Polled heifers

Jennifer Steele of the Conservation Law Foundation recently made a good point about Governor Bigfoot's attempt to ram the megaport down people's throats. In a poll, the Providence Business News asked, "Do you support an environmental impact statement (EIS) study for the Quonset Point container port?" The results were: Yes (79 percent), No (21 percent) and not sure (zero percent).

The PBN admits the poll is simply "a weekly survey of 70 top business leaders throughout the state, representing small and large companies in a variety of industries and businesses." So in essence, Phillipe and Jorge could conduct a poll with the same exact question, except we'd ask members of the Environment Council of Rhode Island. Playing Carnac the Magnificent for a second, we predict the results would include 100 percent of "No" answers, with the "Not Sure" category being loaded with write-ins of "Does Bigfoot have a brain?" or "Has the EDC ever told the truth?"

The problem, as Ms. Steele points out, is that the business people queried might not even understand that the proposed EIS -- a good thing when done properly and at the right time -- is far too premature, since Bigfoot hasn't submitted a concrete plan, and an economic feasibility study needs to be done first -- if you're planning on applying due diligence to the project -- which the Missing Linc and the EDC have not.

We're sure PBN didn't attempt to become water-carriers for the megaport project, but maybe they should now poll businesses to find out if an economic study would be a good idea. (P.S. Congrats to Tom Schumpert and the EDC for yet another string of personnel changes last week. Boy, Steamy Tom sure knows how to build public confidence and credibility in his agency.)

Aid this

Big talk of late from Secretary of State Adam Clayton Colon-Bowel about AIDS -- chastising European countries for not doing enough to help in fighting the disease in Africa, and calling for a more concerted effort in America. But your superior correspondents would deem it a lot more than just BS if Colon-Bowel dismissed the recent remarks by one of Dubya's new faith-based compassionate conservatives, Andrew Natsios, his appointee to head the US Agency for International Development, about our country's view of the problem in the Dark Continent, as we're sure Dubya refers to the place he's never been.

In a recent interview with the Boston Globe, exposed by Bob Herbert in the New York Times, Natsios -- a professional god-botherer and former state legislator from Massachusetts, who headed the fundamentalist group World Vision -- said the money raised by a worldwide fund to fight AIDS should be used almost entirely for prevention services, "not for antiretroviral drugs that have been so successful in extending the lives of people infected with HIV," as Herbert wrote.

Mr. Herbert also cited this exceedingly inane, insulting, and racist comment: "According to Mr. Natsios, the problems [with correctly administering the

antiretroviral drugs] extend to

the Africans themselves. Many Africans, he told the Globe, `don't know what Western time is. You have to take these (AIDS) drugs a certain number of hours each day, or they don't work. Many people in Africa have never seen a clock or a watch their entire lives. And if you say, one o'clock in the afternoon, they do not know what you are talking about. They know morning, they know noon, they know evening, they know the darkness at night.' "

While you're retrieving your jaw from the floor, let P&J tell you that this isn't the first time this argument has been publicly used by colleagues of Dubya the Dumb. Fortunately, Herbert cites a person who actually lives in the 21st century, Toby Kasper, a member of Doctors Without Borders, which is working with antiretroviral drug programs in South Africa, who indignantly pointed out, "Our patients take two pills in the morning and two pills in the evening. That's it." Another case, so reminiscent of former President Al Z. Heifer's tenure, of the Dubya administration leading with a lie.

As Senator Linc Chafee pointed out in a recent inspired and

inspiring speech at URI, the Junior Bush administration has been

traveling under false colors all along and has never been properly called out for damning exposure, such as his conduct in South Carolina during the campaign when he stopped by to fellate Bob Jones III, or after his election, when his first Cabinet choices were John Ashcroft and Gail Norton. Seeing is believing, folks. It's time to go for the little dope, provided you aren't African and don't know how to tell time, right?

War criminals

If you haven't been paying attention, you bad boys and girls -- and we know you haven't since they started running The Weakest Link, starring English dominatrix Anne Robinson, 20 times a week: Courts in France and Chile are pursuing P&J and Tricky Dick Nixon's old buddy and famed war criminal, Herr Doktor Henry Kissinger, to discuss what he knows about the rise to power and regime of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet. You may remember him -- he's the guy who succeeded Salvador Allende, after Allende committed suicide by shooting himself in the back 30 times with bullets with the CIA imprint.

