Author: Slingshot Collective

After 2 decades of research, the US Department of Energy (DOE) is applying for a permit to build the world’s first high level nuclear waste dump. The proposed dump, at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles NW of Las Vegas, is more controversial than ever; even the US government’s General Accounting Office opined that the site research is flimsy. The rush to start building is not motivated by public safety, but by corporate greed. The waste is fine, for the time being, in its current locations at reactors across the country. But with a pro-nuclear president in office, the nuclear industry is leaping at the first hint of an opportunity to build more reactors. And nobody is going to invest in new plants until there’s some place to put the waste that’s piling up at currently operating reactors.

Unfortunately, as progress on Yucca Mountain is delayed, the rapacious nuclear industry is privately hunting for other temporary waste storage options. A consortium of companies is trying to contract with the Skull Valley Goshute Tribe to store waste on their reservation in Utah. Yucca Mountain itself is Western Shoshone land that the government is trying to buy out from under them. Forget the bungled Yucca Mountain project: power plants and the communities and industries that use their power need to deal with their waste locally and boot out the insidious cop-out called the national sacrifice zone.

There are several major flaws with the Yucca Mountain project:

1. Repository safety over the 10,000 year time period that the waste remains dangerous: Using our reasonably well-developed knowledge of geology, we (humanity) can predict how parts of the earth will act over the next 10,000 year period. In terms of geologic time, 10,000 year is not very long.

However, add radioactive waste to the puzzle, and the job of predicting what will happen becomes extremely complex. The whole earth is sitting around us for geologists and chemists to study, extrapolating the future based on the present and the past. But there are no high-level nuclear dumps presently in existence to help researchers forecast how the darned thing will stand up to the test of time. Scientists use computer models to stretch the results of short-term radioactive waste experiments into the realms of geologic time. Of course, we won’t be around to see if the models were right or not. The research is a gray matter of prediction, statistics, of “reasonable” degrees of safety, like when “safe sex” became “safer sex”.

But there are major critiques of the research process the Department of Energy (DOE) is using to determine the “reasonable safety” of a dump at Yucca Mountain. Respected researchers not directly affiliated with the government suggest that the DOE relies too heavily on one complex computer model, instead of using a number of smaller, more focused models. Results between the large model, secondary models, and lab and field experiments do not match up well enough, and scientists think the main model’s data set is too small.

The DOE is attempting a super-human task, and failing- both because the task is beyond humanity’s current abilities, and because their motivations are in the wrong place. According to scientists who have worked on the project, research was done slowly and thoroughly during the first few years of the project. But in the early 1990’s, the DOE, haunted by their 1998 deadline (long past), began to rush. A thorough understanding of how radioactive waste would interact with the mountain’s geology was too complicated a goal, they decided ñ so in order to meet (friendly) pressure put on by the nuclear industry, they changed the project focus. Their contractors would build a dump that relied not on the mountain itself to keep the waste contained, but societies exist on the scale of thousands of years, not tens of thousands. Everything decays. Because we’re confident in our knowledge of geology, it is reasonable that

Timing

Congress may kill the Yucca Mountain project within a few weeks, if Nevada Senator Harry Reid has his way. Earlier this spring President Bush formally recommended Yucca Mountain as the site for the dump. (Why he felt comfortable with this questionable recommendation will be explored later.) Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn vetoed Bush’s recommendation, as allowed by 1982 waste disposal legislation. Congress has 90 days to override the veto by a simple majority, which the House quickly did. The Senate vote must happen before late July. As of press time, Sen. Reid didn’t have quite enough votes together to save the Nevada veto – but with lobby money pouring in from all sides, the balance may be tipped.

If the senate overrules the veto, the DOE then has 90 days to submit a construction license to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has up to 4 years to okay the license before construction can begin.

The task is insurmountable

Whenever science and regulatory issues intersect, there’s high potential for scientific propaganda. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said his recommendation to President Bush in favor of the site was based on “sound science.” Science that sounded good to whom? Not to three inertia-bound Washington regulatory agencies, including the General Accounting Office, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (responsible for licensing the repository), and an “independent” federal reviewer of nuclear waste disposal, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, all three of which expressed substantial concerns. Scientists not directly affiliated with the government echoed the doubt.

