-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 81 October, 2000
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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QUOTE:
"Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will
follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the
prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ...
and the
Republic is destroyed."
--Abraham Lincoln, American president, 1861-1865
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Contents:
---------------
--The Unbearable Lightness of Capitalism
--How Big Money Buys Big Votes In US Race
--The Ordeal of Female Inmates
--California Pot Busts Set Record
--FBI pushes for cyber ethics education
--Have Sex, Stay Young
--Poverty Deepening in Former Communist Countries
Linked stories:
*Embattled vote auction site returns to the Web
*Out with Barry, in with common sense [drug czar]
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Begin stories:
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The Unbearable Lightness of Capitalism
Ithaca Today
October 10, 2000
By Dave Steele
I'm often very uncomfortable when I write my little columns. I don't
want to sound like a broken record, and I certainly don't want to sound
preachy. But I haven't figured out how to avoid either. I am honestly
and deeply convinced that we live in a very, very sick society --- a
society so sick that, in the long-term, our very survival is in
question. It terrorizes me that most of us appear to be so oblivious. I
have to do something. My goal is to help eliminate the obliviousness. I
want to make us (myself included) more aware of the effects we have on
the world, to get us to think about how we contribute to the damage and
to get us to actually change things. I apologize for my preachiness, and
I apologize for my self-righteousness. But I don't know how else to
convey the intense sense of alarm I feel as I look around me.
We, as individuals and as a society, have been profoundly fooled. We
have been fooled into thinking the insignificant to be essential; fooled
into thinking the unstable to be permanent; fooled into thinking the
profoundly immoral to be moral. We have been manipulated into much of
this, but we don't see how that could be. We like our lives (or think we
do) and we show precious little sign that we even care what effects we
have on the world around us.
I use "we" very loosely here. Those of us living on the street, in
tenements, in shelters, have little in common with this "we." But even
among those of us who are desperately poor, the aspiration to be part of
the destructive merry-go-round is strong. We can blame the power of the
advertisement --- and it's appeal to the more base of our desires ---
for much of this. And we can blame the news media for failing to alert
us to the effects of our actions. But, ultimately, we'll have to blame
ourselves for much of it.
Our society is eating up our natural resources at a tremendous rate,
often squandering them on the most trivial of luxuries. We're oblivious
to the damage we're doing. A gasoline crisis is looming. The gasoline we
do burn is warming the world, threatening our very climate. Yet we keep
on buying bigger and bigger SUVs. Our forests are being razed. But we
tear down perfectly livable ranch houses and put up ostentatious
mansions.
The poor are unwittingly forced to prey on the poor. In the endless
pursuit of low price and high profit, labor standards here and abroad
are sacrificed. Overseas workers toil long and hard for pennies an hour
so we can have cheap computers, clothing and food. Jobs that pay living
wages here --- like manufacturing jobs --- are shipped overseas to
maximize profits, using the bodies of the most exploitable of workers.
"Free-trade" proponents argue that, in the long run, these exploited
workers will attain much higher standards of living. They tell us that
economic growth will fuel a new global prosperity. Never mind the fact
that, as "free trade" has been imposed over the last 40 years, the
income gap between rich and poor nations has more than doubled. Even if
the "free-traders" are right, the fact is that their kind of
"prosperity" couldn't possibly last. The world can't support a standard
of living like ours prevailing across the planet. It can't even support
us living at this "standard" in the long run. Certainly nothing like it
can be sustained for the 6 billion people who now populate the earth.
And not for the 10 billion we expect to be around within the next 50
years.
As I alluded to above, we live our high lives largely on the backs of
others. Overseas workers, and underpaid workers here, help us to pay for
our luxuries by their being denied (through low pay) access to safe
housing, even food. The real prices of most of our goods are far higher
than we realize. Where it's not direct worker exploitation that supports
our extravagant lifestyles, it's often the unsustainable use of natural
resources.
This has got to stop. And it will stop, sooner or later, whether we like
it or not. Our consumer society truly cannot be sustained. Oil
production in most of the world has already peaked. Even the vast oil
fields of the Middle East will dry up within this century. We can't
build giant houses forever, or print endless numbers of advertising
supplements. The trees will run out far too soon for that. Either we
make conscious choices to limit the damage we're doing, or the choices
will sooner or later be made for us --- most likely in a very, very
unpleasant way.
