Hammer Mill Days

Good morning, sunshine. Stop that blinking - just rub the sleep right out of your eyes and get back to work, you shiftless mo-fo. If you want me, I'll be... in the top bunk... just up the stairs... zzzzzzz... Yes, exchanges like that take place regularly here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where your friends in the Big Green collective are now warehousing themselves. When we're not discussing anarcho-syndicalist theory, we're making onion dip using sour cream and that cheap-shelf powdered soup mix. (You know, the kind with the crispy onion bits... mmmm, boy!) Then there are the 6-hour meditation sessions over a ceremonial plate of Ramen noodles. (The one who doesn't fall asleep gets to eat the noodles. If you stay awake two sessions in a row, you can even boil them before you eat 'em.) So don't think we're an undisciplined gang of louts over here - we know how to keep the rabble amongst us in line, yessir. (It's sorting out the rabble from the wo...

Another landmark: this week a House committee approved a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide of nearly a century ago - a grisly chapter in Turkish history when perhaps 1.5 million Armenians were put to death. To speak of it in Turkey now is enough to get you in trouble with the law, much as it is problematic for Turkish Kurds to converse in their native tongue or make culturally significant apparel choices. (Irony alert: back in 1915, the Turks employed Kurds to do some of the killing of Armenians.) The Bush administration and many G.O.P. congressmen have raised the alarm that such a declaration at this time will threaten the safety of our troops in Iraq... not that safety appears to be anything like a central concern, since they were the ones who sent them over there in the first place. Still, they suggest (with uncharacteristic accuracy) that the Turks will be pissed off about this resolution and that it may result in interrupted supply lines via Iraq's all-important nor...