After 20 years and $4 million worth of research, serious questions still remain about Yucca Mountain’s ability to isolate nuclear waste over a 10,000 year period. Of course – and the trick is that we can never know whether a dump does in fact meet up to it’s expected ability to contain the waste. We will put the waste in the dump, keep it open for maybe 300 years to perform tests, and then seal it up. We have no prior experience with dump performance. We have to rely on our knowledge of geologic processes and computer models to predict the outcome. But scientists don’t think that the DOE’s main model relies on a large enough data set, and there are disagreements between other models and laboratory experiment results.

A main source of conflict is the information about movement of water through the mountain. Knowledge about water flow is crucial to predicting dump safety because water is the main way radioactive particles would move away from the dump. Estimates of water movement have varied significantly over the years, and no consensus has been reached. After thinking that flow rates were slow, particles of chlorine-36, an isotope produced by nuclear weapon tests, were found within the mountain, suggesting that water does actually move fairly quickly through the area. This issue still has not been resolved.

After encountering so many difficulties predicting the geology and the natural environment of the mountain over the next 10,000 years, the DOE decided to shift their focus towards engineered solutions to keeping the waste dry. The waste containers would be placed under titanium umbrellas to keep the water out. But the same problem still exists- the DOE is glossing over the necessary experiments to predict how the “drip shields” would corrode! Also missing are solid conclusions on how the waste containers themselves will stand up to the test of time.

Another major knowledge gap centers around volcanic activity and faults in the area. Finally, the DOE has not even resolved a major design factor – whether dump should be “hot” or “cold”, depending on how far apart the containers of heat-generating waste are placed from each other.

The nuclear lobby

With such serious holes in the research, why is the DOE pretending it is ready to apply for a license? Predictably, the whole process surrounding the Yucca Mountain dump has been primarily political. The
primary motivation behind the dump is the nuclear industry’s desire to build more nuclear plants. Bush and Cheney have the first pro-nuclear energy policy in years (?), but more importantly, if Yucca Mountain is struck down, there is no fall-back option. Utilities will have to indefinately store their waste at the plants, in storage pools filled with water and, as these fill up, in concrete and steel casks. Both methods are safe- but don’t allow for much expansion of nuclear power.

Congress initially authorized investigation of three potential high-level waste dump sites, including Yucca Mountain, a site in west Texas, and a site near the Hanford nuclear reservation in southwestern Washington. In 1987, Congress eliminated all but Yucca Mountain. Both the Texas and Washington sites were within the boundaries of major aquifers, and studying three sites would have been extremely expensive… but most importantly, the decision was strongly affected by the presence of powerful congress members in both states.

Now, in anticipation of the Senate vote, the nuclear industry is lining senators’ pockets. According to Public Citizen, a contribution watch group, only 7 current senators have received no money from nuclear industry Political Action Committees (PACs). In 2002 alone, senators and a few leading senate candidates have taken $1.3 million from nuke PACs. And of the 20 top recipients of nuke PAC money, 8 sit on the Senate Energy Committee and 6 on the Environment and Public Works Committee, both key committees dealing with nuclear power.

Money talks. So the state of Nevada is entering the conversation with a $5.5 million advertising campaign that has already placed ads in Washington and in selected states with important senators, including Vermont, home of Senate Environment Committee Jim Jeffords (I). The players are quickly coming out of the closet: the Las Vegas gaming industry, with a history of quietly lobbying against the dump, is now publicly pouring money into this advertising fund, and boosting its own PAC contributions. Don’t overlook the direct beneficiaries of all this government chicanery, the advertising industry, lobbyists, and paid consultants.

Another slick scenario fell on its face when it surfaced that the law firm hired by the DOE to prepare the Yucca Mountain license application (a $16.5 million contract), had two major conflicts of interest: the firm, Chicago’s Winston and Strawn, was also representing a Yucca Mountain contractor, TRW Environmental Safety Systems, Inc, and the main industry lobby group, the Nuclear Energy Institute. The DOE is expected to hire another firm that has actually represented a number of utilities in suits against the DOE. Does this make sense?

Logic MIA

Where’s the logic behind the Yucca Mountain dump? And, by extension, behind nuclear power, the root of the problem? The problem of predicting dump behavior for the next 10,000 years is fantastically interesting but can’t stand up to the realities of current scientific knowledge – especially when the investigation is biased by the political clout of the nuclear industry.

