home ||| current issue ||| past stories
about The Prism ||| volunteers ||| other sites

---

Dear Kropotkin,
What do you make of Newt Gingrich's plan to rid the US of drug abuse by 2001?
Boozer Myself, Raleigh

Dear Booze,
In a recent speech to the National Religious Broadcasters, the Speaker did indeed announce this ambitious goal. But Kropotkin has plans of his own. Kropotkin's goal is to rid the nation of all mean-spirited sonsofbitches by the year 2001. Stay tuned to learn whether Kropotkin or Gingrich has the greater success.

Gingrich announced his intention to inform drug dealers that "if you sell it, we're going to kill you" and went on to tell the DJs for Jesus that we must "reassert the centrality of faith in the definition of America." Duh, ever heard of the 6th commandment, Newt? (That's "thou shalt not kill" for you heathens out there.)

Finally, Gingrich announced an initiative to privatize efforts to prevent teenage single girls from having children. What's next, chastity belts at K-mart? Surely, with leadership like Newt's, America is on the path to greatness again.

Dear Kropotkin,
I can't believe that State Senator Ellie Kinnaird has called for the decriminalization of sodomy!
Religious Broadcaster, Raleigh

Dear Jock,
Kropotkin looks out his office window at the lush May woods. Deer copulate. Bees pollinate furiously. Foxes are busy in their holes. Birds of the air build their nests. But the son of man cannot legally get any head. The existing North Carolina law is the true crime against nature and the Senator has done well to seek its overturn.

Dear Kropotkin,
What was Tupac Shakur doing taking hostages in Peru? I'd heard he was murdered.
Confused, Chapel Hill

Dear And-how!,
The reader is, of course, confusing the late-lamented rap star with Peru's now notorious guerilla force the Tupac Amaru. The latter, taking a page from Eddie Hatcher's book, recently failed in its effort to use a hostage crisis to bring to an end two decades of armed crisis and negotiate an agreement for democratizing Peruvian society.

As a result, Peru, perhaps the most repressive nation in the Western Hemisphere, got its fifteen minutes in the media spotlight as pundits competed to defame the guerrillas and praise the Fujimori government.

In Peru, where brute military force is the rule, the overcoming of the guerillas was really no surprise. The chilling, and generally unreported, aspect of the story is the fact that Fujimori's success, like his government in general, was underwritten by Japanese money and US technology. Although in the US, few tears have been shed for the 14 members of Tupac Amaru who went down during a friendly ball game, soccer moms and dads alike should make known their outrage at the US' coddling of Fujimori's wretched regime.

(Send your questions to Ask Kropotkin, PO Box 16025, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516)

("Kropotkin" refuses to reveal whether he is inspired by Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist prince, or by Kropotkin the Village Idiot, a character in the Woody Allen film "Love & Death," or if it makes any difference.)