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UNDERNEWS
Apr 22, 2002
THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
Inside the Beltway, Out of the Loop, Ahead of the Curve
Edited by Sam Smith
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
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WORD
All democracies turn into dictatorships but not by coup. The people give
their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or
Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea -
George Lucas
DEPARTMENT OF WHADDYA KNOW
Washington Post joins conspiracy theorists
[We'd like to think that this report would reduce the number of journalists
making dumb comments about "conspiracy theories" but we doubt it since
badhabits can be even stronger than conspiracies]
||| George Lardner Jr. Washington Post - The House Assassinations Committee
may have been right after all: There was a shot from the grassy knoll. That
was the key finding of the congressional investigation that concluded 22
years ago that President John F. Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963 was
"probably . . . the result of a conspiracy." A shot from the grassy knoll
meant that two gunmen must have fired at the president within a split-second
sequence. Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of firing three shots at Kennedy from a
perch at the Texas School Book Depository, could not have been in two places
at once. A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences subsequently
disputed the evidence of a fourth shot, contained on a police dictabelt of
the sounds in Dealey Plaza that day. The panel insisted it was simply random
noise, perhaps static, recorded about a minute after the shooting while
Kennedy's motorcade was en route to Parkland Hospital. A new, peer-reviewed
article in Science and Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain's
Forensic Science Society, says the NAS panel's study was seriously flawed.
It says the panel failed to take into account the words of a Dallas
patrolman that show the gunshot-like noises occurred "at the exact instant
that John F. Kennedy was assassinated." In fact, the author of the article,
D.B. Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher, said
it was more than 96 percent certain that there was a shot from the grassy
knoll to the right of the president's limousine, in addition to the three
shots from a book depository window above and behind the president's limousine.
MORE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A5
6560-2001Mar25¬Found=true
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA
||| Gore Vidal San Francisco Chronicle - Since V-J Day 1945 ("Victory over
Japan" and the end of World War II), we have been engaged in what the
historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." I
have occasionally referred to our "enemy of the month club": Each month we
are confronted by a new horrendous enemy at whom we must strike before he
destroys us. The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly 200
such military incursions since 1945 initiated by the United States.
. . . The awesome physical damage Osama and company did to us on Dark
Tuesday is as nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing
liberties: The Anti- Terrorist Act of 1996 and the recent USA Patriot Act
(still being written after it was passed, and thus unread by the Congress
which passed it) . . . Even before signing the Anti- Terrorist Act,
President Clinton revealed his disregard for the Bill of Rights: "We can't
be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans." A
year later: "A lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When
personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."
Bush himself, in an address to a joint session of Congress, offered up his
interpretation of Osama bin Laden and disciples' motives: "They hate what
they see right here in this chamber." I suspect a million Americans nodded
sadly in front of their TV sets. "Their leaders are self-appointed. They
hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our
freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." If this is
indeed the terrorists' motivation, they are succeeding beyond even their
dreams, as each day, with each extension of "emergency powers," our Bill of
Rights is shredded more and more. Once alienated, an "unalienable right" is
apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the
last best hope of Earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are
kept in line by SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally
imitated.
MORE
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/21
/IN83832.DTL
||| Oliver Burkeman, guardian, London - The questioning of al-Qaida
prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has descended into farce, with
inexperienced interrogators routinely outwitted by detainees, sources on the
island said yesterday. The claims, reported by the Washington Post, came as
it emerged that the Bush administration was planning new legal guidelines
which would allow detainees to go before military tribunals even if
interrogators had failed to extract any evidence of specific war crimes.
Because many army interrogators and Middle Eastern linguists are in
Afghanistan, Camp X-Ray relies on young, underqualified and often
inexperienced interrogators and linguists. "They twist their pen 2,000 times
a minute," one linguist said. "The detainee is in full control. He's chained
up, but he's having fun." . . . Only about 20 of the 299 detainees are
believed to have cooperated, and none has confessed to any atrocity or war
crime, a Bush official told the New York Times. Consequently, government
lawyers are working out a "legal doctrine" that would make it an offence to
have been a senior member or officer of an al-Qaida unit that was involved
in the more minor crimes of war, such as the mistreatment of civilians, the
newspaper said.
MORE
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,688247,00.html
||| Dan Eggen Washington Post - The Justice Department reluctantly agreed to
release immigration court documents in the case of a Lebanese activist
detained in Michigan after Sept. 11, providing one of the first and most
detailed official accounts of the government's secretive anti-terrorism
campaign. Justice's concession came after stern rebukes from federal judges
in Detroit and Cincinnati, who ruled that documents and hearings in Rabih
Haddad's deportation case must be opened to the public. It also represented
an important, if largely symbolic, victory for civil liberties groups that
have criticized the government's tactics, and for several Michigan
newspapers that had sued for access to the proceedings.
