From: les@jmdl.com (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2001 #490 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: les@jmdl.com Errors-To: les@jmdl.com Precedence: bulk Unsubscribe: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe Archives: http://www.smoe.org/lists/joni Websites: http://www.jmdl.com http://www.jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Wednesday, October 17 2001 Volume 2001 : Number 490 The Official Joni Mitchell Homepage, created by Wally Breese, can be found at http://www.jonimitchell.com. It contains the latest news, a detailed bio, Original Interviews, essays, lyrics and much much more. The JMDL website can be found at http://www.jmdl.com and contains interviews, articles, the member gallery, archives, and much more. ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: eire (njc) ["Dolphie Bush" ] Re: eire (njc) [TimandMaryPowers@aol.com] RE: IRA njc ["Kate Bennett" ] Scary thing happened at work today njc [Catherine McKay ] Re: IRA etal - NJC [Bobsart48@aol.com] Re: eire (njc) ["Kakki" ] Re: Scary thing happened at work today njc ["Kakki" ] RE: Scary thing happened at work today njc ["Wally Kairuz" ] Dinner tonight (NJC) [AsharaJM@aol.com] New Joni material? [johnirving ] Re: NORAD (njc) ["Mark or Travis" ] Re: Patti Smith NJC ["hell" ] Re: Doctor's pills give you brand new ills? [Catherine McKay ] RE: Scary thing happened at work today njc [Catherine McKay Subject: Re: eire (njc) Garret wrote: > I was surprised by Macks surprise that the south of Ireland is a republic!> And believe it or not Garret I know more than most Americans about it, not counting your average American who is either just plain not interested or flat out doesn't care. Most of the people I have encountered in my life have no idea where Ireland is even located. Even the educated ones have little more knowledge of the situation than I do. It is not surprising to me though for me completely ignore Canada in our schooling, other than the fact that it is there. I remember in early junior high studying some rudimentary things about Argentina and Brazil but we never covered Canada. Not once in 12 years and not ever in college either, but I didn't take any courses there that would lend me to finding that information. We learned about the wars and major political events but Ireland was not discussed. I don't know exactly why. Kakki is right about the United States being so large that we are pretty well engrossed in what goes on here. I cannot speak for other Americans but I have the feeling that we more or less have the idea that we are the beginning and the end of the world and the rest are more or less just there. We do feel as if we are the best of everything despite all our protestations to the contrary during the political season and what not. But the U.S. is so large that it is hard to not think in terms like that. Texas alone is huge and it takes 6-7 hours just to drive from the central area, where I live, to the Panhandle. That is not counting the rest of the states. Not easy for me to fathom all that great big old world out there. Nevertheless, all of this info is really interesting. mack ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 19:49:31 EDT From: TimandMaryPowers@aol.com Subject: Re: eire (njc) Hello, I agree with you that my summary could have been better (I wrote it in a hurry) and about the IRA. But what I was really trying to say about the IRA is I think it's time they got over it already and moved on. I know they are attached to the land and want a united Ireland, but I don't care. I've heard about as much of "the old sod" as I can stand for one lifetime. Although my family didn't support the IRA, my father had a little bit of that verges on whiny, self pitying view of Ireland as oppressed, and they needed to get N. Ireland "back" "a nation once again" and all that - I am sick of it. We (my sisters and I) used to have to listen to the Clancy brothers growing up; have you heard them? They (with Tommy Makem) are great entertainers, but they promote hatred in my opinion. Do you know "up the long ladder"? I think the official title is "are you ready for a war?" here's a link: http://www.makem.com/discography/recordings/lyricpage/areyouready.html As I said, I've had about as much of this as I can stand for one lifetime. And that was having to sit there and listen to the Clancy brothers sing about rebellions that, frankly, I couldn't have cared less about. It's no surprise to me that some Americans support the IRA. An insanity that I hope future generations will not repeat. PS my father wanted to name me "Mara" as it is a classic Irish name but my mother put her foot down so they settled for "Mary Katherine". My maiden name is Ryan by the way. Mary People hurry by so quickly Don't they hear the melodies In the chiming and the clicking And the laughing harmonies - - Joni Mitchell ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 17:12:52 -0700 From: "Kate Bennett" Subject: RE: IRA njc Mike wrote: "The US govt has on occasions refused to extradite people wanted by the British govt for terrorist activities,accepting the argument that the person wanted by the Brits had been engaged in a 'legitimate conflict'...There was a case too in Santa Barbara but I need not go into this (details on request)." Do tell! Kate, in Santa Barbara with some Irish, Scottish & English lineage.... ******************************************** Kate Bennett www.katebennett.com sponsored by Polysonics www.polysonics.com Discover the Indies at Taylor Guitars: http://www.taylorguitars.com/artists/awp/indies/bennett.html ******************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 20:41:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Catherine McKay Subject: Scary thing happened at work today njc With all the scares about anthrax (real or hoax), we were concerned at work about what to do in the event of receiving something strange. We receive and respond to mail for several cabinet minister and sometimes the strangest things do come in the mail - we've received people's prescription drugs, a set of false teeth, (Why? because the taxpayers figure, we're the government and if they have a problem