-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 139 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Rehnquist --Political Puppeteer --Water cannon fired on Davos protestors --Fun Facts About Global Inequality --Puppetista Manifesto --Israeli Army Deserted by Soldiers with a Conscience --The Army Is Watching Your Kid --Police fire water cannons at Davos protesters --The CIA Academics and Spies =================================================================== January 29, 2001 Rehnquist --Political Puppeteer <http://www.consortiumnews.com/012901a.html> By Robert Parry When William Rehnquist swore in George W. Bush as president on Jan. 20, the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice completed a near-decade-long struggle by conservative jurists to put their political allies in control of the U.S. government a victory that marks a radical shift in American democracy. Never before in American history have a chief justice and other federal judges exploited their extraordinary powers as brazenly to advance clearly partisan interests as have Rehnquist and his fellow Republican appointees jurists sworn to enforce the laws impartially and to protect the Constitution. Yet there is a history to this development that the news media has missed. This unprecedented politicization of the federal courts dates back at least to the early 1990s when federal judges including Rehnquist adopted legal strategies to protect the Reagan-Bush administrations from the legal fallout of the Iran-contra scandal. This partisanship arced higher through the Clinton administration and reached its apex with the installation of George W. Bush as president. On a personal level, Rehnquist's history of behind-the-scenes political machinations dates back even further to the 1960s when he opposed desegregation in Phoenix and worked on Republican "ballot security" in Arizona, a program criticized as intimidation of African-American and other minority voters. According to a Senate summary of the opposition to Rehnquist's 1986 nomination to be chief justice, Rehnquist "publicly opposed a Phoenix public accommodations ordinance, and he publicly challenged a plan to end school segregation in Phoenix, stating that 'we are no more dedicated to an integrated society than a segregated society.' "Moreover," the summary said, "in the early 1960s, he led a Republican Party ballot security program designed to disenfranchise minority voters. The [Senate Judiciary] Committee has received sworn testimony from numerous credible witnesses that, as part of his involvement in the ballot security program, Mr. Rehnquist personally challenged the eligibility of minority voters. Justice Rehnquist has categorically denied this. But, none of these witnesses had anything to gain by misrepresenting the truth." Though Rehnquist's denial of the "ballot security" charges prevailed as he won Senate confirmation, he seemed equally callous to minority voting rights in 2000 when he ensured that the votes of African-Americans and other minorities were undercounted, this time in Florida. In the weeks after the ruling to stop the Florida vote count, the Rehnquist court's intervention has come into clearer focus. Shifting Reasons New information indicates that the five conservative justices flipped their legal rationale nearly 180 degrees between Dec. 11, when they were first prepared to rule in Bush's favor, and the night of Dec. 12 when the decision to make Bush president finally was announced. The judicial gymnastics demonstrated how Rehnquist and the four other conservatives settled on a political outcome Bush's victory and then dressed up the choice in legal verbiage. USA Today disclosed this inside story in an article about the strains that the Bush v. Gore ruling created within the court. [USA Today, writer Joan Biskupic, Jan. 22, 2001] Though the article was sympathetic to the five conservative justices, it disclosed an important fact: that the five justices were planning on ruling for Bush after oral arguments on Dec. 11. The court even sent out for Chinese food for the clerks, so the work could be completed that night. On Dec. 11, the legal rationale for stopping the recount was to have been that the Florida Supreme Court had made "new law" when it referenced the state constitution in an initial recount decision rather than simply interpreting state statutes. Even though this argument was highly technical, the rationale at least conformed with the conservative principles of the five-member majority, supposedly hostile to judicial "activism." However, the Florida Supreme Court threw a wrench into the plan. On the evening of Dec. 11, the state court submitted a revised ruling that deleted a passing reference to the state constitution. The revised state ruling based its reasoning entirely on state statutes that permitted recounts in close elections. This revised state ruling drew little attention from the press, but it created a crisis for the five conservatives. Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and William Kennedy no longer felt they could agree with the "new law" rationale for striking down the recount, though Justices Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas still would, USA Today reported. O'Connor and Kennedy then veered off in very different direction, USA Today said. Through the day of Dec. 12, they worked on an opinion arguing that the Florida Supreme Court had failed to set consistent standards for the recount and that the disparate county-by-county standards constituted a violation of the "equal protection" rules of the 14th Amendment. This argument was quite thin and Kennedy reportedly had trouble committing it to writing. To anyone who had followed the Florida election, it was clear that varied standards already had been applied throughout the state. Wealthier precincts had benefited from optical voting machines that were simple to use and eliminated nearly all errors, while poorer precincts with many African-Americans and retired Jews were stuck with outmoded punch-card systems with far higher error rates. Some counties had conducted manual recounts, too, and those totals were part of the tallies giving Bush a tiny lead. The statewide recount, even if there were slight variations of standards regarding "intent of the voters," was designed to reduce these disparities and thus bring the results closer