MORE
http://washingtonpost.com
||| MILES BENSON, NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE - Operating under new powers to
combat terrorism, law enforcement agencies are making unprecedented demands
on the telecommunications industry to provide information on subscribers,
company attorneys say. These companies and Internet service providers face
an escalating barrage of subpoenas for subscriber lists, personal credit
reports, financial information, routing patterns that reveal individual
computer use, even customer photographs . . . The Sunnyvale, Calif.,
headquarters of Yahoo, an Internet search engine used by millions, now has a
voicemail prompt that refers law enforcement authorities to a special
telephone number to which they can fax criminal investigation subpoenas.
MORE
http://www.newhouse.com/archive/story1a041002.html
MADISON INDY MEDIA - A group of mostly student peace activists bound for the
April 20th peace marches in Washington, D.C. was detained at Mitchell
International Airport by orders of federal air marshalls who presented the
Milwaukee County Sheriffs and Midwest Express Airlines a "no-fly" list, as
group leader Sara Backus called it. The group was prevented from boarding
until members on this list could be questioned about their purposes in
traveling to Washington D.C. Rather than allowing themselves to split up the
entire group remained grounded in Milwaukee until the matter could be resolved.
The group represented a wide geographic base in Wisconsin, with at least
seven members from UW-Stevens Point, as well as UW-Oshkosh and Sheboygan
students. Several high school students were among the group at the airport,
which also included peace activists of all ages along with Father Bill of
St. Patrick's church in Milwaukee. In recent weeks a number of groups have
organized contingents to attend the coalition of peace marches in
Washington. Among the Wisconsin group are members of the School of the
Americas Watch and its Colombia Committee, Peace Action Milwaukee along with
Student Peace Action Network and other groups. . .
Midwest Express Airlines held the flight as long as possible to allow the
matter to be resolved. Sara Backus, an organizer of the group, stressed that
the delay and eventual missed flight was not Midwest Express' fault. In fact
after some discussion, representatives of Midwest Express provided hotel
accommodations for all who needed them, along with meal vouchers good
anywhere in the airport...
[The group was eventually allowed to fly to Washington]
MIDDLE EAST
||| Justin Huggler, indepdendent, London - The people of Jenin refugee camp
returned to look for their dead amid the devastation that the Israeli army
had made of their homes. The destruction was more complete than an
earthquake, yet the Israelis have not allowed in any heavy lifting
equipment, so the Palestinians dug out the bodies with their hands,
scrabbling in the dust and heaving away the broken blocks. Aid workers and
human rights monitors have started to call this ground zero. The television
pictures do not convey the devastation. You have to come here to walk over
the dust and rubble that used to be people's homes, picking your way through
the little pieces of their lives, the children's schoolbooks and discarded
clothing. You have to smell the stench of death that clings to certain
corners. The piles of rubble tower high above your head and the work of
removing the bodies is nerve-racking and haunting.
Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, visited the
most heavily damaged area and described the scene as "horrific beyond
belief". Israel's actions were unjustifiable, no matter what the military
objective, he said, demanding that Israel allow unrestricted access to
humanitarian agencies. "Jenin will for ever be a blot on the history of the
state of Israel," he told Israel Army Radio.
||| Al Webb, WASHINGTON TIMES - A wave of anti-Jewish attacks ranging from
hate mail and graffiti to stonings, shotgun blasts, gasoline bombs and
synagogue bombings has swept Europe from Britain to Ukraine as the conflict
between Israelis and Palestinians worsens in the Middle East . . . In recent
days, one synagogue in Marseille, France, has been doused in gasoline and
burned to the ground; another in Lyon, France, was damaged in a car attack;
a third, in Brussels, was firebombed; and a fourth, in Kiev, was attacked by
50 youths chanting, "Kill the Jews," who then beat up a rabbi. An
unidentified assailant hurled a stone through the window of another
synagogue in southern Ukraine. In Britain, which takes pride in a
"multicultural" society, police have logged at least 15 anti-Jewish episodes
this month, including eight physical assaults, synagogues daubed with racist
slogans and hate mail sent to prominent figures among the nation's 300,000
Jews.
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/front.html
||| Doug Struck Washington Post - After the Israeli raids, computers lie
scattered about the Palestinian Education Ministry, each machine neatly
disemboweled of its hard drive. What do the Israeli authorities want,
Palestinian school officials wondered, with the test scores of students? Or
the minutiae of school construction contracts? Or the time sheets of clerks,
teachers and secretaries . . . Israeli technicians spent nine hours removing
the data storage units from more than 40 computers in the Education
Ministry, according to two ministry workers forced at gunpoint to open the
offices. The Israelis blew open two safes and cleaned them of official
school seals, cash and other documents. They rifled through files,
selectively removing some and leaving others. They took the high school
graduation scores of more than 1 million students stretching back to 1960,
the ministry officials said. "The only conclusion I can make is they don't
want to see any Palestinian institution able to work again," said Naim Abu
Hommos, acting education minister, as he surveyed the damage during a brief
break in the curfew that has locked down this town on the northern outskirts
of Jerusalem.
