But are we happy down here? Hell, no! Now the news is all about how with the Super Bowl being so close (one week away) to Mardi Gras, New Orleans might become an obvious target for the terrorism which grips America in a sheath of fear right now.

Sea of Dreams

He tells us, in a wonderful speech, a speech we shall long remember, that all is well with our homeland and our people and that justice will prevail. He assures us that the "evil" perpetrators of this attack on our nation will be brought in "dead or alive."

I wake up out of this dream in a cold sweat.

I am not in Germany, I am in America. It was not the Reichstag, but the Pentagon. I can't stop sweating.

But I'm not awake. I'm on the streets. Everywhere I look are large emblazoned symbols of the state. They are in every window, on automobile antennaes, buses, street cars, people are wearing the symbol of the state on their clothing. I'm not in Nazi Germany, I have to remind myself, I'm in America.

I wake up out of the dream in a cold sweat.

I remember that if Germany had not been defeated in WW II, we would never have learned *who* actually set that Reichstag fire.

I remember that the first major act of terrorism and death on American soil was accused on the Muslims, at first, but the evidence showed that it was actually White Supremacists.

I wonder about the anthrax scare, especially after I am sent this article from the Village Voice. I had been thinking to myself that this whole knee-jerk patriotism and xenophobia feeds into the hands of the White Supremacists, but I dared not bring it up for fear that even more people would accuse me of being "unpatriotic." But it's clear to me that the climate right now is perfect for somebody bent on turning the country into a fascist police state. The script was written in Germany in the 1930s.

John Ashcroft *is* Attorney General, after all. The same John Ashcroft who publically praised a racist publication while he sat in the Senate. But we forget that now that America has been attacked, right? It's now unpatriotic to question ANYTHING about our leadership. My friend, Ric, down in Texas, has told me as much. (Like everyone else, he has determined that the Muslims are either childlike idiots who don't know love and need to be coddled by us as part of "the white man's burden," or they are the very embodiment of evil to whom the only rejoinder is murder.)

At one point he really said that we should lock all these Arabs up so that we can teach them how to think more like us (concentration camps!) AND he thought that was a benign solution. But this was not in the dream. I'm awake now. I've known this man all my life and all of I could think to respond was: "Thank you for your opinion on this issue, Herr Eichmann." I only wished that I was still dreaming.

But perhaps I am still dreaming. I feel that way when people send me weird stuff,

THE DIFFERENCE

I bring this up to point out the difference between both the Mouthpiece Media and Bush/Blair empire-building apparatchiks (Think: Rice, Powell, Cook, et alia.) I saw no need to muzzle these writers, though I "own the printing press" because I had no fear of their counter arguments -- unlike the aforementioned. If my own position is so weak that I need to forcibly silence any view in the leastwise contrary, the logic goes, then perhaps I should rethink that position.

But I believe the argument for peace, for ending the brutalization of the weakest, speaks for itself. No matter how eloquently or how many rationalizations are piled one atop the other, the argument for death and destruction will not stand. As Gandhi said: "Every tyrant has lost. Every single one."

I get a sort of spiritual reinforcement when I re-visit my old haunts like Al Ahram, where cooler heads like Dr. Edward Said weigh in with a perspective I can respect, despite the propaganda.

Your World's Magazine is based on this truth and we shall not retreat one inch from standing for peace and compassion.

That said, I highly recommend CAMERON KAMRAN's wonderful foreign policy piece in G21 ASIA to you. He says that the United States needs to re-think its relationship to Iran. I think his analysis is timely.

I could go on with recommendations, but I'll just say this: this edition is a keeper. Print it out and take it on your commute. You'll be glad you did.

INSIDE THE GLASS HOUSE

The luck thing seems to be floating around me. Like lightning, craggy and jagged, it strikes in a bright yellow streak inches away from me. I smile and wonder why the gods and goddesses are doing this to their child.

I would like to laugh, though. I would like to laugh and dance.

And even my friends are silent on the issue. They are exhausted with me. They wag their heads as I continue being still crazy ("...after all these years.)

Like Nelly Furtado's song on our cover, I don't know where my home in. I remain a spirit of the air, like a bird or a butterfly. I do know where my flower is, thousands of miles away in Eastern Europe. But I don't know how I'll be able to take flight again and get back.

My friends Dragan and Dragana are planting gingko trees, which will live for hundreds of years in a grove in the hills and mountains of Serbia. God willing, my children will see them. Perhaps they will also see me resting, nestled in a quiet hillside, covered with foliage, green and fecund, and finally having said my last words.

And there will be butterflies there.

Keep me in your prayers, as I shall keep you in my own.

THINGS I DREAM ABOUT THIS WEEK

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. The new home of the magazine. But he plans to return to Serbia next year.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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