A magistrate in Paris tracked Doktor K down at the Ritz Hotel and asked him to stop by to discuss the American-backed professional torturer and assassin, but the good doktor quickly hopped a flight to Italy. He also failed to RSVP to an invite from a Chilean judge who wanted to know what hand our State Department may have had in aiding and abetting Pinochet, who's now being taken to task for little misdeeds like US-condoned murder of people who dared oppose him. Should we be supporting the inter-country prosecution of people like Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic? Darn tootin'. But let's not forget that scum like Kissinger may also have their day in court, and it ain't going to be before Judge Judy.

Destiny and fairness

For a number of people who work or find themselves in the vicinity of the Financial District in downtown Providence on weekday afternoons, one of the favored lunch spots of the past couple of years has been Destiny Deli on the first floor of the Arcade. About a month ago, this deli mysteriously disappeared. Your superior correspondents, who had frequently enjoyed the Destiny's excellent food, sat down with Destiny owners Brad McKenzie and John Raphael, who tell us they feel that they've been done wrong.

Brad and John say they were evicted by Griffin Realty, the Johnson & Wales-owned corporation that operates the Arcade, for nonpayment of rent. However, after the first year of their lease was up, they say, (it was for one year with a one year option), the Arcade refused to offer them the extension, instead collecting the rent on a month-to-month basis. Then, the Arcade's management refused to accept their rent payments.

McKenzie and Raphael acknowledge having been a few months behind at one time (not an unusual circumstance for a number of the small businesses at the Arcade), but, according to John Raphael, by late winter 2001, they had managed to pay off the back rent, were finally making a profit, and had become increasingly popular with the downtown lunch crowd (P&J can attest to Destiny Deli's long lines at lunch time).

But in April, a day after Arcade manager Dave Roser refused to accept their rent payment, they were served with an eviction notice.

What is most distressing to McKenzie and Raphael is that they're Johnson & Wales culinary arts graduates, featured at one point on the cover of the school's 1997-98 "President's Report" publication with a large inside photograph boasting of their entrepreneurial prowess, suggesting that Johnson & Wales would be supportive of such enterprising graduates.

When the two initially received the eviction notice, they tried to contact Arcade and J&W personnel, but were rebuffed, they say. No one would talk to them. Then they got angry, printing flyers for distribution around the Arcade. But J&W went to court and got a temporary restraining order to prevent this.

Instead, McKenzie and Raphael decided to pass out a leaflet describing their plight at the J&W commencement ceremonies. They discussed this strategy with Mary Carmody from alumni relations who told them, if they'd reconsider and not pass out the leaflets, she'd arrange a meeting with J&W President John Yena and other university officials.

Brad and John agreed not to pass out the leaflets. When they got back in touch with the alumni office the next day, Carmody told them, they say, that she, in fact, couldn't arrange such a meeting. Once again, Brad and John felt that they had been deceived. P&J made numerous attempts to contact Dave Roser, the Arcade's property manager, but he didn't return our calls. Brad and John tell us that Johnson & Wales gave no reason for why their Destiny Deli was evicted from the Arcade. If J&W would like to explain its behavior, we'd like to hear it. Of course, so would Brad and John.

Class act

In a state notably bereft of ethical conduct among its politicians, the URI Institute for International Sport's Ethics and the Sports Media conference, from June 21 to 23, was a delightful breath of fresh air. Executive director Dan Doyle and his troops are one of the best things to ever happen to this state, and the ongoing World Scholar-Athlete Games, which the institute is now holding, is a shining example of that.

In addition to a lineup of panelists that included P&J's favorite sportswriter in America, Robert Lipsyte of the New York Times, Alexander Wolff of Sports Illustrated, and our old pal, the gay activist and soccer aficionado Dan Woog Doyle also brought in Murray Sperber, the once and future Indiana University English teacher, who was IU basketball coach and child abuser Bobby Knight's bête noire. In the tone of honesty that pervaded the symposium, Sperber opened the eyes of P&J and Urinal sportswriter Bill Reynolds, each of whom thought we knew our stuff, to the fact that for all the laudatory media pieces citing the fact that Knight was an educator as well as a coach, Bad Bobby only graduated 44 percent of his players while at IU, and only 11 percent of the black players.

Sleep tight, Texas Tech.

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