MORE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18077-2002Apr19.html
||| Speaking from inside Jenin Refugee Camp, Amnesty International delegate
Javier Zuniga said, "This is one of the worst scenes of devastation I have
ever witnessed. It is almost impossible to conceive that what was once a
town is now a lunar landscape. There is a real possibility that people are
still alive under the rubble of their former homes, one of our colleagues
from a local human rights organisation received a phone call from a family
of 10 trapped below ground and asking for help, yet there is no evidence of
concerted efforts to search for and rescue survivors."
||| ADAM KELLER, GUSH SHALOM - Two days ago, Israelis travelling on the main
highways in the Tel-Aviv area were treated to enormous billboards bearing
the Microsoft logo under the text "From the depth of our heart - thanks to
The Israeli Defence Forces" on the background of the Israeli national flag.
OKLAHOMA CITY
Kenneth R. Timmerman, insight - Insight has learned that the widow of
Philippine-government intelligence agent Edwin Angeles has provided
audiotaped testimony to an investigator working for the American victims'
families that directly ties Iraqi intelligence agents to Terry Nichols, the
man sentenced in 1998 to life in prison for his role in bombing the Alfred
P. Murrah Building seven years ago. Elmina Abdul is the 27-year-old widow of
Angeles, one of the cofounders of the Abu Sayyaf group, a Muslim separatist
terrorist organization in the Philippines whose members trained in Osama bin
Laden's camps in Afghanistan . . . With the knowledge that she was dying of
liver disease, Elmina agreed to meet with Dorian Zumel Sicat, a Manila Times
correspondent serving as an investigative liaison in the Philippines and the
Pacific Rim for Oklahoma City lawyer Mike Johnston, who represents the
victims' families. "I want to tell the truth of what I know of my late
husband," she said in a taped audio statement . . . "Does the name 'Ramzi
Yousef' mean something to you, Mr. Sicat?" Elmina asked. Angeles had
extensive meetings with Yousef and two Americans, including one whom he
called "Terry" or "The Farmer," she said. Angeles ultimately was cleared of
terrorism charges at trial, when documents proving he was working as a
government agent were produced. He was released from prison in 1996 but
not before he provided astonishing details during a videotaped interrogation
by Philippine police authorities of his activities with Abu Sayyaf,
including the secret meetings with Iraqi intelligence agent Yousef, Nichols
and the second American identified in the document as John Lepney.
The earliest meetings took place at a Del Monte canning plant in Davao in
late 1992 and early 1993 just prior to the first World Trade Center
bombing. Later meetings with Nichols, Yousef and the second American whose
name has never been revealed until now took place at Angeles' house in late
1994, according to a report on that interrogation which has been obtained by
investigators working for attorney Johnston, who has been joined by Judicial
Watch in representing families of those murdered in the Oklahoma City
bombing . . .
The video interrogation linking Nichols to Yousef, bin Laden and Iraq
initially was obtained by Stephen Jones, the defense attorney who
represented convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. But at the
insistence of federal prosecutors, trial judge Richard P. Matsch refused to
admit it into evidence. The judge also refused to admit into evidence the
testimony of Yousef coconspirator Abdul Hakim Murad, who was a federal
prisoner at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. Murad was
awaiting trial for his part in Project Bojinka, a plot hatched up by Yousef
to blow up 11 U.S. 747 jetliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995.
. . . FBI spokesman Bill Carter tells Insight the FBI was unaware of a
"foreign terrorist connection" to the Oklahoma City bombing. "There is no
evidence of a foreign connection in our files," he says. "The Oklahoma City
bombing was investigated thoroughly by the FBI; no evidence was found that
would tie it to any foreign terrorist group. If we had found any evidence,
it would have been presented."
MORE
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=221859
CONFESSION
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=241231
VENEZUELA
||| Ed Vulliamy, OBSERVER, LONDON - The failed coup in Venezuela was
closely tied to senior officials in the US government, The Observer has
established. They have long histories in the 'dirty wars' of the 1980s, and
links to death squads working in Central America at that time. Washington's
involvement in the turbulent events that briefly removed left-wing leader
Hugo Chavez from power last weekend resurrects fears about US ambitions in
the hemisphere. It also also deepens doubts about policy in the region being
made by appointees to the Bush administration, all of whom owe their careers
to serving in the dirty wars under President Reagan.
One of them, Elliot Abrams, who gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup,
has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra
affair. The Bush administration has tried to distance itself from the coup.
It immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona.
But the coup was sent dramatically into reverse after 48 hours.
Now officials at the Organization of American States and other diplomatic
sources, talking to The Observer, assert that the US administration was not
only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it,
presuming it to be destined for success. The visits by Venezuelans plotting
a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, 'several months ago',
and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were
received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be
his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich. Reich is a right-wing
Cuban-American who, under Reagan, ran the Office for Public Diplomacy . . .
