The Scoop - http://www.bobharris.com/ Hi folks! To the 350+ readers who have signed up since my appearance with Kojo on NPR last week: welcome! Thanks for joining up. Yes, the column really is free, and you’re always highly encouraged to forward it to friends. That’s how our readership grows. Feel free to email me anytime. I can’t always respond -- in fact, it’s getting difficult for me to answer email from anyone but close friends with any frequency anymore, which I regret very much -- but I read everything, always, I promise. And for those who just came in, my first book-length collection of essays, Steal This Book And Get Life Without Parole, is now available. You can order online from Amazon, thereby losing them money while increasing their stock price -- a phenomenon which continues to baffle physicists -- but you’ll get the best price by ordering directly from my fine publisher, http://www.commoncouragepress.com/steal.html. Thanks! bh ps -- I’m still traveling, so I may not be able to write next week. Thus the double-length bonus column this week. Enjoy… THE SCOOP for September 6, 1999 ___________________________ FBI Honesty At Waco, Hidden Sources, What Day Traders Produce, & Blue M&Ms: New Frontiers In Nothingness © 1999 Bob Harris http://www.bobharris.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * = italics "SOS SOS SOS. FBI BROKE NEGOTIATIONS. WANT NEGOTIATIONS FROM THE PRESS." -- Morse Code message from inside Mt. Carmel, made by flashing a lamp until the FBI obliterated the signal with stadium flood lights "The FBI believed they had three options -- gas, gas and gas." -- Harvard psychology professor Alan Stone, an FBI consultant, in a 1993 Justice Department review of the FBI’s strategy at Waco "We jurors said from the beginning that we had the wrong people on trial. The ones who should have been on trial were the ones who planned the raid…" --Sarah Bain, jury forewoman in the murder trial of surviving Branch Davidians "We have to reaffirm the previous findings." -- Rep. Asa Hutchison, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, discussing the necessity and goals of a new examination of Waco, and utterly missing the point On April 19, 1993, what press reports unquestioningly continue to call "approximately 80" (bizarrely, it’s not even clear, six years later, how many) Americans, about two-thirds of them women and children, died at Mt. Carmel, a religious community outside of Waco, Texas. This is the greatest number of civilian deaths resulting from a law enforcement operation in American history, and the record of official malfeasance is clear. Surprisingly, however, a lot of folks from the left and center haven’t developed much outrage over what happened to the Branch Davidians. Until recently, discussion of claims that the U.S. government -- commonly, the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) is specified -- was responsible for the deaths has been largely perceived as the bailiwick of alt.conspiracy.gungrab.666.Y2K types. Which I personally don’t understand. Progressives are intimately familiar with domestic spying, the abuse of power, and continuing cover-ups. For example, most readers of this column should already be fully familiar with the FBI’s shameful COINTELPRO operations of the 1960s, designed explicitly to infiltrate, sabotage, and destroy the legitimate, legal actions of the civil rights and anti-war movements. So it’s not exactly a stretch, in the face of overwhelming evidence, to figure that similar abuses of power might have occurred at Waco and elsewhere, albeit for different reasons, along with the same institutionalized keister-covering. That the targets might have held unusual or even offensive religious ideas in no way legitimates the abuse of power -- nor does it excuse the silence of those who would take to the streets were the target a black civil rights activist or an hispanic labor organizer. This is a lynchpin of traditional progressive thought: either we all have our rights, or we don’t. That much should be clear. That’s why I think Waco ought to matter a hell of a lot more to the left than it does. ___________________________ And now, big news: after six years of claiming otherwise, the FBI now admits that incendiary devices were, in fact, used at Waco. We know this because of a recently-released FBI videotape made on the morning of the final raid. For over six years, the FBI also claimed it had no such videotape. So now we’re up to two lies, just in the last few days alone. But we’re supposed to believe that, finally, the FBI has told the whole story. In fact, the FBI would even like us to consider it exonerated, since the newly-admitted devices were plainly fired several hours before the eventual fire began. However, according to widespread contemporaneous news reports, the FBI had