UNDERNEWS July 23, 2001 THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW Editor: Sam Smith Washington's most unofficial source 1312 18th St. NW #502, Washington DC 20036 202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779 REVIEW E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] REVIEW INDEX: http://www.prorev.com/ UNDERNEWS: http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/bb.htm WORD The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. - George Orwell, 1984 THE CANONIZATION OF KATHARINE GRAHAM IN A SIGN that the Washington Post's ability to misconstrue events will not die with its leader, the paper gave state funeral status to the passing of former publisher Katharine Graham. This was more than a simple act of commercial self-aggrandizement; it marked a milestone in corporatism, expanding the task of the consumer from mere purchase of products to a required reverence for their makers on a level previous reserved for heroes and royalty. On three successive days the Post actually printed a map of the funeral procession route, local TV stations gave the ceremony live coverage, the police blocked streets, and the holiest temple of Episcopalianism, the National Cathedral, pulled out all the stops. Lost in all this were a few basic facts. The most celebrated events in Mrs. Graham's journalistic career - Watergate and the Pentagon Papers - occurred more than 25 years ago and, while honorable, were anomalies rather than typical. More realistic indicators can be found in the names on the funeral speaker and honored guest list, most remarkably - given all the Pentagon Paper iconography - those of Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger, two of America's major practitioners of violence during Mrs. Graham's reign. Facts that belong in the Graham story, but which have been consistently excised, include: - In 1979 Katharine Graham and her managing editor managed to suppress the first printing of "Katharine the Great" by Deborah Davis. The publisher actually shredded 20,000 copies. Davis sued, eventually won, and the book finally came out. - Graham, in a 1988 speech to senior CIA employees, said: "There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." - Norman Solomon has written, "Graham was a key player in the June 1971 battle over the Pentagon Papers. But such journalistic fortitude came late in the Vietnam War. During most of the bloodshed, the Post gave consistent editorial boosts to the war and routinely regurgitated propaganda in the guise of objective reporting. Graham's [memoirs] never comes close to acknowledging that her newspaper mainly functioned as a helpmate to the war-makers in the White House, State Department and Pentagon." - Lest you think we're just talking old history, here is what Matthew Rothschild of the Progressive wrote last year: "In commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of Saigon on April 30, many leaders of the mainstream media pulled out all the stops to cast the U.S. role in a flattering light. The notable exception was The New York Times, which blamed President Johnson for the "reckless spilling of American and Vietnamese blood." . . . The Washington Post, by contrast, rallied around the flag. Its editorial on April 30 said, "For the sake of the 58,000 Americans who lost their lives in Vietnam, it is important to recall the large and just cause for which they made their sacrifice." The Post also expressed relief that "the Gulf War cured the armed forces of the debilitating Vietnam syndrome." To reinforce its position, the Post ran an op-ed the same day by Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, who received the Medal of Honor for service in Vietnam. Kerrey wrote, "We were fighting on the right side. . . . The cause was just and the sacrifice not in vain." The reason the United States lost, he said, was: "We succumbed to fatigue and self-doubt." Next to Kerrey's commentary, the Post ran five accounts from Vietnamese Americans, every one of them bemoaning the U.S. departure. At least four of the five were South Vietnamese military officers or their relatives . . . Nowhere in The Washington Post was there a hint of another Vietnamese perspective, or another U.S. perspective, for that matter. Newsweek, owned by the Washington Post Company, was equally lopsided in its coverage. The May 1 issue had two long articles on Vietnam. The first was by Evan Thomas entitled "The Last Days of Saigon." The piece was all but bereft of analysis except that Vietnam was "at once a noble cause and a tragic waste," and "a low moment in the American Century, a painful reminder of the limits of power." The other article was by - I'm not kidding you here - Henry Kissinger! Akin to having Goering write about the blitzkrieg, Newsweek let Kissinger (he of the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia, he of the mining of Hanoi's harbors, he of the "madman" theory of diplomacy) retouch his own portrait even as he smeared the protesters once more. - Another