|
APR 22
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
||| 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
||| 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
||| 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
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]
||| 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.
ELECTRONIC
MUSIC EDUCATION AND DEFENSE FUND
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.
MORE
||| 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
||| 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.
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
||| 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
||| 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
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
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
||| 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
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
||| 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
||| 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
||| 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
||| LISA DE MORAES WASHINGTON
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
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
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.
WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT
US
Clintonilla oli tosiaan charismaa
ehkä 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.
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 cliché 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
FIELD NOTES
SLAVERY
TODAY
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 .
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