-Caveat Lector- RadTimes # 63 - October, 2000 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --------------- --Keeping an eye on protesters --The Dirty Little Secret Of The Dot-Com World ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Begin stories: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Keeping an eye on protesters <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/09/29/surveillance/> [see web site for embedded hyperlinks] International authorities are sharing information, not all of it accurate, about anti-globalization activists. by Sarah Ferguson Sep. 29, 2000 On Sept. 17, 23-year-old Kay Morrison of Seattle was standing on the platform at the Bad Schandau train station in Germany waiting for the train to Prague. She planned to join some 12,000 demonstrators who sought to disrupt the 55th annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Prague. Morrison says she was approached by Czech border police, who scanned her passport with a handheld computer. She was taken by train to another station, where police searched her belongings and informed her she was on the list of "persona non grata", not welcome in Prague this week "or in the future." She made another failed attempt to enter the country. After further inquiries, the Czech police announced on national television that Morrison had committed a misdemeanor on a previous trip to the Czech Republic; she had been fined for smoking a cigarette in the main train station. (It later turned out that the "receipt" the police gave her was false and that they overcharged her for the offense.) Though Czech authorities did not say so, Morrison believes she was put on the list because of her arrest in Seattle at last November's mass protests of the World Trade Organization. Morrison is one of 300 activists barred from the Czech Republic in advance of the so-called "S26" demonstrations. Another American, Lee Sestar of Chicago, was told by customs officials at the Prague airport last Sunday that he was also on the unwelcome list because he was arrested at the Seattle protests. Sestar, who insists he was swept up with a group of peaceful protesters, was eventually convicted of failure to disperse, a misdemeanor offense. Charges against Morrison in Seattle were dropped. But both were "persona non grata" in Prague last week. Czech authorities have been praised for successfully containing violent demonstrators who tossed Molotov cocktails and bricks at police and delegates during the IMF/World Bank summit. But authorities' efforts to prevent demonstrations by keeping demonstrators out of the country reflect an approach to dealing with the global protest movement that does not bode well for civil liberties. Over the past month, Czech authorities have sought to bar hundreds from the country. An American and three Dutch cooks with the vegetarian collective Rampelpaln were kept out of the country, and a trainload of 1,000 Italian anarchists affiliated with the militant Zapatista-support group Ya Basta! was surrounded by riot police and held at the border until four group members targeted by police agreed to get off. Czech police, acting in concert with American and European police officials, have tried to prevent known activists from entering the country. Their most controversial means of doing so involves a list of activists allegedly provided to Czech authorities by the FBI. On Monday, a spokesperson for the FBI told Salon that he "had not heard" of any FBI lists of activists or persons arrested in the U.S. being turned over to Czech police. "I have no information on that matter, nor can I confirm or deny published reports," FBI Special Agent Steven Berry said. Reports of the list emerged after Czech officials discussed information they had about unwelcome foreign activists with the press. Czech Republic Chief of Police Jiri Kolar told Agence France Presse on September 15 that authorities possessed lists of "undesirable individuals" who are "suspected of abusing their stay to threaten state security, public order, or undermine other protected interests." Czech Interior Minister Stanislov Gross added that many are "under investigation for crimes committed during violence in the United States," most notably during the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle and the IMF/World Bank protests in Washington last April. According to the British newspaper the Guardian, Scotland Yard also provided photographs and information on the alleged "ringleaders" of the May Day demo in London this year, when numerous bank and store windows were smashed and monuments desecrated. A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Prague said Tuesday that "inexperienced" public affairs officers with the Czech police had mistakenly sourced the lists to the FBI. "There is no blacklist or watchlist that the FBI gave to Czech police concerning American activists," U.S. press attaché Victoria Middleton told Salon. "Whatever lists [the Czech police] have came from publicly available documents," she said. Middleton acknowledged that FBI officials, as well as local and state police from Seattle and other U.S. cities, "shared information with Czech police officials" about the role of activists in previous mass demonstrations, as did police from other European countries. But Middleton added, "I have been assured by law enforcement officials at the highest level that this information is in the public domain." The extraordinary security measures in Prague are indicative of the increased surveillance and repression of activists