-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Impeached POTUS White House "Puts Pressure" on NBC over Alleged Clinton Rape A FURIOUS row was reported at a major television network yesterday over whether to broadcast an interview with a woman who was allegedly raped by President Clinton in 1978 when he was the attorney general of Arkansas. The woman, now 54, is said to have broken a long silence to talk to an NBC News reporter, Lisa Myers, about what the network has referred to as an "explosive" allegation. According to Matt Drudge, the Internet operator who disclosed a year ago that Newsweek was "sitting on" the Monica Lewinsky scandal, network executives have come under enormous pressure from the White House not to broadcast the story. Another network source was quoted as saying: "There is a civil war developing between those pushing for the interview to air and those who think it is completely reckless." On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, the questioning of Miss Lewinsky yesterday became a major sticking point in backroom dealings at the Senate trial of Mr Clinton, with argument raging over how a videotape of her cross-examination was to be handled. Democrats were trying to stop the tape being shown next week on a screen in the well of the Senate, especially if she is grilled on the seamier aspects of her affair with the President. According to the Drudge report, the woman was "emotionally drained" after the in-depth session with Miss Myers. She had told a friend: "I am so afraid of what is going to happen now." Network sources avoided any comment on the affair. But the suggestion is that the woman may have given details of the alleged incident. The claim first surfaced last March in a court document filed by lawyers in Paula Jones's sexual harassment case. The attorneys claimed that Mr Clinton "forcibly raped and sexually assaulted" the woman at the Camelot Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. He then allegedly "bribed and intimidated her" to keep silent. Miss Myers said NBC talked to four people who confirmed that the woman had spoken of the assault at the time. The woman denied any sexual encounter with Mr Clinton in an affidavit prepared to assist him in the Jones suit. She later told the FBI during the Starr investigation her affidavit was "false". Recently, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee denied sending aides to talk to the woman. Investigators close to Mr Starr were said to have worried about the claim being so old. The White House described the allegation as "outrageous and false". The London Telegraph, Jan. 29, 1999 Tulip Mania Greenspan Calls Internet Stocks a Lottery Are you the lucky winner? The rapid recent rise in internet-related stock prices was akin to the popular appeal of a lottery, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, warned yesterday. He added that most of the companies were likely to fail. Though the Fed chairman said investors' heightened interest in internet stocks was a tribute to the efficiency of US markets' ability to find new opportunities for growth, he warned that a degree of "hype" had entered the equation. "You have these pie-in-the-sky type of potentials for a lot of different vehicles. And, undoubtedly, some of these small companies which have stock prices going through the roof will succeed and they very well may justify even higher prices. The vast majority are almost sure to fail. That's the way the markets work," he told the Senate budget committee. Mr Greenspan's remarks were the latest in a series on the Fed's thorny problem of how to respond to surging US equity markets. They indicated once again his uneasiness at the high valuation of many companies' stock, but underlined his reluctance to target them with anything other than verbal warnings. The Fed chairman tempered his warnings by allowing that the interest in internet stocks resulted to some extent from fundamental changes in the economy, which justified some of the sector's performance. "The issue really gets to the increasing evidence that a significant part of the distribution of goods and services in this country is going to move from conventional channels into some form of internet system - whether it's retail goods or services or a variety of other things." But Mr Greenspan said the market was operating along similar principles to that of a lottery - where people will pay far more for a ticket than is justified by the value of a one-in-a-million chance of winning. "When you are dealing with stocks - the possibilities of which are, either it's going to be valued at zero or some huge number - you get a premium in that stock price which is exactly the same sort of price evaluation process that goes on in the lottery," he said. Companies such as Amazon.com and Yahoo! have enjoyed startling increases in their stock prices in recent months although some of the heat has gone out of the market in the last week or two. Concern among regulators and industry bodies about the excitement surrounding internet stocks has intensified recently. The National Association of Securities Dealers has established a committee to examine measures to curb volatility in the market. Despite Mr Greenspan's comments, the Nasdaq market, which is highly influenced by the performance of technology related stocks, closed 70.20 points up at 2477.34. The Financial Times, Jan. 29, 1999 Impeached POTUS Hepatitus C Victims Sue Jail-Blood Sellers Arkansas Firm with Links to Bill Clinton Tainted-blood victims will launch a multimillion-dollar lawsuit today against two companies and the federal government over the shipment to Canada of contaminated plasma from U.S. prisons. The lawsuit follows a series of investigative stories published last fall in the Citizen that revealed how a U.S. firm with links to President Bill Clinton collected bad blood from Arkansas prison inmates and sold it abroad. The class-action lawsuit will involve about 200 hemophiliacs infused with the prison plasma in the early 1980s who later developed hepatitis C. In their statement of claim, to be filed