UNDERNEWS June 8, 2000 Free-range journalism for over 35 years from Washington's most unofficial source ----------------------------------------------------- THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW Editor: Sam Smith 1312 18th St. NW #502, Washington DC 20036 202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------- WORD If to live is to be influenced and to influence . . . surely to die is to be no longer able either to influence or be influenced, and a man cannot be held dead until both these two factors of death are present. If failure of the power to be influenced vitiates life, presence of the power to influence vitiates death. And no one will deny that a man can influence for many a long year after he is vulgarly reputed dead." -- Dr. Gurgoyle in Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon Revisited' TINA AT LARGE Tina Brown, who did to the New Yorker what Ron Brown did to the Commerce Department -- namely make it a subsidiary of the Clinton machine -- seems on her way to becoming the John Rocker of the boomer set. The uproar over her latest book project, a hatchet job on critics of Clinton, isn't dying down. Said Washington Post gossipist Lloyd Grove on Rivera Live, "It's turned from buzz to a buzz saw." Now Matt Drudge, who broke the story, reports that seven sources have described their conversations with the author, John Connolly, "conversations during which the author labeled members of the Office of the Independent Counsel as 'fags', 'faggots' and 'queers.' According to Drudge, Connolly writes in the draft introduction of his book, "There are no less than six gays involved in the [Lewinsky] case. Two of the 'elves', and three of Starr's young male proteges were gay..." Drudge also dug up a March 30, 1998 issue the Nation which claimed White House aide Sidney Blumenthal was briefing members of the media about the sex lives of investigators. "Blumenthal had told them directly of the same-sex orientation of a member of Starr's staff," wrote Nation reporter Doug Ireland. "Two of the members of the media I spoke to about the Starr allegations also said Blumenthal had described at least two other media figures to them as gay." Blumenthal denied the allegations. Meanwhile conservative columnist Ann Coulter says of her alleged tryst with Geraldo Rivera, "The sad truth is, my affair with Geraldo at his 'oceanfront retreat' was compromised by the presence of my brother, Mrs. Rivera, and several other guests." Writes Coulter, "Clinton has given the right wing a reputation for having extremely active sex lives. First Henry Hyde then Newt Gingrich, and now it turns out the rest of us are all gay (or are having an affair with Geraldo Rivera). On the basis of Connolly's book, conservatives should claim to represent the gay movement and start issuing a whole new set of demands. "The current position of Talk/Miramax Books is that this manuscript is a purloined draft of Connolly's book, not in final form . . . I'm afraid, however, that once they take out the libel and laughably false stories, Connolly doesn't have enough left over even for a short pamphlet." Finally, this further note on Tina Brown. Inside reports that during the Talk/Miramax party for Martin Amis a young woman in a white dress was observed wandering through the crowd and talking into a head-set. She turned out to be Tina Brown's assistant at Talk "and one of her jobs at such fetes is to troll the room and pass on information about who's come in, who's leaving, and where everybody is. Her reportage is transmitted to another assistant, who trails the boss and feeds her the most relevant information." http://www.drudgereport.com INFOWARS THE NEW YORK TIMES got caught misreporting recently with a story that declared that Seattle protesters had "hurled Molotov cocktails, rocks, and excrement at delegates and police officers." After complaints, the Times ran a correction noting that the protests "were primarily peaceful," and that any objects thrown were aimed at property. The Times also admitted that no protesters were accused of throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails at delegates of the police. ERITREA AGENCE FRANCE PRESS: The UN refugee agency UNHCR confirmed Wednesday figures given by the Eritrean government that 1.5 million people have been displaced by the country's war with Ethiopia and drought . . . In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia said this week that its troops had broken Eritrea's military capacity after three weeks of fighting, and had repulsed attacks by Asmara's forces in eastern Eritrea. In an interview with the Ethiopian Herald newspaper, Ethiopia's army chief described Eritrea's forces as broken and no longer in a position to threaten Ethiopia's sovereignty . OOPS NEWSMAX: Just over a year ago, Australia followed in the footsteps of mother country Great Britain and made law a total ban on hand guns. The gun ban and confiscation program cost the Australian government more than $500 million. Sometimes using deadly force, authorities there collected 640,381 personal firearms. And now the results are in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent (in a country that has a low homicide rate). Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent. Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent). In the state of Victoria, homicides with firearms are up 300 percent. Figures over the previous 25 years show a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms - since the gun ban this has changed for the worse. http://www.newsmax.com CLINTON SCANDALS JERRY SEPER, WASHINGTON TIMES: High-ranking Justice Department and FBI officials said Vice President Al Gore may have lied to campaign-finance task force investigators when he denied knowing that 1996 donations he solicited from his White House office were illegally diverted to the Democratic National Committee. According to newly obtained Justice and FBI memos, there is "specific information from a credible source" that Mr. Gore "may have lied to us" in claiming no knowledge that "soft" money donations he sought may have been routed to "hard" money DNC accounts. "The statement of a person without apparent reason to lie, corroborated by notes taken by an aide to the vice president, form a basis for concluding that the vice president did know what he claimed not to know or certainly for investigating whether he may have," wrote Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Robert S. Litt in a September 1998 memo. http://www.washtimes.com WORLDNET DAILY: When Attorney General Janet Reno dropped her investigation of former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary for allegedly taking a bribe, she did so over the advice of her FBI chief, a long-secret memo reveals. Johnny Chung, a '96 Clinton-Gore campaign donor, charged in the summer of 1997 that O'Leary agreed to meet with communist Chinese oil officials after he donated $25,000 to her favorite charity, Africare. "It is clear that the donation was made under extraordinarily suspicious circumstances that are worthy of additional investigation," FBI Director Louis Freeh said in a Nov. 24, 1997, memo to Reno . . . "The meetings at the Department of Energy and Africare event show substantial involvement by DNC officials, including Richard Sullivan and Don Fowler," Freeh wrote in his 27-page memo. "Consequently, these events should be further investigated by an independent counsel." His memo was written a week before Reno announced her decision not to seek the appointment of an independent counsel in the case. http://www.worldnetdaily.com COLD FUSION The media is afraid to touch the subject out of fear of being considered foolish. At a recent professional conference, however, a physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory asked speaker Newt Gingrich about cold fusion and the reluctance to address it and got this straight forward reply: "I don't know whether cold fusion exists or doesn't exist yet, but it is not abnormal for very large breakthroughs to be controversial and to be a running fight. Science is not about people meekly getting together in a back room to reach some judgment without passion. I think there are a lot examples in the history of science where people either thought they were right and turned out to be wrong, or were accused of being wrong and turned out to be right." Thus we have the oddity of one of the most partisan figures in America displaying a sensible agnosticism over one of the more controversial scientific ideas while the media pretends the issue doesn't exist. Cold fusion has been ridiculed or ignored in the US and most of Europe. If you want to fall off the physics tenure track in a hurry just suggest a cold fusion project. But as the on-line Infinite Energy points out, "Fortunately, cold fusion research is not 'big science.' It does not need massive installations, just relatively small-scale dedicated work. Cold fusion energy development will dominantly be the territory for private industry. There is no need for massive government investment." In places such as Italy, India, China and Japan research is underway. Among those behind the studies are Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics, the Nagoya Tokyo Institute of Technology, Toyota, Nipon Telephone and Telegraphy, and Shell Recherche (in France). The Japanese are at the head of the pack. COLD FUSION FAQ http://www.mv.com/ipusers/zeropoint/IEHTML/faq.html THE LIST Dot.coms in trouble -- Salon.com which has fired 13 people, including its only media writer and half its book staff. -- APBnews.com which has laid off all 140 staffers and is presently being run by volunteers. -- The auction site Surfbuzz.com which closed after sending its customers an e-mail saying, it "will no longer be operational nor continue to exist. Due to unforeseen circumstances which have constrained our operational abilities and required financial resources beyond our current means we will no longer be able to provide you with access to the Surfbuzz site." -- CBS laid off 24 people in its internet division. -- The Oprah Winfrey-backed Oxygen.com has cancelled two shows planned for the summer and laid off some staff. -- Upscale shopping site Foofoo has shut down, writing its customers, "Regrettably, we are closed. Rest assured, we will process all orders placed on the site prior to its closing -- Amazon.com is reported laying off workers in its Seattle warehouse. -- Toytime.com has shut down -- MarchFIRST laid off 260 workers. DOT.COM DEADPOOL: http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ ECO NEWS WORLDWATCH: A farmer in Iowa who leases a quarter acre of cropland to the local utility as a site for a wind turbine can typically earn $2,000 a year in royalties from the electricity produced. In a good year, that same plot