-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 148 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Corporate Media Try to Bleep Out J20 Protests --Davos, Switzerland: Angry Protests at Summit --Cameras at Super Bowl scanned faces looking for criminals --Secret Cameras Scanned Crowd at Super Bowl for Criminals --What I Learned from the World Social Forum --DOJ Offers Guidance on Electronic Evidence --President Jackass: Stupid George loses more votes --The Human Part of the Brain =================================================================== Corporate Media Try to Bleep Out J20 Protests Feb. 8, 2001 Workers World newspaper BEFORE, DURING & AFTER J20: CORPORATE MEDIA TRY TO BLEEP OUT PROTESTS By Gery Armsby Thousands of print, TV, radio and Internet media personnel were on hand for the inauguration of President George W. Bush on Jan. 20. How could this massive media presence have failed to cover the huge anti-Bush protests all over Washington and in many other U.S. cities? Didn't they see the demonstrations? Was there confusion over what the protests were about? Was it a collective but benign error of omission? Or was it a highly coordinated effort between the corporate- dominated media and the government, including multiple police agencies, to spare the new administration the embarrassment of reporting the presence of tens of thousands of angry, often militant protesters who far outnumbered Bush's supporters along the parade route? On Jan. 21, the front pages of every major newspaper published in North America were filled with pictures and words glorifying and legitimizing Bush's foul ascendancy to the White House. Yet news of the mass protests was relegated to the back pages or, presumably, the editors' wastebaskets. Cable and broadcast TV networks like CNN, MSNBC, Fox and ABC carried live coverage of the inauguration. Each repeated the same bare minimum of information about protests, dismissing them as "not causing the security problems that were expected" or "loud but well contained." This type of reporting along the parade route was a pitiful substitute for any substantive commentary about the predominance of anti-Bush protesters clearly visible on camera and audible on tape. FLURRY OF MEDIA INTEREST BEFORE PROTESTS In the days and weeks before the inauguration, reporters constantly pursued protest organizers for information about demonstration plans. Many attended pre-inaugural news conferences held by organizers from the International Action Center and other groups and lawyers from the Partnership for Civil Justice. At these well-attended news conferences, organizers explained protest plans and disseminated information about the status of protest permits and the legality of security checkpoints. Some reporters asked permission to follow organizers around for periods of time to observe them in action in the days before Jan. 20. C-SPAN aired two of the news conferences in their entirety, and then repeated them. One result of the exposure was that organizers received an enormous response from the public. Another development that may have resulted from the exposure was a media pullback several days before the protests. Stories filed for the Washington Post and ABC World News Tonight, based on reporters' extensive interviews with IAC leaders, were mysteriously put on hold. This was done at the very time that a groundswell of organizing activity was building the protests. Rather than carrying the stories that more or less presented the protesters' point of view of the Post and ABC instead presented stories that hyped up the Secret Service's ostensible notions about the inauguration coming under missile attack, the need for unprecedented high-security measures, description of security checkpoints and so on. Imani Henry, an IAC organizer who staffed the mobilzation's offices in Washington, said he thought that "this was a relentless, targeted attempt to frighten Washington's large Black and Latina/o population away from the Saturday demonstrations, much as Bush forces tried to harass Black voters away from the polls in Florida. "The story about our protest was finally aired on World News Tonight the next evening, but the scare tactic was already out there in the community from the newspapers and TV the day before." 'WE'RE NOT COVERING THE PROTESTS' On Jan. 20, C-SPAN covered one-and-a-half hours of the inaugural parade without commentary. This allowed viewers to clearly hear the thunderous cacophony of the dissenting protesters on TV and on C-SPAN's Web site. However, C-SPAN was the exception rather than the rule. During MSNBC's inaugural coverage, one commentator could be heard saying, "We're not covering the protests, you know that?" just before a commercial break. The comment was made into a live microphone when the announcer apparently thought he had gone off the air. CNN and MSNBC repeatedly claimed they were unable to show footage of the protests because demonstrators were "making gestures too obscene to broadcast." Finally, CNN managed to edit a five-minute report by correspondent Kate Snow that aired several times after 10 p.m. In a Jan. 22 story the Washington Post article admitted that "demonstrators were evident on every block of the 1.6-mile [inaugural parade] route, and on some blocks on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, they outnumbered other parade- goers." Due to the location of 12 of the 16 security checkpoints, many more people were concentrated on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue than on the south. Yet, despite limited access to the south side of the avenue, many anti-Bush protesters massed there between 12th and 14th streets, creating an overwhelming protestor majority among the crowd on both sides. Protesters observed several trucks transporting TV cameras and news photographers along the parade route speed up as they passed these blocks. That's why most TV viewers never got a clear view of the crowds at Freedom Plaza. In the days since the installation of the Bush administration, much has been written about Bush's every move during the inauguration. The New York Times has published barely over 500 words about the protests. A political feature story about TV coverage of the inauguration in the Jan. 21 edition noted: "You didn't have to be a cynic to see reality creeping in, with comments on the rancorous post-election recount and the divided Congress, and eventually with visible evidence of furious protesters along the parade route. The anchors' inability to stay inside their illusory bubble sent a strong message to viewers: the country is living on a split screen." The New York Times article reduced the protests to a mere symptom of divisions between Democrats and Republicans. INDEPENDENT MEDIA PICK UP THE BANNER Where can someone go to find out what really happened during the Jan. 20 counter-inaugural protest? How can one get a sense of its significance? Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (fair.org), a national media watchdog group, issued an action alert urging a campaign to tell the New York Times to provide better coverage of the protests. The alert sharply criticized several recent Times articles that called the inauguration a "vision of unity" and made no mention of angry protests. The Independent Media Center (indymedia.org) has been a repository of reportage, pictures, sound and video clips from many demonstrations since Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization in November-December 1999. That Web site features excerpts of live radio broadcast on Jan. 20, including a recording of organizer Larry Holmes speaking to a fired-up crowd barricaded by police just north of Freedom Plaza in the early hours of the protests: "They don't want anybody who's got a sign that says 'Bush: free Mumia!' or 'Bush equals President Death' or ... a big, black, beautiful sign that just says 'NO!' "They want us to be invisible. That's the real reason behind all this security." At this Web site, Jan Schmidt from the Arctic Avengers tells an Indymedia reporter why she came all the way from California to protest the "Bush-Cheney-Norton oil-industry dream team that wants to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." There is also a short interview with Njeri Shakur of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, live coverage from the scene at Navy Memorial Plaza where cops tried to beat up several protesters, and excerpts from the 'shadow inauguration' rally at the Supreme Court. Also, many of the organizations that sponsored demonstrations have regular meetings and maintain mailing lists and E-mail lists, which are useful sources of first- hand information. Other independent working-class news is available from Workers World newspaper (workers.org) and Peoples Video Network (peoplesvideo.org). These media have helped rescue the Jan. 20 demonstration from the big-media whiteout. At a Jan. 23 meeting of IAC volunteers in New York, a brief PVN video of the Freedom Plaza protest was screened. These independent media are vital to the growing movement. Aside from the lack of objective coverage of progressive causes by the major media, there is another factor to keep in mind. Brian Becker of the IAC pointed out, "The same corporations that own the media fear the rebirth of a mass movement for social justice." =================================================================== Davos, Switzerland: Angry Protests at Summit Feb. 8, 2001 Workers World newspaper DAVOS, SWITZERLAND: CLASS STRUGGLE COMES TO THE MOUNTAIN TOP By Leslie Feinberg The determined and developing anti-capitalist movement that first emerged at the Battle of Seattle in 1999 appears irrepressible. Recent protests in and around Davos, Switzerland, prove it. The world's leading tycoons, corporate executives and political leaders hoped this year's World Economic Forum would avoid protests like those that rocked the event last year. Davos--the highest city in Europe--is a tactical nightmare for protesters. One single road leads to the posh, picturesque ski resort perched atop the Swiss Alps. Police cut off access to it with a roadblock. All incoming vehicles were inspected. Immigration officials at Switzerland's borders and airports were armed with a list of activists to be barred from entering the country. Police officials announced that 104 from that list had been refused entry; another 14 were deported after they were inside Switzerland. Police and soldiers reportedly roamed through trains headed toward Davos. They stopped, searched and detained people wearing jeans, a young woman with dreadlocks and males with long hair. Pamphlets, megaphones and computers were reportedly confiscated, mug shots snapped. Authorities in Davos and nearby cantons halted all train service on Jan. 27, the day of the slated protest. Early on Jan. 26, Swiss cops had used big steel gates to block the roads near the Davos Dorf railway station. Swiss authorities denied permits for any Davos demonstrations. On Jan. 26 four members of Friends of the Earth International dressed as tycoons were arrested and whisked away merely for handing out anti-globalization leaflets in town. Some 3,000 police and army troops were deployed at an estimated cost of $5.5 million. Cops were armed with riot gear and shields. Water cannons and helicopters sat readied. Police prepared to spray tons of liquid cow manure mixed with freezing water on demonstrators. Beefed-up security forces guarded entrances to the upscale hotels. The Congress Center--site of the five-day WEF--was as tightly guarded as a fortress, and encircled with coils of barbed wire. WEF participants wore computer-coded badges to track their access. Everything was in place to suppress the activists' right to denounce the WEF for what it is: a forum to promote globalized corporate economic interests at the expense of the world's impoverished and working people. PROTESTS ERUPT But all the king's horses and men--and a heavy snowstorm-- could not stop anti-capitalist activists from making their voices heard. Protests erupted in Davos and in towns where protesters were stranded. Hundreds managed to make their way into Davos through the supposedly airtight police cordon. Some got in disguised as skiers on vacation. Demonstrators tried to march on the WEF meeting. They managed to get within 500 yards of the Congress Center. Many held signs read: "Justice, not profits!" Cops dragged steel barriers from the train station to surround the protest. They