-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 150 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Boy George and the making of an American coup --Welcome to Wonderland! --The Spread of News by E-Mail Is Becoming News Itself --Campuses to acquire automatic weapons --Phil Ochs updated --National Security Commission Issues Final Report --Fur coats & purple hair, Stetsons & ragged jeans --Study Casts Doubt on Gateway Theory =================================================================== Boy George and the making of an American coup Online Journal - http://www.onlinejournal.com . . . And Another Thing By James Hatfield 02-02-01 February 2, 2001-Let's cut to the chase: I don't believe Al Gore lost the presidential election. He did, however, lose a court battle. But with all due respect to the former vice-president, there is a lot more at stake here than the defeat of one man's lifelong political aspirations. The more articulate talking heads for the Commander-in-Thief (which means they can string a halfway intelligent sentence together) have repeatedly claimed in the wake of the stolen election that Gore's winning popular vote count (over a half million more than Boy George's) didn't matter-only those 271 electoral numbers that officially put him and Dick Cheney in the White House mattered. Wrong, folks. On Election Day, 100 million Americans went to the polls to make their voices heard, but the only numbers that counted were the 5-4 conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Boy George was not elected president of the United States. He was selected by Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, Rehnquist & Kennedy, who contend politics played no role in their court decisions, yet O'Connor and Rehnquist have been quoted as saying that they would prefer a Republican president to name their successors. The arch conservative, Ol' Scary Scalia (he'd make a great bad guy as one of those power hungry megalomaniacs in a James Bond movie), also has never bridled his desire to be appointed Chief Justice when Rehnquist eventually steps down. And, of course, let's not forget that Boy George stated time and time again during the campaign that he would appoint justices "in the mold of Scalia and Thomas." Now that's really scary. Am I missing something or does the Supreme Court's ruling stink worse than dead mice behind a baseboard? It's fairly obvious now that the conservative faction thought more of making sure their Stepford Candidate won the presidency than in upholding the "Equal Justice Under Law" inscription above the great bronze doors at the entrance to the Supreme Court building. Sadly, the justices acted neither properly nor honorably in their partisan political ruling. But it is also not surprising. I'm not professing to be any type of a legal sage, but in this history and civics junkie's opinion, the involvement of the Supreme Court in the 2000 presidential election violated the 10th Amendment in the Bills of Rights, which plainly states that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People." The framers of the Constitution didn't address presidential elections (except for how electors were chosen), so that power was reserved for the states. In fact, the Founding Fathers were not even sure what role the Supreme Court was going to play in our government when the Constitution was written in 1787. It wasn't until the famous case of Marbury vs. Madison in 1803 that the principle of judicial review was established. It's clearer than an Alaska stream (well, at least until Boy George "eases environmental regulations" and allows drilling) that the first Congress of the United States of America did not intend for the Supreme Court to be involved in presidential elections when it passed the Bill of Rights. At the end of their 13-page ruling on Bush vs. Gore (take note of who was doing the suing), the Supremes indicated that they were uncomfortable with having to resolve a presidential election. "None are more conscious of the vital limits on judicial authority than are the members of this Court, and none stand in more admiration of the Constitution's design to leave the selection of the President to the people, through their legislatures, and to the political sphere," the ruling said. Justice Breyer wrote in his dissension that the case should have been rejected out of hand. "The Court was wrong to take this case," he stated unequivocally. "The political implications of this case are momentous." Now there's an understatement. Denouncing the conservative majority for overturning the Florida Supreme Court's decision that ordered about 170,000 votes recounted by hand to resolve the stalled presidential election, Justice Stevens said that Boy George (who made lawsuit reform one of his major campaign promises when he ran for Texas governor in 1994) had no legal basis for his claims, other than an "unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges." In other words, Boy George claimed he believed in "states' rights"-until they interfered with his plans to be president and then he went bellyaching like the cry baby he truly is to the federal government . . . you know, that same multi-headed monster he's always saying he wants to bring down to size and get out of our lives. Justice Stevens added in his dissent, "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential elections, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of the law." For years, America has been sending people like former president Jimmy Carter and other "election observers" to Third World countries. When democratically cast votes were not counted, or a candidate won in a highly questionable manner, we've always referred to the election outcome as a coup d'etat. To all you folks out there who have always said, "Well, it can't happen here," it's time to wake up and notice the frost on the pumpkin. There exists overwhelming evidence of official misconduct, deliberate fraud, and an attempt to suppress voter turnout by unlawful means. In the following days after Boy George's coronation, The Orlando Sentinel, the South Florida Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune looked at 15,596 undervotes and overvotes in 15 different counties. All but one were mostly Republican, and each one used paper ballots