point that Solomon has summarized well: "The autobiography has little use for people beyond Graham's dazzling peers. Even activists who made history are mere walk-ons. In her book, the name of Martin Luther King Jr. was not worth mentioning. For a book so widely touted as a feminist parable, "Personal History" is notably bereft of solidarity for women without affluence or white skin. They barely seem to exist in the great media executive's range of vision." - Robert Parry - a Washington correspondent for Newsweek during the late 1980s - told Solomon: "On one occasion in 1987, I was told that my story about the CIA funneling anti-Sandinista money through Nicaragua's Catholic Church had been watered down because the story needed to be run past Mrs. Graham, and Henry Kissinger was her house guest that weekend. Apparently, there was fear among the top editors that the story as written might cause some consternation." (Former CIA director Robert Gates subsequently confirmed Parry's story in his memoirs.) - In the 1950s, Graham's husband, Philip, played an important role in Operation Mockingbird, a major and remarkably successful effort by the CIA to co-opt journalists. Some 25 major news organizations and 400 journalists were seconded by the agency for its purposes during this period, as admitted by the CIA itself during the Church committee hearings. As one agency operative put it, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." A number of Post editors and reporters, including Mrs. Graham's own choice for Managing Editor, Ben Bradlee, and Bob Woodward, came out of CIA or intelligence backgrounds. Mrs. Graham continued the paper's close relationship with the agency. - The Washington Post joined in the vicious attack on reporter Gary Webb, who dared to reveal aspects of the relationship between the CIA and the drug trade. Typical nasties came from Howard Kurtz: "Oliver Stone, check your voice mail." And from Mary McGrory: "The San Jose story has been discredited by major publications, including the Post." And why? Well, in part because the Post and other papers simply took the CIA's word. Wrote Marc Cooper in the LA New Times: "Regarding the all-important question of how much responsibility the CIA had, we are being asked to take the word of sources who in a more objective account would be considered suspects." - In crushing the pressmen's strike, Mrs. Graham not only broke the back of unions at the Washington Post but set an example that would be followed by other media throughout America. The journalistic labor movement never recovered. - Mrs. Graham, like her husband, believed firmly in a political aristocracy. Other publishers before them had felt the same way but mercifully the nation's media was diffuse enough that they could not have the full power of their prejudices. By the time Mrs. Graham took charge, however, that was changing. As Ben Bagdikian wrote in 1990 in 'The Media Monopoly," "At the end of World War II, 80 percent of the daily newspapers in the U.S. were independently owned, but by 1989 the proportion was reversed, with 80 percent owned by corporate chains. In 1981 twenty corporations controlled most of the business of the country's 11,000 magazines, but only seven years later that number had shrunk to three corporations. Today, despite the more than 25,000 outlets in the U.S., 23 corporations control most of the business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books, and motion pictures . . . An alarming pattern emerges. On one side is information limited by each individual's own experience and effort; on the other, the unseen affairs of the community, the nation, and the world, information needed by the individual to prevent political powerlessness. What connects the two are the mass media, and that system is being reduced to a small number of closed circuits." - The Graham years also saw another profound change. As Bagdikian noted in his memoirs, only after the World War did the Labor Department state, in its annual summary of job possibilities in journalism, that a college degree is "sometimes preferred." As late as the 1950s, over half the journalists in the country lacked higher degree. Under the guidance of papers like the Post, however, reporters would become part of the elite. In the precedent-setting Style section and elsewhere, journalists lost their connection with the readers and became part of the ruling class. American journalism would never be the same. - These two factors - media monopolization and the desertion of readers by journalists - helped speed such grim developments as growing repression and decline of democracy in the U.S., as well as the corporate takeover of politics domestically and of national sovereignty internationally. - Peter Dale Scott wrote in Tikkun Magazine: "In 1989 a subcommittee chaired by Senator John Kerry published a report documenting that the U.S. government had contracted with known drug traffickers to supply the Contras. This important finding was minimized in the dismissive