Further trips down the rabbit hole & praises for Rachel Corrie on the 2nd anniversary of her death

Drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge? Paul Wolfowitz heading the World Bank? Hunter S. Thompson dead? You call this progress? You call this Green? What paltry excuse we have for activism in this great nation of spineless conformists and consumers has been assailed by the weakly motivated. What once was a grand tradition of political unrest, from Thoreau on down to the Weather Underground, has become like everything else, mediocre and only half thought out. The ranks of protesters, like those of journalists, economists, teachers, and all these so-called professional occupations have been swelled by uneducated buffoons not ripe enough to be useful to anyone's cause and a touch too rotten to please the stomach, much less the head. Like genetically modified foods, the quality of our very consciouness is being pillaged by a stink of sameness. But when we all become too much alike, or even too specified in our "individual" fields, we lose the ability to adapt to our surroundings, especially if they were to change suddenly. Forgive this little rant. I'm attempting to get some of my more obscure political thoughts in order and felt the need to share it with this glowing no-one I talk to all the time. Thanks everybody who might eventually take the time to find this. I hope we're not too fucked to pull out of this nose dive. But even if we can't, I look forward to the future with an open heart, ready to embrace whatever changes may come my way. I can only wish you the same.

In other, more important matters, today marks the two year anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death. A courageous young political activist deliberately murdered by the Israeli military, whose case was covered up with the help of a complicit and corrupt American government and, after being highlighted by the mainstream medias for a short time was dropped and virtually forgotten by the masses. I only met Rachel a few times here in Olympia, she volunteered at our bookstore briefly right when we started up and was a bright, intelligent human being, just like those she was attempting to defend. Thank you Rachel, for giving us something else to believe in and struggle for. Thank you for uniting many of us across our myriad causes and allowing new channels of communication between Rafah and Olympia to reach some of those heights you only dreamed of. Your parents, family and friends have filed two lawsuits, one against the Israeli Government for their refusal to cooperate and produce even a statisfactory investigation of Rachel's death, and one lawsuit against the Caterpillar Corporation for knowingly selling their products for use in human rights abuses. These cases will probably never get very much media attention and will eventually live out their fruition say, six to ten years down the line in two very large sums of money settled in civil instead of crimal court (where it belongs) and the Corries will walk away with a ton of dirty money which they will clean by giving the bulk of it to good people I would imagine, people in Rafah and here in Olympia who will do their parts, however small, to further this war of ours against the machinery of capitalism, neo-liberal globalisation and injustice.