with their Rx drugs or their dentures, or whatever, we can fix it!) bits of sweetgrass or tobacco (this particular writer who mails this in is a bit of a nutbar who has the answer to all our problems and claims to be - maybe really is - an aboriginal healer of some kind); a cockroach taped to a letter (this one addressed to me personally by a guy I think was a Nazi - - he wanted to complain about one of the neighbours in the apt. building he was living in, about what a filthy person he was and he was sending me this cockroach to make his point - fortunately it was dead.) We had just discussed the "what to do if..." scenario yesterday. Sure enough, in today's mail, there was an envelope with no return address, poorly spelled (what a cliche!) and there was some kind of gritty material that seemed to be in the envelope (we didn't open it), plus a white powder in the mail pouch it arrived in. My staff alerted me to this and in I go to the mail-opening area and sure enough... there's this white powder on the desk and something on these envelopes. I called building security, the main gov't mailroom - they came over, had a look and called 911. Within minutes, the fire department was there, followed by the police, followed by the police emergency task force who removed the package to take it for testing. The cops told us we didn't need to stay in the area and could go about our regular business and blah blah. This was the second or third such call they had been on so far that morning. Everyone in the office was standing around finding this whole thing quite entertaining, but some of the staff were looking pretty worried. The two clerical staff who opened the mail were getting more scared by the minute and decided to go to hospital emerg. I had touched the stuff too and in fact, I managed to inhale some when the mailroom manager came along to have a look, thereby disturbing this stuff - I could taste something kind of salty. The stuff was white, not like table salt, a little finer than that. After the stuff was carted away, in comes an environmental spills company that I called - before coming into the office, they got dressed up in complete spacesuits and so on. They clean up whatever's left with a heavy-duty bleach solution (guess what? if it's anthrax, I don't think bleach kills it - on the other hand, one of my co-workers said it would probably die of boredom after being in our office!) That was my day. So far I feel perfectly healthy and have seen no need to see a doctor. I guess tomorrow we'll find out what the stuff is. My guess is that it is some weirdo "taxpayer" who gets his/her jollies out of doing stuff like that. This isn't the first time this has happened, long before Sept. 11 and probably not the last. If I do contract anthrax, and then the antibiotics don't work, let it be known here that I want a simple funeral and cremation, nothing fancy. Oh yeah, and I plan to hunt down and haunt whoever did this - in fact, even if it ain't anthrax and I live to a ripe old age, I may still hunt them down and haunt them just for being such a dickhead. Get your free @yahoo.ca address at http://mail.yahoo.ca ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 02:22:35 +0100 From: Subject: Re: NORAD (njc) Thanks Lori, Those links about Colorado Springs brought back memories for me. I used to visit there on work trips. One time I went over for a meeting hosted by a retired Air Force guy. An old timer. There was me and 2 guys from Boston ready for a day long meeting about something dull and technical, when the old guy announces. "Let's see if we can wrap this up in an hour and go play golf for the rest of the day." We happily obliged and he took us over to the course at the Air Force Academy and treated us like kings. Great days and a great attitude to work. :) Philip np Kid Loco - A Grand Love Story ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:52:39 EDT From: Bobsart48@aol.com Subject: Re: IRA etal - NJC Rob Ettridge wrote: "To say that the 'British' should pull out of 'Northern Ireland' is an over simplification." I certainly agree, and do not believe there are many (on a percentage basis) in the US who hold that view. " As I think Colin said, one of the main problems is that most of the population of Northern Ireland consider themselves British." I am not close enough to the feelings of the Northern Irish to evaluate the nuances of that statement, but are you implying that the Protestant (majority) generally does and the Catholic (minority) generally does not ? "The British Government consists of democratically elected MPs from all sides of the conflicts, and we are all one country." I understand the 'democratically elected" part, but I do not fully understand the 'all sides of the conflict' part. Could you please elaborate ? " I honestly, honestly, honestly don't mean this to be a British vs US thing, and I know that this is glib and an oversimplification but as a tenuous example: to say that the 'British' should leave Northern Ireland makes as much sense as saying that 'Americans' should leave Alaska or pull out of Hawaii" If it is glib and an oversimplification, they why use it as an example ? My very very limited understanding of Irish/British history is that the Irish prior to 1800 were under British rule, but hated it. Around that time, there was a rebellion, the British answer to which was to make Ireland part of Britain (although Catholics were not given the right to hold office until 30 years later). After WW1, when the Irish declared their independence, fighting and negotiation led to southern Ireland becoming a dominion, with Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK (presumably because most of NI was Protestant). The end result being that, over a 120 year period, part of Ireland became more independent of Great Britain while the other part became more dependent (i.e., part of) Great Britain. I am sure it is more complicated than that. However, the history is far removed from that of Alaska and Hawaii, territories which applied for statehood and were accepted as part of the US willfully, with no ongoing secessionist movement. Please note that I am a "mutt-American" - I have so many different roots I am