But if Yucca Mountain somehow evades the industry’s grasp, the fist will fall elsewhere in an attempt to relieve the utilities of their waste burden. A consortium of 8 private utilities is negotiating with the Skull Valley Goshute tribe to build a temporary storage facility on their reservation. Surrounded by a chemical weapon test facility, a nerve agent factory, a polluting coal power plant, and a low-level radioactive waste dump , the Skull Valley reservation is surrounded by the epitome of a national sacrifice zone. The tribe website states they can make money no other way and so are negotiating to store the waste. This waste, too dangerous for the communities in which it is produced, can acceptably be stored on native peoples’ land?

No! The waste can be safely stored where it is, at the power plants that used it to generate power, in the local where the power was consumed. If the local community is anti-nuclear, if it says it did not ask for the plant in the first place- well fine, but the community used the power, and the waste can be stored safely. Nuclear plants need to entomb themselves, not endlessly generate waste to lay on far-away people already on the US’s shitlist.

Capitalism and a healthy environment cannot coexist together because of the economic theory behind capitalism and it is consistent need for new frontiers of exploitation.

Environmental damage has reached alarming proportions. Almost daily there are new upwardly revised estimates of the severity of global warming, ozone destruction, topsoil loss, oxygen depletion from the clearing of rainforests, acid rain, dioxins in our body, pesticides residues in our food and water, the accelerating extinction rate of natural species, and so on. Or, as Kirkpatrick Sales puts it, “the planet is on the road to and perhaps on the verge of global ecocide”.

So how have we reached this point of almost ecological disaster? Many anarchists view the ecological crisis as rooted in the psychology of domination that emerged with the rise of patriarchy. Over time as these institutions took form and social domination became commonplace, these ideals were carried over into humanity’s role with Nature. The patriarchal belief system places higher value on linear, mechanistic, analytical, and rational qualities. Under patriarchy the intuitive, emotional, anarchic, and earthy are negatively perceived as passive, weak and irrational within patriarchy. Within the realms of this definition, nature became increasingly regarded as a mere resource, an object exploited and ruthlessly enslaved.

Capitalism is the vehicle through which this psychology of domination finds its most ecologically destructive outlet. Capitalism causes the wasteful use of energy and material far beyond that needed for everyday living at a comfortable level. When one adds up all the raw materials and energy that go into the goods and services consumed over a lifetime, the toll on the environment is staggering. When this cost is multiplied out over the lifespan of families, cities and countries, the proportions are incredible.

An example of wasted natural resources are the 200 Billion cans, bottles, plastic cartons and paper cups, are thrown away each year in the “developed” world. Corporate production focuses on “disposable” items rather than on quality or reliability, products are made for a one-time use because it ensures greater profits.

Many eco-anarchists give the highest priority to dismantling capitalism. Bookchin states that capitalism “in its endless devouring of nature will reduce the entire biosphere to the fragile simplicity of our desert and arctic biomes. We will be reversing the process of organic evolution, which has differentiated flora and fauna into increasingly complex forms and relationships, thereby creating a simpler and less stable world of life. The consequences of this appalling regression are predictable enough in the long run — the biosphere will become so fragile that it will eventually collapse from the standpoint human survival needs and remove the organic preconditions for human life.”

Capitalism must be eliminated because it cannot reform itself to become “environmentally friendly”, despite what many green individuals believe. One might more easily persuade a green plant to desist from photosynthesis than to ask the bourgeois economy to desist from capital accumulation.

Industrial production has increased fifty fold since 1950. Since capitalist corporations must continuously grow and expand, it can only mean disastrous consequences in a finite environment. Therefore, it is not practical to look for a solution to the ecological dilemma within the workings of capitalism, because “grow or die” is inherent in its nature.

What is the principle of grow or die?

Capitalism is based on production for profit. In order to stay profitable, a firm must be able to produce goods and services cheaply enough to compete with other firms in the same industry. If one firm increases its productivity (as all firms must try to do), it will be able to produce more cheaply, thus undercutting its competition and gaining more market share, until eventually it forces less lucrative firms into bankruptcy. Moreover, as companies with higher productivity/profitability expand, they often realize economies of scale (e.g. getting bulk rates on larger quantities of raw materials), thus giving them even more of a competitive advantage over less productive/profitable enterprises. Hence, constantly increasing productivity is essential for capitalist survival.