to equality. Applying the "equal protection" provision, as planned by O'Connor and Kennedy, turned the 14th Amendment on its head, guaranteeing less equality than letting the recounts go forward. Indeed, if one were to follow the "logic" of the O'Connor-Kennedy position, the only "fair" conclusion would have been to throw out Florida's presidential election in total. After all, Florida's disparate standards were being judged unconstitutional. Without some form of recount to eliminate those disparities, the statewide results would violate the 14th Amendment. That, however, would have meant that Al Gore would become president because, without Florida, Gore had a majority of the remaining electoral votes. Clearly, the five conservatives had no intention of letting their "logic" lead to that result. Yet possibly even more startling than the stretched logic of O'Connor-Kennedy was the readiness of Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas to sign on to a ruling that was almost completely at odds with their own legal rationale for blocking the recounts. On the night of Dec. 11, that trio was ready to bar the recount because the Florida Supreme Court had created "new law." On Dec. 12, the same trio barred the recount because the Florida Supreme Court had not created "new law," the establishment of precise statewide recount standards. The five conservatives had devised their own Catch-22. If the Florida Supreme Court set clearer standards, that would be struck down as creating "new law." If the state court didn't set clearer standards, that would be struck down as violating the "equal protection" principle. Heads Bush wins; tails Gore loses. Rationalizing the Rationale After the court's Dec. 12 ruling and Gore's concession the next day, Justice Thomas told a group of high school students that partisan considerations play a "zero" part in the court's decisions. Later, asked whether Thomas's assessment was accurate, Rehnquist answered, "Absolutely." In later oblique comments about the court's role in the case, Rehnquist seemed unfazed by the inconsistency of the logic. His overriding rationale seemed to be that he viewed Bush's election as good for the country whether the voters thought so or not. In a speech to a Catholic service organization on Jan. 7, the chief justice said sometimes the U.S. Supreme Court needed to intervene in politics to extricate the nation from a crisis. Rehnquist's remarks were made in the context of the Hayes-Tilden race in 1876, when another popular vote loser, Rutherford B. Hayes, was awarded the presidency after justices participated in a special election commission. "The political processes of the country had worked, admittedly in a rather unusual way, to avoid a serious crisis," Rehnquist said. Scholars interpreted Rehnquist's remarks as shedding light on his thinking during the Bush v. Gore case as well. "He's making a rather clear statement of what he thought the primary job of our governmental process was," said Michael Les Benedict, a history professor at Ohio State University. "That was to make sure the conflict is resolved peacefully, with no violence." [Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2001] But where were the threats of violence in the 2000 election? Gore had reined in his supporters, urging them to avoid confrontations and to trust in the "rule of law." The only violence had come from the Bush side, when protesters were flown from Washington to Miami to put pressure on local election boards. On Nov. 22, as the Miami-Dade canvassing board was preparing to examine ballots rejected by the voting machines, a well-dressed mob of Republican operatives charged the office, roughed up some Democrats and pounded on the walls. The canvassing board promptly reversed itself and decided to forego the recount. The next night, the Bush-Cheney campaign feted these brown-shirts-in-blue-blazers at a hotel party in Fort Lauderdale. Starring at the event was crooner Wayne Newton singing "Danke Schoen," but the highlight for the operatives was a thank-you call from George W. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, both of whom joked about the Miami-Dade incident. [Wall Street Journal, Nov. 27, 2000] The Journal also reported that the assault of the Miami-Dade canvassing board was led by national Republican operatives "on all expense-paid trips, courtesy of the Bush campaign." The Journal noted that "behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida," with House Majority Whip Tom DeLay's Capitol Hill office taking charge of the recruitment. In other less violent ways, the Bush-Cheney team signaled that they would not accept an unfavorable vote total in Florida. If Gore pulled ahead, the Republican-controlled state legislature was prepared to void the results. In Washington, the Republican congressional leadership also was threatening to force a constitutional crisis if Gore prevailed in Florida. If one takes Rehnquist's "good-for-the-country" rationale seriously, that means the U.S. Supreme Court was ready to award the presidency to the side most willing to use violence and other anti-democratic means to overturn the will of the voters. Ignoring the Voters Gore won the national popular vote by more than a half million votes and was almost certainly the choice of the voters of Florida but for confusing ballots, inefficient voting machines and improperly purged African-American voters. Yet instead of ruling that the vote tabulations alone would decide the victor a position the U.S. Supreme Court could have taken the Rehnquist court intervened to hand the presidency to Bush, the apparent loser. The reason under this "good-for-the-country" rationale was that Gore and his supporters were less likely to disrupt the political process or to resort to violence, if they were declared the losers. To reward a political party simply because it is ready to throw the country into crisis is a bad precedent for reasons that every parent understands when dealing with a child's temper tantrum. But other evidence suggests that Rehnquist's real motives were even less lofty and far more premeditated. Iran-Contra Precedent For the past decade, Rehnquist and other conservative jurists on the federal bench have been venturing into partisan terrain. In key political case after key political case, they have protected and advanced the interests of the Republican