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Compare This!

ETS!,

I protest the "compare and contrast" approach that the male-dominated left has constructed SOLELY when it comes to women's issues. I would like to calclulate HOW MUCH time the left has spent defending and trivializing the "just penis" scandal. How much ink has the Nation spilt on it? Tikkun devotes an entire issue to "Sexual McCarthyism." Column after column written by leftists and liberals were devoted to trivializing the charges of "consentual" sex, We see now how much they really cared that it was consensual with the Broadderick charge. The reasoning was it was "just one woman," read, "just a woman," read, "just women," read "just what I like to do to women" or (in the case of women) "just women who are not at all like me and I don't want to think about it too hard anyway"--whether the "scandal" involved consent was superfulous to most everyone. Just an easy word to throw around.

If the leftists and liberals had devoted the ink and energy they spent writing and talking about the "scandal" instead to the children dying, well how much further along would we be in having ended the injustice?

And tell me, why isn't the question framed that way? Ie Why is it a silly waste of time to go after a president for sexual assault and exploitation, but it is not a silly waste of time to obsess endlessly on how wrong and trivial it is to go after a politician for "just sex." The latter is a silly waste of time. Let's start talking about it that way.

It is far more important that Iraqi children are dying. The sheer numbers of people dying because of sanctions is more important than housing, than individuals being murdered in hate crimes, than welfare cuts, than affirmative action, than mass transit, than the individual rapes, assaults and exploitations committed by the President. But why do we only get a "compare and contrast" to the last one? I hear it all the time. And then the audience roars with applause. By this reasoning, we should also start to say how "trivial" it is to talk about James Byrd and Mumia because it in no way compares to the dreadful U.S. foreign policy. (And that is in fact what the left did when it came to Nicole Brown Simpson's murder--they obsessed on and on about how comparatively "trival" it was--comparatively--that word. And feminists by and large let leftists get away with it, and many eventually joined in).

We are making a big mistake to go along with this. If these issues are trivial, all issues are trivial. Period. We might as well just throw in the towel becuase nothing, repeat NOTHING, matters.

--Adriene Sere, Seattle

Channel Your Anger

Dear Editor;

My story "AIDS, Loans, and Africa" (ETS! 1/13/99) put forward a different view of AIDS in Africa than is found in the mainstream media. I knew it would be controversial, because when I told friends and patients about what I learned in Africa, they found it difficult to believe that we are being so profoundly misled by the "leaders" of this country. I knew ETS! would be interested in an alternative point of view. Thank you for printing the article.

The recent letter by Mr. Bishop (ETS! 2/24/99) regarding the article had an angry tone to it. In my medical practice, I find many patients who have been directly affected by AIDS. The effect is either due to the death of many close friends or by the stigma associated with the condition in our society. The results which follow from this trauma include being very angry, or depressed and despondent. Both are a normal result of grief, although anger is the earlier, healthier of the responses. Even people not directly affected by AIDS are often angry when they learn how lives are being wasted for the sake of profits. I have found that helping people channel this anger, for instance against the establishment and their toxic therapies for AIDS, allows people a positive outlet for their anger. This is much healthier than allowing the anger to be turned inward, or having the energy dissipated by "talking it out" in therapy. By directing their anger at the powerful drug companies who are profiting by selling poisonous drugs like AZT and protease inhibitors, they are helping themselves as well as society. The drug companies are the most profitable subsidiaries of the chemical companies, and the chemical companies are the most profitable subsidiaries of the petroleum companies, thus our battle is the same whether we are environmentalists, humanists, animal rights activists, progressive physicians, etc. Let us communally put our anger to good use.

I have written a number of works on natural treatments for AIDS based on both the scientific research in peer-review journals and my own experience in practice. I would like to get this information out to the progressive community. I would also like to share my views on causes of AIDS, which are also based on both an alternative analysis of the scientific research as well as clinical experience. These will be discussed in future sumbissions to Eat the State!.

Anyone whose life is endangered by the anti-viral drugs and cannot wait for upcoming articles can reach me by email at johnruhland@hotmail.com.

Sincerely

--Dr. John Ruhland, via e-mail

He Must Be Very Lonely

Open letter to Maria, Editor, Eat the State!

Maria Tomchick's response to a letter criticizing ETS!'s position on the open question of the origin of the AIDS virus was frank, as usual, but also showed the same conformity to the Establishment "line" that the writer was addressing. Her brush off of the assassinations of all our '60's progressive leaders as "crackpot conspiracies without proof" is so completely at odds with known evidence on the issue, and with consequences of such grave enormity, both to ourselves as well as to the rest of the world, that one must question her sources if not motives. (G. Parrish as well.)

