracies getting their act together as they say.

Again, thank you and a special thank you to my e mail friends on democracy.

TRR


From Darryl C., Hershey, PA., USA:

Give props to the legal minds behind this...
-----------------------------------------------------------

College entrance criteria give most whites, Asian-Americans the edge (February 12th edition of The Vidette Times) by Hugh B. Price, President of the National Urban League

Just when some figured that those who favor affirmative action have all but conceded defeat on saving the policy, a coalition of civil rights groups has staged a brilliant counterattack against the foes of affirmative action in higher education.

In doing so, they've underscored why the policy came into being three decades ago - and why it continues to be necessary. The organizations are the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. They sued the University of California at Berkeley, charging that the supposed "colorblind" admissions policy the university had to adopt to meet Proposition 209, the 2-year-old referendum proposal banning affirmative action, actually discriminates against bright minority students.

The suit was filed on behalf of more than 750 black, Latino and Filipino applicants with grade point averages of 4.0 or better who it says were denied admission to Berkeley last year, the first freshman class admitted under Proposition 209 rules.

Because of Proposition 209, Berkeley's new policy bases an applicant's acceptance on three fundamental criteria. The first is a student's grade-point average in high school. The second is his or her scores on standardized tests, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test. And the third is whether they've taken advanced placement courses and done well in them.

That sounds fair in theory. In fact, however, it cuts thousands of black and Latino and Filipino students out of the picture.

It does so because of the critical role an applicant's having had advanced placement courses plays in admissions to Berkeley: Students who take advanced placement classes are awarded an extra point if they receive an A in the course. Thus, students who take advanced placement courses have the chance to lift their grade point averages beyond the standard 4.0 barrier and range up to 5.0.

The average freshman admitted last fall had a score of 1,390 out of 1,600 on the SAT and a grade-point average of 4.27. Black, Hispanic and Filipino-American students are unfairly penalized in the competition because more than half of California's high schools don't even offer advanced placement courses. And - surprise, surprise - most of these are the very same schools that have high concentrations of black, Hispanic and Filipino-American students.

Thus, a huge number of black, Hispanic and Filipino high school students in California never get the chance to take the tough courses that would give them a fair shot at admission to the state's most prestigious public university.

Kimberly West-Faulcon, Western regional director for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that their studies determined that white students in California have a 30 percent greater chance than other students of having advanced placement courses, and that more than half of Berkeley's undergraduates come from just 5 percent of the state's schools. As she declared, "Rewarding applicants with slightly higher SAT scores who had access to (advanced placement) courses simply because of where they attend high school doesn't reward merit, it rewards privilege."

That is what affirmative action was intended to - and did - compensate for: the structural advantages whites enjoyed because of past discriminatory policies. No recourse to the desperate fantasy of colorblindness can obscure that. Nor can they conceal what they've produced at the state university of the nation's most racially and ethnically diverse state: tokenism.

Last fall's freshman class, the first admitted under Proposition 209, resulted in a 12 percent drop in the number of blacks and Hispanics admitted to the eight-campus state university system. The drop was most stunning at Berkeley, where just 126, or 3 percent, of its 3,735 freshman are African-American, and 271 were Hispanic - compared to 257 blacks and 472 Hispanics in the first-year class a year earlier.

These were the lowest number of black and Hispanic freshman on campus since statistics began to be kept in 1981. In contrast, the number of Asian-American freshman increased by 6 percent, to 1,468, and the number of whites increased by 7 percent, to 1,018. The lack of access for black, Hispanic and Filipino students as a group to high school advanced placement courses, which would help equalize the competition for Berkeley across the color line, constitutes a "structural barrier" to equal educational opportunity. It is a mechanism of systemic racial discrimination just as harmful as an overt policy against accepting any more than token numbers of these students.

That, in fact, is what the purpose of Proposition 209 was all along.

That is not equal opportunity. That is grandfathering a pernicious privilege that is rooted in America's racist past. Thanks to these civil rights lawyers, however, the battle for inclusion is far from over.

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