There are two ways to increase productivity, either by increasing the exploitation of workers (e.g. longer hours and/or more intense work for the same amount of pay) or by introducing new technologies that reduce the amount of labor necessary to produce the same product or service. Due to the struggle of workers to prevent increases in the level of their exploitation, new technologies are the main way that productivity is increased under capitalism (though of course capitalists are always looking for ways to increase the exploitation of workers on a given technology by other means as well).

But new technologies are expensive, which means that in order to pay for continuous upgrades, a firm must continually sell more of what it produces, and so must keep expanding its capital (machinery, floor space, workers, etc.). Indeed, to stay in the same place under capitalism is to tempt crisis – thus a firm must always strive for more profits and thus must always expand and invest. In other words, in order to survive, a firm must constantly expand and upgrade its capital and production levels so it can sell enough to keep expanding and upgrading its capital — i.e. “grow or die,” or “production for the sake of production.”

Thus, it is impossible in principle for capitalism to solve the ecological crisis, because “grow or die” is inherent in its nature.

As long as capitalism exists, it will necessarily continue its “endless devouring of nature,” until it removes the “organic preconditions for human life.” We do not have to wait until after the revolution to save the earth. Saving the earth is the revolution.

Good Books to Read:

Morris, Brian. Ecology and Anarchism: , Images Publishing (Malvern) Ltd, Malvern Wells, 1996.

Bookchin, Murray, Toward an Ecological Society, Black Rose, Montreal, 1980.

The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, 1982.

Which Way for the Ecology Movement? AK Press, Edinburgh/San Francisco, 1994.

The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Black Rose Books, Montreal/New York, 1990.

In a further attempt to answer the question “what will the anarchist society look like”, a group of anarchist model railroad enthusiasts in Berkeley propose to construct a HO scale trainset that would model a potential future society. The Rail Against the Machine Collective is seeking suggestions from the anarchist community at large as to the composition of the model world. They’re also looking for folks in the East Bay area with modeling skills who are interested in working on the trainset in a Berkeley basement space. The set would be run on solar electricity, provided the anarchist modelers decide a future society would even need trains.

“We haven’t decided yet to model a primitivist future or a syndicalist one,” said collective member Casey Jones. “If the trainset is primitivist, there wouldn’t be trains, or even houses. We would just model hills and creeks with lots of trees and wildlife and perhaps a few scantily clad humans. If the trainset is syndicalist, all the railroads would be run by the One Big Union. Would they run on time? Who knows? We do know that the train stations would have to be extra large to accommodate a lot of meetings.

Dinah Wonchablo, another trainset-ista, imagined a trainset with minimal passenger service run by model solar panels. There would be no roads or cars, but tiny bike paths would connect co-housing settlements built in circles around shared backyard spaces. Each settlement would have a tool lending library, cooperative childcare, un-schools, herbal health clinics and farming plots. “And since we want to model the future Northern California region, each settlement would have a shared hottub, clothing optional!” exclaimed Dinah.

Send in your ideas for the anarchist trainset design bys ending a drawing, urban design plan, or short essay. The best entry will win 4 2003 Slingshot Organizers. Please send your ideas to:

Wacky Slingshot Contest – Trainset

3124 Shattuck Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization

Edited by Eddie Yuen, George Katiaficas and Daniel Burton Rose – Soft Skull Press

The Battle of Seattle is a collection of articles, written by a myriad of authors concerning the WTO protests in 1999. However, these pieces are not devoted exclusively to Seattle and the WTO. The articles cover the recent presidential conventions, thoughts about globalization and capitalism, police brutality against protesters, NGOs and their roles, protests in others places worldwide and much more. The majority of the articles are relatively short, meaning that one can read one or two in a sitting if they do not have the attention span nor time to plunge into large amounts of this book all at once.