Reich also has close ties to Venezuela, having been made ambassador to
Caracas in 1986.
. . . On the day Carmona claimed power, Reich summoned ambassadors from
Latin America and the Caribbean to his office. He said the removal of Chavez
was not a rupture of democratic rule, as he had resigned and was
'responsible for his fate.' He said the US would support the Carmona
government.
. . . A third member of the Latin American triangle in US policy-making is
John Negroponte, now ambassador to the United Nations. He was Reagan's
ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 when a US-trained death squad,
Battalion 3-16, tortured and murdered scores of activists. A diplomatic
source said Negroponte had been 'informed that there might be some movement
in Venezuela on Chavez' at the beginning of the year.
THE NATION
||| Lyndsey Layton Washington Post - Last year was the fifth year in a row
that transit ridership grew faster than highway use, according to statistics
compiled by the American Public Transportation Association . . . Americans
made a record 9.5 billion trips on mass transit last year, 2 percent more
than in 2000. Highway use grew 1 percent, with Americans driving 2.8
trillion miles.
MORE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4752-2002Apr17.html
||| LA had a 61% increase in subway ridership last year. Leaders in new
commuter rail ridership include Burlington Vermont, Seattle, Dallas and San
Jose. Denver, Phoenix, and Philadelphia all saw major jumps in bus ridership.
ECOLOGY
||| Mark Henderson, times, London - The world will become up to 1.3C (2.3F)
warmer over the next three decades, according to a new 30-year forecast of
climate change prepared by British scientists . . . While the figures do not
look large, the total warming effect seen during the entire 20th century was
just 0.6C, and the predicted rise would have profound consequences for
agriculture and sea levels around the world.
MORE
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-270173,00.html
||| KIM MURPHY, LA TIMES - While the Bush administration appears to have
lost its bid to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration,
the Interior Department is preparing to allow oil leasing on an even larger
tract of pristine coastal land on the other side of Alaska's North Slope.
Unlike the refuge, the 9.6 million acres within the National Petroleum
Reserve-Alaska, west of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, would not require further
congressional approval before oil and gas exploration could expand in 2004 .
. . The reserve is the summer home to millions of migratory birds, the
largest lake in the American Arctic and half a million caribou. With 23.5
million acres, the NPRA is the largest tract of undeveloped land in North
America.
MORE
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-042102npra.story
DRUG BUSTS
The government of Bologna has acquitted a young man arrested for possession
of 512 ecstasy tablets. According to the defence's plea, accepted by the
court, quantity is not a determining factor for distinguishing between
personal use and peddling. \
GREAT MOMENTS IN EDUCATION
JOEL MILLER, WOLRD NET DAILY - A music teacher in an inner-city Michigan
grade school is getting an earful from the higher-ups about the type of
songs she can use in her classroom. According to the April 17 issue of the
Rutherford Institute's Insider, the teacher isn't in trouble for having the
children sing lines from the latest Snoop Dogg rap album or even getting the
tykes to trot out with something as strictly verboten as "Jesus Loves Me."
No, said the Insider, "school administrators informed her that she could not
use any songs in class that contain the words 'freedom' or 'liberty.'" Why
not, you might wonder. Simple: "Because some children in the school are not
U.S. citizens."
MORE
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27319
HEALTH
||| JOYCE Howard Price, WASHINGTON TIMES - A California dentist who has
survived a heart attack, liver cancer and three liver transplants is trying
to start a national campaign to pressure Congress to base funding for
disease research on mortality, a move that would sharply reduce AIDS
funding. Dr. Richard Darling, 55, of Palm Desert calls it "grossly unfair"
that the money spent by the National Institutes of Health for research into
AIDS which killed 15,245 Americans last year, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention exceeds the amount allotted for research
into heart disease, which kills more than 700,000 Americans annually. The
NIH research budget for cardiovascular diseases totaled $1.9 billion in this
fiscal year, while its AIDS counterpart was $2.5 billion, according to NIH's
Office of AIDS Research . . . "The entire allocation system is outrageously
biased toward AIDS. The system is extremely unfair to heart disease, lung
disease, liver disease, diabetes, breast cancer, prostate disease,
Alzheimer's and leukemia," Dr. Darling said in a telephone interview, citing
some of the medical conditions that outstrip AIDS in terms of deaths but
which lag far behind in funding . . . Dr. Darling, who's given up his
dental practice and is "trying to stay alive," notes that NIH's $900 million
increase for AIDS research between fiscal 1998 and 2002 is more than the
total $772 million research budget for diabetes in fiscal 2002. While AIDS
has killed a total of fewer than 31,000 in the past two years, diabetes
killed nearly 68,700 in 2000 alone
MORE
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020422-69582976.htm\
||| UN WIRE - Nearly 30 percent of South Africa's labor force will be
infected with HIV by 2005, according to NMG-Levy Consultants and Actuaries'
annual report on labor relations and employee benefits, released yesterday.