placed pinhole fiber optic cameras and microphones throughout Mt. Carmel. Which means the FBI knew the location of the Davidians throughout the siege. And the FBI, while denying they started the fire, admits that the incendiary canisters now in question were fired toward a concrete structure -- a "pantry" to the Davidians, a "bunker" to the the feds -- in which women and children were apparently already hiding, a fact the FBI must have known. It’s hard to see how the latest version of the truth makes the official story any more humane. ___________________________ It’s also hard to believe that anyone in the media is remotely shocked that the FBI has been caught lying about Waco. We’ve already seen numerous other official lies in this case -- and these are just the major ones I found with negligible effort: o David Koresh never left Mt. Carmel, and so a raid was the only way to reach him. Nope. Residents of the area saw him frequently away from Mt. Carmel. o Koresh had to be taken by force because he refused to cooperate with BATF investigators. Not true: a few months earlier, he had openly invited them to Mt. Carmel to inspect his guns, which he and a few other Davidians bought and sold for profit at nearby gun shows. The BATF never took him up on the offer. o The BATF was fully justified in the way it tried to serve its warrant. Nope. The warrant did not consent to "no knock" entry, yet the BATF had only a military-style raid planned, and at trial, agents admitted they didn’t even bring the warrant along. o The raid was intended to be secret. Not even conceivable: it was held in broad daylight, through miles of open field that allow no cover or camouflage. In addition, the Davidians were tipped off, and the BATF knew it, and proceeded anyway. o The BATF agents were surprised at the gun battle. Nope. In fact, agents admitted at trial they were told to mark their blood types on their necks to expedite care if wounded, indicating the BATF was fully prepared for full-scale combat. The Davidians, meanwhile, were frantically calling 911. o The Davidians met the original raid with a hailstorm of gunfire. Nope. Close inspection of photos of the raid show no obvious signs of bullet holes in vehicles, and several agents are visible standing in the open, calmly emptying their clips into the complex. o The Davidians had greater firepower than the BATF. The approaching cattle cars of federal agents, eventually parked broadside facing Mt. Carmel, would have been deathtraps if the Davidians had possessed and used fully-automatic weapons in the manner claimed. o The helicopters which flew over -- and many believe fired on -- Mt. Carmel were unarmed. Nope. Their guns were merely unmounted. o The BATF claimed to have video footage of the first minutes of the raid. Such footage has never surfaced; they now claim that their equipment failed. o The FBI claimed that the Davidians had several years’ worth of food stored, stockpiled to survive an anticipated siege. They did not. o The FBI claimed that the Davidians had booby-trapped Mt. Carmel. No evidence of this has ever surfaced. o The FBI claimed the press had to be kept away because the Davidians possessed .50 caliber machine guns that could shoot almost two miles. Nope. No such weapons were ever found. o The FBI claimed to be using "all peaceful means" to end the standoff. However, recommendations from negotiation experts -- including allowing Davidians to speak with non-Davidian family members, pulling armed forces back from the compound, allowing a third party to negotiate a resolution, etc. -- were consistently ignored by the FBI's militarized Hostage Rescue Team (HRT). o The final attack on Mt. Carmel was necessary because the Davidians were not willing to come out. Nope. Koresh, in fact, had agreed on April 14th to surrender upon the completion of his writing on the Seven Seals. His work on the First Seal, the longest, was finished when the fire began; one of the survivors emerged with it stored on a computer disc in her pocket. Another week of patience might have ended the siege with no further bloodshed. o The FBI claims not to have fired any shots on the morning of April 19th, the day of the fire. Yet over 400 CS tear gas rounds were fired into the complex, from close enough range to kill any human being unfortunate enough in the way. Most people would consider a such deadly projectile fired into his home a "shot." o The FBI claims that two dozen Davidians burned to death because they simply didn’t want to leave the fire. Huh? Survivors insist that these people died because they were trapped on the second floor, after tanks destroyed Mt. Carmel’s stairwells. o On the day of the fire, FBI spokesman Bob Ricks claimed that Davidian children had been injected Jonestown-style with poison to "ease their pain." This was