a man without a proper adjective. I have no particular emotional or vested interest in the Irish situation. That said, my general view is that if one is to engage in the terrors of war (where all is fair, in reality, in the end), then one must have a strong and just cause. As of now, I am pretty far from persuaded that the IRA has sufficient cause for its actions. On a different but related note, I am fully persuaded that the radical Arab/Muslim terrorists do not have such strong and just cause for their actions. I do not care if they disagree. They declared war, and clear thinking Americans know we must and will defend ourselves against that terror. Finally, once again the evils committed along the lines of (if not directly in the name of) organized religions are among the modern world's greatest. That is one of my reasons for having walked away from organized religion - net/net, they turn out to be divisive rather than unifying forces, IMO. Catholic versus Protestant, Muslim versus Jew, Muslim vesus Hindu, Muslim versus Christian, Christian versus Jew, Sunni vesus Shiite, etc. How sad. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 18:50:54 -0700 From: "Kakki" Subject: Re: eire (njc) Mary wrote: > As I said, I've had about as much of this as I can stand for one lifetime. > And that was having to sit there and listen to the Clancy brothers sing about > rebellions that, frankly, I couldn't have cared less about. This cracked me up, Mary. Luckily, my father confined his Irish side to telling hilarious stories about some of his more colorful uncles ;-) > PS my father wanted to name me "Mara" as it is a classic Irish name but my > mother put her foot down so they settled for "Mary Katherine". My maiden > name is Ryan by the way. My non-Irish mother, of all people, wanted to name me "Maeve" and it was my father who put his foot down. Then she lobbied for Bridget and he wouldn't go for that, either, (but compromised on it for my middle name ;-) Kakki ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 19:02:09 -0700 From: "Kakki" Subject: Re: Scary thing happened at work today njc GEEZ Catherine - this is horrible! I hope it was just a hoax. (I'd like to clobber these nutbar hoaxers, by the way) Our mailroom people are all wearing rubber gloves and are really frightened right now, too. Please keep us posted on the results. GEEZ. Kakki ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 19:17:58 -0700 From: "Kakki" Subject: Re: NORAD (njc) Thanks, Lori. I remember your past stories about being there and the photos really bring home just how God-forsaken paprika plains it was! I hope they at least had one good saloon in town! Philip wrote: > Those links about Colorado Springs brought back memories for > me. I used to visit there on work trips. One time I went over for a > meeting hosted by a retired Air Force guy. An old timer. There was me > and 2 guys from Boston ready for a day long meeting about something dull and > technical, when the old guy announces. "Let's see if we can wrap > this up in an hour and go play golf for the rest of the day." We happily > obliged and he took us over to the course at the Air Force Academy and > treated us like kings. Great days and a great attitude to work. :) You surprise me, Philip! I had this image of you as a hip, seasoned music biz kind of guy - sounds like you have an interesting background. I used to work in public relations for a government contractor and for a while was having meetings with "the Generals" and their people at Edwards Air Force Base. I had expected them to be sort of stern and scary but they were actually some of the coolest and funnest people I ever met and they definitely knew how to have a good time. I remember one Major suddenly getting up on a conference table at one meeting and doing a Jimi Hendrix imitation. Great memories ;-) Kakki ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 23:33:38 -0300 From: "Wally Kairuz" Subject: RE: Scary thing happened at work today njc dear catherine, i know how you feel. yesterday at UNICEF we received guidelines on how to handle envelopes of dubious origin. [i work as a translator so i handle tons of mails everyday]. did you get similar guidelines? i can copy mine for you if you want to. misspelling seems to be the big give-away [lord!!!]. we had elections to choose new senators last sunday. to protest against our less than satisfactory government, many people chose to put bologna slices in the ballot envelops. now, that's a scenario that wasn't contemplated in the UN guidelines i read. wallyK ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 22:40:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Catherine McKay Subject: RE: IRA njc - --- Mike Pritchard wrote: Catherine said: > > >> A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist<< > > I say 'that depends'. Nelson Mandela was once called > a terrorist, Menahem > Begin was believed by the British Government to be a > terrorist; my Webster's > calls him a 'statesman' and 'Nobel Peace Prize' > winner. Half the political > leaders of the world (perhaps I exaggerate a little) > were once referred to as > terrorists by political opponents. Look at the > history of Africa. Look at the > history of Latin America. Was George Washington not > regarded as a terrorist by > the British govt? > You're quite right, there. It occurred to me after I posted that, that Mandela would have been considered a terrorist by the then-gov't of S. Africa. Some of the individuals or groups that we think of as terrorists may, from their point of view, be considered freedom fighters, and I presume the other side (if it's so diametrically opposed) would never *get* that. On the other hand, I don't see how blowing up busloads of schoolchildren, or department stores or what-have-you makes that point at all - I'd say there's a difference between those who are fighting for some kind of freedom, and those who (apparently) do this for the sake of anarchy, or to get some sick kind of thrill out of it. I think my point in saying that came from the point-of-view of someone of Irish (and English) background who despises terrorism even if she can (sometimes) understand the motives behind it, and