Newtopia | Issue #5 - November 2002

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/26/2009 - 09:53

ISSUE 5 - NOVEMBER 2002

	THE PHARM SYSTEM by Charles Shaw Is this the Democratic process in action? Totalitarian states are characterized by the complete regulation of personal morality. This is something the US has in common with it's alleged enemies in the Islamic world. Our allies in Europe don't treat their citizens like this. Our approach absolutely baffles them. Our backwards-thinking FDA, our draconian and racist drug enforcement practices, our withholding of medicine from sick patients both in our country and in third world nations who beg us for help. We actually go to court to prevent third world nations from producing their own drugs to treat their overwhelming AIDS epidemics, because we want them to buy them from us at astronomical costs they could never afford.
	DISCONNECTED by Phil Hall The quietness from the American public on a broad range of issues has been deafening. There is no mass demand for accountability regarding the intelligence lapses that resulted in the September 11 attacks, nor is there a demand for accountability on the failure to apprehend Osama bin Laden or cripple the al-Quaeda network.
	EXPOSING YOUR MEAT by Cary Harrison What would you say if the USDA-formerly calling it "food irradiation"-just backed the cheap disposal of the military nuclear waste, Cesium-137 and cobalt-60, by diffusing it into your grocery store meat because it happens to kill Lysteria monocytogenes and e-coli bacteria? Because the four deregulated meat companies, controlling 80% of the meat market, refuse to adequately rinse slaughterhouse animal feces from both factory-farmed cows and chickens, the American public now risks serious cancers from food exposed to nuclear waste.
	A RESPONSE TO STUPID WHITE MEN by Andrew Stephens The central thrust of the book is concerned with the coup that Bush mounted in stealing the election from Al Gore, the rightful victor. The facts and statistics make for shocking reading, though I suspect Newtopia readers will be well versed in their application so I won't discuss them beyond the fact that the whole thing stinks."
	PARTY Y by Cousin Sam Voter apathy cannot be blamed on the young. There's simply no one out there for them to vote for. No one their own age who represents their own values and talks to them in their own language. Nobody to get excited about."
	FAT MAMA COCAINE by Catherine O'Sullivan Periodically, I'm forced to try to put things into some sort of reasonable perspective, sometimes for myself, sometimes for my kids, particularly when they ask me about drugs. I don't like lying, to anyone about anything but there's a difference between lying and putting things in context.
	MY JEW-BU VIEW ON TERROR AND OTHER ISMS by Tova Gabrielle Thich Nat Han, the Viet Nam monk and Buddhist teacher, was once asked how he could refrain from hating the U.S. after our military killed his entire family. Apparently, he'd replied that he couldn't hate us because it was clear to him that someone had to have driven these youth crazy, for them to have carried out such horrific acts. The monk relocated to the very country that destroyed his own, and "got even" by teaching peace here.
	WRITERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! by Colin Todhunter In the world we live in, a prevailing belief is that if something does not sell then it is no good. Or, in other words, if there is no profit in it, then it is useless. If something cannot be reduced to a saleable commodity in the marketplace then there is little room for it. This is the error of the age. In the writing game, according to most editorial policies, your writing is not "good" enough if it cannot justify itself in terms of quantifiable sales or increased readership. Webzines have changed the rules.
	TRIM PARTY by Mr. Greg The house reeked of spicy, hill grown herb. You know, the type with fatty buds grown out in the full sun for well over six months. Plants that yield at least half a pound each if they eluded raids by rippers and CAMP. Thing was, you could smell the house from over 400 feet away. At least the herb in the house. Unless, of course, it was the Geezer cooking; then you could smell it cause he'd surely be burning whatever meal he was attempting to prepare.
	HUMOR AND SATIRE by Catherine O'Sullivan K-14308 whined. Couldn't he please have a human. His best friend K-12603 had one and he'd taught it to do calculus, and trigonometry. They were terribly clever and, if you went about it the right way, trainable. K-14310 was unconvinced. He fancied himself a liberal, but his strong Servo-Mechanistic upbringing was loaded with prejudices against human beings. They were dumb, dirty, and worst of all inefficient.