completely false. o On the day of the final assault, the Justice Department announced that two Davidians had confessed to starting the fire. Not true. o FBI commander Jeff Jamar once alleged that three FBI agents saw a Davidian start the fire. Not true. And so on. So this week comes the news that the FBI has lied about Waco. Stop the freaking presses. ___________________________ Regarding the fire: even without a new investigation, the public record that already exists regarding the origin of the blaze is clear, unambiguous, and deeply disturbing. CS gas is extremely flammable when aerosoled on delivery with a typical methylene chloride propellant. Worse, throwing water on a fire ignited in such a fashion creates a deadly cyanide cloud. It’s such vile, deadly stuff that over 100 countries, including the U.S., have signed a treaty renouncing its wartime use. And the CS canisters were, in fact, potential sources of ignition. Their operating instructions flatly state: "Type of Filling: pyrotechnic mixture… a malfunctioning projectile may explode upon impact." Once the FBI had cut off Mt. Carmel’s electricity, the Davidians were totally dependent on flammable fuels for light, heat, and cooked food. Which means the building was full of butane, kerosene, and propane heaters, lanterns, and cooking utensils, and the FBI knew it. It’s a matter of public record that the invasion force injected huge quantities of highly flammable CS gas into this highly combustible environment for six solid hours on a windy day. Videotape footage also shows tanks punching holes in the walls, turning the building into a giant flue. And the fire was supposedly entirely the Davidians’ idea. As to the FBI’s concern for safety, the gas canisters were delivered by launching over 400 40mm "ferret" rounds, most of them at short range, at which distance the rounds can easily kill and maim merely from impact. The FBI’s own spokesman once admitted that just minutes before the fire began, the tank that smashed the building’s front door injected massive amounts of gas into the center of the complex -- an area which the Davidians, deprived of power, often kept lit by lantern. At the surviving Davidians' trial, FBI agents at the back of the complex admitted that they first saw smoke in this area. Smoke also emerged shortly from the gymnasium area, which was receiving similar treatment. That’s how the fire probably started, folks. But we’re still supposed to believe that the Davidians, thus saturated with gas, surrounded by tanks, and immersed in potential sources of ignition, took this delightful opportunity to kill themselves, thus helpfully exonerating the feds from any blame. To support this lunatic notion after the fire, an "independent" investigation was hurriedly conducted. The guy in charge was recommended for the gig by the BATF itself, was a member of a BATF task force, and his wife was a full-time BATF employee. After eschewing several standard arson investigation practices, such as the interviewing of survivors, the BATF’s guy issued his report: the feds were not to blame. So there you are. ___________________________ Strangely, the question of who exactly was really in charge at Waco, and the extent to which the FBI and military communicated and coordinated, remains something of an open question. The Posse Comitatus Act, 18 USC 1385, forbids the U.S. military from participation in civilian law enforcement. The division between military and civilian police action is supposed to be a sacred one, a key boundary intended (in theory at least) to separate the U.S. from garden variety police states. However, a few exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act have been signed into law. Notably for the current case, military forces can now be used in certain drug enforcement situations. (Next time you hear somebody complain that the War On Drugs has a certain police state vibe, they’re closer to the truth than they probably realize.) Unsurprisingly, the BATF claimed -- falsely -- that the Davidians were operating a methamphetamine lab. Three weeks earlier, however, the FBI had already announced that no drug allegations were being pursued. But never mind. On the false drug lab rationale, military vehicles and National Guard members were attached to the Branch Davidian case. The Clinton administration has long insisted that actual Pentagon involvement at Waco was minimal: only three Delta Force members were present in Waco on the day of the fire -- and only in an advisory capacity. (Note that the U.S. military also claimed to be merely "advising" in Vietnam, El Salvador, and elsewhere -- and the ruse persists even now in Columbia.) However, declassified documents released this weekend, while heavily censored, now indicate that members of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command