that, even if I could understand some of the IRA's logic, it still wouldn't make the violence right. As for presidents and so on meeting with representatives of radical, even terrorist groups, if it can do something to bring the sides together and to end the violence, I wouldn't be too quick to condemn it - if the peace plan works, the prez gets a Nobel prize; if it doesn't, he's a goof. So it's a courageous thing to do because it's quite likely to fail. Get your free @yahoo.ca address at http://mail.yahoo.ca ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 22:43:12 EDT From: AsharaJM@aol.com Subject: Dinner tonight (NJC) I had the distinct pleasure of dining tonight with Smurf and one of our newest members, Walt Breen. It was great to see Smurf again so soon after Jonifest, and Walt was a complete sweetheart! Thanks for driving up this way guys. I really enjoyed the evening. We had a really wonderful time, and tried not to talk "too" much about all of you!! One of things we discussed was Jonifest 2002!!!! :-) Hugs, Ashara ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:21:41 -0500 From: johnirving Subject: New Joni material? Hi gang,, I just popped over to Amazon.co.uk and placed an order for the Joni biography! Thanks for the tip. And Jim is such a cracker jack on the spot posting a link up on JM.com. You guys are too good, Jim. Really beautiful people. I noticed on the order page mentions of other (new?) Joni material. Anyone with information on this stuff: Memoir. ~Joni Mitchell. Paperback 2 September, 1999. Rc487 Memoir. Random House Audiobooks. Audio cassette. 31 December, 2000. The New Best of Joni Mitchell. ~Joni Mitchell, Carol Cuellar (Editor) Paperback. April 1993 Autobiography. ~Joni Mitchell. Special Order. Chatto and Windus. Hardcover. 31 December, 2000. Art Book. ~Joni Mitchell. Chatto and Windus. Hardcover. 31 December, 200l. What's the word on this stuff? Do I have more shopping to do? -Thanks. John. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 19:46:51 -0700 From: "Mark or Travis" Subject: Re: NORAD (njc) > > Now I'm trying to remember what > > the hidden place in Colorado is called! > > Well, NORAD is pretty well inside the mountain -- is that what you're > thinking of? I thought that was Galt's Gulch. Mark E. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 16:06:55 +1300 From: "hell" Subject: Re: Patti Smith NJC Jack wrote: > Thanks for sharing Patti's 'diary' with us - very moving and insightful. I share alot of her feelings, though could never convey them as beautifully. > > Of course, that's the role that great poets are supposed to play. > > Now, if only a certain Ms. Mitchell would follow suit... Well, it's not Joni, but I know there are a lot of Stevie Nicks fans on the JMDL. She was in NYC at the time of the attacks (staying at the Waldorf-Astoria). Her journal from those days is here: http://www.nicksfix.com/stevies_journal.htm And there was also this from the Sep. 22 edition of the Washington Post: Singer Stevie Nicks---staying at Washington's Ritz-Carlton hotel before her concert last Wednesday at the Merriweather Post Pavillion---was touched when she spied the firefighters of the Engine 1 company at 23rd and M streets NW from her window. They were outside collecting donations for their New York comrades lost in last week's attacks. Nicks ordered some room service and took it across the street herself. Hell ____________________________ "To have great poets, there must be great audiences too." - Walt Whitman hell@ihug.co.nz Hell's Personal Photo Page: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~hell/main/personal.htm Visit the NBLs (Natural Born Losers) at: http://www.nbls.co.nz ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 23:04:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Catherine McKay Subject: Re: Doctor's pills give you brand new ills? - --- SCJoniGuy@aol.com wrote: > < situation back then? >> > > I haven't heard her address this *specifically*, > Justin, but you can't help but believe that she was > referring to the medical problems she had in the > 80's & 90's. Her philosophy here is one I > whole-heartedly agree with. I think our culture is > too quick to want to pop a pill to fix themselves in > lieu of seeking to correct what truly is causing the > problem. > Welcome, Justin. There's another explanation for this too - often people who take one kind of drug to fix one kind of ill, end up having to take some other drug to counteract some of the bad effects of the first. Case in point - I was prescribed a drug a few years ago to deal with pain from plantar fasciitis. It's a heavy-duty anti-inflammatory used for arthritis, so you have to ALSO take this other drug that will buffer your stomach so you don't develop ulcers and so on. Or, when my mother had cancer, she was taking pills and chemo for the cancer but then she had to take other stuff to alleviate the nausea from the chemo. And something else to try to increase bone mass. And blood transfusions because of something else. And on it goes. Doctors pills give you brand new ills, and the bills bury you like an avalanche (esp. if you don't have a drug plan!) Ease off the tranquilizers slowly and preferably under the supervision of a doc you can trust - unfortunately, you can't just *stop* taking the damn things, or you'll end up with a whole mess of trouble, including dizzy spells, headaches, nausea, the list goes on. Get your free @yahoo.ca address at http://mail.yahoo.ca ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 23:17:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Catherine McKay Subject: Re: dates and measurements (njc) - --- "Lori R. Fye" wrote: > They (the little packets/sachets/packages/thingies with ketchup and so on in 'em] were designed so you could cut (or tear) one > corner and squeeze a > small amount of the condiment directly on one fry at > a time. I rarely see > people do this, but that's how they were designed to > be used. Handy in > the car, but only if you have both hands free. IMHO they did a pretty poor job of designing them. Most of the time you end up having to rip the thing down the middle and you end up with ketchup all over you. Or your hands are