	A VISION OF NEWTOPIA by Charles Shaw Editor-in-Chief Charles Shaw tries to make sense of a senseless world and provide a blueprint for tomorrow. 10. The Dysfunctional Marriage of Politics and Pop Culture 11. AC/DC and The Five Freedoms
	BENT by Kim Nichols The current state of affairs in sex, relationships, and sexuality from a global, political and cultural perspective. All things cold, detached, multi-partnered and hedonistic.
	TAPWATER by Greg Everett Newtopia associate editor Greg Everett's unfiltered column. It's a little dirty and doesn't always taste too good, but it's real and it keeps you alive. 5. Unheard Voices 6. Suburban White Kid Rebellion
	DIARY OF A MADMOM by Catherine O'Sullivan Newtopia's resident mother hen chimes in on Motherhood and its role in the New World Order. 5. Mad Mom's Mad 6. People Killing People
	LETTERS FROM THE UK by Cameron Carter A monthly musing from our boys across the pond at CODE UNCUT MAGAZINE
	PAVEMENT by Asterix A rampant nosedive into the road flanked by media and politics.

	FOUR CORNER SHAKEDOWN by Kim Nichols and Matthew Wascovich Digging / All the towns / Look like rags / Asleep in disaster / Dynamite / Shake the ankles / Power the punches / To pull back / As if constantly / Looking for reason / To blast the shackles
	POEMS FROM JERUSALEM by Henry Carse So now, awake, you let tears slice you thin / You pare yourself against the barricades / Polishing your skin against a line of boys with guns / And so you become, through your days in Deir Istiya / As translucent and luminous as mother of pearl: / Honed and unbreakable, a woman between the lines.
	FATHER STEPPED ON A NAIL by Jesse Glass somewhere someone played / Handel's Water Music from an open window... / pulled his workshoe from the garbage pit...examined / his foot....pulled his workshoe up...saw his foot...saw the wide / fields fall away to nothing...had a vision of the distant city...short, ugly / section of 2 x 4...red...split at one end...lined with a pencil...

	LEAVING SAINT JEAN DE ROYAN by RD Kushner I have walked through puddles of urban detritus and stacks of limestone glacial till with eyes perched so far from my body that my sight was like a blindness. Like a lover, this land has taken hold of me and as a love lost it makes no apologies to me as it sits there, stone cold, not offering one word of condolence to the pain in my heart; a pain brought on by the pending divorce of my departure.
	ONE CHILD POLICY by Tom Bradley Sam wobbled and dawdled behind Polly, the woman who had married him in good faith. He was looking for somebody selling one of the less objectionable brands of sino-chocolate to cut the pain of dawn mass at the underground church. Of course, he knew the stuff would be melted and remelted into unrecognizable boluses of wax and fat. And, in any case, no vendors were open yet. But the reluctance to worship, combined with the craving to indulge, made him go slowly, anyway.
	THE GAME by Sally McLeod Eight years they had lived in the apartment, caged in the sky above Ninth Avenue. It had been too small when they moved in, cracking sour jokes and vowing to stay for one year. By now the walls seemed coated to Pat, moist with their accumulated exhalations. Sometimes she felt the food she produced in the box-like kitchen was unclean. Today as she stirred her cake batter near the open window she was worried about contamination from outside. The menacing light in the airshaft was teeming, molecules of grime danced on the updrafts and drifted in towards the bowl. Pat stopped beating for a minute and pictured the cake sitting in her sister's kitchen with a spotlight of sunshine picking out its delicate dusting of fuzz.
	NEWBOOK REVIEW: IT'S A FREE COUNTRY by Charles Shaw Mere days from a national election of tremendous significance, our Nation perched firmly on the precipice of chicken-hawk militarism and old school Imperialism (brought to you this week by The Freemasons."cause lineage matters" ), we all seem to understand that the US acting as an aggressor nation, preemptively changing regimes at will to establish an Empire, is sheer lunacy, and will only result in our inevitable demise, as all empires fall.
	PRIMEVAL EMBEDDED IN TIME AND SPACE by Lionel Rolfe I have thought long and hard about what in particular united all the disparate elements of California bohemianism. It shows in California literature, and in Los Angeles literature as well as San Francisco literature. What shows is the "pristine innocence of bohemia," later jaded by the apocalyptical strain in writing which Huxley and Mann introduced to the Southland. The decay and innocence - that is the true L.A.

	SECRETARY by Dr. Jane Alexander Stewart Don't underestimate the submissive one, the one who serves and cares for another. The Secretary dramatizes the healing power of the one who gives in, choosing to yield quietly to even the most absurd demands of one who would be dominant--and then glides past the deadly monster of despair, indifference and alienation to a fresh beginning.
	NOVEMBER MOVIE QUIZ by Dr. Jane Alexander Stewart Big Screen - Moonlight Mile, Children of the Century, Bowling for Columbine. Video - Unforgiven