were actually observing Waco -- at the latest -- within 48 hours of the beginning of the 51-day siege, and their information was relayed throughout to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including commanding General Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. So now we know both the White House and Pentagon have also lied about Waco. Special Ops, remember, routinely conduct clandestine, often illegal operations, carefully designed to provide plausible deniability throughout. Special Ops sometimes employ National Guardsmen. And the helicopters and military equipment at Waco were handled by the National Guard. So it’s understandable if we start getting a little creeped out at this latest news. There’s still no evidence, however, that the Pentagon had any direct operational command over the activies at Waco. As it happens, the first report from the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command on March 2nd coincides exactly with the arrival date of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), an elite sniper and assault force which strongly appears to have been in command of the situation from this point forward. The HRT, which receives military training, was modeled directly on Special Ops, specifically the Delta Force, so it’s not surprising that when the former shows up the latter starts monitoring the action. Both might have been on the scene from the beginning; news photos make it clear that military vehicles were, in fact, present from day one. But until any further evidence develops, the simplest conclusion still resembles the same rough outline we already have: that the FBI’s HRT was called in once the initial raid was screwed up, they went along with the BATF’s meth lab angle to play with some cool military equipment, and from then on their big brother from the Pentagon kept an eye on things. Let’s hope that’s all the new Special Ops documents mean. ___________________________ Still, this is getting interesting. And way out of proportion. Let’s recall for a moment exactly why the raid was supposedly conducted in the first place: according to the search warrant, David Koresh and a few Davidians were suspected of converting semi-automatic weapons into fully-automatic weapons. If true, they would probably owe the government a few hundred dollars. That’s it. The phony meth lab thing is at best a side issue as the show begins. The warrant also mentions alleged child abuse, but even if those charges were true, they’re irrelevant to the initial raid. Child abuse, while repulsive, is simply not a BATF concern. Which means we are to believe whole cattle cars of heavily-armed men were required to serve a warrant and inspect firearms which Koresh had openly invited the BATF to inspect merely months earlier. Three heavily-armed helicopters were apparently necessary as well. KWTX-TV footage plainly shows three military helicopters present at Mt. Carmel at the time of the initial BATF raid, and much evidence indicates that at least one and perhaps all fired down into the complex. Over a dozen surviving Davidians insist they were being fired on from above, and that several of the first raid's victims were shot from the helicopters; autopsies on these victims are consistent with this scenario; both prosecution and defense witness testimony indicated the presence of inward-pointing bullet holes in the roof; video of the raid seems to show bullets hitting the roof at an almost vertical angle; and, compellingly, the panicked Davidians’ 911 call one minute into the raid specifically complained about ongoing firing from the helicopters. As to the timing of the helicopters' entry into the fray, the official version and reality seem to part company: according to the reporters who shot the news footage in question, the helicopters actually *initiated* the raid, arriving in advance of BATF agents on the ground. If these objective eyewitnesses are correct, and if, as other evidence indicates, National Guard helicopters indeed opened fire on the Davidians, the version of the raid most Americans have been taught is incorrect. And since it’s impossible to conduct a search or serve a warrant from a gunship, the purpose of the entire operation is thrown entirely into question. Some federal agents have said was the raid was referred to as "Showtime," indicating that publicity, not law enforcement, was the primary purpose. Perhaps the raid was as much about giving the weirdoes a good ass-kicking, thus generating the BATF some favorable TV coverage, as anything else. As to who shot the BATF agents who were killed and wounded, the evidence is remarkably unclear. Maybe some of Mt. Carmel's devoted Bible students really were terrific shooters. We’ll never really know. Uncustomarily, the BATF did not convene a post-raid review to