Showing how hard the HIV/AIDS pandemic has hit South Africa, the report says
the life expectancy of women in the country is expected to fall to 43 by
2005 and 37 by 2010. South African women had a life expectancy of 54 in
1999. Men's life expectancy is expected to drop to 38 by 2010. Also by
2010, 1 million South Africans will be ill with AIDS, bringing the total of
deaths due to the disease to 6 million, the report adds.
MORE
http://www.unwire.org/unwire/util/category_search.asp?objCat=health
THE MEDIACRACY
||| IT TURNS OUT THAT James Carville, one of the least reliable folks around
the capital, isn't even a ragin' Cajun as he claims. The title belongs to
students and graduates of the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and Carville
went to Louisiana State University.
||| Bruce Williams and Michael Delli Carpini, CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
- According to an ABC News poll almost half of all Americans now get some of
their news over the Internet, and over a third of them increased their use
of on-line sources after September 11. While seeking out information
on-line, people looked beyond traditional sources. For example the Drudge
Report was the 20th-most popular destination for a week following the
terrorist attacks. A special episode of the NBC television drama 'The West
Wing' devoted to the issue of terrorism attracted more than 25 million
viewers, its largest audience ever and roughly three times the viewership
for the network's evening news. "A 2000 Pew Charitable Trusts poll found
that more than one-third of Americans under 30 now get their news primarily
from late-night comedians and 79 percent of this age group say they
sometimes or regularly get political information from comedy programs such
as 'Saturday Night Live.'
||| LEIGH HOPPER, Houston Chronicle - What many pet owners don't know,
researchers say, is that most yearly vaccines for dogs and cats are a waste
of money -- and potentially deadly. Shots for the most important pet
diseases last three to seven years, or longer, and annual shots put pets at
greater risk of vaccine-related problems. The Texas Department of Health is
holding public hearings to consider changing the yearly rabies shot
requirement to once every three years. Thirty-three other states already
have adopted a triennial rabies schedule. Texas A&M University's and most
other veterinary schools now teach that most shots should be given every
three years.
MORE
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1377004
||| JAMES BOWMAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL - Public radio stations across the
country are dumping their traditional formats--mainly classical music and
jazz--or crowding them to the edges of their schedules because their
marketers are telling them that there are many more listeners to a news-talk
format. Marketers? Wasn't the whole point of public radio, in the words of
its charter, to "serve groups whose voices would otherwise go unheard"? You
may not be surprised to learn that the marketers themselves see no
contradiction here. In the words of David Giovannoni, whose marketing firm,
Audience Research Analysis, has been largely responsible for advising the
network and local stations of serious music's unfavorable demographics: "I
am not saying that program directors should make programming decisions based
on how much money they're likely to raise. That would undermine the values
at the very heart of our service, making it unworthy of support. I am
saying, however, that program directors should make the difficult decisions
that give the public the highest level of service. That means replacing
lower-performance programming with higher-performance programming." In other
words, we are to regard it as strictly coincidental that "higher-performance
programming" also happens to bring in more money . . .
The problem, says Tom McCourt, a professor at the University of Illinois,
Springfield, and the author of "Conflicting Communication Interests in
America," is that consultants whose experience was in commercial radio
"pretty much set the agenda for public radio in the mid-1990s." With their
advice, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has set three standards to
qualify for public funding: minority ownership, average quarter-hour ratings
and money raised through listener support.
MORE
http://opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=105001948
||| THE PEOPLE AT SCRIPPS HOWARD appear to not quite understand the nature
of the Web. They posted the following on an easily accessible page: "Due to
the ailing health of former president Ronald Reagan, Scripps Howard News
Service has produced 2 paginated tributes to the celebrated
actor/politician. A 12-page section and an abbreviated 2 facing pages are
available. THESE PAGES ARE EMBARGOED UNTIL REAGAN'S DEATH."
||| ASSOCIATED PRESS - The listings that traditionally conclude programs
have been sped up and shrunken during the last decade to the point that they
are frequently illegible, and now the 11 Discovery-owned cable channels plan
to eliminate them entirely . . . Networks that have de-emphasized credits
say viewers aren't interested and see them as an excuse to change the channel.
MORE
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/magazine/daily/3114231.htm
||| Joe Strupp, EDITOR & publisher - Although coverage of the Middle East
has invited passionate criticism and charges of bias for decades, the
current struggle between Palestinian and Israeli forces has quickly become
one of the most divisive and frightening conflicts for newspapers in years.
Veteran newsroom leaders are being battered by more e-mail, letters, and
phone calls than ever before on this issue, from all sides, and with an
unusually high level of anger, while newspapers such as the Star Tribune of
Minneapolis and the Los Angeles Times are being singled out through
organized protests and boycotts. "There is a real desperate feeling to it --
some of the opinions are sort of violent," said Marshall Ingwerson, managing
editor of The Christian Science Monitor in Boston, who has been accused by
readers of "being in league with murderers" and "having no human decency."