What really matters in life, anyway? I know that when I've bought
another car or a fancy stereo, I've felt that strange elation that comes
with the purchase of a luxury product. I've been sufficiently
brainwashed by the advertisers to associate the acquisition with an
increase in social status. But I also know that the feeling of elation
is short-lived. "New and improved" stereos, cars and computers are
always coming out. One can't expect to achieve lasting happiness by
always having to chase newer things.
Lately, I've found that a frugal life combined with a sense of community
and community service brings me a much more fulfilling happiness. I'm
amazed at how much easier it is to maintain my feelings of self-worth
when I'm doing something to help somebody else. That is especially true
when I'm doing that something as part of a larger group. Humans are
definitely social creatures; the satisfaction that comes from a sense of
belonging in a caring community is astonishing.
Rescuing our world will require profound change. Capitalism, at least in
our society, runs on overproduction and overconsumption --- and on the
isolation of the individual, both physically and in thought. Perversely,
our society is structured so that the poorest among us will be hurt the
most when we end our buying spree. But end it we must. The reality is
that society must be changed to protect the planet and to protect the
poor. The needs of all must be accounted for. Either we make the
necessary changes, or the ability of this world to support the needs of
any of us is in grave doubt. The choice is up to us.
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How Big Money Buys Big Votes In US Race
Published on Tuesday, October 10, 2000 in the Guardian of London
by Julian Borger and Martin Kettle in Washington
Flo seems such a nice old lady. She is feisty, good-humoured and worries
about how other elderly Americans are getting on, especially with the high
price of medicines these days. She is especially concerned that some
new-fangled policy in Congress is going to put "big government in our
medicine cabinet".
That remark, almost hidden among her lighthearted musings, gives away who
she really works for. The series of public policy advertisements she
appears in is paid for by an innocuously named group, Citizens for Better
Medicare, which turns out to be the public relations arm of Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America.
The industry lobby is fighting a tooth and nail battle against a Democratic
proposal to curb the ballooning price of prescription medicines. It has
poured more than $11m (£7.8m) into the presidential campaign - mainly to
George W Bush who opposes the scheme, but about a third to Al Gore in the
hope he will feel beholden to the industry if elected and perhaps water
down the plan. In a close race like this, it pays to hedge your bets. For
that reason, the industry has ploughed many millions more into
congressional races.
The gulf between Flo's kindly face and the hard-edged bottom-line war she
is fighting in is a fitting illustration of the two parallel elections
underway in the US. One is a contest of personalities and a menu of
user-friendly policies that fills the airwaves and news bulletins. The
other is practically invisible and pits two loose coalitions of
corporations and interest groups against each other in a struggle to decide
how money will be made and who will make it under the next administration.
The map of the visible election is familiar. It is the patchwork of states
coloured in different shades to represent their allegiances. The other,
largely invisible, electoral map shows how corporate America has lined up
for contest - the most money-driven election in US history.
Larry Makinson, head of the Centre for Responsive Politics which monitors
the role of money in the campaign, said the sheer amount of cash involved
owed a lot to the closeness of the race. The corporations, he explained,
"don't know who to lobby because they don't know who's going to be in
control and both parties are trying to raise money like gangbusters. And so
they're calling in chits."
But after the election, it is corporate America that will call in its
chits, and - if recent political history is anything to go by - much of the
new administration's policy will be guided by the bets placed by big
business during the campaign.
In some cases, the policy issues are the same in both the visible and
invisible elections. The future of Medicare has been exhaustively debated,
even though the trade association, whose "public service" broadcasts are
helping shape that debate, is rarely identified.
However, many of the key battles which determine the struggle over big
money are not fought in the open. They concern issues such as tort reform
and financial deregulation, which sound obscure and tedious, but which
represent billions of dollars to both parties' financial backers.
The story is often told of how George W Bush came almost out of nowhere to
win the Texas governorship in 1994 from a popular Democratic incumbent,
Anne Richards. It is often explained in terms of Mr Bush's optimistic
never-say-die nature and his easy manner with ordinary Texans.
But it had a lot to do with one campaign pledge. "Probably the first and
most important thing I will do when I am governor of this state," he
promised, "is to insist Texas changes the tort laws and insist we end the
frivolous and junk lawsuits that threaten our producers and crowd our
courts."
