Well, when you put it THAT way...

Dearest Rod,

Read your article today and got the sense of your depression and dispair. I sense your giving in to health problems that may be avoided and corrected. Though the saying. "the poor and the sick will always be around us," there is nothing stopping you for doing what you expound other to do. Help! This starts with yourself. Give you all the help you need to continue to survive or just exist, if that's the way you see life. But don't give up on life. Ý

To the world you might be one person or nobody, but to one person you might be the world. Those who look forward to the web paper, and you don't know how many may be disabled or dependant on the communication you bring with the "g21", you may be supplying them with a life line. Ý

I will not cease from trying to get you to go for a physical, regardless of how boring I may sound. Ý

TwoÝof my favourite sayings are: 1) Live vivaciously and enjoy life while you can, too many things and peolpe are working against your success. (Just made it up) Ý 2) Forgive yourself forÝpast failures and future blunders and you will feel better about life.

(Boy! I am on the ball today, you can join me and bounce back.) Ý

Love,
Rudell Ý


From Anonymous:

Reflection of letters:

To Ric W. of Texas: Maybe that's what the rapist thinks. If only I could get some Pussy then I will have solved all my problems and brighten at least one moment in time ( for himself.) One can't go around drowning in Pussy or Jesus. A balance must be found in both. Voice of reason.


From John L., Sydney, AUSTRALIA:

SUBJECT: MOIA - Taming of the Web Part 1 Douglas,

Great article

It is always very interesting to consider the bigger picture - the wholistic perspective- be it time or space. Your painting of current www happenings and developments onto the larger landscape has helped me gain a better understanding of a rapidly changing (yet, eerily, as you say similar) scenario. Thank goodness for artesian water (the spirit of creativity) that bubbles up all over the place notwithstanding the fences.

Look forward to the next article.

Cheers
John L.
Sydney Australia


DOUGLAS MC DANIEL RESPONDS: John,

The Wild West metaphor is about that universal tendency for what we humans do with space of any kind. So now we have entered the season of contention, of lawsuits, turf wars, closed-in networks and viral outbreaks unleashed by neo-luddites afraid we are going to all be enslaved by the master cyborg. The real trick for all of us, if the Net is to truly enhance the ongoing goal of evolving human consciousness, is to see how far we can get beyond the metaphor. We need to break out of this feedback loop of seek and and devour and destroy. How can people work to maintain the Web as a place where that artesian well is renewed, over and over, for millions of people who today see the Web as just an extention of consumer-friendly electronic lotto and mass-market surveillance by consent?

I guess that's like trying to figure out how to keep democracies from becoming subject to the tyranny of the most common denominators. There's no cure for Brittany Spears, plus Socrates and the Greek Classics already had their reunion tour.

What do we say to make a difference: Reading is fun?

Oh well, some new jolt to the system is always just around the corner. Electricity is funny that way.

Positively,
Douglas McDaniel


From L. C., (No City Provided,) USA:

I think It is great that some one finds time out to write such good information.

I think Raheem's piece would have been more telling if he had also mentioned how blacks have been historically and systematically excluded from participating in the mainstream activities that would have allowed many, many of our ancestors to acquire the sort of tangible assets that would improved their economic condition.

Free blacks and ex-slaves, for example, were not allowed to acquire land under the provisions of the Federally-sponsored Homestead Act under which tens of thousands of European immigrants and native born whites were able to acquire 160 acres of land in the Midwest and western United States. The murders, rapes, lynchings, assaults and thefts and thousands of other crimes committed against blacks have certainly left terrible wounds but the planned and agreed upon exclusion of their our participation from the national economy, except primarily as landless serfs, has been as equally devastating.

Darryl C.


RADIO RAHEEM RESPONDS: Mr. C, thanks for reading my article and bothering to say something about it. You are absolutely right for calling me on not bringin' up the wider economic issue. That's part of the reason, I think, Mr. Robinson believes that reparations is part of the answer. It's the economic exclusion of our people, including modern-day racist practices like "red-lining" by banks, that has made the racial barrier so pernicious. Ever wonder why Spike Lee calls one of his production companies 60 Acres and A Mule? Let's talk broken treaties here.


From Ron D., Wendell, NC, USA:

My name is Ron Diener, an occasional writer for the Rod Amis communique, G21.net. I don't know if you recognize my name, so I thought a brief introduction might suffice.

I did like your recent RDR article very much. We have gone from a time when it was forbidden for black children to be taught how to read, or forbidden simply to read, to a point where - if they cannot be "brought" to a "high achievement level" in reading - the children are faulted, the schools are condemned, the teachers are dubbed incompetent. We have gone from a point where black children were taught NOT to compete, but to work together and get along, to the point where they are thought to be lacking initiative if they are not blood-curdlingly competitive, ready to chop off their opponents' legs.

"My people" came from Russia in 1909, poor folks, my grandfather had stolen from his father and was about to be caught when he fled with his wife and children. Within a few years, his children were re-enacting the Pilgrim Fathers for Thanksgiving, were singing patriotic songs about "we" and "us" on the Fourth of July and had access to good schools and good-paying jobs. My grandparents and parents were ferociously racist: they hated blacks and orientals for absolutely no reason at all. But "our people" fared very well in the New World.