blasted activists with water cannons in freezing temperatures. Protesters, some with snowballs, fought back against police. Many demonstrators never made it to Davos. In a Jan. 27 report, Reuters quoted a police spokesperson who said hundreds of people had been turned back, "creating a traffic jam at the bottom of the road leading up to Davos." Students and journalists also complained of being barred entry by cops. Landquart is a city in the flatlands below Davos where rail passengers transfer to the train to Davos. There, police fired teargas into the crowd of hundreds of protesters barred from travel to Davos. Some reports said police used rubber bullets. Activists blocked train tracks. Others held a sit-down strike on a local highway. The same day, demonstrators fought pitched battles with police 90 miles away in Zurich. Cops fired tear gas and water cannons into the crowd to disperse activists trying to reach Davos. Police, who officially estimated the demonstration at 1,000, reported 121 arrests--mostly Swiss and German activists. Protesters fought back in this heart of the Swiss financial capital. Stones reportedly injured two police officers. One soldier was knocked to the ground and disarmed by activists. Demonstrators tried to take over Zurich's main railway station. Hundreds of railway passengers were trapped as police filled the station with teargas. Activists then took to the streets of the nearby Bahnhofstrasse, one of the world's most opulent shopping districts. They reportedly set fire to cars, smashed windows of exclusive stores and spray-painted political slogans on buildings. THIS IS WHAT CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE The next day, the Associated Press reported, "Swiss Sunday newspapers largely blamed the authorities." And the Swiss Trade Union Federation charged authorities with "violating basic principles of democracy." Inside the WEF, at a late-night soiree on Jan. 27, the tony crowd in black tie nervously sipped Moet-Chandon Champagne, nibbled sushi and watched tango dancers and synchronized swimmers. The real topic of the WEF, according to an indymedia.org report, was "widening the corporate social agenda." The power players included Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, Goldman Sachs Managing Director Abby Joseph Cohen and Accel Partners managing partner Jim Breyer. Discussions included whether the U.S. economy is headed for a soft or a hard landing. The Bush-Pentagon "National Missile Defense" system was a point of controversy in hallways. So were Bush's anticipated positions on trade, his attitude to Europe and Asia, and his reputation as an executioner of prisoners. Representatives of developing countries were invited to discuss a subject near and dear to the hearts of imperialist bankers and industrialists: how to best privatize state- owned factories. WEF organizers tried to mute what they termed "globalization backlash" by inviting some 40 non-governmental agencies and 36 organizations like Greenpeace and Amnesty International this year. U.S. Sen. John Kerry tried to take the steam out of scheduled protests by suggesting a multi-billion-dollar environmental fund. Lip service was paid to bridging the divide between the imperialist Goliath and the countries it has kept technologically underdeveloped. "Touchy-feely" Davos--that's how one senior World Bank official described this year's WEF. But few were taken in. An "anti-Davos" forum was held concurrently in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This "World Social Forum" was organized by the Public Media Center, a U.S. research organization, and joined by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Green Party. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a Davos participant, sent a sympathetic message to the WSF. The French sent two government ministers to Porto Alegre and two others to Davos. On the opening day of the World Social Forum, some 10,000 protesters marched in Porto Alegre. One contingent of students carried a banner reading "Scrap Plan Colombia, Yankees out of Latin America" to denounce U.S. intervention against the Colombian popular insurgencies. A counter-WEF event was also held just a few hundred yards away from the Davos proceedings. "Public Eye on Davos," sponsored by the World Development Movement, was created by those who eschewed the protests at the barricades. However, many who planned to participate never got through the police checkpoints. Swiss police deported one speaker scheduled to deliver a keynote address to the event, according to organizers. Many who addressed the Public Eye forum stressed that corporations left to their own designs harm the environment and human rights. Speakers called for government regulation to police global corporations. Douglas McLarren, of the worldwide BGO Friends of the Earth, said that he and other members of non-governmental organizations had drafted a report spelling out requirements for corporate accountability. As if to illustrate the limitations of this idea that governments will advance the interests of the people against the corporations, copies of that report never arrived in Davos. Swiss authorities confiscated them. Jessica Woodroffe of the World Development Movement, an NGO based in England, said the transnational corporations at the WEF across the road were "making a mockery of democracy and plotting with governments to figure out rules to regulate themselves." But riot-clad cops and army troops, bales of barbed wire, and fumes of teargas and manure wafting through the air is what democracy looks like--democracy of, by and for the wealthy and powerful. =================================================================== Cameras at Super Bowl scanned faces looking for criminals http://www.viisage.com/january_29_2001.htm Press Releases GRAPHCO TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Provides Surveillance for Raymond James Stadium to Identify Known Suspects, Deter Crime On January 28th, Criminals No Longer Another Face in the Tampa Stadium Crowd Tampa, Florida, January 29, 2001 -Graphco Technologies, Inc. (G-TEC), a leading developer of technology and solutions for biometric authentication, secure access, and expert information-sharing