The book looks at the protests in Seattle and other protests worldwide under the auspices of leftist ideals. However, even with the leftist viewpoint, within it there are a wide array of opinions towards capitalism and globalization and how best to approach and confront it. This diversity of opinions on the subject makes the book interesting and keeps your attention, good thing because this book is over three hundred pages and anything too one-sided could leave the reader frustrated and uninterested. The Battle of Seattle is only one of the numerous books on the Seattle protests recently making it to the shelves, but like many of these books, it will surely help generate new followers to the anti-capitalist movement and with that, hopefully some new ideas as well.

Seattle animal rights activist Jon Batchelor is free after 94 days in the Fairfax Co, VA jail! His felony charges from actions at an animal rights demonstration, carrying a possible sentence of 10 years, were dropped. He was found guilty on a misdemeanor charge of assault and fined $2,700, bringing his total expenses to $14,000. He still needs our support paying off the bullshit.

During the demo, he ‘unarrested’ a woman from a suspected undercover cop. The cops apparently got his name from undercovers at the demonstration, and he was arrested on the warrant months later in Seattle, WA. His trial was fraught with state repression: a metal detector was set up, somebody reported seeing a sniper on an adjacent building, and a van of supporters was harassed by police.

Send contributions to: Jon Batchelor, 5208 Heather Dr, Anacortes, WA 98221. JONfromNOWon@yahoo.com

When I tell people I hate cell phones, they generally respond with wide eyes, asking me why. With passion, they describe the ways cell phones have made their lives so much better. “They are so convenient.” “I’m never at home, this way people can reach me.” “I have it in case of an emergency.” I have heard them all. My first response is maybe you should spend some more time at home, or appreciate the time when you can’t be reached as your time uninterrupted. Or if it’s only for emergencies, why are you always on it? I personally cherish the times I cannot be reached as time just for me. I think about the supposed convenience, which is payed for by giving up some of the best things humans have going for us, not to mention the exploitation of resources, poor folks and animals.

Col-tan (columbite tantalite) is a mineral essential for the manufacture of cell phones. Companies in the US pay from $100 – $200,000 a ton for it, depending on the market. Col-tan is plentiful in the Congo in Africa, where it is a major source of potential income for the local population. Different factions involved in a long-running war in the Congo fight to control mines so they can use col-tan profits to buy weapons. Thus, the U.S. demand for col-tan fans the flames of a conflict that has been plaguing the Congo. Impoverished and hungry Congolese miners, removed from their homes and usual food sources to work in the mines, have been slaughtering and eating elephants and gorillas who happen to live around the mines. It’s the same story of the US exploiting a poor country that has the natural resources we want, to make us faster, bigger, stronger and more hungry for natural resources. The above summary is a very simplified version of the complexities of the Congo, but the truth is that people and animals are dying and land is being destroyed in order for people in the United States to have convenience. It is about speed and accessibility and profit, and to hell with the rest.

But cell phones aren’t just problematic socially and environmentally — they’re degrading our very nature, our culture and our communities. Cell phones don’t always work. People become dependent on a believed sense of security. Many people seem to believe that nothing bad can really happen if they have this little device, but it ain’t so. Cell phones do likely get people out of a jam here and there, but we have to remember that babies were born and people found the house they were trying to visit, or got help when the car broke down, before this invention. Somehow we made it through without them. Cell phones may get some people out of a difficult spot, but so have good sense or the kindness of another person.

Who will be better off if we lose those things in ourselves? Cell phones only serve to separate us (humans) more. How small would your world be if you never met any strangers? What if you didn’t have to ask for directions on the street or at a corner market. Who might have you missed out on meeting? If we lose our ability to be creative solution finders, what happens when the cell phone goes kerplooey. What happens to our sense of security and autonomy if it’s all based on a piece of technology, and the hope that it will work? And what happens if the damn thing breaks and there aren’t any pay phones left?

Having to figure out “how am I going to hook up with this person,” actually stretches the mind. You used to have to think about it, invent a plan that would make your paths cross if you weren’t at home. Now people don’t prepare as much, and assume more. There is an expectation of immediacy, as if we have the right to reach any person whenever we want.

And whatever happened to talking to the person you are with? I can’t even count the times I’ve observed one person sitting next to their companion, as their companion talks on the phone completely ignoring them. People don’t talk to the person they stand in line with, instead they exhibit potentially schizophrenic tendencies, looking like they are talking to themselves until you see the petroleum/col-tan appendage stuck to their heads. I even witnessed an outrageously obnoxious man telling his phone companion how awful and stupid the service was right in front of the poor clerk making minimum wage ringing him up. My friend who just returned from a lovely hot springs visit told me about the person who sat in the hot spring in the wilderness talking on the blasted thing. Arrogant! Obnoxious! Is consideration out the door with creativity and adventure and good sense? We are in trouble!