determine which bullets struck whom, thus perhaps ruling out "friendly fire," in spite of 4 deaths and 20 injuries. The lack of curiosity is eye-catching. Some video footage seems to indicate that at least some BATF officers were in fact struck by their own comrades. Contrary to official claims, the issue has never been fully resolved. After the failure of the initial raid, the manner in which the siege was conducted became almost wholly military in nature. This isn’t surprising, given that the FBI’s HRT receives military training and consciously emulates the Pentagon’s Delta Force. So the Mt. Carmel complex soon began to resemble less a religious retreat than a prison. The Davidians were surrounded by tanks. Concertina wire was strung up. Davidians who moved in unexpected ways were greeted by explosive "flash-bang" charges. Even psywar tactics were employed on a grand scale: flood lights were brought in to deprive people in the complex of sleep, and horrific noises, such as the sound of animals being killed, were broadcast at high volume day and night, reminiscent of the siege of Noriega in Panama. Keep in mind that the large majority of Davidians inside the compound receiving this treatment were not considered suspects in any crime. Many were small children, whom the government claims it was only interested in protecting. And also as in wartime, the media was also kept under careful control, two miles away from the scene. Reporters who got closer were arrested and had their film confiscated. Strikingly, the Davidians repeatedly asked the FBI to allow news crews to enter Mt. Carmel and inspect the scene independently. The FBI refused. Why? Throughout the siege, Koresh and other Davidians repeatedly stated their certainty that the physical evidence at the scene would prove their version of events true -- as well as their certainty that federal agents would never let such evidence be seen by the world. Indeed, the militarized portion of the FBI presence, the HRT, behaved as if it had no desire for a peaceful resolution. As the FBI’s chief negotiator, Cliff Van Zandt, eventually admitted with dismay, when the Davidians cooperated with FBI negotiators, they were often *punished* by HRT agents, who responded to successful negotiation by destroying personal property of the Davidians and stepping up the level of harassment as a response to the cooperation. This makes no sense unless a peaceful outcome was not the HRT’s objective. ___________________________ BACK STORY Six months earlier, the HRT commander in Waco, Richard Rogers, was also the commander at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. At Ruby Ridge, a reclusive white supremacist named Randy Weaver, wanted for failing to appear in court on charges of sawing off some shotguns -- an infraction that a paid BATF informant had talked him into committing -- was surrounded at his home by BATF personnel. A botched raid led to one death on each side. As in Waco, the HRT was then brought in to respond. HRT commander Rogers reportedly expanded the rules of engagement to include shooting any armed male, whether he posed an immediate threat or not. Soon, one of Roger’s snipers shot and killed Mrs. Vicki Weaver, an innocent woman not even suspected of any crime, as she stood holding her infant child in her arms. For the next week, the FBI taunted surviving family members with broadcasts such as, "Good Morning Mrs. Weaver. We had pancakes for breakfast. What did you have?" After eight days, Randy Weaver surrendered peacefully. Had he not, the HRT reportedly had invasion plans in place for the following day, including an armored vehicle assault and the use of CS gas. Sound familiar? At trial, Weaver was acquitted of any criminal violence; he was convicted only of failing to appear to face the original weapons charges. Eventually, a civil jury awarded the surviving Weaver family over $3 million in damages for the government’s handling of the case. Richard Rogers is the guy running the HRT in Waco as well. And anyone is surprised at how things turned out? RETURN TO MAIN STORY ___________________________ On April 14, David Koresh promised to surrender upon completion of his analysis of the Seven Seals, which were the center of Davidian teachings. Peace was arguably at hand. Patience was very possibly all that was necessary to end the conflict. However, on April 15, HRT commander Richard Rogers told Janet Reno that negotiations were deadlocked, with no progress in sight, and apparently began pushing for a final, military resolution. On April 18, the day before the fire, the FBI pulled TV news cameras further away from the compound. At 6 am of April 19, federal agents began firing CS gas canisters into the Davidian complex. Davidians hung a message on a blanket indicating that they wanted to negotiate, but the