news stories published by the Post and the Times, while Newsweek, owned by the Post, wrote off Kerry as a "randy conspiracy buff." This style of ex cathedra put-downs of any critics of the system would become a hallmark of Post political coverage. - Under Philip Graham, the Post established a local version of the Trilateral Commission - the Federal City Council - a business-centered body devoid of political legitimacy but overflowing with political power. This body became a major weapon in Mrs. Graham's efforts to control the city, which included such horrors as relentless advocating a LA type freeway system and fighting self-government as long as possible. - Finally, as the years went on, the Post became less and less interesting. It became, as Samuel Johnson once said of an important person of his era, not only dull "but the cause of dullness in others." In short, a good journalist once would have at least described the late Mrs. Graham as "controversial." The fact that hardly any even thought of the word is a testament to how powerful she and her paper truly became and how little anyone else has to say about it anymore. MISSION CREEP [This report confirms what the Review has been reporting for the past five years: that the military is slowly but steadily moving into areas of domestic activity from which it had been previously barred for good constitutional reasons. This military mission creep has been almost universally ignored by the corporate media, despite its impact on American democracy.] ROBERT WINDREM, MSNBC: As Republicans gathered here last August to nominate George W. Bush for president, a drama played out in secret locations across the city as thousands of American soldiers stood poised for a catastrophic event. Along with a host of civilian emergency specialists, these specialized troops braced for a biological, chemical or nuclear terror attack on the GOP and its nominees the kind of attack that might force a declaration of martial law. No specific or credible threat ever surfaced in Philadelphia or in any of the dozen other U.S. cities hosting similarly high-profile events in the past five years. But the Philadelphia plan sheds light on a new domestic role for the military. Some argue that the role makes sense in light of the threat posed by modern terrorist groups. But a diverse coalition of civilian law enforcement agencies, civil rights advocates and libertarian groups worry about allowing the military to play so prominent a role on U.S. soil . . . In the mid-1990s, after the bombings of the World Trade Center and the federal building in Oklahoma City as well as a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system the [posse comitatus] law was amended to allow the attorney general to send armed troops into American cities in cases of catastrophic attacks . . . As the world's borders have become more porous, the definition of national security has expanded into many new areas: counter-terrorism, tracking drug traffickers and disaster preparedness. Secretary of State Colin Powell said recently he will add immigration to that list as well. The military's move into domestic law enforcement territory began with drug interdiction along the U.S. border during the Reagan administration, and expanded significantly during the Clinton years. Officials at several key civilian agencies from the FBI to the Public Health Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency say the military's growing role in preparing for a domestic terrorist attack is disconcerting. "We used to be the main people involved in this," said a domestic preparedness official with the Public Health Service who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "Now, there are fewer of us and more of them." Despite the Posse Comitatus Act and concerns about domestic mission creep, a doctrine known as "Garden Plot" exists in the Department of Defense that would allow the armed forces to step in to take control of civilian affairs following a catastrophic event if the president requested it. As with the military's posture abroad - the "Defense Condition" or "DEFCON" there is a step-by-step system for military involvement at home as well. It's known as Civilian Disorder Condition, or "CIDCON." This scenario is the last resort following the collapse of order at home. In this most dire of circumstances - possibly anarchy in the wake of a large-scale terrorist incident, for instance the "Garden Plot" doctrine gives the president the power to invoke martial law under The Insurrection Act. Here's how it would have worked last August in Philadelphia: Two military "Joint Task Force" units were available for quick deployment. One, called Joint Task Force-Civil Support, is based at Fort Monroe in Virginia. It is trained to coordinate countermeasures for terrorist attacks and would generally be deployed without weapons. The other unit, code-named "Task Force 250," is meant to go in fully equipped for battle. This unit, according to documents obtained by NBC News, is