True to his word, he signed a string of tort reform bills in his first few
weeks in office. Tort reform means making it harder for consumers to sue
large corporations. If he becomes president, Bush and his backers mean to
put industries such as tobacco, guns, oil and medicine far beyond the reach
of the lawsuits which have had the corporations pinned down in the courts
for years.
The Bush tort reform proposals would limit victims' rights of access to the
court system and cap the amount of damages they could be awarded if they
did manage to bring a case to court.
The effect in Texas was dramatic. When a San Antonio jury tried to award a
widow $42.5m after lax oil company safety procedures had resulted in the
death of her husband, an oil refinery worker, the Bush tort reform laws
meant the company paid just $200,000.
Mr Bush's tort reform pledge flooded his 1994 campaign with corporate
funds, and is doing the same now. It is bringing in cash from almost every
corporate sector which feels vulnerable to the US people's litigious
instincts - financial services, insurance, tobacco, pharmaceuticals and
oil, the list is endless and explains the Republican candidate's
extraordinary lead in the money stakes. The anti-corporate third party
candidate, Ralph Nader, often refers to Mr Bush as a "corporation disguised
as a human being".
Mr Bush had raised a record $170m by the end of August and must be heading
towards $200m by the election on November 7. Over half his campaign funding
is "hard money" - individual donations subject to a limit of $1,000 given
directly to his campaign coffers. These donations are often "bundled"
together by firms or interest groups in the names of their members or
employees.
The rest is "soft money" which can be given to each party's national
committee to promote "issues". These issues are not supposed to be directly
related to the election campaign, and so are not subject to cash limits.
But it is a transparent veil. The money and the advertising it funds almost
always goes to support the presidential candidates.
Vice-president Gore has raised more soft money than hard but altogether he
has little more than half the financial resources of his opponent. His key
backers are the lawyers, who fear tort reform as much as Mr Bush's
corporate sponsors crave it. In most class-action lawsuits - against gun
manufacturers, tobacco, the construction industry or whomever - the lawyers
keep a third of the financial award. Each year in US courts that accounts
for a huge sum of money and the legal industry has invested nearly $12m in
Mr Gore to make sure its members are not deprived of it.
Alienating industries
Mr Gore's and the Democrats' close association with the trial lawyers has,
however, inflicted strategic costs elsewhere, alienating industries that
might otherwise be sympathetic, such as the computer and dot.com industry.
Silicon Valley is this year's emerging big player on the election
Monopoly-board, contributing $10m to the presidential campaigns alone. The
Clinton Democrats have long held an edge here, as they have generally
opposed initiatives to tax the internet. Furthermore, the relaxed liberal
California lifestyle which is home to many in the industry is conducive to
Democratic support. Democratic primacy is being challenged however, as the
big computer and internet firms worry about the threat of shareholder
lawsuits, by which individual owners of company stock have sued firms for
sudden plunges in its value, a frequent occurrence in the volatile hi-tech
sector.
The huge financial sector is also tilting away from Mr Gore. The banks and
investment houses have traditionally been "double-givers", backing
politicians on both sides, to make sure government stayed out of their
business. Their payoff was the financial deregulation legislation of 1999.
But this year, there is another issue on the table. Mr Bush's proposal to
allow Americans to invest part of their social security payments (the US
version of national insurance payments) in the stock market has raised the
possibility of billions of dollars of new investment funds for the
securities industries. It represents a significant prize and has tilted
this, the largest single corporate sector, decisively in Mr Bush's favour.
Mr Gore's environmental policies have cost him dearly in the race for big
money. It has alienated the real estate brokers and construction industry,
which are against environmental zoning, the transportation industry, which
wants cheap fuel and less emission control, and the big oil companies.
Mr Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, spent much of their careers in
the oil business, so the industry's backing comes as little surprise. But
the oil companies will exact a price for a Republican victory. They want to
explore the Arctic coastal plain in Alaska, beneath which they believe
there are 16bn barrels of oil. Mr Gore has said he will not allow the area,
a wildlife refuge, to be destroyed.