phone was cut off. Officially, we are told that the CS gas was intended to force the Davidians to leave peacefully over the next 48 hours. However, at 11:20 am, tanks began smashing the building. Precisely who ordered this action and why remains unknown. Roughly two minutes after one tank injected a large amount of CS gas in the center of the building, a fire began in this location. Former Army and BATF investigator Richard Sherrow has concluded that this part of the fire was directly caused by this tank. Right about here, the FBI also claims, conveniently, that its surveillance devices failed. Officially, the tanks were trying to open up holes through which the Davidians could escape. However, the tanks smashed stairwells and hallways, blocked doorways, and collapsed ceilings, making escape more difficult. Tanks continued ramming the building long after the fire began, even as Davidians were trying to escape. Once the fire was underway -- whoever started it, although federal culpability in creating the incendiary environment could not be clearer -- not only was critical crime scene evidence not carefully maintained, it was actively destroyed. Videotape footage clearly shows tanks pushing walls of the compound, containing crucial bullethole evidence that would have determined the direction and number of shots fired during the initial siege, into the fire. One key piece of evidence, the front door itself, disappeared after the fire entirely. The tragedy underway inside the complex, as dozens of innocent children the operation was allegedly designed to save were incinerated, was clearly not viewed as such from outside. Several federal agents on the scene took trophy snapshots of themselves posed in front of the blaze. Ultimately, the BATF flag was raised over the scene as a symbol of victory. ___________________________ The state of the bodies of the Davidians raises still more disturbing questions. Many of the dozens of bodies -- it’s still not clear how many -- found in the concrete pantry ("bunker" in FBI parlance), mostly women and children, were incomplete and jumbled, missing hands, legs, and even heads. Unless the Davidians also worshipped Anne Boleyn, this makes no sense. We’re not talking about fire damage; the autopsy photos, which you can find easily on the Internet if you’re truly motivated (I’m not providing a link because they’re so damned awful, and those of you who merely suffer from idle curiosity would really regret an impulsive viewing -- trust me; the pictures are gruesome beyond words) show sudden discontinuities that do not appear to be the result of mere charring. Falling debris -- even if there were enough in the room to have killed over a dozen people (which there was not, the hole in the six-inch thick roof being only about two feet square immediately after the fire) -- cannot explain numerous stray limbs which belong to no body and at least six skulls that were simply not present and never found. Eleven of the corpses, including that of Koresh and members of his immediate family, were even found in a bizarrely dense and compacted mass, mashed together so tightly that all eleven were ultimately sent to the morgue in the same body bag. This cannot be accounted for by less than two cubic feet of falling debris. What happened here? I have no idea. But standard crime scene procedure screams that the area was handled with gross negligence at best. We might know a lot more, but on May 12, before Davidian attorneys could examine the scene, what was left of Mt. Carmel was bulldozed, destroying large amounts of evidence, including the entire concrete room where supposedly perhaps as many as 43 people died. And that was the end of that. ___________________________ So what the hell is the whole story at Waco? I don’t know. But we know for sure that the FBI had all of Mt. Carmel under extreme surveillance. We know that much of their equipment recorded this surveillance. And we know that the FBI has already lied about how much evidence exists in these tapes. We also know that the Justice Department, the FBI, and the BATF cannot be trusted to investigate themselves. Let's assume for a moment -- naively -- that perhaps there are a few Congressmen out there who care enough about the case to pursue it sincerely. In this case, a Congressional investigation, possibly a House Select Committee, might be the place to start. The first order of business should be to order the FBI to turn over every single piece of surveillance information -- every videotape, photo, audiotape, logbook, etc. -- dating from their first appearance on the scene at Mt. Carmel to the disbanding of the their presence after the fire. Congress can also subpoena similar information from the BATF and the Special Operations Command, plus communications between Washington and FBI commanders, etc. And the survivors should be deposed exhaustively. In spite of the extreme mishandling of the evidence, this is still an open case. Perhaps it’s time someone treats it as such. ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ The Arizona Republic recently fired columnist Julie Amparano, who had been writing a series of person-on-the-street interview columns. The quality of her writing was just fine. The stories were consistently interesting and insightful. The trouble was that as far as anyone could tell, some of the people she interviewed didn’t actually exist. Well, gee. That’s an awfully high standard. Just because someone doesn’t exist doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be heard. This opinion is shared by the dancing Q-Tip fairies that live in my medicine cabinet. I rely on the dancing Q-Tip fairies for many of my best insights. The one named Pookey likes to sit in my lap and tell me all about the financial difficulties of temporary employees, current trends in personal grooming products, and the case for marijuana decriminalization. I think Pookey is really cool. In fairness, Ms. Amparano denies any wrongdoing. The people she wrote about apparently seemed real to her, too. Good enough for me. And besides, all kidding aside, that’s usually good enough for the rest of the media as well: nobody has ever confirmed that Deep Throat actually existed. Look what he did for Woodward & Bernstein. Heck, look at the front page of your paper. How much of what passes for hard news comes from anonymous, highly-placed sources, and how much turns out to be true? The answers you’ll find: a) lots, and b) not much. And we’re not talking about minor, slice-of-life, person-on-the-street human interest stuff. We’re talking about huge chunks of hard news, totally screwed up by large percentages of the mainstream press. Was the Oklahoma City bombing really the work of Arab terrorists? No, but highly placed sources told lots of reporters it was. Was Bill Clinton really going to resign during the Monica thing? No, but the false rumor was widely reported. Did the White House ever prove the pharmaceutical plant they bombed in Sudan had anything to do with Osama Bin Laden? No. Quite clearly, the bombing was a shameful mistake. Was Mehmet Ali-Agca working for the KGB when he shot the Pope? No. Was Richard Jewell really responsible for the Olympic Park bombing? No. Were the final peace terms in Kosovo the ones NATO insisted upon as completely non-negotiable? No. And so on. And did anyone ever get fired for getting such enormous stories completely wrong? No, no, no, no, and no… The fact is, what Ms. Amparano wrote was every bit as true as most of the "real" news you read every day. Pookey thinks this is a complete outrage. ___________________________ As you know, there’s a whole subculture of day traders out there who do nothing but stare at computer screens all day, trying to get rich quick by leeching money out of the productive economy by making hundreds of trades on thousands of shares of stock: half a point here, a quarter point there, and a complete nervous breakdown every couple of weeks. At day’s end, as Wall Street shuts its doors and CNBC begins broadcasting Geraldo Rivera, Chris Matthews, and a pack of wild dogs, our overstressed contestants tote up their scores, pack up their things, and head home, twitching and blinking and muttering about Freemasons, fluoridation, and precious bodily fluids. As I’ve said many times before, you can often judge whether something is useful to society by what would happen if ten times as many people did it. Multiply America’s schoolteachers by a factor of ten, and we’d be better off. If we had ten times as many day traders, Geraldo, Chris, and the other spectral hounds would just have more to bark about. And the twitching is about to intensify: online brokerages are now starting to extend their services into after-hours trading. By this time next year, we’ll probably see computerized trading 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365.242205 days a year. (Although if Y2K hits, the primary stock being traded will be live.) Which means that thousands of panicky day traders, who already barely sleep at night as it is, will soon forego getting any sleep entirely. Oh, joy. Suddenly "The Sixth Sense" feels like a documentary: *I see dead people.