hierarchy, first defensively and then offensively. A pivotal moment came with the Iran-contra scandal which exploded in November 1986, amid disclosures that Ronald Reagan's White House had been running a secret war in Nicaragua funded, in part, by illegal weapons sales to the radical Islamic government of Iran. White House officials were caught lying about both Nicaragua and Iran. The Reagan-Bush administration's response was to sacrifice a few low-level officials, such as Lt. Col. Oliver North, and insist that senior officials had been kept in the dark. To avert a constitutional crisis, congressional Democrats went along, concentrating their criticism on North and letting Ronald Reagan and then-Vice President George H.W. Bush off the hook. [Democrats, with the exception of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, adopted a similar see-no-evil approach to evidence that the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels were deeply implicated in the cocaine trade. See Robert Parry's Lost History for more details.] The Walsh Factor The Iran-contra cover-up ran into trouble, however, when special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh conducted a methodical investigation that stripped away one layer of lies after another. Walsh was a former Republican judge who was appointed by a three-judge panel in 1986. That panel was headed by another Republican, senior U.S. Appeals Court Judge George MacKinnon. Both Walsh and MacKinnon were old-school Republican conservatives from the Eisenhower era who saw their duty as pursuing justice and the truth, regardless of political concerns. Early in the first Bush administration, Walsh won convictions against North and Reagan's national security adviser John Poindexter. Conservatives grew angry. Republicans desperately battled to keep the scandal from spreading to Reagan and then-President Bush, the current president's father. Some of that fury played out within conservative judicial circles. In Firewall, Walsh's book about the Iran-contra scandal, the special prosecutor described how the black-robed Republican appointees to the U.S Appeals Court in Washington "waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army." A leader of this partisan faction was Judge Laurence H. Silberman, an obstreperous conservative who had served as a foreign policy adviser to Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign. At one point during the Iran-contra scandal, Silberman berated MacKinnon over his support for the special-prosecutor law. "At a D.C. circuit conference, he [Silberman] had gotten into a shouting match about independent counsel with Judge George MacKinnon," Walsh wrote. "Silberman not only had hostile views but seemed to hold them in anger." On the North appeal in 1990, Silberman teamed up with a younger conservative, Judge David Sentelle, to overturn the three felony counts against North. The vote was 2-1. Ironically, in ruling for North, the two law-and-order judges chose to expand the rights of defendants in cases involving limited immunity, such as that which Congress had granted to North. Sentelle, a prot=E9g=E9 of conservative Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., also served on a second appeals panel that overturned the conviction of Poindexter on similar grounds. Despite the reversals, Walsh continued to make progress. In early 1992, he was bringing obstruction-of-justice cases against former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and several senior officials at the Central Intelligence Agency. The case was moving dangerously close to then-President George H.W. Bush. At that point, Walsh received a call from MacKinnon with some troubling news. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist, who controlled appointments to the three-judge special-prosecutor panel, had decided to oust MacKinnon, Walsh's old ally. Rehnquist was pushing MacKinnon out and replacing him with Sentelle. Rehnquist made this move although it defied the legal language of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, the law that created the special prosecutor post. As a safeguard against partisanship on the three-judge panel assigned to pick the special prosecutors, the law stipulated that in appointments to the panel, "priority shall be given to senior circuit judges and retired judges." That provision had always been followed until 1992 when Rehnquist waived its provisions and reached down for an active junior judge, Sentelle. Beyond Sentelle's lacking "senior" status, he was known as one of the most conservative partisans on the federal bench. A Reagan appointee, Sentelle had named his daughter, Reagan, after the president. Sentelle also continued denouncing liberals even after his appointment to the federal bench. In one article published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy in winter 1991, Sentelle accused "leftist heretics" of wishing to turn the United States into "a collectivist, egalitarian, materialistic, race-conscious, hyper-secular, and socially permissive state." By picking Sentelle, Rehnquist assured that future special prosecutors would be more politically attuned to Republican political needs. Rehnquist decision and his continuation of Sentelle in that position through the 1990s led to a string of conservative special prosecutors who pulled their punches on Republicans and flailed away at Democrats. Double Standard Sentelle's first special prosecutor was named when a scandal arose in fall 1992 over the Bush administration's illegal searches of Bill Clinton's passport records seeking derogatory material that could be used to insure George H.W. Bush's reelection. Sentelle's panel handed this politically sensitive probe off to Republican stalwart Joseph diGenova, who ran an investigation that turned up many facts pointing to Republican guilt but still concluded that the Bush operatives were innocent. Once the Clinton administration began, Sentelle's panel picked hard-line conservatives to investigate the Democrats. Republican Donald Smaltz was named to investigate Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. David Barrett, who had headed Lawyers for Reagan, was picked to investigate Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros. And most notably, Bush's Solicitor General Kenneth Starr was chosen to investigate President Clinton, first over the