meant to restore civil order after major terrorist events. "Task Force 250" is more commonly known as the Army's 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C. Even without a crisis, hundreds of servicemen were on hand in Philadelphia last summer, and more than 1,000 were on alert to move into the city if necessary. Command centers and alternate command centers - in case the primary headquarters was destroyed - were established. Among those stationed the center: More than 80 military bomb disposal teams, several Army biological advisory and assessment teams, four Department of Defense biological sampling vehicles and the Nuclear Emergency Search Team of the Department of Energy. The Navy even set up a facility for "use as a detainee processing center," the documents say, in case there were numerous arrests . . . According to the documents obtained by NBC, the plans for the presidential conventions said: "Use deadly force only with great selectivity and precision." http://www.msnbc.com/news/546844.asp?cp1=1 [NOTE: there is no provision in the Constitution for martial law. The exercise of it by a president or the military would amount to a coup.] THE REVIEW'S 1996 STORY: http://prorev.com/mil.htm CHANDRA LEVY CASE [The FBI agent assigned to the Chandra Levy case is the one who was most active working on the Starbucks murders. This is from a contemporaneous story] JIM KEARY, WASHINGTON TIMES, January 13, 2000: An FBI agent testified yesterday that he continued to question Carl D. Cooper about the triple slayings at a Georgetown Starbucks although Mr. Cooper continued to deny his involvement. FBI special agent Bradley J. Garrett said he continued to quiz Mr. Cooper because he believed he knew about the killings of the three coffee shop employees. "Why did you keep pressing him?" Steven R. Kiersh, Mr. Cooper's attorney, asked Mr. Garrett. "It is an important case," Mr. Garrett said. "I believed he would eventually talk about it." Mr. Garrett testified for most of the day during a hearing in U.S. District Court to determine whether statements made by Mr. Cooper about the killings are admissible in his trial . . . Mr. Cooper was arrested March 1 at his Northeast home on charges of wounding an off-duty Prince George's County police officer during a robbery in a county park. Mr. Garrett took Mr. Cooper to the FBI's Washington Field Office to interrogate him before he was extradited to Maryland. During the three-hour interrogation, Mr. Cooper denied knowing about the Starbucks killings. Mr. Cooper confessed to the killings to Prince George's County detectives after he was taken to Maryland, but Mr. Garrett testified yesterday that Mr. Cooper recanted his confessions when he returned to the District on March 16. Mr. Cooper was brought back to the District after being charged with the Starbucks killings. "He said: 'I admitted to everything under the sun. I said what they wanted me to say. They didn't advise me of my rights. My statements will be suppressed. I know my rights,' " Mr. Garrett testified regarding what Mr. Cooper told him. Also during the hearing yesterday, Prince George's police Sgt. Richard Fulginiti testified that as he drove Mr. Cooper from the District to Maryland, Mr. Cooper immediately started talking about the Starbucks killings. http://washtimes.com FOX BUTTERFIELD, NY TIMES: The number seems horrifying. Last year 876,213 missing-person cases were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by local police agencies after calls from frantic families or friends. But there were even more cases - 882,163 - in which a missing person was found or, in many instances, simply turned up. Some of those closed cases, of course, involved people who had been reported missing in earlier years. But Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said the statistics showed that the police "are locating missing persons almost as often as they are being reported lost." The figures also help explain why the families of missing people frequently believe that the police are not searching as aggressively as they can or should and, in turn, demonstrate how unusual it is that the Washington police have been engaged in so intense a search for Chandra Ann Levy, the government intern who vanished at the end of April. For the authorities know from experience that only a handful of missing-persons cases turn out to involve foul play in which the person is killed or never found. And they know that a large majority of adults who disappear do so because they want to leave, perhaps to escape a soured relationship or financial difficulties, and that it is not a crime for an adult to disappear. MORE http://nytimes.com LAND OF THE FREE GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: A teen-ager who died while at a boot camp for problem youngsters was forced to stand in sweltering heat as punishment for wanting to go home, then taken to a motel where he vomited mud and drowned, according to a court document . . . Campers told investigators that