peter eichenberger

In a past life, I was a subcontractor in the corporate audio-visual business. The gig was a lot like being the kid in school who ran the projectors, although whereas the kid who ran the projector possessed an aura of stardom, my tasks were performed under a mantle of anonymous commodity. The cut of my […]

The two big back-to-back shows in downtown over the weekend were inescapable in the contrast in how systems respond. In the case of Saturday’s Operation Capital Guardian, a conjoined effort by the State Highway Patrol, Capitol Police and Raleigh police (originally to be a terrorism drill complete with a smoke bomb, building evacuations and so […]

“The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to […]

From a news item in the Mail Tribune in Jackson County, Ore., Oct. 16: Police ordered about 300 people to clear a section of California Street in front of the Jacksonville Inn, where President and first lady Laura Bush were dining after holding a rally at the Jackson County Expo. Two protesters were arrested and […]

I am lying in a bed. I can feel her hip upon which my left hand rests lightly. The room is warm and faintly lit, gentle breeze–a home smell. Then a percussive sheeeeiiiiip–a blast of air–and the room is gone, evaporated by a six-engine Union Pacific freight hissing and rumbling north toward Portland. The woman’s […]

“The first casualty of war is the truth” is more than a cliche in the United States; historically, it is almost national policy. Time and time again, the United States government has resorted to invented and heavily modified tales concocted to gain widespread public support for mass movements, many of the sort that the average […]

It was that certain skirl of sheared air rising barely above the muscular roar that might have made a person drowsing in the furnace-like heat twitch and wake from a nap. Over the years there have been all manner of gas bags, spooky black bombers, riots and tanks in the streets, missiles on rail cars […]

G-8 “demonstration” Escape from Raleigh– to the Security State The distant black (and silver) chopper clattering in big, lazy circles under low, iron-colored clouds twanged a note–a specific effect. Like the shadow of a hawk passing over a sparrow, I stopped in my tracks and watched. This was no newschopper, this was the Highway Patrol’s […]