in a Toronto court, the victims will allege the companies that distributed the plasma -- believed to be infected with HIV and hepatitis C -- were negligent and federal regulators were also at fault. The victims' lawyer, David Harvey, said yesterday that they are seeking about $300 million in damages. "Everybody turned a blind eye because they were making money, and they sacrificed our lives," said lead plaintiff Mike McCarthy, a Waterloo, Ont., resident with hepatitis C. "There has to be justice here." By early 1983, U.S. companies that fractionate blood products had stopped buying prison plasma -- at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration -- because it was widely understood that, since many inmates practised unsafe gay sex or intravenous drug use, their blood posed a high risk of carrying HIV. But this didn't stop prison blood centres from selling their products to foreign companies. The companies being sued are Connaught Laboratories, a Toronto-based firm that manufactured blood products for Canadian patients, many of them hemophiliacs; and Continental Pharma Cryosan, a Montreal blood broker that imported plasma from prisons in Arkansas and Louisiana and resold it to Connaught. At the Krever inquiry, Connaught said it didn't realize it was buying inmates' plasma and that the shipping papers accompanying the plasma had not revealed the donation centre was located in a prison. They simply referred to the source as the "ADC Plasma Centre, Grady, Arkansas," without any indication that "ADC"' stood for Arkansas Department of Corrections. As well, although Connaught had received an inspection report by the FDA that revealed the centre was in a prison, the report was not reviewed by the company. Mr. Harvey said that constitutes negligence. "They're manufacturing the product. It's their obligation to ensure that the raw materials that they're purchasing are of good quality. That requires them to know everything about how and where the materials are being collected." As for Continental Pharma, company president Thomas Hecht told the Citizen last November that his firm did know it was importing prison plasma. But he insisted scientific knowledge at the time didn't indicate inmates' plasma was any riskier than the general population. As well, he said, his firm supplied "U.S. government-licenced product and never denied its origins" to customers such as Connaught. The victims will contend in their lawsuit that Continental did know, or should have known, about the higher risks associated with prison plasma. The federal government is being sued for allegedly failing in its responsibilities as the blood system's safety regulator by neglecting to properly police the two firms. Regulators in Health Canada apparently didn't know that Connaught and Continental were dealing in prison plasma, which the Red Cross had stopped collecting here in Canada as far back as 1971. "They should have known," said Mr. Harvey. "It's their obligation to regulate the industry, to make sure that appropriate safety standards are being met. They should have been inspecting the plant at Connaught, going over the logs that show where this stuff was coming from." Unlike other class-action lawsuits filed by tainted blood victims -- which have tended to claim negligence on a broad front -- this one is specifically aimed at the prison-plasma issue. And that explains, in part, why there are so few victims able to join the lawsuit. Mr. Harvey estimates about 1,000 hemophiliacs were exposed to the prison plasma in 1980s. Of those, many contracted HIV and were later given a compensation package which prevents them from suing. As well, many severe hemophiliacs who frequently relied on Connaught's blood-clotting products throughout the decade developed hepatitis C. If they got any products between 1986 and 1990, they too are being offered compensation as long as they sign a legal waiver. That leaves a smaller group still able to sue -- an estimated 200 victims, mostly Ontarians, who took Connaught products exclusively in the early 80s and contracted hepatitis C. The story of how that plasma was collected and found its way into the bloodstreams of unsuspecting Canadians stands as one of the most shocking aspects of the tainted-blood tragedy. Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas when the Canadian blood supply was contaminated in the mid-'80s. He was generally familiar with the operations of now-defunct Health Management Associates (HMA), the Arkansas firm that was given a contract by Mr. Clinton's own state administration to provide medical care to prisoners. In the process, HMA was also permitted to collect prisoners' blood and sell it elsewhere. The prisoners were paid $7 a unit. Each unit of plasma was sold by HMA for about $50, and half of that was handed over to the Arkansas Department of Corrections. With hundreds of prisoners donating every week, it became a profitable enterprise. HMA's president in the mid-1980s was Leonard Dunn, a personal friend and political ally of Mr. Clinton. Later, Mr. Dunn was a Clinton appointee to the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, and he headed Mr. Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial re-election finance committee. The Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 28, 1999 Single Currency Counting Out the Euros in Wages and Jobs Unions Fear Effect of Big Cost Disparities PARIS - For all the hopes placed in the euro as an economic elixir, the common currency is bringing new tensions to the area of salaries and the related concern among trade unions that Europe is heading for a wave of downward competitive bidding on wages and job relocation. In response, unions are talking for the first time about initiatives that have the outlines of transnational collective bargaining. Specific discussions are under way on how to set cross-border standards on hours, overtime and minimum wage levels - not so much for unskilled entry-level jobs as for whole industrial sectors such as the automobile industry. The circumstances are simple: The average hourly cost of industrial