July 28, 2004

we're all here chewing our tongues off waiting for the fever to break

* The great, great game? Chess ends ugly.

"An argument over a game of chess ended with a fight in which one player rammed the other's head through a plate-glass window, St. Tammany Parish authorities said.

"Robert Talley, 34, was booked with second-degree battery and later released on bond, Sheriff's department spokesman James Hartman said.

"Robert Henderson, 42, emerged from the broken window with several serious lacerations, deputies said. He was released after treatment at Northshore Regional Medical Center, Hartman said.

"The fight occurred about 1 a.m. Sunday at Talley's house, which is about five miles from Henderson's."

* From an article by Howard Zinn titled: Stories Hollywood Never Tells, from the current issue of the sun.

"Wars are more complicated than the simple good-versus-evil scenario presented to us in our history books and our culture. Wars are not simply conflicts of one people against another; wars always involve class differences within each side, and a victory is very often not shared by everybody, but only among a few. The people who fight the wars are not the people who benefit from the wars."
...
"The American political system and the revered and celebrated Constitution of the United States do not grant any economic rights to the American people. We very often forget that the Constitution gives political rights but not economic rights. If you are not wealthy, then your political rights are limited, even though they are guaranteed on paper in the Constitution. The freedom of speech is granted there, but how much free speech you have depends on how much money and what access to resources you have. The Declaration of Independence talks about the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But how can you have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness if you don't have food, housing, healthcare?
...
"If such films are made -- about war, about class conflict, about the history of governmental lies, about broken treaties and official violence -- if those stories reach the public, we might just produce a new generation. As a teacher, I'm not interested in just reproducing class after class of graduates who will get out, become successful, and take their obedient places in the slots that society has prepared for them. What we must do -- whether we teach or write or make films -- is educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: To Change the World."

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