systems, announced today that they provided a surveillance and facial recognition system at both the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa and at Ybor City, Florida. The system was in place from January 21 - January 28, 2001 to monitor potential criminal activities during the sporting events and related activities at the two locations. In cooperation with the Tampa Sports Authority, Graphco Technologies partnered with Raytheon Company's (NYSE: RTNA, RTNB) Linthicum, Maryland office, Viisage Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: VISG), and VelTek International, Inc., to provide its FaceTrac facial recognition system to the Tampa Police Department and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. "Not everyone comes to sporting events with good intentions," says David Watkins, G-TEC's Managing Director, "The multiple distractions at the nation's premier athletic events provide criminals with opportunities to engage in a variety of illegal activities. G-TEC's facial recognition system provided the Raymond James Stadium with a superior surveillance system that not only captures images of individuals but also compares their facial features against a database of known felons." The FaceTrac core facial recognition technology provides the ability to locate faces, to build 'face print' templates and to recognize matches to images stored in a database. When integrated with G-TEC's law enforcement database, FaceTrac allows rapid search, comparison and identification of suspect facial photos within the database. FaceTrac may be used for surveillance with multiple locations networked to a high capacity site, for analysis and system-search results. G-TEC installed FaceTrac at the Raymond James Stadium as a single site system, integrated with a custom designed database and search result notifications for tracking faces in a crowd and monitoring access to secure areas. Tom Colatosti, Viisage President and CEO said, "Places where large crowds are present, such as sporting events, are tempting targets for all types mischief, criminal behavior and larger threats. Using patented Viisage technology, G-TEC has introduced a new generation of tools for law enforcement officials to more effectively and non-intrusively provide for public safety. As an integral partner in the project, Viisage Technology provided G-TEC with the industry's leading and most robust face-recognition technology." Viisage Technology's FaceFINDER software drives the FaceTrac surveillance and identification process. Viisage's industry-leading face-recognition technology has the world's largest image database deployment in surveillance and investigative applications. Viisage also provided the project with image acquisition and integration technology and services. During the week of January 21st, G-TEC deployed the FaceTrac system throughout the Raymond James Stadium to detect and identify individuals who are wanted or suspect, and may present a danger to the public. Using standard cameras to recognize human faces during entry to the sporting event, FaceTrac continuously compared faces in the incoming crowd to an extensive, customized database of known felons, terrorists, and con artists provided by multiple local, state and federal agencies. A law enforcement task force of local, state and federal agency personnel monitored the system. Once individuals were matched with photo files in the database, officers of the joint task force, circulating throughout the complex, could be dispatched immediately to make possible arrests, quickly and discreetly. In addition to installing cameras supplied by VelTek International at the Raymond James Stadium, G-TEC adapted its FaceTrac capability to cameras in Ybor City, Florida to oversee the celebrations before and after the athletic events. Raytheon Company, a global developer and supplier of high-tech products and services, and a G-TEC partner, provided sophisticated cameras and expertise to provide police with exceptional night vision capabilities for poorly lit or darkened areas in Ybor City. G-TEC, headquartered in Newtown, PA, develops, manufactures, and markets secure database and secure communications systems worldwide. G-TEC combines information sharing, biometric authentication, secure access, and secure data facility technologies to provide technical infrastructure and applications in support of public and private law enforcement, corporate security, manufacturing, and secure web-enabled virtual communities. G-TEC's Intrapol Analysis Center offers secure-access data storage, sharing, and secure virtual community systems to corporate and law enforcement entities at the local, regional, state, national, and international levels. Graphco Technologies is located on the World Wide Web at www.graphcotech.com. Viisage Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: VISG), Littleton, Massachusetts, is a world leader in biometric face-recognition technology and in digital identification solutions. Viisage's face-recognition technology is widely recognized as the most convenient, non-intrusive and cost-effective biometric available. Viisage's patented face-recognition technology, originally developed at MIT, and its systems integration and software design capabilities, improve personal convenience, privacy and security while deterring identity theft and fraud. Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTNA, RTNB), based in Lexington, Mass., is a global technology leader that provides products and services in the areas of commercial and defense electronics, business and special mission aircraft. The company is now successfully expanding its defense technologies into non-defense sectors such as air traffic control, data, image and information management, transportation and communications. Raytheon's Linthicum, Maryland office has expertise in network security and large system development and deployment for both national intelligence and commercial customers, and is the primary Raytheon branch that supported G-TEC's surveillance efforts at the Raymond James Stadium. Additional information is available at www.raytheon.com Veltek International, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of Closed Circuit Television and security related equipment. Veltek currently offers over 250 different CCTV products through worldwide distribution including standard and specialty video cameras, housings, video signal, remote transmission, digital video streaming and digital storage equipment. FaceTrac is a trademark of Graphco Technologies, Inc. FaceFINDER is a trade mark of Viisage, Inc, =================================================================== Secret Cameras Scanned Crowd at Super Bowl for Criminals <http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates2/lat_cameras010201.htm> Thursday, February 1, 2001 Surveillance: Faces were cross-checked by new technology in bid to catch terrorists, other suspects. Privacy concerns are raised. By LOUIS SAHAGUN and JOSH MEYER, Times Staff Writers Unknown to the 100,000 people who passed through the turnstiles at Sunday's Super Bowl, hidden cameras scanned each of their faces and compared the portraits with photos of terrorists and known criminals of every stripe. In a command post at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the digitized images of fans and workers were cross-checked against files of local police, the FBI and state agencies at the rate of a million images a minute. The cameras identified 19 people with criminal histories, none of them of a "significant" nature, Tampa authorities said. But the undisclosed first test of the technology at a major U.S. sporting event raised arguments about privacy versus security and questions about the future of such spying and its uses. "Oh my God, it's yet another nail in the coffin of personal liberty," said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technical officer of Counterpane Internet Security Inc., a security monitoring company. "It's another manifestation of a surveillance society, which says we're going to watch you all the time just in case you might do something wrong," said Schneier, whose book "Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World" warned of the increasing encroachment on civil liberties in high-tech society. But USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, a nationally recognized authority on constitutional law, said the right to privacy doesn't extend to places quite so public. "I'm troubled by the extensive use of cameras to monitor us when we're in public places, but that doesn't mean it's illegal or unconstitutional," Chemerinsky said. "People have no reasonable expectation that when out in public, they cannot be photographed." Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin said the department jumped at the chance to borrow the technology after Graphco Technologies Inc. approached it and allowed it a tryout for free. "It's just another high-tech tool that is available," Durkin said. "We used it for a week to test it, evaluate it and see if we liked it. And yes, we did like it. Very much so." Durkin said the department wanted to screen for pickpockets and other potential scam artists drawn to the huge event and for potential terrorists who wanted to use its worldwide TV and radio audience to make a political statement. "Clearly, the vast majority of citizens would applaud our efforts to make Super Bowl XXXV as safe as we did," he said. "And I'll tell you, had this system identified some known terrorist because of the size of the event and the eyes of the world on Tampa, and the police stopped the terrorist act, the system would have proved priceless." No arrests were made that day. But, Durkin said, "it alerted us that they were there. It confirmed our suspicions that a crowd of this magnitude would attract people trying to take advantage of the situation." Oakland Raiders Senior Assistant Bruce Allen agreed with the need. "Whatever they want to do to protect this country, I'm for. . . . So anything we can do to help, I can't imagine anyone disagreeing with that." Critics warn, however, of the potential for error. "What if I have the same shaped nose as John Dillinger? Am I going to get frisked?" asked Clifford Stoll, author of books questioning the applications of technology and their benefits to society. Although advocates insist such technologies are reliable, he added, "that's what J. Edgar Hoover said when he measured the head shape of criminals to determine the standard appearance of a criminal." Other applications are expected to include ATM machines and public events such as the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The popularity of facial-recognition technology is also spreading in Las Vegas, where a growing number of casinos employ it to identify criminal suspects or unwanted gamblers--including card counters and those listed in the "Black Book" of banned casino guests. But not everyone who enters a casino, where "eye-in-the-sky" surveillance cameras are a long-accepted feature, is automatically photographed, according to the corporate spokesman for three of Las Vegas' largest casinos using the technology. Rather, a person is photographed, and his facial features scanned, only if he is suspected of being a criminal or otherwise unwanted at the casino, said Alan Feldman, vice president of MGM Mirage. What happened at Sunday's Super Bowl, however, signals a revolution in spying technology with possibly grave implications, Schneier said. ---- Also, see: Cameras scanned fans for criminals <http://www.sptimes.com/News/013101/TampaBay/Cameras_scanned_fans_.shtml> Tampa Crowd Scanned for Suspects <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010131/sp/super_bowl_super_security_1.html> =================================================================== What I Learned from the World Social Forum by Starhawk 31 Jan 2001 Although I¹ve spent a lot of the last year and a half at antiglobalization actions and meetings, many of which included forums of various sorts, and although in at least some of my incarnations I am a Respectable Adult with a college education and books to my credit who even gets asked to speak at conferences and universities, and even though some of my best friends work for NGOs, this is the first time I¹ve actually made it up out of the direct action trenches and into the conference rooms. I found it highly educational (although like most university education it had its