The tone is "definitely harsher," he says . . . On Thursday, the Los Angeles
Times reported that nearly 1,000 readers had suspended home delivery for at
least a day in protest of the paper's "inaccurate, pro-Palestinian
reporting." . . . And major papers are not the only ones feeling the heat.
Executive Editor Gary Gilbert of The Oakland Press in Pontiac, Mich., which
has more than 100,000 Jewish residents in its circulation area, said
criticism of coverage has been harsher in recent weeks. "There is a tone of
hatred that we don't see in anything else," he said.
MORE
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_displ
ay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1468479
||| Lisa de Moraes WASHINGOTN POST - PBS celebrated the debut of [Louis]
Rukeyser's [CNBC] show by shooting itself in the foot again -- this time in
the form of a letter from PBS President Pat Mitchell urging member stations
to reject the CNBC program, which has been offered to them for free. "While
I wish Louis well in his new endeavor and say again I regret his decision
not to continue with 'Wall Street Week' I will regret even more if he uses
his campaign of misinformation and misrepresentation to lure public
television stations," Mitchell wrote in the letter, a copy of which was
first obtained by the Miami Herald. Airing "Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street,"
the CNBC show, "seems destined to create more problems than it will solve,"
Mitchell wrote.
MORE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18272-2002Apr19.html
DO WHAT I SAY, NOT WHAT I DO
REP. TOM DELAY, who earlier had advised a group of Christian conservatives
not to send their children to Baylor or Texas A&M has admitted that he was
kicked out of Baylor for his "extracurricular activities" and "too vigorous
a social life." A spokesman declined to detail what DeLay did other than to
say it involved "lots of pranks." The New Republic has reported that DeLay
was expelled for "dancing and painting buildings green at rival Texas A&M."
The Washington Post said it was for drinking and carousing.
In the same speech, DeLay said, "Christianity offers the only viable,
reasonable, definitive answer to the questions of 'Where did I come from?'
'Why am I here?' 'Where am I going?' 'Does life have any meaningful
purpose?' Only Christianity offers a way to understand that physical and
moral border. Only Christianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers
all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation. Only Christianity
offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world
-- only Christianity."
On the other hand, A.E. Housman once said, "Malt does more than Milton can
to justify God's ways to man."
TODAY IN HISTORY
1526 Immanual Kant is born. According to one account, "Kant's habits were so
regular, people used to check their watches when as walked past their houses
-- the only time his schedule changed was while reading Rousseau's Emile,
and he forgot his walk."
GREAT MOMENTS IN LITERATURE
BBC - HARRY Potter fans in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk are believed to
have been poisoned after drinking a "magic potion" inspired by the series of
books about a boy wizard. Local police suspect that older children stole
copper sulphate from a school laboratory and fed it to younger children in a
Potteresque initiation ceremony.
MORE
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/monitoring/media_reports/newsid_19410
00/1941152.stm
ANOTHER AXIS OF EVIL
REUTERS - Governments across the globe shot, electrocuted and hanged more
than 3,000 of their citizens last year, more than double the total executed
in 2000, Amnesty International said. During 2001, at least 3,048 people were
put to death in 31 countries, the sharp increase largely the result of a
Chinese crack-down on crime which saw the world's most populous nation
execute nearly 1,800 people in four months, Amnesty said. . . . "The
figures for China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States accounted for 90
percent of all known executions in 2001," Amnesty said.
MORE
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020409/wl_nm/rights_exec
utions_dc_2\
CONTEST
A free copy of Sam Smith "Why Bother?" goes to the first reader who can
identify the location of a life size outdoor statue of Lenin in the United
States. Readers with the initials JW or DB are not eligible.
WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT US
Clintonilla oli tosiaan charismaa ehk� liiankin runsaasti. Katso seuraavaa
os. http://www.prorev.com/legacy.htm
LABOR
David Crary ASSOCIATED PRESS - Exasperated day care workers are starting to
organize across the nation, seeking to increase wages in one of the nation's
lowest-paid, least-stable professions. In Stamford, Conn., child care
employees staged a four-week strike, disrupting the lives of 600 families as
unionization proved confrontational. In contrast, newly unionized workers in
Seattle have teamed up with their employers in a joint effort to improve job
conditions and win more state funding.