Unfortunately for our grandparents and parents, two generations later we are truly American. All the children are now our children. A child with learning problems presents a challenge for a solution, not an opportunity for condemnation - no matter the race or age or whatever. Those who suffer want and neglect in our society are our brothers and sisters - particularly those who waste away in penitentiaries because of our racist "justice" system.

I have been active in communities in St. Louis, Boston, Columbus, and now in Raleigh. I do not understand most white people, not at all. I do not understand. Wherever I have been, a few dollars spent in the right places could do very good things - after school programs, job training, good clothes for a job applicant, a down payment on a house of their own, a down payment on a car to get to work. All of these are small sums of money. They could transform utterly the lives of people who have suffered too long, too much.

No one gives. The notion that private charity will do substantially well for the poor is nonsense. Who gives? The poor give to each other. There is no one more generous than a welfare recipient or a food-stamp person. I hate the generosity of the poor, because they make the stingeyness of the rich all the more awful.

Bless you, R R, and keep it coming.
Ron Diener


RADIO RAHEEM RESPONDS: Mr. Diener,

Thanks for writing this. It's the only e-mail I've in a while that *wasn't* spam --- one of the blessings of having a free Hotmail e-mail account.

I thank you for letting me know this.

I, personally don't think I'm as one-sided or as near-sighted and shallow as my fellow G21 writer, Ed Cantarella, claims in his rebuttal to that article. If anything, I think ALL poor folks have common cause to want to see some changes here in the United Snakes. But naturally, I'm gonnah focus on the concerns I see every day in my own neighborhood first.

And Mr. Cantarella conveniently ignores --- as you, thankfully, do not --- that all the other groups he catalogues know their pasts and weren't kidnapped into America.

Peace,
Raheem


From (G21 Alumni) Jeff Winbush, Columbus, OH, USA:

The cold hard truth about American racism is we love to point at totalitarian nations that brutalize and dehumanize their own citizens while at the same time this country treats many of it's citizens in a similar fashion. Ý

Only difference is we call it law and order here.ÝÝ

Whose law though and at what price comes the order? Ý

Radio Raheem in his June 13 column is dead on it.Ý Black people have tried and tried again to make America love us as much as we love it.ÝÝ

For how long will we continue to play this one-sided game before that unrequited love curdles into poisonous hate? Ý

And then, everybody dies. Ý

Remember my Caucasian brothers and sisters:Ý Whatever evil thing befalls black folks is going to eventually befall you as well.ÝÝ

When they come one morning to take away everybody who's different, who doesn't fit in, who stands out, who doesn't want to be another cog in the corporate machine, who values freedom and sanity over vulgar consumerism and madness...what makes you think you'll be spared? Ý

Good piece Raheem.Ý

Stay up, Brah! Ý Ý
Jeff Winbush
Columbus, Ohio


From Ed. C, Pontiac, MI, USA:

Dear Rod:

I liked Doug's article, it hit a lot of good points as regards security. However, let's not forget that the "open range" was dangerous and unstable, a good place for "common folk" to get robbed or worse. Rather than ending up with mundane pieces of "Mall America" and "gated communities", I see the Web growing up from something akin to the jumble of papers left on the floor of a high school on the last day, to the orderliness AND variety of a Barnes & Knobles bookstore- complete with the coffee bar.

"They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot".
Ed C


DOUGLAS MC DANIEL RESPONDS: Ed,

Not sure, but I think Joni sang, "They called it a paradise, and put up a parking lot." But then I could be getting that mixed up with that Eagles tune with the line, "Call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye." The first line by J.M. was actually used as a kind of campaign slogan to save a slice of wetlands, which were actually slated to be used for a parking lot, on land right on the border of Telluride, Colorado. That 30-year-old tune was such a hit, the local public radio station played that Joni Mitchell song all of the time, and the parking lot project ended up getting resoundingly voted down by the town. That set back town planning 10 years, but at least that wetlands is still open space.

Who says the 60s counter-culture is dead?

One other thing about Telluride, way up there in the San Juans at 8,700 feet. There are no franchises allowed within town limits. Thus, the malling of that part of America is countered, small and remote as that might be.

Maybe the Web will be better organized, but it won't be as open. Anybody ever hear this: The imposition of order creates chaos? Probably some anarchist came up with that one.

Douglas McDaniel


[EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. McDaniel is indeed confusing the two songs. Mr. Cantarella quotes the line from the Joni Mitchell song correctly.]

AND your favorite e-mails from The World's Mailbox

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This is an appeal to pray for the child and to send the donations and/or forwarding this message to your address book/contacts. Please send donations in the name of :- (PLEASE do write, "for the treatment of PRANJALI D/o Mrs. Shobha Ganesh Rohi') C/o The Director, RASHTRA SANT TUKDOJI MAHARAJ CANCER HOSPITAL AND RESEARCH CENTRE, NAGPUR (MAHARASHTRA) INDIA. THANKS for your time and concern for saving a young soul.Ý

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