moments of airless, deadly boredom.) The amazing number of participants, thousands more than expected, coupled with limited translation facilities and a high degree of confusion meant that I often didn¹t get to workshops I would have liked to attend or didn¹t know about events until after they happened. What follows, therefore, is an extremely limited picture of all the immensity of discussion and debate and strategizing and organizing that went on around hundreds of issues. In order to get this out, I¹ve limited my focus to issues that affect groups I¹m currently working with. Water: Water is a key issue worldwide, as there is a strong push from corporate interests to privatize water resources and water delivery services. The FTAA, the WTO, and a whole list of smaller bilateral and regional trade agreements open the door to the privatization of water. For me, this issue had eerie echoes of the negative society I imagined in my novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, where the poor could not afford to drink and people were imprisoned for stealing water. The antiglobalization movement now must assert that water is a human right, linked to the right to life. There is no substitute for water; therefore there must be a limit to private ownership and control of water resources. Women¹s Issues: Are key in the antiglobalization struggle. There was a powerful workshop on feminist perspectives on globalization, and many other workshops on women¹s issues. The main morning panels, however, tended to be quite male dominated, and there was much talk of the need for an even stronger focus on women. I was able to connect individually with some of the women working on antiglobalization, and hope that our women¹s action in Quebec City in April will bring our issues more to the forefront. There was great interest in it among women I met and as soon as the call is finalized I will be able to get it out to some of the women¹s networks I¹ve connected with here. Indigenous Peoples¹ Struggles: For me, the most moving and clear talks I heard in the entire five days were two indigenous speakers who spoke so heartfully and poetically (and in such clear, blessedly slow Spanish!) that I felt like I was drinking cool, spring water after days of stale coffee. There was an encampment of youth, the MST (Landless Rural Workers¹ Movement) and indigenous groups, but unfortunately it was separate from the main campus and also there was no clear announcement of the fact that there were ongoing meetings, speeches and presentations of the indigenous people¹s networks. Had I known, I probably would have spent most of the conference there. As it was, I got there only almost at the end, in time to learn that the situation in Chiapas is not happily resolved under Vicente Fox, that he is also trying to outlaw abortion, and that the growing struggle in Chiapas will also focus on water rights. High on the corporate agenda is control of the hydroelectric potential represented by Chiapas¹ rivers: Bay Area folks, take note in light of our current energy Œcrisis¹! The FTAA: I knew about the FTAA, I knew it was bad enough that I¹m devoting most of my time currently to organizing against it, but I didn¹t know in detail just how bad it is: Privatization of services: Education, medical care, libraries, water delivery‹the FTAA would open those areas to regulation by international trade agreements. It¹s one of the things the WTO hadn¹t quite gotten around to yet. Presumably, that could mean a corporation that runs prisons could sue a government for providing its own and thereby limiting its potential profits. Ditto with water, schools, health care, etc. Of course, for most countries in Latin America the World Bank and the IMF have already dealt with their health care and educational systems. But the FTAA would make it difficult or impossible for local or national governments to take control of their own schools, health care programs, or utilities and run them for the benefit of their own citizens instead of for corporate profit. Agriculture‹probably the most important aspect for the South, for farmers and indigenous people. The agreement would make it impossible to support small farmers, to ensure biosafety standards around genetically engineered foods and seeds, to prevent market manipulations and crop dumping that destroys traditional cultures. Natural resources and the environment: The agreement would undermine every legislative and regulatory tool for conservation of resources and environmental protection, from the Endangered Species Act on down, and override local and federal laws. Investment‹remember the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, that was defeated back in '97 by the opposition of civil society? This agreement brings it back, opening the door to 'investors¹ rights' to control of government regulations and financial systems. End run around the WTO: The FTAA, along with a whole lot of other bilateral and smaller multilateral agreements, are part of the new strategy of the corporate globalists. Since the body blow that was dealt to the WTO in Seattle, what they¹re trying to do is put in place piecemeal the provisions they couldn¹t yet put into the WTO. The WTO: May or may not hold it¹s next meeting in Quatar in November‹although the media is reporting it as a sure thing, it will actually be a couple of weeks before they confirm the decision. It is less of a priority for corporate interests, however, because their strategy has shifted to bilateral and regional trade agreements that essentially put its noxious provisions into place. Direct Action: We did do one forum on direct action in FTAA organizing, with groups from Brazil and Argentina. But in general direct action is sort of the stepchild of the NGO world. It happens around the edges: the MST (The Landless Rural Workers Movement) did a great action pulling up bioengineered crops on the first day of the conference. Unfortunately we were still en route and couldn¹t take part. They Respectable Adults know about direct action; they often support it, and some of them actually take part in it. The introduction to the Forum Schedule credits the movement sparked by Seattle and DC and Prague. But many of the groups seem to have