Volume 7, #20 June 4, 2003 POLITICS WITH BITE! CONTACT HELP previous BACK ISSUES next
A FORUM FOR ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN POLITICAL OPINION, RESEARCH AND HUMOR

Backtalk



ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Desperately Seeking Site

Hello Eat the State!

I have been a loyal reader ever since I discovered your site about half a year ago. All of the writing is fantastic and I so much appreciate there being honest media compared to what you see flashed in our faces at a constant rate just about everywhere.

Around the same time I found your site I discovered another. It was somewhat of a pay site but it had all these internal documents of large companies such as AOL and Time Warner. It was called internaldocuments.com or something like that. I've searched endlessly, so now I turn to you., do you happen to know this site or anyone who could probably point me in the right direction? This was such a great site. I was hoping you could help me out.

Thanks,

Conor, via e-mail at DoyleReacts@aol.com.

Ed. reply: Readers?

Police State Chronicles

ETS!,

Tonight at 12:45 AM I witnessed two police men drag a man out of City Market Grocery on Capitol Hill. "I was jaywalking", he said as he walked by in custody. "Was he stealing?" I asked the clerk. "No, Jaywalking."

"Yeah," said the other clerk, "The city needs money so they're arresting people for jaywalking."

The man was not given a ticket or a warning, he was being taken away in handcuffs.

I can't imagine that it's cost efficient keep police on the payroll to arrest people for looking both ways before crossing the street, and then crossing, rather than waiting for a light to tell them there are no cars coming-ever! Especially not during the middle of the night. Surely they have better things to do.

Anonymous, via e-mail

Depleted Uranium

ETS!,

Anybody who knows anybody who's in the military -- make it your job to make sure that they know everything there is to know about D.U., depleted uranium. Also make sure that any young person considering joining up for a job, education, travel, etc. knows about D.U.

Almost everyone will know someone who knows someone who knows someone...and we have to get the word out. The government surely won't.

And by the time they've finished their tour of duty, the Bushites may have succeeded in cutting veterans' medical benefits. Let them know this, too.

Among all the "heartwarming" pictures of returning troops greeting their much-missed loved ones with hugs and kisses -- what was missing from that picture? The gays and lesbians serving in the military, embracing their smae- sex partners-- that's what. Because of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- they can't.

This administration really knows how to "support our troops"!

Barbara Tomlinson, Seattle

G.P. comments: Look next issue (I hope) for an extensive issue on both depleted and un-depleted uranium; munitions used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and, more recently, Iraq have apparently tended to use pure rather than depleted uranium. And preliminary clinic data from Afghanistan -- necessarily spotty -- suggests the health effects upon Afghan civilians in war zones are far more devastating even than the effects were from D.U. upon Iraqis after 1991. US soldiers are affected, too, of course -- but they, at least, have access to money and Western medicine, and they had a choice about being in a war zone in the first place.

All in all, it's a terrifying issue, and one that desperately needs more attention.

Land of the Free

Dear Eat the State!,

Do unto others what you would have others do unto you.

How can you call this liberation? If a recent article in the Observer is telling the truth, I find it truly appalling that we can do such things. Would we want our enemies to treat our pow's in this fashion?

The article is at www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,963176,00.html.

Never in the history of past wars has any combatant done that to enemy prisoners. I'm truly ashamed that our so-called civilized country can torture prisoners in this fashion hooded, bound and gagged. The poor creatures must get so disoriented, not knowing where they are, what day it is, what time it is, what month it is, what year it is, or what planet they are on, or whether they are here or in the hereafter, which may have been the intention of whoever devised this unusual and cruel treatment. The only countries in the world that are doing it, are (a) US against the Afghan Arabs and the Iraqis, and (b) Israel against the Palestinians.

Whatever happened to humane behavior?

Sincerely,

Maxwell Scherwyn, Renton

John, We Forwarded This to Your Boss

ETS!,

I don't like Madonna's music, don't listen to the Dixie Chicks and have never heard or seen Dannie Glover or Tim Robbins, and I think we did the right thing in getting rid of Saddam Hussein. However, when I hear that the Bush Administration and/or the Republican Party has threatened the livelihood of these people by contacting their employers or people with whom they have contracts by implying that dire consequences will accrue for supporting people who speak up against the government, I sense something very wrong. In fact this is frightening.

I fought for our country's freedom in Korea. We may not like what other people say but THEY HAVE A CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED RIGHT TO SAY WHATEVER THEY WISH.

What if I say something that is not approved by our government? They do not have the right to contact my employer and threaten them with a loss of government contracts unless they fire me.

I thought that one of the reasons that Saddam was so evil was because he denied the Iraqis free speech. What happened to our right of free speech (including that of Madonna, the Dixie Chicks, Tim Robbins, etc.)?

John T. Vickers, Jr., Lafayette LA



subscribe / donate / tiny print / guidelines for writers / help / index

© 2003 Eat the State! All rights reserved.