worldwide, as law enforcement agencies cooperate to combat a new, increasingly mobile army of dissent. Last month the FBI, which hosted trainings for Czech police in Washington during the last round of IMF/World Bank protests in April, opened its own office in Prague. American law enforcement officers, along with special agents from Interpol and Scotland Yard, were on hand both before and during Prague protests this week to advise Czech authorities. Scotland Yard even sent a "media specialist" to help counter negative spin. After Tuesday's violent protests in Prague, police will likely increase surveillance of activist groups. But so far authorities have done a poor job of differentiating the violent from the peaceful demonstrators. A recent Canadian security report, "Anti-Globalization: A Spreading Phenomenon" warns that authorities must brace for a variety of threats from the growing protest movement. "Continued presence and use of large numbers of security forces, fencing, and similar restrictive measures could dampen the enthusiasm of protesters and might gradually reduce the size of some gatherings, as could adverse weather conditions," the report states. "But, as demonstrated by extremist animal-rights and environmental activists, security measures could prompt a rise in the scale of violence from smashing windows to arson attacks, the use of explosive devices, and even physical threats against individuals, including posting warning letters purported to contain contaminated razor blades." The report, which was produced in preparation for protests at the World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Alberta, last May, was widely mocked in the Canadian press for its "highbrow" intelligence. It cites recent articles on protesters in the New Yorker and Harper's, as well as the book "No Logo" by Canadian media theorist Naomi Klein. "The report shows they have a fairly sophisticated understanding of what is motivating activists," Klein says, "certainly far more so than our elected officials here in Canada, who portray activists as anti-globalist, or protectionist. "The problem is," she says, "they portray grass-roots activists as James Bond-like figures with all these high-tech tools, which then gives them the rationale to spend all sorts of money on their own high-tech surveillance." The Internet has become a central organizing tool for demonstrators, as well as a key target for police, who are monitoring activist Web sites and discussion groups, and in some cases, even posing as protesters to gain information. Some police have targeted activists with cellphones, noting that the use of cellphones and radios gives protesters a new level of "tactical mobility" with which police must contend. "Legal, grass-roots activism has become the new 'terrorism' in the post-Cold War world," Klein says. "They need a new enemy, and the activists are it." Both before and during the recent protests in Washington, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, police infiltrated meetings and disrupted public gatherings. Activists complained that their phones were tapped and that police were posted outside the homes and offices of suspected organizers. In Los Angeles, some infiltrators were so successful that they even got arrested or gassed by fellow officers. Last May, the Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter reported that reserve units from U.S. Army Intelligence were deployed to monitor the April 16-18 protests against the IMF and World Bank in Washington. "The Pentagon sent around 700 men from the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir to assist the Washington police on April 17, including specialists in human and signals intelligence," the report states. Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Michael Milord confirmed that the Department of Defense provided medical and "explosive ordinance support, as well as food and housing to the National Guard and Washington police during the April demonstrations." However, Milord insists the support amounted to no more than 30 Defense Department personnel. The Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, U.S. Park Police and Federal Bureau of Prisons also provided support to the Washington police, Milord confirms. According to the newsletter, activist files are being circulated via the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS), a network of computers used by law enforcement agencies nationwide. Created by the feds to track organized crime networks, RISS now serves more than 5,300 member law enforcement agencies in 50 states, two Canadian provinces, Australia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. It also networks to the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Secret Service, U.S. Customs and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Intelligence Newsletter reports that among those currently labeled as "terrorist" organizations in the RISS database are Global Justice (the umbrella group that organized the April demonstrations in Washington), Earth First, Greenpeace, the American Indian Movement, Zapatista National Liberation Front and ACT-UP. A spokesperson from the Department of Justice called the report "bogus" and said the RISS system does not list domestic groups as "terrorists." "We don't collect information in any group that wants to demonstrate anything, unless there is a crime being committed," insists Jerry Lynch, director of Magloclen, one of the six RISS regional centers. "If there's any individual or group that has as its purpose