a bit of difficulty actually focusing on the direct action component of that movement or thinking about it as part of their strategy. Of course, they have funding to protect, so maybe they¹re better off not linking to us too directly. Maybe we don¹t need joint strategies and these parallel worlds can just continue to exist semi-separately. But I can¹t help but think that we¹re their best friends‹we¹re the reason why the World Bank is going to read a letter of protest with alarm and concern, or look at a petition, or pretend to have a dialogue. And that it might be nice occasionally, or smart strategically, for that to be a little more clearly acknowledged. Our direct action movement gains a lot when we do work together with the groups which have a level of sophistication and expertise that paid staff can develop‹for example, in our San Francisco organizing around the FTAA there are a number of NGOs and also some union people who bring an incredible amount of knowledge and sophistication to the issues. But I¹d also like to see more of the high level strategists come down to the convergence center and actually listen to the anarchists and the dreadlocked youth and the black bloc who have a level of radical clarity that can get lost after years of reading reports and pressing for minor policy changes. Anyway, I amused myself by tossing out radical proposals: "Great, you guys send out a joint letter of protest and meanwhile we¹ll shut down every major stock exchange on the planet." And some people seemed genuinely interested. There are, however, awesome groups down here that are organizing around direct action. There are groups in Sao Paolo, Belo Horizonte and Buenos Aires that did solidarity actions around the S26 protests in Prague and are now gearing up for actions around the preliminary FTAA (ALCA in Spanish) meeting April 7 in Buenos Aires. They¹re serious, determined and radical‹the Argentinians want to make the Quebec City protests unnecessary by shafting the FTAA before it ever gets to Quebec. It¹s a joy and a privilege to be down here sharing some of our experiences and helping in that endeavor. Yours in Persistent Opposition to Authority, Starhawk =================================================================== DOJ Offers Guidance on Electronic Evidence FCW Government Technology Group (01/19/01); Jordon, Bryant A revised guidebook regarding the search and seizure methods used to obtain electronic evidence has just been released by the Justice Department. The manual does not reflect the department's official standing on the subject, nor is it a regulatory tool, but rather a guidebook analyzing the current electronic privacy laws and our rights. ---- To review the manual "Searching and Seizing Computers and Obtaining Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations, visit: <http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/searchmanual.htm> =================================================================== President Jackass <http://laweekly.com/news/> Stupid George loses more votes by John Seeley February 2 - 8, 2001 It's becoming clear just how solidly George W. Bush lost the election in Florida. The media's ongoing examination of Florida ballots last week increased Al Gore's edge in the popular vote. Among the findings: The Chicago Tribune and its Florida newspapers studied more than 15,000 ballots that elections officials in 15 small counties had said lacked a presidential pick. The paper easily determined the voters' choice on 1,700 of the ballots. The ballots would have given Gore a net gain of 366 votes wiping out the 154-vote Bush margin established by the Florida Supreme Court, and canceling two-thirds of the statewide 537-vote Bush margin certified by Katherine Harris and finally sustained by the 5-4 Supreme Court decision. The Palm Beach Post examined thousands of dimpled ballots from Palm Beach County. The ballots had been set aside by the canvassing board for court review. By the newspaper's count, Gore would have picked up 682 votes. This Democratic dividend would have eliminated Bush's cushion under the standard of either court's calculation. The Palm Beach Post also found that Bush would have received six more votes if 10,600 rejected punch-card ballots had been tallied in Miami-Dade County. The Democrats in December had expected to uncover hundreds of Gore ballots, but found fewer than 500 discernible votes. The Miami Herald reported the findings of a U.C. Irvine professor who concluded that about 1,700 Miami-Dade ballots had been invalidated because of misalignment between card and ballot holder. If properly aligned, these cards would have given Gore 316 more votes than Bush, Irvine political scientist Anthony Salvanto said. As data comes in from an array of jurisdictions using different voting machinery and varying ballot formats, some tentative conclusions can be drawn about the causes of bad ballots. To hardly anyone's surprise, spreading presidential candidates' names across two pages tended to confuse voters, leading some to cancel out their actual preference with a vote for a minor-party candidate on the second page. In Duval County, where voters were wrongly advised in sample ballots to "vote on every page," more than 20,000 "overvotes" were recorded. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the punch-card system hanging chads and all was not the worst offender in disenfranchising Floridians. The proportion of void ballots was even higher in counties using optical scanners without reading machines at the precinct, research by the Orlando Sentinel shows. Tabulating machines were generally unable to discern votes cast by pen or marker (instead of the prescribed pencils) and often counted a mark the voter had made every effort to erase. And some literal-minded voters mistakenly thought the phrase "write-in candidate" was an order to spell out their candidate's name. The scanners rejected such ballots as overvotes. The bottom line on the state's count is still to be revealed. Under the sponsorship of a broad consortium of media including CNN, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Publishing and the Associated Press the National Opinion Research Center continues to inspect all 180,000 rejected