so greasy from the fries that you can't get a good enough grip so you can rip! I usually end up tearing them open with my teeth (tres elegant). The thing that really irritates me though is the little sample things of shampoo and so on. You get into the shower, wanting to try out this new brand of shampoo or conditioner - some of them have a little separation that you should be able to pull so you can get the damn thing open - except that 90% of the time it doesn't work. So, you either have to get out of the shower to find a pair of scissors to cut the friggin' thing open, running around the house wet and naked except for a towel, slopping water all over the house from your wet feet, and you can never find the damn scissors because one of the kids has been using them for some school project but claims they've never seen them - if you're lucky, you miss tripping over the cat, but you end up stepping on the scissors, which have been left on the floor in the middle of cut-up bits of paper from the kids' project. So now you have a big gash on your foot and you're not just slopping water on the floor, now you're slopping blood, too. But the good news is - you've found the scissors and you're on your way back to the shower, so you can wash the blood off your foot at the same time. Only, you decided to leave the shower running so it'd be nice and warm for you when you got back, and you've left the shower curtain open, so now there's water all over the floor. And the water is running cold because two people have had showers before you and the hot water tank has run out. Next time, use your teeth to rip the thing open. You probably won't lose a tooth from this and you probably WILL get a mouthful of shampoo, but your feet will be fine, and your water will still be hot. Curse you, Clairol Company! Get your free @yahoo.ca address at http://mail.yahoo.ca ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 23:36:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Catherine McKay Subject: RE: Scary thing happened at work today njc - --- Wally Kairuz wrote: > dear catherine, > i know how you feel. yesterday at UNICEF we received > guidelines on how to > handle envelopes of dubious origin. [i work as a > translator so i handle tons > of mails everyday]. did you get similar guidelines? > i can copy mine for you > if you want to. misspelling seems to be the big > give-away [lord!!!]. Yes, we got the guidelines. It's the same ones you'd find on the FBI website and so on. We actually had a scare like this (not in my office, but another gov't office) back in the spring, at which time they evacuated the entire complex! So, we had already been through the procedures once and fortunately (how timely) had just gone over them again yesterday. I admit, most of us chuckled then and do now about some of the weird stuff they want you to look for in the event of a suspicious package (could be a bomb or a biohazard) which include: the package is ticking (! now there's a giveaway - let's give this thing a shake to see what happens!); oil or greasemarks on the envelope (do these people all wear greasy hair pommade? are they eating too often at greasy spoon restaurants? what's up with the grease marks?) No return address on the envelope (that would cover about 30% of the mail we get and I'm ready to tell our staff we're going to just send anything without a return address to NeverNeverLand somewhere, so we can get caught up on our work with the ones that DO have a complete address); misspelled words (true, the one we spotted today had both the minister's name and the streetname misspelled - are all terrorists or terrorist wannabes functionally illiterate?); excessive postage (excessive postage? So they can't spell, but they can still afford to put TOO MANY STAMPS on the envelope? They couldn't possibly be Canadian - we're all too cheap to do that!) and so on... > we had elections to choose new senators last sunday. > to protest against our > less than satisfactory government, many people chose > to put bologna slices > in the ballot envelops. now, that's a scenario that > wasn't contemplated in > the UN guidelines i read. > wallyK We've received (besides the false teeth and asthma puffers and cockroaches mentioned earlier) the following items in the mail at one time or another either in my office or the premier's office: - - a tube containing several lemons (can't remember what the point was, but maybe it was that this gov't was sour; or, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade - who knows?) - - a doll in a casket with a knife through its belly (this was supposed to represent what the gov't was doing to the health care system or some such thing) - - hula hoops! (Imagine trying to get one of THOSE in an envelope!) This was reaction of some groups protesting a remark the premier made about how things go in and out of style and that some of these groups had to change with the times; he mentioned hula hoops as something that was once in style, but now was not (and yet, people managed to find hula hoops to put in the mail.) Sometimes ya gotta laugh. Get your free @yahoo.ca address at http://mail.yahoo.ca ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 00:40:38 -0300 From: "Wally Kairuz" Subject: RE: dates and measurements (njc) oh catherine and hell!! this is too funny and too true!!!!!!!! eternal curse on the inventors of sample and ketchup sachets! wallyK, who hates also the little ring that you have to pull to open tropicana juice containers. you pull ...and the ring comes off and then you have to punch a hole with a knife. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 08:31:02 +0200 From: M.Russell@iaea.org Subject: More about the war... NJC TERRORISM Sunday Times, October 14 2001 An anguished John le Carri says we wasted our cold war victory and are now assisting our enemy October 8, 2001. The bombing begins, screams today's headline of the normally restrained Guardian. Battle joined, echoes the equally cautious Herald Tribune, quoting George W Bush. But with whom is it joined? And how will it end? How about with Osama Bin Laden in chains, looking more serene and Christlike than ever, arranged before a tribune of his vanquishers with Johnny Cochrane to defend him? The fees won't be a problem, that's for sure. Or how about with a Bin Laden blown to smithereens by one of those clever bombs we keep reading about that kill terrorists in caves but don't break the crockery? Or is there a solution I haven't thought of that will prevent us from turning our arch enemy into an arch martyr in the eyes of those for whom he is already semi-divine? Yet we must punish him. We must bring him to justice. Like any sane person, I see no other way. Send in the food and medicines, provide the aid, sweep up the starving refugees, maimed orphans and body parts - sorry, "collateral damage" - but Bin Laden and his awful men, we have no choice, must be hunted down. But unfortunately what America longs for at this moment, even above retribution, is more friends and fewer enemies. And what America is storing up for herself, and so are we Brits, is yet more enemies; because after all the bribes, threats and promises that have patched together the rickety coalition, we cannot prevent another suicide bomber being born each time a misdirected missile wipes out an innocent village, and nobody can tell us how to dodge this devil's cycle of despair, hatred and - yet again - revenge. The stylised television footage and photographs of Bin Laden suggest a man of homoerotic narcissism, and maybe we can draw a grain of hope from that. Posing with a Kalashnikov, attending a wedding or consulting a sacred text, he radiates with every self-adoring gesture an actor's awareness of the lens. He has height, beauty, grace, intelligence and magnetism, all great attributes unless you're the world's hottest fugitive and on the run, in which case they're liabilities hard to disguise. But greater than all of them, to my jaded eye, is his barely containable male vanity, his appetite for self-drama and his closet passion for the limelight. And just possibly this trait will be his downfall, seducing him into a final dramatic act of self-destruction, produced, directed, scripted and acted to death by Osama Bin Laden himself. By the accepted rules of terrorist engagement, of course, the war is long lost. By us. What victory can we possibly achieve that matches the defeats we have already suffered, let alone the defeats that lie ahead? "Terror is theatre," a soft-spoken Palestinian firebrand told me in Beirut in 1982. He was talking about the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, but he might as well have been talking about the twin towers and the Pentagon. The late Bakunin, evangelist of anarchism, liked to speak of the propaganda of the act. It's hard to imagine more theatrical, more potent acts of propaganda than these. Now Bakunin in his grave and Bin Laden in his cave must be rubbing their hands in glee as we embark on the very process that terrorists of their stamp so relish: as we hastily double up our police and intelligence forces and award them greater powers, as we put basic civil rights on hold and curtail press freedom, impose news blackpoints and secret censorship, spy on ourselves and, at our worst, violate mosques and hound luckless citizens in our streets because we are afraid of the colour of their skins. All the fears that we share - Dare I fly? Ought I to tell the police about the weird couple upstairs? Would it be safer not to drive down Whitehall this morning? Is my child safely back from school? Have my life's savings plummeted? - they are precisely the fears our attackers want us to have. Until September 11, the United States was only too happy to plug away at Vladimir Putin about his butchery in Chechnya. Russia's abuse of human rights in the north Caucasus, he was told - we are speaking of wholesale torture, and murder amounting to genocide, it was generally agreed - was an obstruction to closer relations with Nato and the US. There were even voices - - mine was one - that suggested Putin join Milosevic in the Hague; let's do them both together. Well, goodbye to all that. In the making of the great new coalition, Putin will look a saint by comparison with some of his bedfellows. Does anyone remember any more the outcry against the perceived economic colonialism of the G8? Against the plundering of the Third World by uncontrollable multinational companies? Prague, Seattle and Genoa presented us with disturbing scenes of broken heads, broken glass, mob violence and police brutality. Mr Blair was deeply shocked. Yet the debate was a valid one, until it was drowned in a wave of patriotic sentiment, deftly exploited by corporate America. Drag up Kyoto these days and you risk the charge of being anti-American. It's as if we have entered a new Orwellian world where our personal reliability as comrades in the struggle is measured by the degree to which we invoke the past to explain the present. Suggesting there is a historical context for the recent atrocities is by implication to make excuses for them. Anyone who is with us doesn't do that. Anyone who does, is against us. Ten years ago I was making an idealistic bore of myself by telling anyone who would listen that, with the cold war behind us, we were missing a never-to-be repeated chance to transform the global community. Where was the new Marshall plan, I pleaded. Why weren't young men and women from the American Peace Corps, Voluntary Service Overseas and their continental European equivalents pouring into the former Soviet Union in their thousands? Where was the world-class statesman and man-of-the-hour with the voice and vision to define for us the real, if unglamorous, enemies of mankind: poverty, famine, slavery, tyranny, drugs, bush-fire wars, racial and religious intolerance, greed? Now, overnight, thanks to Bin Laden and his lieutenants, all our leaders are world-class statesmen, proclaiming their voices and visions in distant airports while they feather their electoral nests.There has been unfortunate talk, and not only from Signor Berlusconi, of a crusade. Crusade, of course, implies a delicious ignorance of history. Was Berlusconi really proposing to set free the holy places of Christendom and smite the heathen? Was Bush? And am I out of order in recalling that we actually lost the crusades? But all is well: Signor