* ___________________________ I’m writing this from a hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. It’s Saturday night. I’m sitting alone, staring at a big blue package of M&Ms. O the glamorous life I lead. (The short version if why I’m in Memphis is this: on Tuesday I’ll be walking along as Granny D (the 89-year-old campaign finance reform crusader), Dick Gregory, local sanitation workers, and others hold a march and ceremony honoring Dr. Martin Luther King and calling for citizen action to improve the quality of our democracy. The long version will be next week’s column.) The short and long of why these M&Ms are in a big blue bag is: because they’re crunchy. And thank God. I can’t tell you how often people complain to me that their M&Ms are too smooth. So here I sit, examining a big blue bag, two square inches larger than the dark brown bag the similarly-priced traditional M&Ms come in. The big bag makes it look like you’re getting more candy when you buy the crunchy style, maybe as a bonus to get you to try the new stuff. Read the fine print. The big new blue bag holds 1.5 ounces of candy. The small old brown bag holds 1.69 ounces. Such a deal. Anyway, I’m surprised I bought the big blue bag. I don’t really like candy much. I like my pancreas better. I also enjoy having teeth and fitting through doorways and such. But I bought this big blue bag. It’s late and I’m tired and chocolate contains phenylethylamine, which enhances mood, which is part of why people think chocolate makes you feel good: it does. Although that’s just my smartypants rationalization. The real reason I bought the big blue bag is that it was big and it was blue and it caught my eye and even your intrepid progressive activist reporter, knowing full well he was being manipulated, wanted to see what was in the big blue bag. So here I sit. I’m still tired. And now my dental work hurts and my pancreas is twitching. Hold on a second. I gotta go brush my teeth and run for 20 minutes. I’ll be right back. (Actual delay. Honest.) OK. I mention all this because it brings to mind a prank a New Zealand artist named Fiona Jack once played as perhaps the ultimate demonstration that advertising can sell you things you absolutely don’t need. As she explained to the magazine Adbusters, Jack was concerned with advertising’s "coercive ability to sell the most completely bizarre things to people… " and "realized that the ultimate nonexistent product would be… nothing." So she decided to actually call a product Nothing -- complete with a little trademark symbol -- and market it. Jack convinced a local advertising association to join the fun, and pretty soon Auckland, New Zealand had 27 billboards displaying no product, making no claims, and carrying the following slogan: Nothing… it’s what you’ve been looking for. And yes, people actually started calling the billboard company, trying to find out where they could buy this wonderful new Nothing stuff. As Jack explained, the project proved "you can market anything if there’s enough money behind it." Keep that in mind as the Presidential race heats up. ___________________________ Bob Harris is a stand-up comedian, political writer, and syndicated radio humorist. His new book, Steal This Book And Get Life Without Parole, is now available from http://www.commoncouragepress.com. To receive a free email subscription to The Scoop, just send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________ Bob’s Big Plug-O-Rama™ (updated 9/6/99): Steal This Book And Get Life Without Parole is available in many bookstores and can be ordered directly from http://www.commoncouragepress.com/steal.html at 25% off the retail price. The book includes cartoons by Tom Tomorrow and a foreword by Paul Krassner, who edited Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. I’m doing readings at bookstores around the country during my fall college tour. So far, the book has already received hugely kind praise from Michael Moore, Jim Hightower, Jeff Cohen, and lots of other cool people. This is way exciting. Http://www.bobharris.com now includes streaming stand-up comedy clips, radio commentaries, and lots of other stuff like early writing samples from National Lampoon, my first published cartoons, and other such whatnot. Syndication of "This Is Bob Harris," the daily radio feature, is rolling along: 75 stations and counting. Call your favorite station and ask for the feature. They pay attention, honest. The radio stuff is also broadcast up to four times a day in over 140 countries by Armed Forces Radio -- including, strangely enough, during the 3rd commercial break of the Rush Limbaugh program! You can also hear an audio version of my commentaries at Soapbox, http://www.webactive.com/webactive/soapbox/monday.html. Some columns are reprinted in the current print editions of Dollars & Sense, Extra!, and the Funny Times. The Scoop now has subscribers in 44 countries. Welcome, new readers from Portugal and Iceland. Finally, Mother Jones online (http://www.motherjones.com) now carries The Scoop almost every week. I am honored to be associated with these people. They rule. ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MSN Messenger Service lets you stay in touch instantly with your family & friends - Visit http://messenger.msn.com