Florida ballots. The Miami Herald expects to complete its separate examination of the state's "undervotes" later this month. Results to date tend to sustain the claim of Democratic National Committee chair Joe Andrew that "If all the votes [are] counted, Al Gore wins the presidency." Though the state Republican Party has had observers on hand for the media-sponsored counts, GOP officials have taken issue with the results. "To somehow suggest that a ballot that is dimpled provides us some sort of [look] into a voter's mind is ridiculous," GOP spokesman Ken Lisaius told the Palm Beach Post. The Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas opinion, he added, points out that voters must follow directions. Another critic of the process is a Democrat who has been in the eye of the electoral storm since the first Tuesday in November Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Theresa Le Pore. "You got different people looking at different criteria there," Le Pore told the Post. "Some are not even looking at the cards. They're yawning, talking on cell phones. I think it's unfair to put out any numbers that are inaccurate." But Le Pore herself has now come under attack from an unexpected quarter, her predecessor in the office, Jackie Winchester. "Just about every decision she made favored Bush," said Winchester, a fervent Gore supporter. If Le Pore had followed the office's previously established recount guidelines, she suggested, Republican count observers would have had fewer chances to make the frivolous challenges that overwhelmed the canvassing board and stopped it from meeting the court-imposed November 26 deadline to complete the count. Instead of focusing on apparent undervotes and overvotes, as the guidelines prescribed, "Theresa had the counters going over every ballot," Winchester told the Post. "They wasted so much time." Le Pore said she decided to go beyond the written instructions because "This was an abnormal situation." Despite all the evidence, there is no sign Stupid George plans to yield to the public will and move out of the White House anytime soon. =================================================================== The 'Human' Part of the Brain <http://www.healthmall.com/newsletter.cfm?type=article&id=1437&a=> Canadian and American researchers say they have found the seat of humanity in the brain area called the right prefrontal cortex. Among other things, that area allows us to empathize with others, understand a great joke and tell when others are lying, say the researchers. Scientists refer to the ability to understand mental processes of others as "mentalizing," and it is considered the hallmark of being human. Scientists have known that the frontal lobes are involved in the ability to mentalize, but until now they couldn't pinpoint it. "There's a very large [amount of] literature on qualities such as empathy and theory of mind. There have been a lot of research in animals and human with lesions saying that the frontal lobe is involved in this characteristic insight," says Dr. Daniel Weinberger, the chief of the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md. Weinberger says functional magnetic resonance imaging has been used to study the "theory of mind: the experience that another person has a different perceptual, experiential orientation than oneself." Now, lead study author Donald Stuss, director of the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, Ontario, reports how he and his colleagues narrowed the search in the February issue of the journal Brain. The researchers asked 32 adult patients with damage to various parts of the frontal lobes and other areas of the brain to perform two specific tasks requiring mentalizing skills. Their performances were compared with those of 14 healthy adult volunteers. One task, involving visual perspective, asked the subjects to guess which coffee cup had a ball hidden underneath. Occasionally, the experiment leader hid the ball under a cup in view of the subject. In other trials, however, two assistants joined the experiment, one sitting by the examiner and one by the subject. A curtain was drawn and the ball was covered out of sight of the subject and one assistant. When the time came to point to the right cup, both assistants stood beside the examiner and pointed to the cup they each suspected. The subject had to recognize that one assistant knew the ball's location, while the other didn't. Patients with frontal lobe damage, particularly in the right frontal lobe, did very poorly on the test. The second task involved deception. An assistant who sat beside the experiment leader would always "help" by pointing to the wrong cup. The participant had to make a decision based on the knowledge that the assistant was lying. Patients with damage to the right inferior medial prefrontal cortex were most often deceived. Stuss says the study suggests that patients with frontal lobe damage can't pick up social clues, they show a disconnection from their emotional responsiveness, or they can't bring their knowledge to bear in a given situation. "Patients with frontal lobe damage can look perfectly normal," says Stuss. They may be able to hold normal conversations or score well on certain neurological tests, but sometimes Stuss says family members notice a change in their social interactions. One woman told Stuss that her husband used to notice when she was upset and would bring her flowers after she had a bad day. Yet after suffering frontal lobe damage, he would miss all the cues and stopped buying flowers. "He's there when she's describing this," says Stuss, but when the doctor asked the man about it, he admitted he sometimes noticed the cues but didn't care about them. Stuss says the study will add to scientists' understanding of the function of different parts of the human brain, but, more immediately, it will help families understand changes in their loved ones' behavior. Stuss says when the woman whose husband stopped bringing her flowers was told about the findings, she expressed relief, because she had assumed something was wrong with her. =================================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. 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