http://www.4bypass.com/stories/jan99l.html -------------------- [Media Bypass -- The Uncensored National News][Our Life & Times, Jan. 1999] Bringing You Uncensored News from Our Nation and Around the World… Brief synopses of this month's Life & Times. For the full stories, subscribe to Media Bypass today. Blackballed Paradise There exists a large country, with some 10 million inhabitants, where the attitude to business is strictly laissez-faire, and where government limits its activities to protecting individual rights. There are plenty of business opportunities there and the country welcomes foreigners. Business opportunities include fishing, livestocking, agriculture, mining, shipping, aviation, banking, insurance, trade and tourism. The reason why so few people know about this eastern African country is that it has been blackballed by the United Nations. Its name is Somalia, and its sin is that it defeated the UN army thatcame to restore the central government that the Somali nation had abolished in 1991. Ever since, the press has been reporting that this country is in chaos. In actual fact, it is more peaceful than most other countries in the world. . . . Big Bad Bread A recent Cincinnati Enquirer headline read, "Smell of baked bread may be health hazard." The article went on to describe the dangers of the smell of baking bread. The main danger, apparently, is that the organic components of this aroma may break down ozone. When are we going to do something about bread-induced global warming? Sure, we attack tobacco companies, but when is the government going to go after Big Bread? . . . If You’ve Seen One Cow . . . Scientists in Japan reported in December that they have cloned eight calves from cells they gathered from a slaughterhouse, creating eight identical copies of a single cow. Though half of the calves died, some biologists say the results indicate that the cloning of cows may be at least as efficient as invitro fertilization. Cows are the third adult mammal to be cloned. The first was a sheep named Dolly, whose birth was announced in February 1997. She had been cloned from an udder cell. Then came mice, announced last July. And suddenly cloning, which just two years ago had been thought biologically impossible, is looking like it might be entirely feasible, if not easy, according to cloning experts. It still seems surprising to some scientists. But now, "cloning is becoming routine," said Dr. R. Michael Roberts. . . . FBI’s SIOC Goes Global As it entered its 91st year with new duties that extend around the world, the FBI on Nov. 20 opened a high-tech, $20 million operations center nearly the size of a football field and capable of handling up to five crises at once. The new Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC) — called "sigh-ock" after its initials — covers 40,000 square feet on the fifth floor of FBI head-quarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. It is 10 times bigger than its two-decade-old predecessor that could, with difficulty, handle two crises simultaneously. The center’s purpose is to keep the FBI updated on any crisis through sophisticated computers and communications equipment, the officials said. . . . Rolls Royce Racket (joke by Pat Shannan) Before going to Europe on business, a man drove his Rolls-Royce to a down-town New York City bank and went in to ask for an immediate loan of $5,000. The loan officer, taken aback, requested collateral. "Well, then, here are the keys to my Rolls-Royce," the man said. The loan officer promptly had the car driven into the bank’s underground parking area for safekeeping, and gave him $5,000. Two weeks later, the man walked through the bank’s doors, and asked to settle up his loan and get his car back. "That will be $5,000 in principal, and $15.40 in interest," the loan officer said. The man wrote out a check and started to walk away. "Wait, sir," the loan officer said. "While you were gone, I found out you are a millionaire. Why in the world would you need to borrow $5,000?" . . . High Times in Haiti Colombian and Dominican drug traffickers have made Haiti the fastest-growing transit point for cocaine on its way to the United States, major news outlets have reported. Barry McCaffrey, the retired general who is President Clinton’s drug policy director, visited in early October and described the situation as "clearly an emergency," warning that Haiti had become "the principal focus" of groups trafficking drugs in the Caribbean. In an interview here, Pierre Denize, chief of the Haitian National Police, offered an almost identical assessment. "The intensity of the problem is new and the capacity of law enforcement, at least in the Republic of Haiti, is very limited," he said. "We have limited resources, limited training, limited intelligence and investigative capacity, and a very, very limited capacity to control a coast that, geographically, is just across the street from Colombia." American officials estimate that 15 percent of all the cocaine consumed in the United States now passes through Haiti, about four tons a month. By their calculation, that figure has doubled in little more than a year, and is, they say, in large part a result of their increased success in blocking smuggling routes farther east in the Caribbean, in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. . . . No Crime, Pay Fine Complaints of a coming police state are familiar within the so-called "patriot" community, but when the warning comes from an elder on the Hallandale [Fla.] City Commission, protesting the city’s latest legal crackdown on drugs and prostitution, maybe it’s not simply rhetoric. "This reminds me of a police state,’’ warned Commissioner Arnold Lanner. "We can’t give police the authority to determine who is guilty or innocent.’’ In early December, despite objections from Lanner and Mayor Dorothy Ross, the Hallandale commission did just that, voting to tack an automatic $500 fine onto arrests for drugs or soliciting prostitution. But what makes civil libertarians so queasy is that the $500 fine sticks even if the person charged is acquitted. The "abstract notion" of Constitutional rights was shunted aside to fight a "real and pervasive nuisance." . . . Where the Bombs Are The locations of nuclear weapons remains an official secret despite the fact that nuclear security requirements and other indicators make their presence obvious. U.S. nuclear weapons are currently stored at some 26 locations in 15 states and seven foreign countries. A comprehensive accounting was done in 1992 (Nuclear Notebook, September 1992) and has been updated and included in a forthcoming Natural Resources Defense Council report, "Taking Stock: World-wide Nuclear Deployments, 1997," which will cover Russian, British, French and Chinese locations as well. . . . Body-Slam, Ventura Style The Nov. 24 edition of CNN's Late Edition with Wolfe Blitzer featured Reform Party Governor-elect for Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, scolding former New York governor Mario Cuomo for continuing to spin the "Clinton Apologist" line. In response to Cuomo's defense of Clinton — wherein Cuomo laughably stated that, "There is still no proof that President Clinton lied to the Grand Jury..." — Ventura replied: "...You're gonna see a lot more Jesse Venturas elected" if the tune doesn't start to change, and quickly. It was a fun evening of highly partisan phlegm from the Democratic pundit, an evening of gratuitous capitulation from the Republican side of the desk, and some typically refreshing Reform Party-style common sense from Governor-elect Ventura. . . . You Hafta Sue NAFTA? A Canadian funeral conglomerate was recently fined $150 million for gross business misconduct in Mississippi. But the latest twist in the case comes more from Annals of International Trade: Canada’s Loewen Group has filed a suit under a little known provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), charging that the justice meted out by the Mississippi jury dis-criminated against a foreign company. It is claiming hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from U.S. taxpayers. The unprecedented lawsuit, coming on the five-year anniversary of Congress’ approval of NAFTA, has sparked outcries from critics of the agreement as well as the Mississippi citizens involved in the trial. A NAFTA provision that was little discussed in the 1993 debate on the agreement, allows a corporation to sue one of the three NAFTA governments for cash damages to compensate for a government’s failure to deliver to private investors all the benefits promised to foreign investors under the accord. The New World Order strikes again. . . .