labor in the 11 countries of the European Union's single-currency zone varies so much that it seems certain to force a reconsideration of where many manufacturers and service providers place their operations and how much they pay their workers. The average hourly all-inclusive labor cost in manufacturing in 1998 in Germany was 28.68 euros ($33.07). It was 7.51 euros in Portugal, the lowest among the countries that adopted the euro on Jan. 1. France, based on statistics for the first quarter of last year, was 24 percent below Germany in industrial hourly wage costs but 31 percent above Spain. Taking the whole year into account, Ireland had labor costs roughly double those of Portugal's but about one-third lower than those in the Netherlands. These figures, compiled by the EU's statistical agency and recalculated by Rexecode, a French economic-research group, do not constitute a lodestar of sudden business wisdom. But the numbers' meaning is changing with the presence of the euro, the ease it brings to making comparisons and the inhibitions it removes in judging the potential profitability of one European country or region against another. With concerns about exchange-rate fluctuations no longer affecting entrepreneurs' risk calculations in relation to the low-wage countries, and the assurance that the euro zone's tight inflation criteria will hold off dramatic increases in these countries' pay levels, trade unions in the high-wage countries of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium regard the new situation as deeply troubling. After years of low growth and high unemployment sometimes linked to the austerity measures that brought Europe's currencies into convergence, the contrasting labor costs now illustrate how the coming of the common currency may exact a new price in terms of people's lives. David Foden of the European Trade Union Confederation's research unit in Brussels said: ''There is a fear by the trade unions that this competitive climate will lead entrepreneurs to undercut on wages. You can imagine a downward spiral. There is a fear on the unions' side that the competitive pressures will encourage companies and even governments to go from country to country to see who can go furthest down on wages.'' For a time, Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine of Germany seemed to be on the unions' wavelength and ready to move in favor of their standpoint within the EU. He said: ''It would be wrong if the economy of a region or a state tried to create a competitive advantage for itself by forcing down its salary costs. ''That's why salary policy has to be coordinated. The unions have to talk among themselves and use the European institutions in which the unions and employers are represented.'' For politicians, the issue involves dealing with the reality that their country could be facing a loss in jobs even as European competitiveness might be benefiting in general from an overall labor-cost shakeout. Michel Didier, the director of Rexecode, said he considered Germany and Belgium to be facing problems because of their labor costs. He regarded France as being hurt to a lesser degree, Italy in a neutral position and Spain and Portugal as clear beneficiaries. As much as he welcomed Mr. Lafontaine's view, Hans de Vries, national negotiator for the metal and electrical industry workers' union in the Netherlands and an activist among labor leaders pressing for a transnational approach in Europe, said the unions so far had received ''more sympathy than real support'' from their countries' left-of-center politicians. Mr. de Vries acknowledged that coordinating across-border salary policy would be extremely difficult and that there were great impediments to it within individual countries. But he said the European Metalworkers' Federation was pushing its members toward adopting minimum standards and that the automotive and shipbuilding sectors would be among the first to be targeted. The chances of making headway are best in areas where there are common patterns and practices, such as Germany and the Benelux countries, Mr. de Vries said. Short of transnational collective bargaining, the unions are also pressing for harmonization of tax policy across Europe. But it will not be easy to get other unions on board on the central issue of salaries, said Joachim Kreimer-de Fries, who directs European wage policy for the German Trade Union Federation. He said he believed it would be difficult to include Spain and Portugal, whose unions he described as less eager to link wages and productivity. At the same time, there are indications of an increasing effort by low-wage countries in the euro zone to attract businesses from higher-wage areas. Joao Alves Pereira, head of Portugal's 25-person investment office in Paris, described the competition from countries such as Ireland as great. Mr. Pereira flees the hard sell and talks about Portugal as if it were interesting largely because of its work ethic and new training programs. But beyond his practiced diffidence, Mr. Pereira reports success from France. The investment office's bulletins clearly state Portugal's wage advantages, and Mr. Pereira becomes more direct when he is asked whether he is concerned by union attempts to level them out. ''You're talking about evolutionary change,'' he said. Referring to the Maastricht treaty on European union, he added: ''The Maastricht rules are clear. Inflation levels are limited. If you're talking about relocating, it's worth it for 10 years or more.'' Hourly labor costs - the figures that were used for this article, from Eurostat, include tax, pension and social security payments - are obviously only part of the calculation that goes into choosing sites for industrial facilities. Productivity, geographic advantage and political climate also matter. But wage considerations have been accentuated, the unions say, by the euro's leveling out of foreign-exchange and interest-rate factors. International Herald Tribune, Jan. 29, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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