The phone companies are in on the scam too. Has anyone noticed pay phones disappearing, or the price now at 50 cents. (You notice if you don’t have a cell phone!) I know that people of all classes have cell phones, but there are those who can’t afford them (besides those of us who just choose not to). What do we do? I’ve heard tale of walking block after block in search of a pay phone, to no avail

This appears to be another front in the war against the poor. The best reason I can think of to have a cell phone is if you do not have a home. Cell phones could be a great boon to the grueling homeless life of travel from line to line, trying to reach people when you can’t be reached, trying to find a job . . . But if you are homeless or poor and you don’t have a cell phone (maybe your credit wasn’t good enough) then how do you take care of business at 50 cents a pop? At least there are still some drop in centers with phones to help.

Clearly demand for pay phones has dropped. There are 600,000 fewer pay phones now than there were in 1998, and the US government believes there are over five and a half million households that have no regular telephone at all. Ouch, I see both of these figures getting worse.

You may notice that I haven’t listed car accidents and brain cancer in my tirade. The research I did showed that neither risk is proven, although one study did say that mice couldn’t find their way out of a tank of water onto a ladder when they were surrounded by cell phone frequencies. I don’t need those reasons to hate cell phones, but they could make it on someone’s list.

Let me recap here what we are potentially giving up for this so called convenience: good sense, kindness, adventure, problem solving skills, connection, Congolese, gorillas, elephants, the ability to have solitude, real security as opposed to imagined.

And this may be the clincher: I read an article that says there has been a drastic decrease in ghost sightings over the last 15 years, where there had been a fairly constant number for the last several hundred years. This decrease is associated with the increase in electromagnetic activity of our technological utopia. So after all of this, are we going to give up our connection to the dead as well? I don’t see how any of it is worth the convenience.

Sometimes I go too far with this cell phone thing. I’ve thrown people out of my house and my room for using them. As a high school teacher, I threaten to destroy them on a daily basis when I see them in my classroom. But I am serious when I say that cell phones are leading us down a path from which we may not recover. It’s the same path that so many other “scientific breakthroughs” have put us on — in a really personal and daily way, cell phones are undermining community. We’re engaging in selective breeding — several generations in the future, people will be less spontaneous, have a harder time making decisions, and have less common sense. Or maybe we’ll just get cell phones implanted into our heads along with the computer chips that contain all our medical information.

Late July, 2002

Adventure * mystery * excitement * chaos * the death of boredom * total vacation * no one would ever expect it at all. 50,000 kids in one place – but what are we supposed to do? really, now? play games? shake our booties to today’s funkiest dance grooves? build robots? fight monsters? work voodoo on our enemies? race shopping carts? dig through the garbage for treasure? dig in the sand for china? dress up like silly lunatics and have normal folk stare at us? walk up to them, hellbent on making them be lunatics with us, or at least making them feel like boring assholes? make obstacle courses, mazes and funhouses? cut out stencils to beautify the city’s walls and sidewalks? go trick-or-treating? fly kites? ride bikes? rock and roll? beat the innards out of pinatas? climb trees? slip and slide on wet, soapy sheets of plastic? juggle? explore the obscure corners of our environment? cook food? eat food? poop? pound, pluck and probe musical instruments, even constructing rhythm and harmony if you’re lucky enough? strap on armor and beat your friends with padded swords? pretend you’re brad pitt and kick the shit out of your friends sans wimpy armor? roll around in the hay with a love interest? hang your pretty drawrings on walls for people to look at? build catapults and other such weapons of mass destruction… i mean, innocent, fun toys? parade? watch movies made by crazy punk rockers and wierdos? fall in love? learn something useful or amusing or both or neither? generally live life like it mattered? oh yeah? that’s nuts! yes! Yes!! YES!!! fucking seattle, late july 2002. be there or die of boredom, for surely. THE KIDS are going to do something. they’re gonna have fun. but what is fun? it’s what we’re not supposed to have, it’s treating the city like it was ours, our own world of dance parties and war games, art shows on public walls and theater in the streets, rap videos come to life and mythical beasts rampaging through a city that should not be there. all it takes is some creativity, some energy, some not givin a fuck, and a shove to get the ball rolling. tell everyone you know. tell the kids you know who like fucking with people, tell the kids who aren’t afraid of anything, tell the kids who wouldn’t in a million years so much as dream of being boring, tell kids in bands, kids who make stencils, kids who’re always telling you about a crazy idea they have, kids who will dance all night long and then walk all the way home telling you stories, kids with the fucking spirit of pippi longstocking & abbie hoffman. and send this shit around. haha! love you. chef jeffrey moominmonster footclan@ziplip.com nihil@bikerider.com