MORE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18769-2002Apr20.html
||| DRUG REFORM COORDINATION NETWORK - A bill quietly working its way
through Congress garbed as an anti-methamphetamine measure contains a
stealth provision that could lead to prison sentences for promoters of
events where illegal drug use occurs. "Whoever knowingly promotes any rave,
dance, music, or other entertainment event, that takes place under
circumstances where a promoter knows or reasonably should know that a
controlled substance will be used or distributed in violation of federal law
or the law of the place where the event is held, shall be fined under Title
18, United States Code, or imprisoned for not more than nine years, or
both." The Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund, a group created to
defend the industry against attack from politicians unable or unwilling to
differentiate between the rave culture and drug use, has raised the alarm
about H.R. 3782. Saying it is "extremely concerned," EMDEF noted that "this
law could be used to prosecute the promoters of any well-attended
entertainment event, whether it be a rave, a concert, a major league sports
game, or even a high school dance."
The organization also pointed out that the bill could have a negative impact
on on-site harm reduction efforts, such as those done by Dance Safe
(http://www.dancesafe.org), a group that provides pill-testing and safety
information to rave-goers. "This legislation would make event promoters
less likely to allow drug prevention organizations and harm reduction groups
to distribute their information inside an event for fear of
self-incrimination," wrote EMDEF in a prepared statement.
Section 305 doesn't even mention methamphetamine; instead it refers to "a
controlled substance," meaning that even marijuana use at rock concerts -- a
commonplace occurrence since the mid- 1960s -- could be enough to indict and
convict promoters under the bill. While the bill explicitly targets the rave
culture, opportunities for prosecutions under the bill could well extend to
county fairs, NBA games, high school proms, and just about any music event
-- except, perhaps, performances by Attorney General Ashcroft's choral group.
MORE
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/233.html#federalmethbill
ELECTRONIC MUSIC EDUCATION AND DEFENSE FUND
http://www.emdef.org
THE WEEKEND PROTEST
||| DAVID MCREYNOLDS - This was the first loud, clear voice from a nation
which had been told by the media that there was no protest. In the words of
Cokie Roberts, one of those air-headed talking heads, if there were any
protests against the war in Afghanistan they were not important, not from
"anyone one who counted". But yesterday even she could have counted. And we
DO count.
For the supporters of Israel it was a warning shot that they have lost the
American Left, lock, stock and barrel. And that includes losing a great many
American Jews who were there at the protest and had helped organize it. The
issue of Jenin isn't one of Jews against Muslims. It is one of Sharon
against the world, against the United Nations, against a very large number
of American Jews and against a great many Israelis.
There were moments surreal, as when early in the march a small group of
orthodox rabbis, with their fur hats and long coats, were led through our
march by escorts. No problem, no shouts. and no idea where the rabbis had
come from or where they were going, except that, being the Sabbath, they had
to go there on foot. . .Some of those from the more traditional peace
movement talked to me of their disappointment that some issues seem to have
vanished - Afghanistan was barely mentioned. But this misses the point - and
one can be sure that Congress and the White House will not miss it. I doubt
if one person in that whole vast mass of people supported Bush's illegal
actions against Afghanistan, or bought into the rhetoric of his "war on
terror", a war which has become a terror in itself, reminding us that war
and terrorism are intimately linked and often, as in the Middle East, become
one and the same thing.
What was important, in my view as an old veteran at these events, was that
where the media had assumed silence, the world now saw public dissent - in
far greater numbers than even we had hoped for. . .The loose coalition of
peace and justice groups, from the Black Radical Congress to the War
Resisters League, from the American Friends Service Committee to Peace
Action, from the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism to
the Greens, have shown that they can pull off a national demonstration and
provide leadership.
WHY DO I EVEN DO THIS?
Jay Berger
1:56 AM
DC INDY MEDIA - When I'm more depressed than manic like now, it doesn't seem
as if there is any point to any of this stuff. The government is a
bureaucracy, the type most resistant to change. And it's powerful as hell.
Why do we even bother? Work, sleep, work, death. And in between, nobody gets
to have any fun. None of it makes any sense anymore. None of it ever made
any sense to begin with. There doesn't seem to be any real reason to do
anything, or to refrain from doing anything. People are so worried about
their public image and reputation, but all of that can be torn down in a
microsecond for any reason or no reason. Everyone has so many different
faces. One for work, one for the parents, one for your friends, one for your
other friends. Nobody will ever truly get to know anybody, ever. We will all
perpetually be strangers to one another, no matter how hard we try. Nothing
matters anymore. We protest, they arrest us. Nothing changes, except that
the Security State gets larger and more bloated, the rich get richer, the
poor get poorer. The Corporate Feudal Lords always get what they want. . .
I'm sure someone will tell me to see a shrink. Will anything they could
possibly tell me, or any drug they could possibly cram down my throat give
me even the slightest inclination that the world is NOT a completely
pointless psychotic mess? Would it convince anyone else? I sincerely doubt
it. I'm tired of fighting. I can't really see that there is anything that
anyone can do. This train we so coyly call civilization is running right off
the track, the engineer is obviously asleep at the switch or drunk or
something, and the only thing we can do is to bend over and kiss our
collective a--es goodbye.
Party, people. Party like it's 1999. Because you just flat out never know
when the end will come. Your personal end, or the Big Apocalypse Thingie.