Mr Gore's environmental policy is generally more popular with voters, as is
his support for Medicare and his opposition to tort reform (most Americans
believe in the right to sue). But those positions have also lost him
financial backing. This election may prove whether you can win the contest
for votes without winning the contest for money first.
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The Ordeal of Female Inmates
Friday, October 13, 2000
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/10/13/ED16328.DTL>
LAWMAKERS and the public should be deeply troubled by the stories of
sexual terror and medical neglect being reported this week by female
inmates of the California Department of Corrections. That human
beings could be caged and virtually denied treatment for potentially deadly
or disabling diseases conjures up barbaric and disquieting similarities
to the medieval savagery of old.
More than a dozen women told a panel of state lawmakers chilling
accounts of how horrible ailments -- including hepatitis and HIV -- had
either been misdiagnosed or ignored by prison personnel. A terminally ill
woman said that in the five months it took to get her breast lump examined,
cancer overran her body. Others told of botched surgeries, severe
infections and deteriorating health due to no, slow or inadequate medical
attention. Another told of sexual abuse by guards who ``prey on us.''
Indeed, shocking if only partially true. ``From what I've heard,''
said Assemblyman Carl Washington, D-Compton, ``cats and dogs are treated
better than some of these people.'' He's right, and the CDC must be
held accountable. It must provide quality care, if only because it's the
humane thing do.
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California Pot Busts Set Record
<http://www.apbnews.com/NEWSCENTER/BREAKINGNEWS/2000/10/24/pot1024_01.html?s=syn.emil_pot1024>
Authorities Seize $1.3 Billion Worth in Latest Campaign
Oct. 24, 2000
By David Barry
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (APBnews.com) -- State authorities seized a record $1.3
billion worth of marijuana crops in a recent campaign and say that Mexican
organized-crime cartels are dominating the drug trade.
In an 11-week statewide operation called Campaign Against Marijuana
Planting (CAMP), 345,207 marijuana plants were seized at large-scale
growing operations around the state. A well-tended marijuana plant will
yield about 1 pound of marijuana, officials say, which puts the cash value
of the crop seizures at $1.3 billion, at current street prices of $4,000 a
pound.
A total of 57 people around the state have been arrested and charged in
connection with the drug seizures, authorities say. California Department
of Justice spokesman Mike Van Winkle said the organizations
behind the cultivation of the huge marijuana crop sites are the same
Mexican organized-crime families that have been involved in large-scale
methamphetamine trafficking in California.
"It used to be the case that in Mendocino and Humboldt County you'd have
aging baby boomers growing cash marijuana crops on inaccessible forest
land," Van Winkle said. "That's still going on up there, but in the rest of
the state, we're finding that the growing is done by the same Mexican
national organizations that operate meth labs throughout the state."
High profits, low risk
Organized drug trafficking groups based in the Mexican state of Michoacan
and operating in California are moving into the marijuana business because
the profit margin is higher and the risk lower than in the methamphetamine
business, Van Winkle said.
"You look at the profit margin," Van Winkle said. "You can buy a marijuana
seedling for $10 to $15, and when it matures, it produces $4,000 worth of
marijuana."
In contrast, producing a pound of methamphetamine requires hundreds of
dollars of chemicals and lab equipment, and the process poses a high risk
of fire and explosion, he said. There is also a better chance the operators
will be arrested.
"With marijuana, the risk to the growers is minimal," Van Winkle said. "And
the profit margin is so high that they still make big bucks even if they
lose 15 gardens out of 20."
Spotting plants difficult
Putting the gardens out of operation requires shifting three full-time task
forces from one location to the next throughout the state during the time
of the operations. From the air, authorities can only spot the marijuana
plants when the sun is on the leaves, which turn emerald green in the
sunlight.
"You can't see just one plant," Van Winkle said. "There have to be a bunch
of them together to be visible. And you can't see them on an overcast day."
When a marijuana garden is found, the task force is called in. The sites
are rarely accessible from public roads, so the raids are carried out by
helicopter. Often, two agents are lowered in slings because the ground is
too rocky, too steep or too forested to permit a helicopter landing. On the
ground, the narcotics agents cut the plants and load them into a sling,
which is hauled up into the helicopter and transported away for destruction.
Sophisticated operation
Van Winkle said the big gardens are highly sophisticated growing
operations, involving an irrigation system with water drawn from a
collected pool, fed by gravity, and carefully filtered into small pipes
that drip water on each plant.