supervisors began beating them two days after the five-week camp started June 25, according to the affidavit the sheriff's office submitted for a search warrant of the camp founder's home and property. The campers said they were whipped, kicked, stomped on and forced to put mud in their mouths. MORE http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20010719/us/boot_camp_death_4.html GINA KOLATA & IVER PETERSON: Prompted by new insights into the psychology of eyewitnesses to crimes, New Jersey is changing the way it uses witnesses to identify suspects. Starting in October, the state will become the first in the nation to give up the familiar books of mug shots and to adopt a simple new technique called a sequential photo lineup, said John J. Farmer Jr., New Jersey's attorney general. Sequential viewing of photographs has been shown to cut down on the number of false identifications by eyewitnesses without reducing the number of correct ones. The difference between the old and new systems is subtle but highly significant, according to researchers who have studied the psychology of witness identification. At present, eyewitnesses browse through photographs of suspects, comparing, contrasting and re-studying them at will. Under the new system, victims and other eyewitnesses would be shown pictures one after the other. They would not be allowed to browse. If they wanted a second look, they would have to view all the photos a second time, in a new sequence. Also, the pictures would usually be shown by a person who would not know who the real suspect was. MORE http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/21/nyregion/21WITN.html?todaysheadlines AMONG THE PROBLEMS with arresting a hacker for showing how Adobe e-books can be copied is that it is a disturbing example of the growing tendency to criminalize activities for the benefit of large corporations. Traditionally such activities were civil matters but under the Millenium Copyright Act adopted by the U.S. under pressure from multinational corporations these have been transformed into criminal offenses . . . Thus it was particularly disturbing to see the nation's largest association of book and journal publishers hailing the actions of the U.S. Department of Justice in arresting and charging a Russian cryptographer for hacking the Adobe software. The statement came from the president of the Association of American Publishers, the former liberal Pat Schroeder. MID EAST UPI REPORTS THAT THE CIA believes Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided to launch a retaliatory full-scale attack on Palestinian-controlled territory if there is another suicide bombing attack. "There's no question that he's going in," said a former CIA official, referring to Sharon. MORE http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=204500 CAPITAL FOLKWAYS John Ashcroft referred to the missing FBI guns and computers as "assets not subject to location." LABOR PAUL NYHAN, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: The International Association of Machinists lost its bid to represent more than 17,000 Boeing workers, as the employees overwhelmingly voted against joining the union's ranks. By a resounding 85 percent, the targeted white-collar workers rejected affiliating with the Machinists, capping months of campaigning by both sides. Union leaders had attempted to convince computer programmers, photographers, buyers, lab technicians and others that the union could offer them more leverage over job security, benefits and other worries . . . Despite the decisive vote, the union could conceivably return for another try. "So often with big drives like this, you do lose a couple times before you win," Eve Weinbaum, acting director of the University of Massachusetts Center for Labor Relations and Research, said earlier this year. MORE http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/business/32077_iam20.shtml HEALTH BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL: Although it is difficult to open a newspaper today without finding an article on stress, latest figures show that we are hardly any more neurotic now than we were in the early 1990s. New data from the Office for National Statistics showed that 17% of adults in Great Britain aged between 16 and 64 had a neurotic disorder in the week before interview last year, compared with 16% in 1993. The disorders included depression, anxiety, and phobias. Women were found to be more neurotic than men, though the rate went up slightly among men but remained static among women. In 1993, 20% of women and 13% of men had a neurotic disorder, whereas in 2000 the corresponding figures were 20% and 14%. The most common disorder, experienced by 9% of people, was mixed anxiety and depressive disorder. In all, 4% of people had generalized anxiety disorder and 3% reported a depressive episode. People tend to get less neurotic as they get older. Men and women aged 65 to 74 years had a lower rate of neurotic disorder (10%) than respondents aged