to commit crimes, we would be entitled to collect information on them, as would any law enforcement agency, " Lynch explains. "It is not the purpose of RISS to collect information on civil disobedience protests." But the perception of nonviolent activists as terrorists has emerged elsewhere as well. During demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, organizers were targeted for carrying cellphones. John Sellers of the activist training group Ruckus Society was arrested and held on an unprecedented $1 million bail after the Philadelphia assistant district attorney argued that Sellers "facilitates the more radical elements to accomplish their objective of violence and mayhem." (Another judge later reduced the bail on constitutional grounds, but misdemeanor charges against Sellers are still pending. Sellers denies all charges.) A previously sealed police affidavit made public earlier this month details how Philadelphia police used state troopers to infiltrate planning meetings and the puppet warehouse, where activists were constructing giant, satirical floats and other props. Some state troopers even posed as union carpenters and helped build floats. More disturbing still, the affidavit cites a report by an obscure right-wing think tank to contend that some of the protest groups are funded by Communists and "Soviet" sympathizers. Specifically, the affidavit claims that PCAN, the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Group, is a "United States conveyer for People's Global Action (PGA), a self-styled 'leaderless' international network of groups opposed to the global market economy. Funds for the PGA ... allegedly originate with Communist and leftist parties and from sympathetic trade unions. Other funds reportedly come from the former Soviet-allied World Federation of Trade Unions." In fact, People's Global Action is the international umbrella group that formed two years ago in Geneva to help launch the WTO protests in Seattle. And PCAN is a consumer rights group in Reading, Pa. While PCAN organized the permitted and peaceful "unity march" that led off the GOP protests on July 30, it had nothing to do with the street blockades that took place later that week. The affidavit attributes its information to a report by the Maldon Institute, a private think tank funded by conservative multimillionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife is best known for financing several investigations of President Clinton in recent years. Maldon Institute director John H. Rees is a contributor to the right-wing John Birch Society and publishes a newsletter devoted to "intelligence-gathering" which is distributed to police. The affidavit's red-baiting shocked protest lawyers and civil libertarians. "For many of us, it brings back the worst memories of J. Edgar Hoover and the flagrant abuses of the FBI during the '40s and '50s ... right on up to the '60s and '70s," says Larry Frankel, executive director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union. Philadelphia police are barred from conducting undercover investigations of political groups without mayoral consent because of a 1987 lawsuit filed by the ACLU. Both prior to and during the GOP Convention, police and city officials repeatedly denied that they had infiltrated protest groups, a fact which leads ACLU legal director Stephan Presser to contend that the cops used state police to do "an end run" around the law. Police and city officials have declined to comment, noting that the GOP protesters are still being prosecuted. More repressive measures have taken place in cities where media scrutiny was not so high. In Minneapolis last July, the FBI was brought in to oversee preemptive measures on activists aiming to disrupt the International Society of Animal Geneticists meeting. Claiming that large quantities of ammonium nitrate had been stolen from a nearby storage facility, and that a cyanide bomb had been detonated in a McDonald's restaurant (it was a smoke bomb), the federal Drug Enforcement Agency raided one of the collective houses where anarchists had been organizing, several days before the protest. A dozen were arrested and several hospitalized during the raid. Charges against all but one were eventually dropped. Last May, undercover police disguised as activists went so far as to provide a "secure" apartment in Calgary for a "communications team" set up by John Parnell of the Ruckus Society to advise protesters during the World Petroleum Congress. The Congress, which drew no more than 300 demonstrators, was defended by some 2,500 law enforcement officers. According to Parnell, the undercovers (a police detective, a Canadian Mountie and a customs official) met him outside the convergence space where activists were meeting and led him to an apartment, where they helped him set up his gear and even helped out with logistics. Undercovers were also among those carrying radios and Nextel cellphones on the streets. "It was surreal," says Parnell, "I was listening to people talking on the radio that were monitoring us." Parnell, a 52-year-old communications geek who installed radio systems for Witness for Peace during the Contra struggle in Nicaragua, is no stranger to police surveillance. "These guys were good," he says of the Canadian undercovers. While global law enforcement authorities step up their surveillance of activists, activists in turn are using technology to keep their eyes on police. During protests in Seattle, Washington, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, activists