Understand, we have never had a liberal mainstream media, most especially not today. Unfortunately some in the Alternative media look to the Establishment media (N.Y. Times, Wash. Post, L.A. Times, and other known CIA assets) for much of their information and direction. If truth and reality are of any value instead of the usual Establishment propaganda, it would help to rely less on periodicals, including "The Nation" with often compromised views from Chomsky and Cockburn, and rely more on better documented books. For starters Dr. Michael Parenti, Dr. Donald Gibson, Harrison Livingstone, Jonathan Vankin, and author Jim Hougan ("Secret Agenda"). Dr. E. Martin Schotz in "History Will Not Absolve Us" examines the politics and social psychiatric dynamics of those on the "Left" who join with those on the Right in providing cover for the political entities involved in the murder of their own leaders. You could begin with a talk by Parenti on "the JFK Assassination and the Gangster Nature of the State" and go from there.

Your critic, unfortunately, was correct. As fine a publication as you put out, you need to change your descriptive by-line to "All the Establishment Neo-liberal News That's Fit To Print" or, better yet, change your attitude and better inform yourselves. It may not conform to socially chic correctness but it will be ethically correct. I've noticed that those who can't or won't get the Kennedy assassination straight usually have a corrupted agenda and cannot be relied upon to get anything else straight, since progressive politics all came unhinged from there. To quote author George O'Toole: "...one is moved to look backward and ask where we went wrong. There can be no single answer to that question: there are too many different currents in the flow of human history. But the assassination of the President Kennedy marks the point at which we took leave of the truth. Unless we find and fix this thing, we will never put ourselves right." And from Edward Livingstone: "The assassination of Kennedy was political, and that fact means that the evidence itself is politicized. The control and interpretation of that evidence therefore becomes political. Unless we understand this, we cannot ultimately understand either the evidence of the larger nature of why the assassination occurred ... Let us not forget the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the attempt to kill Governor George Wallace. These were terrible and heinous crimes from which we still have not recovered a generation later. Our whole political history was changed as a result."

If you want to represent the anti-authoritarian perspective you must first represent the integrity they don't have. That is what differentiates us from them.

Sincerely,

Richard T. Lee, Seattle

M.T. replies: Besides being completely offensive to all the activists born before Kennedy--in fact decades and centuries before Kennedy--your letter poses a humorous puzzle: on the one hand you say we're Neo-Liberal PC "Establishment" types, but on the other, you say that our publication is "fine." What gives? Maybe that's a riddle only a psychologist can unravel. (Along with the ridiculous claim that JFK was the "progressive leader" of the '60s.) Aw, just admit it: it's your personal hobby, on a par with those ancient history buffs who dress in armor and re-enact The Crusades (but without revisiting the slaughter and poverty The Crusades brought to Europe and the Middle East).

Truly, there's no shame in admitting that you're a history buff--unless it becomes an outright mania (which makes it rather sad). Think about it, Dick: the narrow focus on Kennedy, the denial of his role as President of the most powerful (and power-hungry) nation on earth, no mention of his father's efforts to buy political office for his son, and your valiant attempts to turn Kennedy into some sort of Christ-like persona. It would be funny if it wasn't such a waste of your time and effort.

By the way, I noticed that you left out the connection to the assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. And what about that guy who killed Indira Ghandi? And how is it that Castro can survive dozens of CIA-planned assassination attempts against him, but Kennedy croaked on the first try? I'm sure you'll think of a reason. Or two.

G.P. chimes in: Dick, you're a very smart guy. But there's a reason why you're banned from every radio talk show in town, and why the folks who retrieve our voice mail dread your distinctively anonymous, rambling, insulting five minute messages. Your fixation on arcana and contempt for anyone who doesn't share your fascination with it--complete with cheap psychoanalysis--virtually guarantees that nobody will take you seriously, even when you have good things to say. Learn to say them with a bit of grace and you'll get a lot farther.

And one more time, just so there's no confusion: ETS! is not interested in conspiracy theories. Plenty of other places are. Wing nuts of the world, take your obsessions there, or better yet, start your own zine, but don't bother wasting your and our time with ETS!. It's not what we do, and we've never claimed otherwise. In a world where profit equals morality and tunnel vision reigns supreme, it requires no conspiracy to get anti-social public policies. As far as Kennedy and my "corrupt agenda," it involves not living in the past and not attributing all history to the result of one event--whether it's The Nation's obsession with the Rosenbergs or yours with JFK, I don't care. Hoover himself could've shot JFK and it would not appreciably alter the evil realities we face 36 years later. We've got more than enough problems combatting and exposing the corporate police state without humoring your fantasies.

Working Geniuses

ETS!,

Your work and humor is appreciated. At the risk of appearing pedantic, your term "Working Stiffs" perpetuates the stereotype of working folk as ignorant automatons who plod along without the ability or cognizance.

Regards,

--Larry Brown, Machinists Union Representative

G.P. replies: No offense intended...I've always thought of the phrase as meaning that people had sore backs after their physical labor. Nothing bad about that, unless lack of access to a good health plan or daily backrubs is somehow disreputable.