The Scoop - http://www.bobharris.com/ New subscribers: thanks for joining. Yep, the column is free, and you�re encouraged to forward it to friends. That�s how our readership grows. Short column this week, just three pieces adapted from radio. Very busy. Possibly some major news about a new radio talk show very soon. Fingers crossed. Gratuitous plug: Steal This Book And Get Life Without Parole is now available; check out http://www.bobharris.com/book.htm. THE SCOOP for December 6, 1999 ___________________________ The Child Labor Ban: "Abusive" Indeed Also: Supporting the Gulf War Vets, and an MLK Memorial � 1999 Bob Harris http://www.bobharris.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * = italics Bill Clinton doesn't lie nearly so often as some folks think. More often, he merely resorts to lawyerly precision. President Clinton just signed a treaty banning "abusive" child labor. Sounds great, right? And then he posed for a photo op and smiled and waved, basking in the warm glow one might expect from someone who has just tried to wipe out said "abusive" child labor. Notice the phrase isn't "all" child labor. Just the "abusive" kind. As opposed to the good kind, apparently. Granted, the treaty does call for an end to child slavery, prostitution, military service, and extreme stuff like that. Which is great. Yes, we should ban all that stuff. Swell. But let's not get all worked up about it. It's not exactly like Clinton is taking on some powerful pro-child slavery lobby. Hey, now let's pass a law against beating old people with sticks. Read the fine print: the treaty Bill Clinton just signed does not ban all child labor. Not by a long shot. There are still gonna be kids working in sweatshops making your running shoes, six and seven days a week, making like seventeen cents an hour. One of Clinton's biggest fundraisers over the years has been Phil Knight, CEO of Nike. So don't imagine that anything's really changing here. The truth is, the U.S. government isn't even particularly interested in child labor. Ten years ago, the UN passed an international Convention on the Rights of the Child which has since been passed by every country but *two* -- the United States and Somalia. Ten years later, the U.S. Congress has yet to ratify this landmark UN convention. Somalia has an excuse. They don't even have a government. The United States does. Or at least, Congress likes to imply that we do, using the most lawyerly of words. ___________________________ Remember the Gulf War? Almost everywhere you turned, you were told to Support Our Troops. OK. Maybe we finally ought to. As you probably know, Operation Desert Storm wasn't quite the big democracy-protecting shindig we were sold at the time. Almost nine years later, Saddam's still in power, half a million Iraqi kids are dead due to sanctions, and the Kuwati legislature denied women the right to vote, again, just last week. But the Americans who did the actual fighting were mostly just average folks, the vast majority lower-middle class people just trying to get by and maybe go to college, who did what they thought they were supposed to. And in return, at least a hundred thousand came down with chronic fatigue, weakness, and a whole bunch of other stuff now known as Gulf War Syndrome, which the VA and Pentagon have spent a lot of energy denying even exists. It does. As this space reported over two years ago, researchers at the University of Texas found that almost half the vets they studied showed signs of brain damage, probably caused by chemical weapons, anti-chemical warfare pills, bug spray, vaccinations, and a bunch of other toxic crap all slapped together in a big neural cocktail. Last week, that study received major corroboration thanks to a newer, separate study, also at UT's Southwestern Medical Center, which found that Gulf War Syndrome sufferers have lost 10% to 25% of their brain tissue. Let the VA and Pentagon pretend that's just hypochondria. Whatever any of us felt about the war, these folks are our brothers and sisters, and they need our help. Support our troops. ___________________________ Can one person truly make a difference in the world? How else do you think it happens? I just want to conclude this week by sharing something wonderful with you. I just came back from South Carolina, where I gave a lecture on Martin Luther King's leadership of the Civil Rights movement and the U.S. government's reaction. Declassified documents show that after his years of non-violent protest in the face of police dogs and Klan violence culminated in a March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act, the FBI was still trying sabotage the rise of Dr. King -- "neutralization" is the word used in one memo -- even as he was accepting a Nobel Peace Prize. The FBI spied on Dr. King's organization with informers and electronic surveillance, planted false stories in the media, hired local street gang and Klan members to disrupt King's marches and rallies, and worse. In the most notorious instance on public record, the FBI even sent Dr. King a poison-pen letter attempting to induce him to commit suicide. The attempts to smear Dr. King were more successful than pop culture prefers to remember. Most retrospectives end after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the last years of his life, thanks to his strong leadership of the working poor and opposition to the war in Vietnam, Dr. King was frequently vilified throughout the mainstream media. At the time of his death, support for segregation and even brute racism were still commonly and openly expressed, and Dr. King was the recipient of much of that hatred. But times change. I gave a talk about all this at Clemson University's Thurmond Institute, named for the Senator who ran for President in 1948 on the platform "Segregation Forever." And in that building, in that place, an audience both black and white gathered to celebrate and study the work of one man who wasn't afraid to face injustice, look it in the eye, and call it by name. This week brought the announcement that Dr. King would receive a memorial on the Mall in Washington. I know sometimes it feels like you, one person, can't really change the world. But here's one of the great lessons we should learn when we remember Dr. King's life, and visit his memorial: if you're willing to treat doing what's right like it truly matters... if you, like Dr. King, truly have a dream of making a better world... you're the one person who can. ___________________________ 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 at http://www.commoncouragepress.com/steal.html. To receive a free email subscription to The Scoop, just send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________ Bob�s Big Plug-O-Rama� (updated 12/6/99): Steal This Book And Get Life Without Parole is widely available and can be ordered directly from http://www.commoncouragepress.com/steal.html at 25% off retail. The book includes cartoons by Tom Tomorrow and a foreword by Paul Krassner. You can read some ridiculously kind reviews at http://www.bobharris.com/book.htm. Noam Chomsky�s book on the Balkan War, The New Military Humanism: Lessons >From Kosovo, is now available. I was honored as heck to provide the narration. This, too, is best obtained directly from Common Courage. Syndication of "This Is Bob Harris," the daily radio feature, is rolling along: over 75 stations and counting. Call your favorite station and ask for the feature. They pay attention, honest. The radio stuff is now also rebroadcast four times daily in over 140 countries by Armed Forces Radio. You can also hear an audio version of my commentaries online at Soapbox, http://www.webactive.com/webactive/soapbox/monday.html. 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. The email version of this column now has subscribers in 47 countries. Welcome Cuba (or at least Guantanamo Bay)! Mother Jones online (http://www.motherjones.com) also often carries The Scoop. I am honored to be associated with these people. They�re swell. Finally, do you ever have trouble sleeping at night? Check out what I consider one of the coolest, most whimsical videos ever made at http://www.sheep2sleep.com. ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb
