-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 79 - October, 2000
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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QUOTE:
"I spent thirty-three years in the Marines, most of my time being a high class
muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was
a racketeer for capitalism."
--General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps Commandant, 1935
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Contents:
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--"Democracy Now!" In Danger [Pacifica]
--Shoot To Kill: The Militarization of the U.S. Police
--Drug War Toll From Police Shootings Continues to Rise
Linked stories:
*Trafficking in human flesh
*FBI arrests 'gangland leaders'
*Copyright.net Inks Agreement With Media Enforcer
*RIAA Anti-Piracy Efforts Reap Series Of Fall Successes
*Cool Places: Red-Light Districts
*Agencies tracking Web users despite restrictions
*Broadband Could be Hackland
*Voteauction Booth is Closed
*Army's Heads-Up: Berets All Around
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Begin stories:
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"Democracy Now!" In Danger
Pacifica management turns against free speech
October 19, 2000
According to a leaked October 18 memo from "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman
to the Pacifica Radio network's Board of Directors, Pacifica presented
Goodman with a new set of "rules" on October 16 which drastically curtail
her freedom to decide what stories to cover and how, and even attempt to
restrict her free speech rights. (The memo was not given to FAIR by Goodman
or any other member of the "Democracy Now!" staff.)
"Democracy Now!," produced at New York City Pacifica station WBAI, is
Pacifica's most popular and influential show. Hosted by award-winning
journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, the daily newsmagazine is on the
cutting edge of American journalism, bringing the public stories and voices
too often shut out of mainstream media and standing out, as the show's motto
declares, as "the exception to the rulers."
Over the last year, the national management of Pacifica has become
increasingly hostile to the crew of the show "Democracy Now!", and in
particular to Goodman. Goodman's leaked memo reveals that after fruitless
attempts at good-faith negotiations, Goodman has been forced to file formal
grievances against Pacifica's management charging "harassment, gender
harassment and censorship," along with other violations of her union
contract.
In a violation of Goodman's freedom of speech, Pacifica's new "rules"
threaten to fire her if she does not clear any and all speaking engagements
with Pacifica management. In addition, the network threatens to fire
Goodman if she does not provide Pacifica Program Director Steve Yasko each
Friday with "a list of possible shows the following week" and "determine the
topics of at least three shows the preceding week."
"Essentially, these rules make it impossible for Goodman to continue to
produce the hard-hitting, breaking news stories 'Democracy Now!' is famous
for," says FAIR senior analyst Steve Rendall. "It seems clear that Pacifica
is trying to force Amy out of her job."
Background: The Crisis at Pacifica
Most Pacifica listeners first became aware of the growing conflict within
the network when in March 1999, Pacifica fired Nicole Sawaya, station
manager of Berkeley station KPFA; a few days later, veteran reporter Larry
Bensky was also fired from KPFA for discussing on-air his concerns about the
network's autocratic management. In the wake of the firings, as many as
2,000 listeners took to the streets of Berkeley to protest the actions of
Pacifica's management and demand greater accountability to the community.
As a media watch group dedicated to promoting greater diversity in the
press, FAIR has followed with distress the deepening crisis at the country's
first listener-supported community radio network. Over the last year and a
half, Pacifica's management has increasingly orchestrated censorship--
including of FAIR's own radio show, CounterSpin-- retaliatory personnel
moves and the disenfranchisement of listeners and local advisory boards in
order to impose its often regressive decisions on the network.
The latest moves against "Democracy Now!" are a sad indication that
Pacifica's management is making a final break with the progressive core
values laid out by Pacifica founder Lew Hill.
Save "Democracy Now!"
"'Democracy Now!' is quite simply one of the most important shows on the
radio today," says FAIR's Rendall. "Goodman's journalism is exemplary.
Pacifica has rewarded her for years of dedicated work with threats, daily
harassment and intimidation."
Goodman is a 1998 recipient (with "Democracy Now!" correspondent Jeremy
Scahill) of the George Polk Award for the radio documentary "Drilling and
Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Military Dictatorship." She has also won
numerous awards for the radio documentary "Massacre: The Story of East
Timor" (co-produced with journalist Allan Nairn), including the Robert F.
Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia
Silver Baton, the Armstrong Award and the Radio/Television News Directors
Award.
Pacifica's actions against "Democracy Now!" come at a time when the show has
been doing a remarkable amount of groundbreaking work. During the protests
at the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the show's 2000
election project, "Breaking With Convention: Power Protest and the
Presidency," was simulcast live via satellite on community radio and public
access TV stations across the country. This unprecedented collaboration
generated the largest expansion of audience in Pacifica's history.
In addition, "Democracy Now!" has recently broken major stories on a host of
issues, including Chevron's role in Nigeria, the Lori Berenson case and East
Timor, to name a few. Pacifica's response? According to Goodman's memo, in a
September 14 meeting with Pacifica's General Managers, KPFK's Mark Schubb
explained to Goodman that her style of reporting was inappropriate because
listeners "don't want to hear graphic details of police brutality before
breakfast."
ACTION: Please contact Pacifica's National Board and demand that it withdraw
its new "rules" for "Democracy Now!", cease harassing Goodman and give her
their full support in continuing her ground-breaking journalism.
Please remember that some individuals on the Board support Goodman's work;
your letters will be most effective if they encourage undecided Board
members to take a strong stand in support of the show.
In addition, FAIR and the San Francisco-based Media Alliance are urging
Pacifica listeners across the country to attend protests outside their local
Pacifica stations in support of "Democracy Now!" Details will be
forthcoming at: <http://www.mediademocracynow.org> .
CONTACT:
You can cut and past this list of email addresses into the "To" heading of
your letter-- your email program may require semicolons in between addresses
rather than commas. For fuller contact info see RadTimes # 78.
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FURTHER INFORMATION:
For more on FAIR's role in and analyses of the Pacifica crisis, see:
<http://www.fair.org/activism/pacifica-history.html>
For a full history of the turmoil at Pacifica, see Save Pacifica's
chronology at:
<http://www.savepacifica.net/sofar.html>
To stay up to date on upcoming Pacifica protests, see:
<http://www.mediademocracynow.org>
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Shoot To Kill: The Militarization of the U.S. Police
September 2000
by Charles Simmons
The fatal shooting by Detroit Police of a deaf man holding
a rake was followed several days later by the murder of a
factory worker who was trying to kill a dog that had been
terrorizing the neighborhood for two years.
These recent killings are the culmination of a series
of brutal beatings and murders of residents during the
administration of Mayor Dennis Archer, and Detroit residents
are demanding the resignation of the Mayor and the Police
Chief Benny Napoleon for continuing to support a Shoot-To-
Kill policy. Detroit police killings have won the city the
distinction of the highest rate of murders by a police
department in the U.S.
The policy of "Shoot-To-Kill" is also the policy of the
U.S. Marines, CIA and Mafia hit men, and is fast becoming
the de facto policy of civilian police forces throughout the
nation. The armaments, supplies, computerized and military
vehicles, combat and intelligence training, and values of
U.S. police forces are similar to that of military forces in
many nations which serve exclusively to suppress their local
populations. In Georgia, at the School of the Americas, the
U.S. trains military leaders from Latin America in torture
tactics and death squad operations to oppress and rob the
little people of a continent. How many of those professors
of death are training the Detroit Police? A friend from
Spain recently remarked that the conduct of American police
forces reminds her of the treatment of civilians by the
police and military during the Nazi regime in Spain under
General Franco.
In addition, some big corporations are making tremendous
profits from this massive domestic weaponry. The U.S.
armaments industry, one of the leading sectors of the global
economy and the major export of the U.S., makes billions of
dollars annually from domestic and international sales of
weapons and support systems.
The increasing globalization of the economy is rapidly
intensifying the gap between big wealth and workers. With
this process everywhere there are the usual suspects:
downsizing, privatization, outsourcing, union-busting, a
growing disrespect for people of color, youth, and workers,
and everywhere there is the expansion of the police and
military forces to maintain the old order of exploitation
surrounded by a sea of riches.
In Michigan, this police Shoot-To-Kill policy goes hand in
hand with the Shoot-To-Kill policy of Governor Engler's cuts
in domestic services and fundamental democratic ideals. The
massive cuts in services for health care, the closing of
mental health institutions, the elimination of home rule,
the opposition to affirmative action, the take over of the
Detroit judiciary -- all reflect a Shoot-To-Kill domestic
policy. The opposition to urban and rural environmental
policies to promote clean air and water, and legislation
against Living Wages, reflect the Shoot-To-Kill mentality
and a race to the bottom in providing fundamental needs in
a society in which the people seek a true democracy rather
than nice speeches about democracy.
The globalization of the economy by the giant corporations
is a world wide Shoot-to-Kill policy that wreaks havoc in
American urban neighborhoods by grabbing the land, health
and safety in the inner cities from Detroit's Brush Park to
Los Angeles' South Central. The Shoot-to-Kill policy steals
the wealth of diamond mine workers and their families in
South Africa. In Nigeria, residents who live near the oil
deposits suffer from chronic health problems and police
brutality caused by environmental degradation imposed by
foreign corporations headquartered in New York, London and
Paris. . Smiling Bill Clinton's remedy is to send Marines
to train the Nigerian soldiers, already experts in brutality
against their own people. Farmers and workers in Columbia,
South America, face death squads armed with U.S. weapons
financed by American tax dollars which Clinton claims are
being sent to stop CIA drug trafficking which continues
to expand in New York and Little Rock.
The Shoot-to-Kill Policy is responsible for the fact
that mothers, teenage girls and war refugees in Africa,
Asia, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and female
immigrants across the globe are being brutalized and sold by
the tens of thousands into slavery as prostitutes throughout
the world. And in the industrialized nations, and in states
such as Michigan, women are increasingly the victims of
impoverishment, and are filling the prisons as never before.
But this is not simply the time for complaints; this is a
call for peoples' action and empowerment. This is not a call
to hear the usual speeches of eloquent politicians, but a
call to form a grassroots movement to make fundamental changes
in the system right now at the local and national level. In
the process of building such a movement, we must reach across
borders and boundaries to join hands with others who seek
social and political and environmental justice.
As we demand the resignation of the mayor and police
chief, we must also demand a democratic method of selecting
officials to oversee the police by the working people and
in the community and not by big corporations. We must demand
that police at every rank will be personally liable for their
corruption, abuse and murder. We must demand that the training,
selection, and discipline of police be supervised by elected
community representatives at the top level who are not allowed
to take money or benefits from big corporations. We must demand
that the profits be taken out of the prison industry and that
the administration of prisons and other penal institutions
be turned over to elected officials whose objective is to
rehabilitate the inmates so that they be returned to the
society prepared to make a positive contribution.
We have to call for a living wage for all those employed and
a guaranteed wage for all residents. We have to demand the
restoration of social and health services to all people and
a new and positive environmental policy that is compatible
with good public health.
In addition, we have to demand socially relevant public
education at every grade level that incorporates these
issues into the curriculum so those students will feel
connected to their community. This approach to education
will help the youth to feel empowered to participate in the
positive life of the community. This approach will compel
the youth to use their energy in creative ways to begin to
make changes that will contribute to a better home and
family, a better neighborhood and a true democratic nation.
-----
Charles Simmons teaches journalism and media law at Eastern
Michigan University and is co-chair of the Committee for the
Political Resurrection of Detroit. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
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Drug War Toll From Police Shootings Continues to Rise
How Many Dead? Nobody Knows Because Congress Doesn't Care
<http://www.drcnet.org/wol/156.html#policeshootings>
On Wednesday, September 13th, a Modesto, California SWAT team
officer executing a federal search warrant in a methamphetamine
investigation shot and killed 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda. The
youngster died in a pool of blood on his bedroom floor after
being hit in the back with a shotgun blast from veteran officer
David Hawn. The California Attorney General's office is
investigating, but if past police shootings are any indication,
the police shooter will walk free.
In the wake of a rash of widely publicized police killings in the
1990s, public anger and apprehension has mounted. But while the
overall number of police killings is recorded annually, there are
no national figures on police killings in the drug war. DRCNet
has, however, found disturbing patterns in reports of those
killings it has been able to survey.
Young Sepulveda, sadly, is not the only or even the latest
unarguably innocent person to be killed by police enforcing the
drug laws. (Let us be clear here: The victims of these police
killings are dead regardless of whether or not they were involved
in drug law violations, and even someone who may have committed a
drug crime deserves a day in court, not summary execution by
trigger-happy police.) Here are a few recent examples of both
innocents and suspects killed at the hands of police:
* September, 1999: Denver SWAT team members shoot and kill 45-
year-old Ismael Mena, a father of nine, after he attempted to
defend himself and his family from the unannounced, masked
intruders who broke down his bedroom door as he slept. The SWAT
team was carrying out a no-knock raid, but had the wrong address
on their search warrant. Mena was shot eight times and died on
the spot after he fired one shot from a .22 caliber pistol. No
drugs were found at the house. The city of Denver paid $400,000
to settle a lawsuit with the Mena family. The officer in charge
of the raid pled guilty this month to a perjury charge pertaining
to his affidavit seeking the search warrant. In February, a
Denver grand jury cleared that officer and two other police
shooters of any other wrongdoing.
* January, 2000: An Arlington, Texas police officer shoots and
kills 48-year-old Raymond J. Sanchez during a methamphetamine
bust. Police alleged that Sanchez tried to run them over while
fleeing after his passenger was arrested. The father of four
died in a Kwik Wash parking lot after being shot one time. In
May, an Arlington grand jury cleared the police shooter of any
wrongdoing.
* March, 2000: A New York City police officer shoots and kills
Patrick Dorismond, the fourth unarmed black man killed by the
city's police in little more than a year. Undercover police
accosted Dorismond, a 24-year-old security guard, as he and a
friend hailed a cab. In what police described as a "buy and
bust" operation in which they approach strangers on the steet and
ask them for drugs, Dorismond angrily rejected the undercover
agents' request and the dispute escalated into a scuffle.
Dorismond was shot once in the chest and died within minutes. In
a sign of intense community anger at Dorismond's and other
killings, 23 officers and five civilians were injured in a melee
at his funeral. In July, a New York grand jury cleared the
police shooter of any wrongdoing.
* June, 2000: A suburban St. Louis detective and a DEA agent,
acting as members of a multi-agency drug task force, shoot and
kill two 36-year-old black men, Earl Murray and Ronald Beasley,
in their vehicle in the parking lot of a busy suburban Jack in
the Box restaurant. The police were attempting to arrest Murray
for allegedly selling rocks of crack cocaine to undercover
officers on two previous occasions. Police said they shot the
two after Murray, the driver, attempted to flee. Police said
they feared that Murray would run them down. No weapons were
found in the vehicle. Beasley, the passenger, was not a target
of the bust. Police described his death as "unintended, but not
a mistake." In August, a St. Louis County grand jury cleared the
police shooters of any wrongdoing.
* October, 2000: Two Lebanon, Tennessee police officers
executing a search warrant for the wrong house shoot and kill
John Adams, 64, in his living room. According to Adams' wife,
Loriane, police repeatedly refused to identify themselves as they
banged on the door, then broke the door down, handcuffed her, and
shot her husband several times. Police claim he shot at them
with a sawed off shotgun. Loraine Adams says this is not so.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating.
These are only a sampling of recent victims of police violence in
the drug war from data provided to DRCNet by the Media Awareness
Project <http://www.mapinc.org>, a web-based archive of drug
policy-related news stories. According to the MAP's Tom
O'Connell, who did the archival digging, their partial and
preliminary data show at least 60 people shot by police enforcing
drug laws in recent years.
"That is the minimum. These are by no means comprehensive
statistics," O'Connell explained. "These are only the cases that
have been posted to our news archives. We do not catch
everything, for a couple of reasons. First, we rely on our
'newshawks' to bring articles to our attention, so articles that
may get only local or regional play might be missed. And don't
forget that as we grow stronger, we have more 'newshawks' than in
earlier years, so those early years are probably underreported
there as well."
"Second," continued O'Connell, "it has not been our policy at the
Media Awareness Project to post every drug bust or incident. We
would be overwhelmed. We have concentrated on policy-related
stories, so again this has caused us to miss some."
Even with the limited data available, some disturbing but
predictable patterns emerge. In cases where race of the victim
could be determined, blacks were most often the victims, followed
by Hispanics, with only a small minority of white victims.
(Interestingly, the only two cases where the victims shot at
police were two white pot-farmers in separate incidents in
Oregon. One was shot and killed; the other was shot and
paralyzed and later committed suicide in jail.)
"We also looked at whether the person was armed," said O'Connell,
"and in many cases, the only 'weapon' the victims had was the
vehicle in which they were trying to escape."
O'Connell is not alone in sounding the alarm about drug-related
police shootings.
Joseph McNamara, former police chief in Kansas City and San Jose
and currently a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute,
told DRCNet, "These shootings are a major cost of the drug war."
"This is a real ethical issue," said McNamara, "and evidence of
the kind of callousness abroad in the land. It results from the
emotionalism surrounding drugs and the whole war mentality that
goes along with it. Things happen in war that we would not
excuse in a civilized society."
McNamara, whose book on policing in the drug war, "Gangster Cops:
The Hidden Cost of America's War on Drugs," will be published
soon, predicts more fatalities. "These shootings are
inevitable," he explained. "Police are doing military operations
in drug raids, not because dealers are anxious to shoot it out,
but because dealers are armed to avoid being robbed."
Timothy Lynch directs the criminal justice project at the Cato
Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank that opposes the war
on drugs. For Lynch, paramilitarized policing is a key factor in
the high number of police shootings.
"We should arrest the trend of militarizing police tactics,"
Lynch told DRCNet. "Congress has encouraged cops to create
paramilitary units -- all those SWAT teams -- by giving away
surplus military hardware and encouraging the bad trend of cops
emulating military special forces."
"Once these paramilitary units are created," Lynch continued,
"they apply military tactics to executing search warrants. This
leads to unnecessary shootings and killings."
"And there is the problem of mission creep," he told DRCNet.
"When these SWAT teams are first created, they have specific
missions -- hostage situations, for example -- but over time,
after they've invested all this money and training, these units
start to get involved in non-emergency situations, such as
executing arrest and search warrants. Constitutional rights get
trampled, people get killed."
"The police are caught up in drug war rhetoric," said Lynch.
"When police adopt the mindset of going after the enemy, there's
an insensitivity to respecting constitutional rights. This
increases the likelihood that unnecessary violence will occur."
McNamara also pointed to police hoping to profit from the drug
war via asset forfeitures as a contributing factor. "Many of
these shootings occur during the execution of arrest or search
warrants," he told DRCNet, "and sometimes police search warrant
decisions are influenced by the desire to get the loot."
"If there is enough evidence to obtain the warrant, why don't
they arrest the guy when he leaves the house so innocent people
are not endangered?," asked the former chief. "It's because they
want the cash, the dope, the goods. Law enforcement is addicted
to seizure money."
Despite the data collection problems cited by O'Connell, the
Media Awareness Project's numbers are actually some of the best
available on drug enforcement-related police shootings. The
responsibility for the paucity of data lies squarely with the
political class. As a sop to liberals concerned about police
abuse of force, one section of the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act of 1994 ordered the Department of Justice to
acquire data and issue annual reports on the use of excessive
force by law enforcement officers.
Congress, however, only funded a preliminary project for two
years. That effort, carried out by the International Association
of Chiefs of Police (IACP -- <http://www.theiacp.org>, resulted
in a National Use of Force Database. But since 1998, Congress
has refused to appropriate funds for the project. The Bureau of
Justice Statistics, which is in charge of the effort, has not
issued a report since June, 1998. In its final word on the
subject, the Bureau wrote, "because funding was specifically
requested to fulfill the... mandate for annual data collection on
the police use of excessive force, but was not provided, it is
unclear whether the pilot efforts can be continued."
Because of lack of funding and because law enforcement agencies
participate only if they choose to -- the IACP says only 319
agencies out of at least 2500 participate -- the database has
extremely limited utility at this point. The database lists, for
example, a total of six police killing for the years 1997-98, far
fewer than even MAP was able to uncover.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics also produced one preliminary
study, a report on the prevalence of police use of force. While
it does not provide a breakdown for drug-related incidents, it
does provide a startling estimate of the extent of police
violence. The Census Bureau in 1996 surveyed a sample of some
6,000 citizens on their interactions with police, and
extrapolating from those interviews, the Bureau of Justice
Statistics estimated that some "500,000 persons (0.2% of the
population age 12 or older) were hit, held, pushed, choked,
threatened with a flashlight, restrained by a police dog,
threatened or actually sprayed with chemical or pepper spray,
threatened with a gun, or experienced some other form of force.
Of the 500,000, about 400,000 were also handcuffed." (The report
is online at <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/puof.htm>.)
For obvious reasons, the survey contained no interviews with
victims of fatal police shootings.
While the study's authors noted that the sample was to small for
reliable estimates, they did find racial differences in line with
other recent studies of racial disparities in the administration
of criminal justice in general and in drug law enforcement in
particular. Less than 1% of whites who reported contact with
police reported police threat or use of force; for blacks that
figure was 2.1% and for Hispanics 5.4%.