Berlusconi was misquoted and the presidential reference is no longer operative. Meanwhile, Mr Blair's new role as America's fearless spokesman continues apace. Blair speaks well because Bush speaks badly. Seen from abroad, Blair in this partnership is the inspired elder statesman with an unassailable domestic power-base, whereas Bush - dare one say it these days? - was barely elected at all. But what exactly does Blair, the elder statesman, represent? Both men at this moment are riding high in their respective approval ratings, but both are aware, if they know their history books, that riding high on day one of a perilous overseas military operation doesn't guarantee you victory on election day. How many American body bags can Mr Bush sustain without losing popular support? After the horrors of the twin towers and the Pentagon, the American people may want revenge, but they're on a very short fuse about shedding more American blood. Mr Blair - with the whole western world to tell him so, except for a few sour voices back home - is America's eloquent White Knight, the fearless, trusty champion of that ever-delicate child of the mid-Atlantic, the special relationship. Whether that will win Blair favour with his electorate is another matter because Blair was elected to save the country from decay, and not from Osama Bin Laden. The Britain he is leading to war is a monument to 60 years of administrative incompetence. Our health, education and transport systems are on the rocks. The fashionable phrase these days describes them as "Third World" but there are places in the Third World that are far better off than Britain. The Britain Blair governs is blighted by institutionalised racism, white male dominance, chaotically administered police forces, a constipated judicial system, obscene private wealth and shameful and unnecessary public poverty. At the time of his re-election, which was characterised by a dismal turnout, Blair acknowledged these ills and humbly admitted that he was on notice to put them right. So when you catch the noble throb in his voice as he leads us reluctantly to war, and your heart lifts to his undoubted flourishes of rhetoric, it's worth remembering that he may also be warning you, sotto voce, that his mission to mankind is so important that you will have to wait another year for your urgent medical operation and a lot longer before you can ride in a safe and punctual train. I am not sure that this is the stuff of electoral victory three years from now. Watching Blair, and listening to him, I can't resist the impression that he is in a bit of a dream, walking his own dangerous plank. Did I say war? Has either Blair or Bush, I wonder, ever seen a child blown to bits, or witnessed the effect of a single cluster bomb dropped on an unprotected refugee camp? It isn't necessarily a qualification for generalship to have seen such dreadful things, and I don't wish either of them the experience. But it scares me all the same when I watch uncut political faces shining with the light of combat and hear preppy political voices steeling my heart for battle. And please, Mr Bush - on my knees, Mr Blair - keep God out of this. To imagine God fights wars is to credit Him with the worst follies of mankind. God, if we know anything about Him, which I don't profess to, prefers effective food drops, dedicated medical teams, comfort and good tents for the homeless and bereaved, and, without strings, a decent acceptance of our past sins and a readiness to put them right. He prefers us less greedy, less arrogant, less evangelical, and less dismissive of life's losers. It's not a new world order, not yet, and it's not God's war. It's a horrible, necessary, humiliating police action to redress the failure of our intelligence services and our blind political stupidity in arming and exploiting Islamic fanatics to fight the Soviet invader, then abandoning them to a devastated, leaderless country. As a result, it's our miserable duty to seek out and punish a bunch of modern-medieval religious zealots who will gain mythic stature from the very death we propose to dish out to them. And when it's over, it won't be over. The shadowy armies of Bin Laden, in the emotional aftermath of his destruction, will gather numbers rather than wither away. So will the hinterland of silent sympathisers who provide them with logistical support. Cautiously, between the lines, we are being invited to believe that the conscience of the West has been reawakened to the dilemma of the poor and homeless of the earth. And possibly, out of fear, necessity and rhetoric, a new sort of political morality has indeed been born. But when the shooting dies and a seeming peace is achieved, will the United States and its allies stay at their posts or, as happened at the end of the cold war, hang up their boots and go home to their own back yards? Even if those back yards will never again be the safe havens they once were. ) David Cornwell 2001 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 08:52:10 +0200 From: M.Russell@iaea.org Subject: Editorial by Barbara Kingsolver NJC A good friend of mine sent me this piece by Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favorite authors. She expresses a lot of what I feel. I don't know what the answers are, I just know that I wish there were some peaceful way to bring ObL & Co to justice. I think one of the reasons I have been feeling so depressed is that I feel helpless to influence current policy one way or the other. Anyway, this one is especially for you, Kate - but also for all the other doves on the list - so that you will know that you are not alone and, in fact, that you share the very respectable company of Barbarba Kingsolver. Love, Marian + + + + + + + + No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak By BARBARA KINGSOLVER Barbara Kingsolver is the author of, among other books, "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Prodigal Summer." This article will appear in a forthcoming collection of essays LA Times, October 14 2001 TUCSON -- I cannot find the glory in this day. When I picked up the newspaper and saw "America Strikes Back!" blazed boastfully across it in letters I swear were 10 inches tall--shouldn't they reserve at least one type size for something like, say, nuclear war?--my heart sank. We've answered one terrorist act with another, raining death on the most war-scarred, terrified populace that ever crept to a doorway and looked out. The small plastic boxes of food we also dropped are a travesty. It is reported that these are untouched, of course--Afghanis have spent their lives learning terror of anything hurled at them from the sky. Meanwhile, the genuine food aid on which so many depended for survival has been halted by the war. We've killed whoever was too poor or crippled to flee, plus four humanitarian aid workers who coordinated the removal of land mines from the beleaguered Afghan soil. That office is now rubble, and so is my heart. I am going to have to keep pleading against this madness. I'll get scolded for it, I know. I've already been called every name in the Rush Limbaugh handbook: traitor, sinner, naive, liberal, peacenik, whiner. I'm told I am dangerous because I might get in the way of this holy project we've undertaken to keep dropping heavy objects from the sky until we've wiped out every last person who could potentially hate us. Some people are praying for my immortal soul, and some have offered to buy me a one-way ticket out of the country, to anywhere. I accept these gifts with a gratitude equal in measure to the spirit of generosity in which they were offered. People threaten vaguely, "She wouldn't feel this way if her child had died in the war!" (I feel this way precisely because I can imagine that horror.) More subtle adversaries simply say I am ridiculous, a dreamer who takes a child's view of the world, imagining it can be made better than it is. The more sophisticated approach, they suggest, is to accept that we are all on a jolly road trip down the maw of catastrophe, so shut up and drive. I fight that, I fight it as if I'm drowning. When I get to feeling I am an army of one standing out on the plain waving my ridiculous little flag of hope, I call up a friend or two. We remind ourselves in plain English that the last time we got to elect somebody, the majority of us, by a straight popular-vote count, did not ask for the guy who is currently telling us we will win this war and not be "misunderestimated." We aren't standing apart from the crowd, we are the crowd. There are millions of us, surely, who know how to look life in the eye, however awful things get, and still try to love it back. It is not naive to propose alternatives to war. We could be the kindest nation on Earth, inside and out. I look at the bigger picture and see that many nations with fewer resources than ours have found solutions to problems that seem to baffle us. I'd like an end to corporate welfare so we could put that money into ending homelessness, as many other nations have done before us. I would like a humane health-care system organized along the lines of Canada's. I'd like the efficient public-transit system of Paris in my city, thank you. I'd like us to consume energy at the modest level that Europeans do, and then go them one better. I'd like a government that subsidizes renewable energy sources instead of forcefully patrolling the globe to protect oil gluttony. Because, make no mistake, oil gluttony is what got us into this holy war, and it's a deep tar pit. I would like us to sign the Kyoto agreement today, and reduce our fossil-fuel emissions with legislation that will ease us into safer, less gluttonous, sensibly reorganized lives. If this were the face we showed the world, and the model we helped bring about elsewhere, I expect we could get along with a military budget the size of Iceland's. How can I take anything but a child's view of a war in which men are acting like children? What they're serving is not justice, it's simply vengeance. Adults bring about justice using the laws of common agreement. Uncivilized criminals are still held accountable through civilized institutions; we abolished stoning long ago. The World Court and the entire Muslim world stand ready to judge Osama bin Laden and his accessories. If we were to put a few billion dollars into food, health care and education instead of bombs, you can bet we'd win over enough friends to find out where he's hiding. And I'd like to point out, since no one else has, the Taliban is an alleged accessory, not the perpetrator--a legal point quickly cast aside in the rush to find a sovereign target to bomb. The word "intelligence" keeps cropping up, but I feel like I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming at each other, "He started it!" and throwing rocks that keep taking out another eye, another tooth. I keep looking around for somebody's mother to come on the scene saying, "Boys! Boys! Who started it cannot possibly be the issue here. People are getting hurt." I am somebody's mother, so I will say that now: The issue is, people are getting hurt. We need to take a moment's time out to review the monstrous waste of an endless cycle of retaliation. The biggest weapons don't win this one, guys. When there are people on Earth willing to give up their lives in hatred and use our own domestic airplanes as bombs, it's clear that we can't out-technologize them. You can't beat cancer by killing every cell in the body--or you could, I guess, but the point would be lost. This is a war of who can hate the most. There is no limit to that escalation. It will only end when we have the guts to say it really doesn't matter who started it, and begin to try and understand, then alter the forces that generate hatred. We have always been at war, though the citizens of the U.S. were mostly insulated from what that really felt like until Sept. 11. Then, suddenly, we began to say, "The world has changed. This is something new." If there really is something new under the sun in the way of war, some alternative to the way people have always died when heavy objects are dropped on them from above, then please, in the name of heaven, I would like to see it. I would like to see it, now. ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2001 #490 ***************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe ------- Siquomb, isn't she?