monitored police communications, in some cases live-streaming feeds picked up off police radio scanners over the Internet. As the FBI is well aware, independent media centers, information hubs set up by activists in cities across the U.S. and Europe, have played an increasing role in helping protesters to both coordinate actions and control the spin on events. An Aug. 1 FBI advisory to corporate security officials and police reads, "Based on the increasing priority that independent media centers appear to have received by protests and activists organizations after N30 [the November 30 demonstrations against the WTO], the coverage will likely attempt to record law enforcement operations, particularly during the marches, and even more so if physical response is used by local law enforcement." ---- About the writer: Sarah Ferguson is a freelance writer in New York who writes frequently about activism. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Dirty Little Secret Of The Dot-Com World <http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1465/a03.html> Sun, 01 Oct 2000, Los Angeles Times by P. J. Huffstutter, Robin Fields, Times Staff Writers Drug Use Is Rampant In The High-Tech Work Force, Experts And Industry Insiders Say. One Young Internet Star's Death Sheds Light On A Frenetic Culture That Fuels The Problem. At age 26, Aaron Bunnell was riding the fastest wave of the New Economy. The son of a technology media baron, Bunnell propelled the fledgling Web site, Upside.com into a daily hot spot for Internet news, and pulled all-nighters pumped with caffeine and uppers. When he wasn't working 100-hour weeks, he was partying with Silicon Valley's elite at digerati events, scattered across the sprawling haze of new money in Northern California. The dot-com wave carried him in mid-July from San Francisco to New York City on a business trip, where long days of work on a new venture melted into equally long nights of partying. And ultimately, on July 16, into a toxic combination of alcohol, Valium and heroin. A waiter at the posh Waldorf-Astoria Hotel discovered Bunnell dead in Room 1443 late the next morning, lying in bed with an empty bottle of champagne nearby. "I believe my son was a victim of the dot-com boom," said David Bunnell, the 53-year-old chief executive of Upside Media, which publishes print and online technology industry magazines. "I knew he was drinking a lot and taking uppers to stay awake. I didn't think it was much of a problem. I didn't see it." Like the drug waves that swept through places like Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s and Wall Street in the '80s, drug use has found a new, eager home in the centers of technology. The digital revolution has transformed Northern California into the valley of riches, where hope for an explosive stock offering fuels fast deals, faster cars and the fastest computer chips in the world. But the combination of excessive wealth, driving ambition and a youthful sense of invulnerability has created fertile ground for some of society's most expensive, and dangerous, highs. While illicit drug activity wanes nationwide, drug use, particularly methamphetamine and powder cocaine, is booming among high-tech workers, according to scores of interviews with chemical dependency experts, computer programmers, technology executives and former drug addicts. "Drugs are the dirty little secret of the dot-com world," said Dr. Alex Stalcup, medical director of the New Leaf Treatment Center in Concord, Calif., which gets 40% of its new patients from the technology world. "It makes sense, really. There's so much money, such long hours, such pressure to perform here. It's speed to work on, coke to play on and smoking heroin to come down on." It's too early for formal studies that quantify the problem, but there are ominous signs of its growing proportions. The San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force, for instance, has seen the amount of cocaine seized jump 173% between 1995 and 1999, while the quantity of methamphetamine seized has skyrocketed 678%. In Wise County, N.C., home to tech hub Research Triangle, the sheriff's office has seen the amount of methamphetamine seized increase by more than 6,000% between 1997 and 1999, while deputies have confiscated 45% more cocaine. And last week, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that it had seized 125,904 pounds of cocaine in the just-ended fiscal year, an all-time annual record. The young people who are vital to the high-tech work force were mere toddlers during the cocaine epidemic of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and are repeating the mistakes of the past. The number of people age 19 to 28 who say they use powder cocaine jumped by one-third between 1994 and 1999, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research found. And escalating numbers of young tech workers are seeking treatment for drug addictions. While most dot-commers eschew public clinics and 12-step programs such as Cocaine Anonymous, they are flooding into private treatment centers in the Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and New York. The doctors who run these programs say the number of patients they see from the computer industry has grown exponentially since just two years ago, when technology workers were a rare sight. It is relatively easy to hide all but the most extreme problems, say medical experts. Most technology firms in Northern California, fearing they will lose hard-to-replace employees, refuse to drug-test their workers. Among