Whitewater case and later over other allegations. In Senate testimony in 1999, Sentelle explained that he consciously selected political adversaries to conduct these investigations. Sentelle said he looked for Republicans "who had been active on the other side of the political fence" to investigate Clinton and his administration. Beyond the view of many legal experts that prosecutors should be as impartial as possible neither friends nor foes of the person under investigation Sentelle also had applied his selection strategy differently in 1992 when the subject was a Republican administration. Then, he picked a fellow Republican to handle the investigation. Though Sentelle testified otherwise, it seemed clear that his real criterion for selecting a special prosecutor in sensitive cases was to pick a Republican. Hunting the President Some critics of the Starr investigation concluded that his long-running inquiries into relatively trivial matters such as the Clintons' Whitewater business deals, the Travel Office firings, the mistaken delivery of FBI files to the White House, Clinton's fibbing about his sex life amounted to a "hunting of the president." But whether Clinton opened himself up to the suspicions or not, there is little doubt that these time-consuming investigations took their toll. Often coordinating with conservative political groups and right-wing media, the Clinton investigations weakened the president politically and created the climate for his impeachment in 1998 over his misleading testimony about a sexual affair with White House employee Monica Lewinsky. Arguably, the hidden hand behind this anti-Clinton strategy was the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice, who had picked Sentelle who, in turn, picked the special prosecutors. Before his death in 1995, MacKinnon told his family that if he had remained in charge of the special prosecutor panel he would not have appointed Starr. A son, James D. MacKinnon, said Judge MacKinnon objected to Starr's appointment in 1994 because of the appearance of partisanship arising from Starr's senior position in the prior administration. Judge MacKinnon also expressed concern about Starr's frequent public appearances, which the judge felt "were wholly inappropriate for an independent counsel," James MacKinnon stated. "My father always felt that independent counsels and judges should be extraordinarily discreet with any public comments, and be as anonymous as possible and simply do their work." The impression left with many Americans that Clinton was responsible for a wide variety of ethics scandals was thus partly created by Rehnquist through his choice of a junior judge with strong ideological motives to oversee the investigations against Clinton. Crossover to Gore The eight-year assault on Clinton carried over into campaign 2000 as the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush's campaign worked hard to link Vice President Al Gore to the supposed "Clinton sleaze." Bush promised to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House and the GOP exaggerated allegations about Gore's honesty in a not-so-subtle strategy to tie Gore to Clinton's deceptions about Lewinsky. According to polls, the Republicans achieved some success in this effort to taint Gore. Still, on Nov. 7, the American voters cast more than a half million more ballots for Al Gore than for George W. Bush. Gore also led in the Electoral College. Bush only could win by claiming the 25 electoral votes of Florida, where he was clinging to an official lead of only a few hundred. Limited recounts, however, were eating into that margin. The situation looked grim for Bush on Dec. 8 when the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide review of ballots that had been rejected by counting machines. The recounting began on the morning of Dec. 9. Immediately, the canvassers began finding scores of legitimate votes that the machines had missed. Bush operatives lodged objections to delay the inclusion of these as Gore votes. Meanwhile, Bush's lawyers raced to the U.S. Appeals Court in Atlanta to stop the count. Though dominated by conservatives, that court found no grounds to intervene. A frantic Bush then turned to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. There, in the late afternoon, the court took the unprecedented step of stopping the counting of votes cast by American citizens. Justice Scalia made clear that the purpose of the court's action was to prevent Bush from falling behind in the tally and thus raising questions about his legitimacy should the Supreme Court effectively declare him the winner. [See Dark Cloud, Dec. 10, 2000] That outcome would "cast a cloud" over the "legitimacy" of an eventual Bush presidency, explained Scalia. "Count first, and rule upon the legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires," Scalia wrote. Trusting the Law Nevertheless, on Dec. 11, Gore and his lawyers voiced confidence that the rule of law would prevail, that the U.S. Supreme Court would rise above any partisan concerns and insist that the votes be counted and that the will of the voters be respected. The Gore team went before Rehnquist's court apparently still not cognizant of the reality that whatever they argued, the five conservative justices were determined to make Bush the next president. All that was left to do was to come up with a reason. The first one that the Florida Supreme Court had made "new law" fell by the wayside when the state court sent to Washington a modified ruling on the evening of Dec. 11. That forced the five conservatives to fall back to Plan B have O'Connor and Kennedy devise another argument, the "equal protection" rationale. With that in place, on the night of Dec. 12, the five conservatives made George W. Bush the first popular-vote loser in more than a century to take the White House. When Rehnquist swore George W. Bush in as the 43rd president on Jan. 20, the deed was done. A Step Toward Dictatorship Wishful thinking in Washington clearly hopes that the Rehnquist court's intervention in the political process was just an anomaly something the conservative majority did reluctantly for the good of the country. But that doesn't square with the last decade of an increasingly partisan Republican judiciary intervening again and again to hurt its ideological foes and help its political friends. That reality