The New and Improved Bush Drug War Now that George W. Bush and the Crypto Nazi Right have their non-congressionally declared “War on Terrorism) in high gear, it is time to reflect thoughtfully on yet another of these republican presidents’ declared wars: the war on drugs, declared 30 years ago by Tricky Dick Nixon. The fact that according to the trashed US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, only Congress can declare war, has been usurped and rendered meaningless, the US constitution destroyed in order to safe it, as the Republican mantra goes. When do these republican presidents’ declared wars end?

Since George W. Bush is also leading the Nixon-called War on Drugs, after the on-going 30 years of war, it is time to take account of the real purpose of the real purpose of these republican presidents’ undeclared wars-excluding bush’s much alleged drug use in his younger years. The illegal drug business lies at the heart of a great paradox. The narcotics cartels are by far the most successful enterprises in the international market.

Mexico’s cartels alone yield an estimated $30 billion to $50 billion a year in hard currency from the U.S., dwarfing earnings from the export of oil and automotive assembly parts. This is one of the few major businesses whose ownership and management is almost completely Hispanic, and CIA blessed, and the cartels owe their home-grown success to the United States and Republican Presidents. In the first place, because the US provides and enormous and inexhaustible market for their pharmaceutical products. The sub rosa purpose of republican presidents’ declared “drug wars” is to protect criminal cartels.

Were narcotics legalized, tobacco and liquor companies, the legal purveyors of addictive chemicals, would rush in with lower prices and world-wide marketing and distribution, and the cartels would be out of business almost overnight. George W. Bush is the best friend illegal drug cartels have.

The sober truth is that the economics and economies of Mexico and Columbia would go into convulsions without the infusion of narcodollars, which are as important to them as petrodollars are to the Arabs. Both countries – and others too – are addicted to narcodollars. The unpleasant truth is that the addiction is reciprocal. Just as Mexico and Columbia are hooked on narcodollars, the US is hooked on narcotics. Both are signs of the failure of community and republican presidents’ protection racket, a free service to drug cartels, aided and abetted by the CIA.

Surreptitiously protected by Bush and the CIS, under the false flag of a war on drugs, Mexico and Columbia have long been engaging in a form of internal market consolidation. Occasionally the two governments – and America- nab a kingpin, portraying the move as a great coup on the war on drugs, while clearing the way for better connected traffickers to take over their markets.

Freed from excessive competition, the cartels become more profitable. That boosts the economy as a whole, as narcodollars reap multiplier effects in banking and tourism, priming the economic pump.

All of which brings greater tax revenue to the government. First, because laundered drug profits make their way into the formal economy, where they are taxed like any other income. Second, because the cartels that win the bidding war pay a substantial hidden tax to the government in bribes and payoffs that supplement the salaries of officials, including the police and the military.

Countries that want no part of this flim-flam sham drug war game – such as Cuba and Venezuela – knowing it is a protection racket for drug cartels, not so mysteriously find themselves the subject of destabilizing acts from the US/CIA/pimps/proxies/puppets, and at the top of the bush administrations doo-doo list.

Sometimes you must turn a product upside down to read the label. If you turn the war on drugs upside down, you can readily see what’s going on, and the exact same is true of other republican presidents’ declared wars: such as the war on terrorism, war on crime, ad nauseum. It’s a pattern. A modus operandi. Based on part of Abe Lincoln’s dictum: you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time. Robert J. Zani No. 328938 Michael Unit PO Box 4500 Tennessee Colony, TX 75886