Silicon Valley's top tech employers, only chip maker Intel Corp. screens prospective workers for illegal substances. Indeed, weeks after David Bunnell learned that his son had died, the chief executive declined to implement a pre-employment drug-testing policy. "What people do in their own time, in the privacy of their own homes, is not our business," Bunnell said. "We have a policy that we don't want people to be stoned at work, but there is a lot to do here. There's no time to slow down." Open Drug Use Raises No Eyebrows Parties abound south of Market Street, the heart of San Francisco's hottest dot-com locale, and elsewhere throughout the city. On a recent Friday night, workers fled their cubicles and loft-like offices to cram into the Merchant's Exchange Club. Vodka flowed easily and heavily on the 15th floor of this California Street skyscraper. A hip-hop beat throbbed through the ballroom, luring women in alligator pants and men in Armani chic toward the deejay's turntable. Two women slinked off to the bathroom and found a quiet corner, away from the harsh fluorescent light. As one woman pulled out a compact and checked her lipstick, the other withdrew from her purse a bullet-shaped vial. Sliding the top to one side, she tapped out a small mound of white powder onto her fingertip, lifted it to her nose and inhaled quickly. She passed the vial to her friend. In between their delicate snorts, they rehashed the latest gossip at their high-tech firm. Who got hired and fired. Who made a fortune. Who lost it all. Other women strolled through the bathroom. No one looked at the pair or asked what they were doing. No one seemed to care. "Everyone has coke, especially up north," said a chief executive of a Los Angeles-based dot-com who recently relocated from San Francisco. "If your friends don't have it, or your [banker] doesn't have it, then it's a phone call away. It's like ordering a martini. It's no big deal." Socially, cocaine serves as shorthand proof of prosperity in increasingly nervous times. The silicon success stories that once fed the imagination, tales of brilliant young college students who took fledgling companies public and awoke the next morning as multimillionaires, have been replaced by accounts of layoffs and lost venture funding. But instead of a pall hanging over Northern California, the good times just roll on. Cocaine helps create the illusion of wealth, whether it's real or not. Technology workers say cocaine often is used with other party or "club" drugs, such as Ecstasy and GHB, its unpredictable liquid cousin. Speed also is popular, even during work hours, experts say. "I see programmers who start their day by stirring meth into their cup of coffee," said the Rev. Katherine O'Connell, a clinical psychologist and interfaith minister in Capitola, Calif., who has treated thousands of high-tech workers, politicians and executives for drug addiction since 1970. "Their whole social life revolves around their work life. If there's drug use at work, then there's likely drug use when they play." Experts say the toxic combination that the New York City Medical Examiner's Office found in Aaron Bunnell's body, alcohol, Valium and heroin, suggests long-term abuse of stimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine, even though those drugs were not the direct cause of his death. The medical examiner called Bunnell's death accidental, brought on by acute intoxication. "Virtually 100% [of stimulant users] begin to use downers, alcohol, Valium or heroin, to sleep," said Dr. Stalcup of the Concord treatment center. He declined to comment specifically about the Bunnell case. Although there are no statistics showing that drug and alcohol addiction afflicts technology workers more than the general population, drug treatment experts say tech workers are more susceptible than those in, say, Hollywood or Wall Street because of their work. Drug use by white-collar tech workers "makes the Wall Street boom, and the excess that went along with it, look like puppy chow," said Nicholas Ney, a Menlo Park clinical psychologist and addiction specialist. "The body count is just starting." Rebelliousness Is Part of the Problem A potent work-hard, play-harder streak runs through the tech work force, as does a free-thinking, rebellious attitude that resists strait-laced corporate values. "There's always been an anarchist technophile drug-use thing that seems to go together," said Josh Fishman, a 26-year-old New York programmer who has tried speed and "extra" doses of his Ritalin prescription to help make deadlines or conquer code-writing challenges. "You tinker with your own body and perceptions as well as with technology," he said. "There's the same romantic, opium-poet mystic theme in the hacker culture that used to be in the Beat culture." Network engineer Allan Arimoto's twin compulsions, work and coke, mixed perilously when he worked at the now-defunct PC manufacturer Unitron Computer USA in the city of Industry. Under pressure to prepare exhibits for Comdex, the massive computer industry trade show held annually in Las Vegas, Arimoto fell off the wagon and showed up three days late. He resigned on the spot. Clean for more than a year, Arimoto, 37, now handles computer tasks at the Cri-Help rehab program in North Hollywood. "My work habits are as sick as my drug habits," he said. "I could work for three days straight, no sleep, writing programs, tweaking on computer parts." Cocaine always has followed the money, say addiction specialists. That's why, in the 1980s, coke flowed