The psychologist Carl Jung explains in his autobiography that at times in our lives we are "haunted by the voices of our ancestors." Whether we recognize and heed those voices, or stay haunted by them, is a large factor in the happiness and success of our lives and fulfillment of our destinies.

Your newspaper is a descendent of a newspaper called the Drummer. That paper and the community that it served were not merely opposed to the war in Vietnam, their entire identities were defined by their active opposition to that war.

We are once again on the battlefields of that war. On one side of the conflict are Americans who believe that their country is fundamentally good and just, who believe that its government should be run with only the concern for what is best for the majority, a government that meets the nations of the world with that same desire. On the other side are people whose livelihood is the sale of weaponry and oil, and hypocritical politicians who will send people overseas to kill and be killed, though they themselves have never seen active military service.

Over one and a half million people marched against the coming war with Iraq last weekend, over 300,000 in the United States. The lack of coverage by the press of this country was shocking.

Listen to the voices of your ancestors. There are at least a half-dozen antiwar organizations in Philadelphia. Their leadership is articulate, and not averse to being interviewed. There are many future events planned, locally and nationally, and they need coverage and promotion. Coverage means more than occasional editorial commentary. Coverage means involvement, commitment of page space and resources.

I understand that there is as much chance of this happening as of William Penn climbing down off City Hall. I just thought I would write to remind you of what your paper once was, and where it should be standing now.

The Bush administration seems focused on going to war with Saddam Hussein. We have no guarantees this will accomplish peace; there will be others to take his place. Do we have any idea what this means in terms of involvements? Will this make us friends in the Mideast?

Will we be resorting to the very kinds of weapons we have "forbidden" others to use? What will be unleashed? Will whole countries and neighbors become Hiroshimas? Will the U.S. be one of those? Our actions could unleash massive terrorism by many other groups desperately fearful of U.S. domination. Our impatience could be the beginning of a gradual worldwide destabilization. We are all in some way inextricably interconnected. Will an invasion make us safer?

We need to be asking questions we've been ignoring: What are the sources of hate against us, and how could those sources be reduced? How can we increase the supply of goodwill, ultimately the most stable and plentiful source of security? If all you have is guns, then everything you see is a target. Our task is to leave no doubt that we care as much about the survival and well-being of others as our own. And we don't even need to be generous to do this. The truth is, our own survival is at stake.

I have to smile when I think about what the late, great Groucho would probably say about the (unelected) village idiot in the White House.

Around the time of Watergate, Groucho said of Tricky Dick Nixon, "I knew that son of a bitch was a crook 20 years ago!" Call it a hunch, but I think that he would be less than impressed with The Smirking Chimp (DUMBya).

The first thing that needs to be realized is how impoverished North Korea is as a result of their spending on the military, for sure, but more importantly from 49 years of economic sanctions (what the Bush administration has been calling for recently is a complete military blockade, which is an act of war according to U.N. conventions) and flooding that continued for years during the '90s, causing famine and starvation. North Korea is poor in natural resources. If North Korea sells arms to other countries, it is because arms are simply all they have to trade.

As far as their military spending versus the food crisis, one must understand that North Korea has always felt threatened by the U.S. military and, from their perspective, they are simply doing what they feel they must to deter U.S. invasion (i.e. Vietnam). After the Soviet collapse, it was revealed that during the '70s and '80s, the U.S. had stationed at least 150 nuclear warheads in South Korea. North Korea's nuclear program developed partly as a reaction to the U.S. foreign policy of using their own nuclear warheads as a coercive strategy.

The other motive in developing nuclear power was to be self-sufficient. This is precisely the background of the Agreed Framework of 1994. In exchange for the halting of the processes that could be converted into weapons-grade plutonium production, the U.S. and its allies would provide two light water nuclear reactors from which North Korea could generate energy but not plutonium. And from here begins the problem. North Korea did comply and shut down their processes (according to the U.S. officials at the time) but the U.S., not North Korea, continuously missed the deadlines within the Framework. And it became known that the U.S. had been secretly drafting a war plan, now declassified, that called for a complete annihilation of North Korea. So the North Korean regime probably does not deserve the blame it gets for trying to sustain its military power. The only reason North Korea is spared the destruction visited upon Bosnia and Kosovo is due to their test-firing a long-range missile over Japan in 1998 as a last desperate act to show the U.S. that they will not be taken down easily.

In short, through the mass media and the network news, we are trained to think that the U.S. always only responds to crises but is rarely, if ever, responsible for initiating them. This has been one of the most effective pieces of misinformation shaping U.S. public opinion. Such misinformation must be challenged and corrected at every turn if we are all to make a good judgment about the world affairs.

Class Act

Daryl Gale's story "Tough Enough," about Ozzie Wright and West Philadelphia High School, was really interesting. [Jan. 30, 2003] As Wright mentioned, too often all we learn about our city's public schools are what is wrong with them.

As someone going into secondary education, I am shocked to learn that even teachers declare many of the city's young people as "unteachable" or "animals." It is as though they cannot see that these same students are the ones that need tremendously concerted effort from teachers and administrators, as they often have little other stability or attention in their lives.

The article also highlights the feelings of those working at West who see a softer side to these students who are so often generalized as being collectively horrible. They see that these young Philadelphians want a safe, clean and proud place in which to learn.

It is time to expose the good occurring in our city's schools, not merely the bad. City students should not be treated as aliens, foreign from the "angels" learning in suburban classrooms. While some children continue to lack good home settings in far too many instances in our city, they deserve the best efforts from the school system. With people like Wright out there and others doing their damnedest to see that that happens, we should all feel a bit more proud of the Philadelphia schools.

Trucked Up

It is about time Pennsylvania reviewed the classifications for motor vehicle registration. My lovely, green state is being overrun by cars in general and, in what many of us think is even further abuse, by SUVs. I was shocked to see the new truck/car Subaru with a truck license plate on it, considering the Ford Expedition has a car plate! SUVs start with truck chassis -- the federal government says they are truck chassis -- so why does Pennsylvania choose to let them pretend to be cars?

I drive West River Drive every morning and I am amazed at the nasty habits many SUV drivers have. All of them seem to be speeding. This road is a recreational road and it is treated like the Autobahn, with SUV owners consistently speeding and driving over the double-yellow line, only to be sitting at the impending traffic light next to me. So let's do Pennsylvania a service and change the classification for SUVs from car to truck. I know SUVs are here to stay, but let's make the people who want to drive them pay for what they are driving.

Correction

In last week's review of olive: Hip-Hop Dance Theatre's performance at DanceBoom!, the performers were misidentified. Olive's piece featured Raphael Xavier and Richard Carmelo Soto (a.k.a. Abtrak), not, as reported, Xavier and olive co-founder Jamie Merwin. City Paper regrets the error.