In a raid Saturday in the hills of Madera County in the central San Joaquin
Valley, an operation by the Madera Narcotic Enforcement Team seized 339
pounds of processed marijuana, arrested 41 people and grabbed 33 firearms,
several of which were assault rifles.
"We took down the major organizational heads of that operation," said
Special Agent John Gaines, supervisor of one of the three statewide CAMP
task forces. "We had been running an undercover operation for weeks prior
to the raid Saturday, and we had arrest warrants to serve on individuals
before we raided the growing locations."
Coordinated attack
A task force of about 200 officers drawn from state, local and federal
police agencies made a coordinated attack on 17 different Madera County
locations, delivering 28,000 plants, 339 pounds of processed marijuana,
$160,000 in cash, and 28 pounds of methamphetamine, Gaines said.
Gaines said all of the 41 people arrested in that operation are of Mexican
origin, nearly all of them from the state of Michoacan, the traditional
site of drug-dealing families in Mexico.
"What we found is that the operators come up here for the growing season
and stay with the crop until it is harvested," Gaines said.
The organization running the wholesale marijuana operation in Madera
County, Gaines said, was producing methamphetamine as a side business to
cover the overhead of the marijuana farm.
Growing on public land
The biggest crop garden busted was a 59,000-plant crop in the Sequoia
National Forest in Kern County, two hours north of Los Angeles.
At that growing site, in ravines and hillsides in heavily forested country,
investigators found sleeping bags for 40 people. Ten people were arrested
at that site.
"These large operations, directed by Mexican drug organizations, utilize a
corporate approach, with different branches for production and
distribution," Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.
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FBI pushes for cyber ethics education
<http://europe.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/10/09/ethics.in.cyberspace.ap/index.html>
October 9, 2000
WASHINGTON (AP)
Thou shalt not vandalize Web pages.
Thou shalt not shut down Web sites.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's MP3s.
FBI agents are spreading a new gospel to parents and teachers, hoping
they'll better educate youths that vandalism in cyberspace can be
economically costly and just as criminal as mailbox bashing and graffiti
spraying.
The Justice Department and the Information Technology Association of
America, a trade group, has launched the Cybercitizen Partnership to
encourage educators and parents to talk to children in ways that equate
computer crimes with old-fashioned wrongdoing.
The nascent effort includes a series of seminars around the country for
teachers, classroom materials and guides and a Web site to help parents talk
to children.
"In a democracy in general, we can't have the police everywhere," said
Michael Vatis, director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection
Center, which guards against computer attacks by terrorists, foreign agents
and teen hackers.
"One of the most important ways of reducing crime is trying to teach ethics
and morality to our kids. That same principle needs to apply to the cyber
world," he said.
Vatis and other FBI agents attended a kickoff seminar, titled the National
Conference on Cyber Ethics, last weekend at Marymount University in
Arlington, Virginia.
Part of the challenge: Many teens still consider computer mischief harmless.
A recent survey found that 48 percent of students in elementary and middle
school don't consider hacking illegal.
Gail Chmura, a computer science teacher at Oakton High School in Vienna,
Virginia, makes ethics a constant in her curriculum, teaching kids about
topics such as computer law, software piracy and online cheating.
She has argued with students who don't see that stealing from a computer
with bad security is as wrong as stealing from an unlocked house.
"It's always interesting that they don't see a connection between the two,"
Chmura said. "They just don't get it."
The FBI's Vatis tells students, "Do you think it would be OK to go
spray-paint your neighbor's house or the grocery store down the street? On a
Web site, it's the same sort of thing. It's somebody's storefront or an
extension of themselves."
Chmura tries similar messages. For instance, she asks a budding composer how
he would feel if his music was stolen and given away online.
"They do sometimes realize that when they're copying someone's product, it's
not just that 5 cent disk, but someone's work that they're copying," she
said. "I think they do come to appreciate the fact that it's somebody's
salary they're stealing."
Vatis cites a long list of cyber crimes perpetrated by minors, including
attacks on defense department computers in 1998 and the February jamming of
major Web sites such as Amazon.com and eBay.