under 65. http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7305/130/a COLOMBIA INTER PRESS SERVICE: Six governors from southern Colombia asked President Andris Pastrana to order a halt to the use of the glyphosate and other herbicides in eradicating illicit drug crops, charging that the chemicals endanger human health and the environment. [The governors] explained to Pastrana that the situation confronting the region is explosive, as 35,000 indigenous peoples and peasants are threatening to rise up in protest against the fumigations. JULIAN BORGER, GUARDIAN, LONDON: Coca-Cola's bottling plants in Colombia used right-wing death squads to terrorize workers and prevent the organization of unions, it was alleged in a Miami court. The US union United Steelworkers is suing Coca-Cola on behalf of the Colombian union Sinaltrainal for what the lawsuit describes as "the systematic intimidation, kidnapping, detention and murder" of workers in Colombian plants. Sinaltrainal claims that five of its members working in Coca-Cola bottling plants have been killed since 1994. Coca-Cola denied any responsibility for the alleged atrocities, saying the company did not own the bottling plants, which operated under contract. But union lawyers argued that the world's best-known soft drinks company closely controlled the operations of its contractors and was well aware of the brutal intimidation of workers in the bottling factories. The case has focused attention on frequent complaints by critics of globalization that the process of contracting out work to developing countries allows corporations to shirk their responsibilities for safeguarding the basic rights of their workers. The lawsuit details a litany of assassinations and terror which, it claims, were carried out by rightwing paramilitary groups on behalf of the management of the Colombian bottling plants. MORE http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,525209,00.html THE MEDIACRACY SLATE: The Los Angeles Times [notes] Amazon's continued freefall. The company will report its 17th consecutive unprofitable quarter, while still maintaining that it will achieve "a very loosely defined version of profitability" by the end of the year. Loose, indeed. "I see a real risk of outright bankruptcy," says one analyst. "If you look at their financial statements, it's obvious." Amazon has accumulated $2.7 billion in debt. And to think it was just two years ago that founder Jeff Bezos was Time magazine's Man of the Year. ("If I had a nickel for every time a potential investor told me this wouldn't work..." he says in the gushy tribute. http://slate.com NEW WORLD ORDER MARK WARD, BBC: A libel case in New York could test the freedom of speech enjoyed by online journalists and activists. The legal action has been launched by the National Bank of Mexico against the New York-based Narco News website. Before now, organizations that dispute or dislike information published about them on web pages sitting outside national boundaries have had little chance of stopping the information circulating. But if the bank succeeds in pursuing its case beyond Mexico, legal experts say other organizations may be tempted to try the same tactics - and it could restrict free speech . . . The court case revolves around allegations made about Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, the general director of Banamex, and his alleged links to the drugs trade. The allegations were initially made in a series of 15 articles by Mario Menendez and were first aired in Mexican newspaper Por Esto! in 1997. So far, Mexican courts have thrown out libel actions brought by Banamex three times. The bank took the opportunity to launch fresh legal action when the Narco News web site, which is hosted by a net provider in New York, reprinted some of Menendez's articles. Legal experts have described the case as an example of "forum shopping" in which a defendant sues in the country it thinks will produce the most favorable verdict . . . The case has implications for freedom of speech on the net because Banamex has been able to reach beyond the national boundaries of Mexico to suppress information. Before now, the global spread of the net has largely defeated attempts to restrict the spread of information on it. http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_1448000/1448428.stm WATCHING THE COUNT According to yet another election analysis - this one by a group of academics from prominent technical universities - Wyoming was among the states with the highest rates of unrecorded votes last fall: 3.6% compared to notorious Florida's 2.9% and a national average of 1.8%. Says Deputy Secretary of State Patricia O'Brien Arp: "Some states ... allow the category of "None of the Above," and we don't allow that. So I think sometimes people just choose to undervote on purpose, to say 'I just don't want any of the candidates on here."' LAWYERS DEBORAH ORIN, NY POST: The Florida bar has let Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's