of a deeply politicized judiciary willing to manipulate court cases for partisan purposes also means that the nature of American democracy has changed. With its unique position as the final arbiter of American law, the U.S. Supreme Court, controlled by five conservatives, now has appropriated the power to use blatantly specious logic to overturn the will of the American people. The court's action in anointing George W. Bush as president has moved the United States in a troubling direction, toward a hollowed-out democracy, indeed toward the framework of dictatorship. ---- In the 1980s and early 1990s, Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek. =================================================================== Water cannon fired on Davos protestors Anti-globalization protestors were doused with water cannons and sprayed with tear gas and rubber pellets at demonstrations against the annual gathering of leaders at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. http://itn.co.uk/news/20010127/world/03davosprotests.shtml =================================================================== Fun Facts About Global Inequality 1. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs). 2. The Top 200 corporations' sales are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity. Between 1983 and 1999, their combined sales grew from the equivalent of 25.0 percent to 27.5 percent of World GDP. 3. The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10. 4. The Top 200s' combined sales are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world population) living in "severe" poverty. 5. While the sales of the Top 200 are the equivalent of 27.5 percent of world economic activity, they employ only 0.78 percent of the world's workforce. 6. Between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the Top 200 firms grew 362.4 percent, while the number of people they employ grew by only 14.4 percent. 7. A full 5 percent of the Top 200s' combined workforce is employed by Wal-Mart, a company notorious for union-busting and widespread use of part-time workers to avoid paying benefits. The discount retail giant is the top private employer in the world, with 1,140,000 workers, more than twice as many as No. 2, DaimlerChrysler, which employs 466,938. 8. U.S. corporations dominate the Top 200, with 82 slots (41 percent of the total). Japanese firms are second, with only 41 slots. 9. Of the U.S. corporations on the list, 44 did not pay the full standard 35 percent federal corporate tax rate during the period 1996-1998. Seven of the firms actually paid less than zero in federal income taxes in 1998 (because of rebates). These include: Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom, McKesson and the world's biggest corporation - General Motors. 10. Between 1983 and 1999, the share of total sales of the Top 200 made up by service sector corporations increased from 33.8 percent to 46.7 percent. Gains were particularly evident in financial services and telecommunications sectors, in which most countries have pursued deregulation. Institute for Policy Studies http://www.ips-dc.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] =================================================================== Puppetista Manifesto ITINERANT GARBAGE THEATRE FOR CULTURAL INSURRECTION a Puppetista Manifesto I. Against the backdrop of the tightly controlled consumer compliance Industry and the unilateral bombardment of corporate mass media, the arts become either commodity, commercial, or, if they refuse to serve this system, criminalized, incarcerated, destroyed. From the quagmire of complacency and the garbage that it produces, the puppet emerges and finds its poignant paper mache voice. II. Puppetry has existed for longer than anyone cares to remember. It is an anarchic art, rooted in mockery, a ridiculous gesture towards the absurdity of the established order. It is the unique ability of the clown to laugh in the face of the king. It is equally rooted in the Festival, where a community comes together to present for each other a Pageant- an enactment of a common struggle. Effigies are created representing otherwise abstract adversaries: Thunderstorms, Institutional Industrialization, Drought, Biotechnology, Famine, and Corporate Global Domination Enforced by a Constantly Expanding Military Complex; Beasts that terrorize and induce fear. Through a ritualistic confrontation with these elements, citizens are empowered to take on these forces, psychologically, and then physically, while achieving a spiritual elevation that resonates into daily existence. With the newfound power acquired from the pageant, the citizens have rehearsed for the inevitable uprooting of the evils that threaten their livelihoods. III. Puppets are intentionally ugly against the glittery status quo, and inherently worthless in the eyes of the money economy. They are summoned from the garbage to serve a purpose, ultimately returning to the garbage. Cultural Insurrection will never aspire to the narrow confines of the vacuous pit of the standardized, easy-to-swallow arenas of the entertainment machine. On the sidewalk, in the basement, behind the couch, cultural Insurrection utilizes any acceptable or illegal venues for the proliferation of its radical puppetganda. The streets are littered with potential puppetshows and potential puppeteers. IV. By rescuing puppet theater from the shiny black boxes, by returning it to its roots as a theater of action, we are able to reimagine the possibility of life instead of mere survival inside of the system. The authorities of the media/cop state have been uncharacteristically correct in their portrayal of the puppet as a weapon, for the puppet is indeed a powerful tool to reshape individual minds, and by extension, an entire society. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> =================================================================== The London Observer Sunday, January 28, 2001 Israeli Army Deserted by Soldiers with a Conscience by Jason Burke in Jerusalem The Israeli army has been hit by an unprecedented wave of disobedience as scores of soldiers refuse to serve in areas which have seen the worst violence during the Palestinian uprising. Others have cut short their military service in protest at the Israeli control of Arab territories, against the measures used to tackle the four-month-long revolt, and against what they call the 'militarisation' of Israeli society. Hundreds more serving soldiers have requested transfers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip or have refused reserve duty. Thousands of other young people are dodging military service - traditionally seen as one of the cornerstones of life in Israel. At least nine soldiers, including some from combat units and at least one reservist, have been jailed for taking a stand against military authorities since the start of the intifada in September. Campaigners say only one in 40 refusers is being prosecuted. The army says exact figures are unavailable. Eyal Rozenberg, 20, refused to complete the last of his three years of mandatory service with a prestigious intelligence unit when the most recent violence broke out. 'The army is being used to defend and further a policy I do not agree with but was assisting,' he told The Observer . 'Every morning when I woke up I was torn between what I was doing and what I believed in.' Many of the refusers are reservists. After their three years of compulsory service, Israeli men can be called up for more than a month each year. Thousands of reservists have been deployed on the West Bank and in Gaza in recent months. Several have been killed. More than 300 Palestinians have died. 'I don't want to be in a position where I might have to shoot and wound and kill people who are throwing stones and I don't want to die myself. If it was a war for Israel's survival, that would be totally different,' said one 33-year-old reservist, a former fighter in the elite paratroop brigade. Sympathetic commanding officers, aware that Israel's forces are a 'people's army', are often happy to quietly transfer soldiers away from sensitive positions. Others recommend that they seek a medical discharge, he said. However, the new wave of 'refuseniks' has revealed deep divisions in Israeli society. Young Israelis are increasingly secular and materialistic. Many conservatives see the new trends as undermining the nation's security, damaging its moral fabric, or even as contrary to divine injunctions. In nine days, Israelis go to the polls to elect a new Prime Minister. Ariel Sharon, the bullish hardliner, has a huge lead over Ehud Barak, whose electoral pledge to bring peace has not been fulfilled. In the heated pre-election atmosphere, the criticism of conscientious objectors and 'refuseniks' has been severe. Lothan Raz, 20, who spent two months in jail for refusing to serve in the West Bank, said he has received abuse and threats after talking publicly about his decision. 'People said that I wasn't a Jew if I didn't serve in the army. They called me a traitor and a coward,' he said. Raz maintains that he speaks for a huge number of young Israelis whose vision of Israel is very different from that of 'the religious or military establishment'. But although the violence in the territories has caused a crisis of conscience for some, it has also led to a backlash against the peace process. The army points out that unprecedented numbers of reservists are reporting for duty and says some are requesting a posting on the West Bank or in Gaza. During the last intifada, from 1987 to 1993, about 200 soldiers were jailed for refusing to serve. Campaigners say current figures do not reflect the extent of the discontent. 'The army don't want to stir things up at a difficult time, so they have a policy of not jailing people. It's the tip of the iceberg,' said Ishai Menuchin, a veteran of Israel's traumatic war in Lebanon who now runs a group supporting conscientious objectors. He says that out of 40 refusers who have contacted him since September only one has been jailed. Instead of formally objecting, some young Israelis simply opt to avoid military service. Some campaigners claim that a quarter of those called up are dodging the draft. The army says only 1 per cent fails to serve. Outside a bar in central Jerusalem last week several young Israelis were happy to tell The Observer how they avoided military service. 'It was easy,' said Yoel, a 19-year-old IT student. 'I just told them that I had bad nightmares and sometimes had suicidal thoughts. They don't want to take any risks, so they let me off.' He said he was not ashamed. 'I don't like fighting and I don't want to shoot anyone. I don't see why that should stop me being a good Israeli citizen.' =================================================================== The Army Is Watching Your Kid <http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,41476,00.html> by Jeffrey Benner Jan. 29, 2001 The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has asked the Department of Defense to explain why it is monitoring the Web surfing habits of children using the Internet at school. An article in Friday's Wall Street Journal prompted EPIC's request, filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), for all documents related to the department's purchase of reports on student's surfing habits from a company called N2H2. The Journal reported that N2H2 (NTWO), the leading provider of Web-filtering services to U.S. K-12 schools, is telling the department which websites students visit most while at school. "We're very interested in knowing why the Department of Defense would want this kind of information," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said. Other privacy advocates and foes of commercialization in schools expressed similar interest and concern. Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert -- a nonprofit group opposed to advertising and marketing excesses -- called N2H2 a "corporate predator" in a statement issued on Monday. He also sent a letter to new Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asking the department to stop purchasing Web traffic information from N2H2. N2H2 filters Internet content for schools that purchase its software, called Bess. According to the International Data Corporation, Bess is the most popular Web filter with schools, with about 20 percent of the market. N2H2 says it filters content for about 15 million students nationwide. But the company is not profitable, and it recently began selling the information collected by its filtering servers. N2H2 uses Web logs to determine the top 1,000 websites students visit each month and the length of the average visit to each site. Surfing habits are then divided according to age group, nine geographic regions and population density. For example, a subscriber to the database could learn where junior high kids in the rural areas of the Northeast click most. This aggregate information is passed along to Roper Starch Worldwide, which packages and markets it as a product called Class Clicks. While the notion of the military spying on kids makes privacy advocates shudder, N2H2 and Roper Starch say the concerns are unfounded. "The fear that we're selling names or something like that is a lot of media hype," said Bob Pares, who markets Class Clicks for Roper. "We don't have that information. The concerns that people have are a bit overdone." He also finds the interest of the Defense Department -- one of only two customers that have purchased Class Clicks so far -- less mysterious and ominous than privacy groups. "Obviously, it's for recruitment," he said. "The prime thing they want to do is communicate opportunities to people coming out of high school. The military is interested in knowing how to talk to teenagers in new media settings." Ruskin, who researches advertising in schools, notes that the military is a top advertiser on the closed circuit television service Channel One. The armed services' difficulty meeting recruitment quotas over the past several years has been well publicized. The department couldn't confirm or deny if it had purchased the Class Clicks product. The Army's new ad agency, Leo Burnett -- hired to come up with a replacement for the retired "Be All You Can Be" campaign -- hadn't heard of it either. Pares said the Defense Department had only subscribed to the service about a month ago, and thought it quite possible it hadn't yet been put to much use. Assuming Pares is right -- the military is only trying to figure out where to place banner ads -- where's the harm? Even staunch foes of any breach of students' privacy conceded that if the data provided in Class Clicks is as general as N2H2 says, it probably doesn't threaten students' privacy. "In general, aggregate information doesn't raise privacy concerns. If it's not associated with an individual, or a group of less than about 25, it's not a privacy issue," said Jason Catlett, president of privacy advocate group Junkbusters. Pares said the information in Class Clicks does not approach that degree of specificity. The Bess software does not require students to log on with a user name, and cannot provide any information on individual users. "We're not even sure if these are boys or girls," he said. But even if Class Clicks does not violate students' right to privacy, the precedent that N2H2 has set by choosing to sell information collected during filtering deeply concerns those who want to stop commercialism from penetrating schools via the Web. The passage of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) last December has raised the stakes in that fight significantly. The new legislation requires schools and libraries that receive federal funding for computers to use filters like N2H2's Bess. The crux of the concern is that, if filtering companies are allowed to sell their data, children will be unable to avoid monitoring by corporations who want to sell them stuff, or government agencies looking for a few good men. Kids have to go school, schools have to have filters and filtering companies can sell the information. EPIC and the ACLU have promised to challenge the legislation as an unconstitutional impediment to free speech. EPIC's Rotenberg thinks N2H2's decision to sell the information on students collected via soon-to-be mandatory filters could be used as additional ammunition in their case. "We might argue that it's another reason mandatory filtering imposes an unconstitutional privacy burden on school children," Rotenberg said. N2H2 claims that most of the interest in Class Clicks is coming from educational content providers who want to improve their products. But they also say that they don't have any moral qualms about selling to commercial interests. "We wouldn't have a problem selling a report to Pepsi," a company spokesman said. =================================================================== >Police fire water cannons at Davos protesters > >By Hugh Carnegy in Davos > >January 28 2001 > >Swiss police fired water cannons at a group of about 200 protesters in the >centre of Davos to stop them marching on the heavily-fortified conference >centre where hundreds of world political and business leaders were holding >an annual meeting on the global economy. > >The demonstrators, who had vowed to disrupt the World Economic Forum, >chanted anti-capitalist slogans and attempted to outflank police lines to >get close to the conference centre. But armoured police jeeps, water cannon >trucks and police in riot gear kept them at bay about 500m away. > >The protesters say the WEF is a symbol of deep economic inequalities >perpetuated by globalisation. Some of the demonstrators were masked and >shouted: "Wipe out WEF" as they gathered in a heavy snowstorm. > >They carried a banner reading: "Money, power and profits destroy the world." >But by mid-afternoon there had been no repeat of scenes last year when >demonstrators smashed up a local branch of McDonald's restaurant. > >Police broadcast warnings to the crowd in four languages, including English, >before aiming several bursts of water at those approaching police lines. >""This demonstration is not permitted," they said. "We will use water >cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets. Please go away." > >Most of the power of the demonstration was defused by a huge security >operation mounted by Swiss police. Hundreds of potential demonstrators were >stopped from entering Davos. Road and rail links to the Alpine skiing resort >were temporarily closed and demonstrators complained that police had >arbitrarily stopped many people from journeying to Davos. > >Much of Davos was barricaded by wire-mesh fences and rolls of barbed wire to >ensure free access into and around the town was impossible for anyone >without WEF security clearance. > >Police denied overreacting. But they took no chances after violent protests >by anti-globalisation demonstrators caused serious disruption at a World >Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle in late 1999 and meetings of the >International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Prague last year. =================================================================== The Los Angeles Times Sunday, January 28, 2001 The CIA Academics and Spies: The Silence That Roars By David N. Gibbs TUCSON -- An academic controversy has revealed a most interesting fact: A significant number of social scientists, especially political scientists, regularly work with the Central Intelligence Agency. It has long been known that the academia-CIA connection was a staple of the early Cold War. During the 1940s and '50s, the CIA and military intelligence were among the major sources of financial support for America's social scientists. In Europe, the agency covertly supported some of the leading writers and scholars through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, as Frances Stonor Saunders recently documented in her book "The Cultural Cold War." Such ties supposedly withered during the 1970s, in the aftermath of Vietnam and hearings by the U.S. Senate select committee on intelligence, which revealed extensive CIA misdeeds, including fomenting coups against democratically elected governments, plotting assassinations of foreign leaders and disseminating propaganda. After these revelations, it seemed that no self-respecting academic would go anywhere near the agency. A recent article in the magazine Lingua Franca, however, reveals that this perception is inaccurate and that the "cloak and gown" connection has flourished in the aftermath of the Cold War. The article states that since 1996, the CIA has made public outreach a "top priority and targets academia in particular. According to experts on U.S. intelligence, the strategy has worked," it says. The article quotes esteemed academics, including Columbia's Robert Jervis, former president-elect of the American Political Science Assn., and Harvard's Joseph S. Nye. Both acknowledge having worked for the CIA. Yale's H. Bradford Westerfield is quoted as saying: "There's a great deal of actually open consultation and there's a lot more semi-open, broadly acknowledged consultation." What is interesting about the above quote is that it is offered so casually, as if no reasonable person could find fault with the activity. Something is seriously wrong here. The CIA is not an ordinary government agency; it is an espionage agency and the practices of espionage--which include secrecy, propaganda and deception--are diametrically opposed to those of scholarship. Scholarship is supposed to favor objective analysis and open discussion. The close relationship between intelligence agencies and scholars thus poses a conflict of interest. After all, the CIA has been a key party to many of the international conflicts that academics must study. If political scientists are working for the CIA, how can they function as objective and disinterested scholars? This problem of objectivity is essentially the same one that scientists are addressing with regard to biomedical research funded by drug companies. Biomedical scientists increasingly are expected to reveal financial support that might bias their findings. It is regrettable that political science, which has no expectation of full disclosure relating to work for the CIA, holds itself to a lower standard. The CIA likes to advertise that it has "reformed" since the end of the Cold War and no longer engages in many of the secretive practices that resulted in so much congressional and public disapproval. Indeed, several academic defenders of the CIA, including Westerfield, emphasize CIA "reform." This is mostly a public-relations gambit. People who think the agency has reformed should try requesting documents through the Freedom of Information Act; they probably will find it impossible. Secrecy poses a special problem for scholars. Research undertaken for the CIA often is classified, so that academics who have performed the research are legally barred from revealing much of what they may find. Scholars thus are prevented from doing their jobs, which must include disseminating the fruits of their research through publication. In undertaking classified work, researchers have become complicit in the practice of secrecy, one of the most undemocratic characteristics of the intelligence services. Jervis, Nye and Westerfield seem to discount any suggestion that academic-intelligence ties might bias scholarship. But consider covert operations undertaken by the CIA. These operations resulted in some of the most controversial actions during the Cold War, including U.S. support for overthrowing governments in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Zaire in 1961, Indonesia in 1965 and Chile in 1973. These operations have been extensively documented in Senate hearings and by other reliable sources. How does political science treat these issues? I reviewed all the articles published during the past 10 years in five of the most prestigious journals in the field. Apart from a rare paragraph or perhaps a sentence or two, they contain no mention of CIA covert operations. Covert actions have been effectively expunged from the record. This failure of political science to discuss covert operations is troubling. The Los Angeles Times and other news media run articles on covert operations, such as the recent revelation that the CIA had close links to Gen. Manuel Contreras, Chile's dreaded secret police chief during the Pinochet dictatorship. The U.S. government has acknowledged some of these operations. This past March, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright publicly acknowledged to the Iranian government, in light of evidence, that the CIA had supported the 1953 coup in that country. Nevertheless, political science journals remain virtually silent on such issues. Can anybody explain this? =================================================================== "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]>. ______________________________________________________________ **How to assist RadTimes: An account is available at <www.paypal.com> which enables direct donations. If you are a current PayPal user, use this email address: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, to contribute. If you are not a current user, use this link: <https://secure.paypal.com/refer/pal=resist%40best.com> to sign up and contribute. 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