Cram as much enjoyment into your lives as you possibly can before it's all
over because in the end we will only know for sure about the afterlife after
we are dead and so far nobody has come back to tell us what it is like or
even if it is there at all. Don't spend your life worrying about whether
what you think or say offends people because everything will offend SOMEONE.
If you are going to live like that you may as well just stay at home.
Society, definition: a bunch of madmen pretending to be just as crazy as
each other is for fear of being called crazy by the other madmen. I'm tired.
Very tired. Irish Coffee and computers don't mix.
SOME REPLIES
IGGY, 2;07 AM - Utopia is not the place we're going.... it's the journey
there. Standing in the streets with the humanity and the drums and the
love... that's where it's at. Loving each other, the children, the earth...
The cops can't ruin the party. They're like inanimate objects compared to us
and what we've got!
WORKING CLASS WHITE MALE 2:33 am - Did you think the powers that be were
going to roll over for us? That's why it's called 'struggle', dude. Yes,
they have all the money. Yes, they grow more and more powerful it seems.
That doesn't mean I'M going to be just another sheep in the herd. I'm going
to call them out on the carpet and continue to be a pain in the ass to them.
I'm going to continue to educate people who will listen about what this
government does to us and others around the world on a daily basis. So go
ahead, get your ear tagged and get in the pen with the other people who have
decided it's too hard. I like the hard way. The struggle is what keeps me
going. I'm not a sheep. I'm a thick-headed Irish-American that loves pickin'
a fight with the Stupid White Boys Club in Washington.
S 2:34 am - Wow...I can certainly dig where your coming from Jay. Those same
thoughts swirl through my head with frightening regularity too. All I can
say is that its a long, hard road we are traveling down. Creating utopia
wont happen overnight. But if you have done anything in your life to better
the world, then you've done more than most gap-shopping McDeath eating pukes
ever have. Trent Reznor said: "If there is a hell, I'll see you there" Well,
I hate Christianity, but I say to you Jay, If there is a heaven, Ill see you
there. . . whatever that may be. . .peace
CUSPY 2:35 am - Hey Jay, try to remember things aren't so monolithic and
stagnated. Society isn't the same as it always has been, it's not the same
everywhere, and we humans aren't the same as the dust we grew out of,
essence and all that aside. Hey, we didn't always have indymedia as a lens
out onto the world, did we? Internet, unprecedented communication potential,
solidarity protests worldwide, virtual reality, solar and wind power,
nanotechnology, new music forms, new babies being born, new drugs (fun ones
and not), etc. and forever. Pardon the clich� but everything changes. Like
the poster above said, the journey is really what it's about anyway, since
the "there" that we all envision is also just another still in this motion
picture. Get back on the train, you know what I'm saying? You don't need a
psychiatrist, just a little patience (if it helps, try to imagine Axl Rose
doing his dance). What's Axl up to these days anyway? Maybe he could be our
leader.
YOU 2:48am - YOU are worth it. YOU are beautiful and wonderful. Try to get
at least some rest and try not let things get you down. - LOVE YOU
ONE OF MANY 7:39 am - Awww... group hug :)
MORE
http://dcindymedia.org
FIELD NOTES
SLAVERY TODAY http://www.anti-slavery.org/
DOES IT WORK? "Karl Rundgren, a reporter for Abilene, Texas television
station KRBC, is familiar with disappointment. For his weekly "Does It
Work?" segment, he has tried out dozens of products touted in cheesy
late-night TV commercials, from the Hairagami to the Smokeless Ashtray to
the Pro-Trim Paint Roller. While many are duds (Epil-Stop hair remover
"doesn't hurt, and it doesn't work"), some -- like the Baconwave microwave
bacon cooker -- get surprisingly good reviews." - Spiked
http://www.krbctv.com/diw_archive/
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RECENT ADDITIONS AT OUR WEB SITE
PUNKS AND PROTEST: The beat, bullied, busted, and bamboozled generation
http://prorev.com/punk.htm
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Vest.
http://prorev.com/army.htm
WHOSE LAND IS IT, ANYWAY? Reflections on patriotism
http://prorev.com/patriot.htm
MEMO TO A NEW MAYOR. Advice for a just elected politician.
http://prorev.com/newmayor.htm
THE LUDDITES AT MICROSOFT: Making machines that smash themselves
http://prorev.com/luddites.htm
DERIVATIVE AMERICA & THE ENRON GENERATION
http://prorev.com/derivative.htm
WHERE'S BIN BEEN?
http://prorev.com/wheresbin.htm
GRADUATION SPEECH: A few things adults don't usually tell 8th graders
http://prorev.com/gradspeech.thm
CRIME THE WAY IT OUGHT TO BE
http://prorev.com/policelog.htm
CIVIL LIBERTIES QUOTATIONS
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HOW TO TELL WHEN YOU'VE WON
http://prorev.com/howtotell.htm
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