He tries to drive home the consequences of hacking -- including the
resources it drains from his center, as law enforcement scrambles to find
who is responsible at the outset of an attack.
Authorities "don't know if it's a terrorist or a foreign military," Vatis
said. "It diverts very scarce resources of people who are trying to focus on
crime, warfare and terrorism."
And children aren't the only ones in need of training. College students and
parents also are frequently undecided about what crosses an ethical boundary
in cyberspace, where anyone can download pirated musical recordings.
"We had some discussion about the legalities of whether you're sharing
something with your friend or burning CDs to sell at your school," said
Deborah Price of Lewisville, North Carolina, parent of a 14-year-old
daughter. "I'm not real certain about Napster ethics myself."
Price -- whose daughter uses Napster, the music-sharing service considered a
threat to the recording industry -- feels that computer ethics are an
important issue.
"I think it should be part of the discussion at the school," Price said.
"It's only going to get bigger."
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Have Sex, Stay Young
October 10, 2000
LONDON (Reuters) - Vigorous regular sex can make you look up to seven
years younger, researchers claimed on Tuesday.
Energetic love-making can reduce fatty tissue and release endomorphins
from the brain which are natural painkillers and reduce anxiety, according
to the authors of a new book "Secrets of the Superyoung."
Edinburgh psychologist David Weeks and science writer Jamie James
reached their conclusions after interviewing 95 people in Scotland who
looked very young for their ages.
Research revealed that sex was a big factor in their youthful appearance.
"The significance of this factor came as a surprise," the authors said.
"As much as any other physical activity, sex is an important part of life for
young-looking people from late adolescence or early adulthood throughout
their entire lives," they concluded.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poverty Deepening in Former Communist Countries
October 12, 2000
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON, Oct. 11 - At least 50 million children in Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union live in poverty and are exposed to
tuberculosis levels usually associated with the third world, says
a report released today.
The report, by the European Children's Trust, a group active in 10
Eastern European countries, urged the West to help by easing debt
burdens. The report, "The Silent Crisis," found that poverty in
the region had increased more than tenfold over the decade since
the fall of Communism because of reduced spending on health,
education and other social programs.
"Since the breakup of the Communist system," the study says,
"conditions have become much worse , in some cases catastrophically
so.
"For all its many faults, the old system provided most people with
a reasonable standard of living and a certain security."
At least 50 million children were found to live in "genuine poverty,"
with 40 million of them in the former Soviet Union. Over all, more
than 160 million people, 40 percent of the population, are thought
to live in poverty.
The report measured infant mortality, the proportion of the population
not expected to live to 60 and the number of tuberculosis cases.
It said infant mortality, at 26 per 1,000 births in 1998, approached
rates in Latin America and the Caribbean, where it is 32 per 1,000.
In the United States, infant mortality is 7.2 deaths per 1,000 live
births.
Tuberculosis rates have risen in Eastern Europe, with an average
67.6 cases per 1,000 people in 1997. That compared with 49.6 percent
in Arab states, 47.6 percent in Latin America and 35.1 percent in
eastern Asia.
Tuberculosis rates ranged from 20 per 1,000 in the Czech Republic
to 80 per 1,000 in Lithuania, Turkmenistan, Latvia and Russia, and
150 per 1,000 in Georgia.
In Kyrgyzstan, 88 percent of people live below the poverty line,
the report found.
"Time is running out," the trust said. "That there has not been a
total collapse of social structures in these countries so far is
a testament to the resilience of the people there. But they cannot
continue living this way indefinitely."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linked stories:
********************
Embattled vote auction site returns to the Web
<http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/10/24/vote.auction/index.html>
Voteauction.com was apparently counted out too soon. The
Austrian-based site, which lets Americans sell their votes to
the highest bidder, has returned to the Web with a slightly
toned-down message. (10/25/00)
********************
Out with Barry, in with common sense
<http://www.liberzine.com/jamesmarkels/001024mccaffrey.htm>
<http://www.reason.com/sullum/102400.html>
Drug czar Barry McCaffrey could have hardly been less effective.
His main accomplishments have been to shovel billions of dollars
into wasted media efforts to tell scary lies to children, pump
over a billion more into Colombia's military to wage war against
the local drug lords, and effectively bribe the major creative
media to echo the government's line. (10/24/00)
********************
======================================================
"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
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