from the banking and stock-trading world of New York to the companies and industries they invested in elsewhere. Today, the Bay Area is ground zero of the Internet economy and all its excesses, with its frenetic night life and sky-high rents. Just 30 years ago, San Francisco also was the home of the nation's drug culture, a mix of psychedelics and social change and dreams of a brave new world. Today, the drug of choice is cocaine, and the movement's hero is not the Grateful Dead or Timothy Leary, but the Gordon Gecko character in the movie "Wall Street." In West Los Angeles, where entertainment dot-com companies crowd the coastline, workers say they, too, have seen a boom in cocaine use among their peers. "Want to know how easy it is to score a gram of coke? My friend and I recently went to a bar in Venice Beach where everyone there was a dot-commer," said a public relations manager for a Los Angeles entertainment firm. "My friend asked the doorman where she could get some coke. One minute and $60 later, she had a gram." Similar tales can be heard in New York, where Silicon Alley and the related financial industry have grown flush because of the Internet. Dr. Arnold M. Washton, who runs a private New York addiction treatment center for executives and professionals, said he has seen a resurgence of cocaine use among his patients. One of them, a 27-year-old computer programmer for a dot-com, says she became a regular cocaine user as part of her office's social routine. At least three nights a week, she and colleagues would meet after work at a bar and one member of the group would bring cocaine for everyone, Washton said. They would drink until 2 a.m., then go to someone's apartment and do cocaine until 5 a.m., he said. A few hours later, still reeling from the drugs, the group would show up for work. "The person she reports to is part of this crowd," Washton said. "Now that she's in treatment, people are asking her, 'Why don't you come out and party with us?' She's getting worried that now that she doesn't want to use anymore, she may lose her job." Friends Recall Early Drug Use Though Aaron Bunnell's pursuit of his dot-com dreams ended in Room 1443 of the Waldorf-Astoria, the path to his demise began in college. Friends say he began experimenting with pharmaceutical drugs as an undergraduate film student at USC. "He worked so hard. Everyone knew that he put in long hours," said Roxana C. Reyes, a former girlfriend. "But he didn't start using anything stronger than pot or painkillers until he moved to San Francisco to be with his dad." David Bunnell, a well-known tech publishing figure who founded PC World and MacWorld magazines, wanted to expand Upside's Web presence. It was 1998 and the dot-com boom was just beginning. After graduating from USC with a bachelor's degree, where he was named director of the year, Aaron was lured north by the promise of working on the Web. Family members and friends say he also wanted to spend time with his father, whom he had often seen during holidays and long summer vacations after his parents divorced in his youth. "He was always so clean, I never worried about him getting into serious drugs," said David Bunnell. "His mother's a drug and alcohol counselor. We never saw this coming." Usually dressed in his favorite baggy trousers, with his stereo blaring out rock tunes, Aaron regularly pulled 15-hour days at the privately held company, say co-workers. He often worked on the site all night, sleeping on the floor or at a nearby hotel. Slowly, the Web site staff grew from five to a team of more than 20. In late 1999, Aaron was promoted to vice president and editorial director of Upside's entire online business. Soon thereafter, he began leaving work to drink at a nearby bar, returning to the office to work while inebriated. "It was pretty clear he had a substance-abuse problem," said a former Upside editorial staffer. "Given the intensity of the [dot-com] community, it's not surprising." Even the online tribute to Aaron from colleagues and other friends betrays a sense of imbalance in the world of cutting-edge technology and its drive to one-up the competition. The opening line of the tribute reads, "Aaron Bunnell never said 'no.' " Mourners praised Bunnell's ability to work an insane schedule, "putting in long hours and immersing himself in the task." Many wished he had "come out to play" with them, while others wondered why he didn't spend more time "chillaxing and marinating." No one mentioned drug use, or questioned what price Bunnell was paying for his long hours of work. Gini Talmadge, Upside Media president and Aaron Bunnell's boss, declined to discuss her former employee or how his death has affected the company. "We do not want you to do this story. Let it go," Talmadge said. "We don't have the desire or time to talk about this." For sentimental reasons, the company has not taken the time to update its phone system. It is the only recording of Aaron's voice the family has, his father said. Almost three months after Aaron Bunnell's death, his voicemail at work is still taking messages. "Hi, this is Aaron at Upside Online," says a tired-sounding Bunnell. "I'm going to be out of the office this week, so send me an e-mail message and I'll get back to you." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ====================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. Krishnamurti ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe or for a sample copy or a list of back issues, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