The standard measure for police shootings, the FBI's annual
Uniform Crime Reports, shows what it calls justified homicides by
law enforcement, but does not break down the aggregate numbers by
type of offense. The 1999 report shows total law enforcement
killings hovering at more than 300 annually throughout the
decade, before dropping to 294 last year. (The UCR is available
online at <http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/99cius.htm>.)
Lynch said that regardless of the lack of hard numbers on drug-
related police shootings, he knows where the problem lies. "The
war on drugs is the leading cause of police shootings," he said
flatly. "When you look at the percentage of search warrants
being executed, most of them are for drug activity. When there
is either a mistaken shooting or violence between homeowners and
police, it is usually drug enforcement. If you're looking at
innocent people being killed, it is usually in a drug raid
context.
McNamara gives credit where credit is due. "Police are doing an
excellent job of reducing shootings," he said, "except for drug
shootings."
For McNamara, the bottom line is protecting human life. "Police
officers are not soldiers but peace officers, whose duty is to
protect human life. We've lost sight of the basic mission of
police, which is to protect human life, not make drug arrests.
When we set priorities and they conflict, protection of human
life should take precedent, not the desire to seize drugs."
MAP's Mark Greer is frustrated. "This is a story crying out to
be written," he told DRCNet. "We hope a good investigative
reporter could pull all this together for a nationwide expose of
not only the number of innocents murdered, but also the racial
breakdown, and how consistently people are being killed in drug
enforcement because they 'attacked the officer with his car.'"
Is there a reporter in the house?
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Linked stories:
********************
Trafficking in human flesh
<http://www.salon.com/sex/feature/2000/10/16/trafficking/index.html?CP=SAL&DN=662>
A landmark act passed by the Senate last week would increase
protection for slaves forced into prostitution.
********************
FBI arrests 'gangland leaders'
<http://itn.co.uk/news/20001020/world/11mobsters.shtml>
The FBI has arrested ten members of the Decavalcante organized crime
family, one of the leading mob groups in the United States.
See also:
<http://www.ganglandnews.com/> & <http://americanmafia.com/>
********************
Copyright.net Inks Agreement With Media Enforcer
<http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=13758>
Scours Peer-to-Peer Networks To License And Enforce Copyrights
********************
RIAA Anti-Piracy Efforts Reap Series Of Fall Successes
<http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=13720>
Nationwide Initiatives Net Multiple Arrests And Thousands Of Counterfeit CDs
********************
Cool Places: Red-Light Districts
<http://www.travel.roughguides.com/>
Love them or leave them, red-light districts are here to stay.
Join Rough Guides Online as we sneak a peek at the underbellies
of some of the world's most famous cities.
Amsterdam <http://www.travel.roughguides.com/content/2419/8943.htm>
Bangkok <http://www.travel.roughguides.com/content/11001/25419.htm>
Sydney <http://www.travel.roughguides.com/content/13026/31229.htm>
Hamburg <http://www.travel.roughguides.com/content/14135/33995.htm>
Paris <http://www.travel.roughguides.com/content/14135/33995.htm>
********************
Agencies tracking Web users despite restrictions
<http://www.dallasnews.com/national/197121_privacy_22nat..html>
Despite a federal ban on tracking Web surfers, 13 government
agencies, from the Federal Aviation Administration to the office
of the drug czar, are secretly using technology that monitors
the Internet habits of people visiting their Web sites.
********************
Broadband Could be Hackland
<http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39235,00.html?tw=wn20001023>
Buyer beware: Using a high-speed connection to the Internet, such as
those provided by DSL and cable modems, puts you at higher risk of
getting hacked than the old, slow lines.
********************
Voteauction Booth is Closed
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39590,00.html?tw=wn20001023>
The vote buy-and-sell website shuts down after a district court in
Illinois slaps it with an injunction. Accused of illegally trafficking
votes, its creator now says the whole thing was a joke.
********************
Army's Heads-Up: Berets All Around
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26870-2000Oct17.html>
The Pentagon announced that in order to improve morale, black berets--now
reserved for elite Ranger units--will be standard headgear for all soldiers
next year, including cooks, clerks, drivers and chaplains' assistants.
********************
======================================================
"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. Krishnamurti
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