brother off the ethics hook over the $434,000 he got to lobby Bill Clinton to pardon a convicted cocaine dealer and a snake-oil salesman. A bar review panel concluded there's not enough evidence for a formal complaint that might have led to disciplinary action against Hugh Rodham. The panel of four lawyers and two non-lawyers decided that Rodham taking a contingency fee for a pardon isn't "improper per se" and the case didn't involve a "compelling public interest." Rodham's Florida lawyer, Andrew Berman, told the Miami Herald: "What he did was not unethical for a lawyer to have done because what he did was not the practice of law." . . . Rodham collected the big bucks for successfully lobbying Bill Clinton to pardon convicted cocaine dealer Carlos Vignali and herbal fraudster Glenn Braswell. http://nypost.com TOM DASCHLE ON NATIONAL SECURITY TIM RUSSERT: Would it be in the country's best interests that a congressman -- who's apartment has been searched, has given a DNA sample, has in fact given a lie detector test, has been accused of asking that an affidavit be signed improperly during this critical period -- that he recuse himself from the House Intelligence Committee, where he's privy to all our nation's secrets? DASCHLE: Well, Tim, you put your finger on the right word -- "accused." That's what he stands of right now, he's accused of some things that I don't think anybody can prove at this point. The real focus has to be on finding Chandra Levy. That's where the investigation needs to go. Until we know the facts, I think it's highly premature to come to any conclusions about Mr. Condit or anybody else. RUSSERT: But he is vulnerable to blackmail in his current situation. DASCHLE: Well, he may be. But there are probably others that are subject to blackmail as well. I think the real issue is how do you find some solution to this tragedy. GENOA JOHN NICHOLS, NATION: The slaying by Italian police of a demonstrator outside the Group of Eight summit in Genoa was not the first killing of a protester against corporate globalization. Dozens of activists have been killed in India, Nigeria, Bolivia and other countries where anti-globalization movements are, for reasons of necessity, more advanced and impassioned than those now taking shape in Europe and the United States. The difference is that the killing of one protester and the wounding of more than 80 others in Genoa -- like the shootings at Ohio's Kent State University campus in 1970 -- took place in front of the cameras of western news organizations and independent reporters who transmitted the story to the world . . . No action by this G8 summit, no matter how noble in rhetoric or intent, will erase the fact that the economic policies promoted by the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia are now so unpopular that their gatherings must be "protected" with deadly police violence . . . An estimated 100,000 activists from around the world have made their way to Italy to echo the sentiments of former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, who announced prior to the summit that the place for those who seek a just world is in the streets of Genoa http://thenation.com WEBSITE OF THE DAY THE INTERNET CARTOONS OF JOHN CHUCKMAN http://pages.prodigy.net/lilaccottage/index.html FIELD NOTES STAR WARS, INC.: THE MEN AND THE MONEY BEHIND SPACE WEAPONRY http://www.westchesterweekly.com/articles/starwars.html TODAY IN HISTORY 1888 Raymond Chandler is born. Kenneth Rexroth will later say him: "The secret of this kind of writing is that it isn't buying anything & it isn't selling anything." OVER THE WEEKEND 1886 San Francisco brewery workers finally win free beer, a closed shop, the right to live anywhere, and a ten-hour day, six days a week (as opposed to 16-18 hour days) 1887 Twenty striking railroad workers are killed by state troops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1910 20 blacks are lynched by a mob in Palestine, Texas. 1956 Billboard calls Elvis Presley "the most controversial entertainer since Liberace." 1959 D. H. Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' is ruled not obscene and legal for publication in U.S. despite the Postmaster General's opinion that it is "pornographic, smutty, obscene, and filthy." 1967 Seven days of race riots in Detroit result in 43 deaths, 1400 fires, and over 2,000 injured. 1972 The Trilateral Commission is organized 1981 Louisiana passes a law requiring equal teaching of creationism with evolution. HISTORY NET http://www.thehistorynet.com/today/today.htm WRITER'S ALMANAC http://writersalmanac.org/ DAILY BLEED http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/calmast.htm ---------------------------------------------------- REVIEW E-MAIL: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] REVIEW INDEX & HEADLINES: http://www.prorev.com/ UNDERNEWS: http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/bb.htm UNDERNEWS SUBSCRIBE: Reply with "subscribe" as subject. 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