can produce $100 worth of corn . . . Harnessing the wind has become increasingly profitable. The American Wind Energy Association reports that the cost per kilowatt-hour of wind-generated electricity has fallen from 38 cents in the early 1980s to 3 to 6 cents today depending primarily on wind speed at the site. Already competitive with other sources, the cost of wind-generated electricity is expected to continue to decline. These falling costs, facilitated by advances in wind turbine design, help explain why wind power is expanding rapidly beyond its original stronghold in California. As wind farms have come online in farming and ranching states such as Minnesota, Iowa, Texas, and Wyoming, wind electric generation has soared. http://www.worldwatch.org/chairman/index.html JUST POLITICS SEATTLE TIMES: Ralph Nader and Patrick Buchanan will not be allowed into this year's presidential debates. They should be, for at least one debate . . . Imagine a four-way debate: Nader attacking Gore for being too attached to the gasoline car, and Buchanan attacking Bush for being soft on affirmative action. Americans would watch a contest like that . . . Consider economic globalization. Gore and Bush mainly agree on it. Nader and Buchanan don't. With them involved, Gore and Bush would have to defend themselves . . . Any party whose nominee shows up at 4 percent, or perhaps even 2 percent, should be included in the first round. In the second round, the threshold should go up to 8 or 10 percent. In the third round, the threshold should go up again, to 15 or 20 percent. Such a plan would give a small party the chance of scoring a triumph in the first debate, popping up in the polls, scoring another triumph, and going on to win. It would be a long shot, but people would talk about it. It would add a note of excitement. HR CLINTON has plummeted in the polls in the short time since Rick Lazio has been in the NY Senate race. The two are now tied, but perhaps even more interesting is the fact that 50% of those responding to a Quinnipiac poll said they were voting against Clinton. LAND OF THE FREE Human Rights Watch reports that blacks go to state prisons on drug charges at a rate 13 times that of whites. At the present time, one in 20 black men over the age of 18 is in prison compared to one in 180 white men. Blacks are 62% of all drug offenders in state prisons while comprising just 12% of the population. JOHN MCCASLIN of the Washington Times received a letter from a reader who believed he had been "aurally assaulted" while walking with his son past some White House protesters even though he couldn't hear a loud noise. After the item appeared, other readers wrote in to point out that governments have used secret sound-emitting devices. In fact you can buy one for $39.95 form the Spy Mall, which boasts: "Sonic Nausea is a small electronic device which can really turn one's stomach. It generates a unique combination of ultra-high frequency sound waves which soon leads to most in its vicinity to queasiness. It can also cause headaches, intense irritation, sweat, imbalance, nausea, or even vomiting. Hiding this device in your inconsiderate neighbors house might put an end to their late-night parties. Perfect for an abusive bureaucrat's office, the executive lunchroom, or for use on other office vermin . . . The unique sound wave characteristics make directional source determination difficult. Powered by one 9-volt battery (not included). Use with discretion." http://www.spymall.com ------------------------------------------------ PROGRESSIVE REVIEW INDEX: http://www.prorev.com/ UNDERNEWS: http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm UNDERNEWS SUBSCRIBE: Reply with "subscribe" as subject UNDERNEWS UNSUBSCRIBE: Reply with 'unsubscribe' as subject REVIEW FORUM: SUBSCRIBE: [EMAIL PROTECTED] REVIEW FORUM: POST MESSAGE: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] REVIEW FORUM SITE: http://www.egroups.com/messages/prorev RECOMMEND US TO OTHERS: http://www.recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=526397 RECOMMEND US TO OTHERS: http://www.recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=526397 For a free trial subscription to UNDERNEWS send your postal address with zip code. Copyright 2000, The Progressive Review. Matter not independently copyrighted may be reprinted provided TPR is paid your normal reprint fees, if any, and is given proper credit. Because of its quantity, TPR's mail is not always answered, but it is always read. The editor is cheered or remorseful as appropriate and posts some of the more interesting messages at http://www.prorev.com/letters.htm. * * * * * * * * * * THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1312 18th St NW (5th Floor) Washington DC 20036 202-835-0770 Fax: 202-835-0779 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Editor: Sam Smith INDEX : http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS : http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINES: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm For a free trial subscription to both our bi-monthly hard copy edition and our regular e-mail updates send your e-mail and terrestrial address to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To order "Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual" (WW Norton, New York, London): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0393316270/progressiverevieA/