and optical-scan readers. These papers unearthed 1,700 ballots "on which a voter's choice for president could be easily determined." Among these, Gore had a 366-vote lead. The Gore campaign had not pushed for recounts in any of these counties-which represent 4.6 percent of the total ballots cast in the state. The Orlando Sentinel reported that its review "found hundreds [of ballots] that were thrown out even though it was clear which candidates those voters wanted." The Miami Herald's review in Palm Beach county-home of the now-famous "butterfly ballot"-of the 500,000 votes cast, 5,264 ballots contained votes for both Gore and Buchanan. If Gore had picked up 11 percent of these, he would have won. A Washington Post analysis of the computerized records for 2.7 million votes of the eight largest counties in Florida concluded that "Democratic voters were significantly more likely to have invalidated their ballots than Republican voters." Gore, the paper found, "was by far most likely to be selected on invalid overvoted ballots, with his name punched as one of the choices on 46,000 of them. Bush, by comparison, was punched on 17,000." Justice Stevens was right. The real loser in the 2000 presidential election was America, and Boy George's orchestrated coup is a threat to our democracy like we've never seen before in this country and could lead to the destabilization of our democratic institutions. ---- James Hatfield, the controversial, New York Times best-selling author of Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President (www.softskull.com), is a frequent political commentator on radio stations across the country. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] =================================================================== Welcome to Wonderland! <http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010201Wonderland.html> by the bushoccupation.com staff Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2001 (bushoccupation.com via APJP) -- You are now leaving the United States of America. Welcome to Wonderland. You haven't gone insane. Yes, we had a coup. The mainstream media is telling you we didn't, and the democratic Senators refused to do anything about it. It was still a coup. The Republicans now control all three branches of government. This was how they seized power: by destroying the institution of the supreme court. They feel God is on their side. This makes them dangerous. This makes them lawless. This makes them, perversely, completely immoral. They will destroy any institution, in order to preserve it. As Oliver North spit in the face of Congress to preserve 'democracy', so too the current Republican party will discard votes to protect the validity of their election. Because they care only about one thing. Winning. And they are willing to win, by any means necessary. Remember Willie Horton. Remember arms for hostages. Remember the tax cut for all Americans that will benefit only the wealthiest five percent. Remember Bush's cousin calling Florida for Bush at Fox. Remember the lies about Gore. Remember the free ride for Bush. They want to enrage us. The text of the supreme court decision was designed to make us incoherent with rage. They used the equal protection clause to disenfranchise black voters, as a kind of sick joke. They are laughing at us. They are sticking their fingers in our eyes. They are paying us back for the last 20 years of progress. They want us to be shrill. So they can marginalize our response. The only way they can pretend this is business as usual, politics as usual, is to engender hysteria on our part, and then laugh it away. This coup isn't politics as usual. It requires a different kind of response. Our anger is real. It is justified. We must not let it fade away. The media wants us to go back to sleep. The congressional Democrats are playing a long-term game, laying low, giving this idiot enough rope to hang himself. They can play their game, but we must also play ours. Let them take the high road. Let us use our anger. Not in petty, or small, or hateful ways, but in sincere expressions of pain, anger, and sober, reasoned, rage. We have a right to demand their apology. When they refuse, we have the right to call them what they are. Racists. Women-killers. Wealthy elitists. We must play the race card, it's one of the few cards they haven't' stolen from the deck. We must engage in what they call 'class warfare'and talk about social justice. The game has changed. We're fighting for our lives and our country. Their code words don't define us. They don't get to tell us when to heal. They don't get to tell us when we stop hurting. Ultimately, they don't respect us. They think we are wimps, that our morality is situational, that we go along to get along, that we will compromise with them every time they scream at us, shut down the government, dredge up scandals, call us godless scum. We will stand our ground. Today, we stop giving them the inch. Today, we ignore their scandals. We will focus the spotlight on their scandals. We will use the tools that they have created to bring them down. There will be time to elevate the dialog when we have retaken two out of three branches of government, and not one second before. We must employ their own devices against them. We are the real Americans now. We are the ones who count votes. We are the ones who represent the middle class. We are the ones with principles not fabricated on the spot to advance our cause. We are for fiscal responsibility. We are the ones who wanted to censure Clinton and move on, so that government could do its job. We are the ones who knew the government shut down was insanity. And you know what? The people are on our side. They elected Al Gore, after all. So we cannot give in to despair. Because now, for the first time in a long time, it is very obvious, to anyone whose heart isn't encased in ideological cement, that God is on our side. We must match them verse for Biblical verse. We must react to their rage with our rage. We must fight this fight within the rules of the game as it is now played. We cannot reward them for cheating. Because we know they will do it again if they get away with it. They want to use their tax cut to fund the next campaign against us. We can't let them do it. We can't let the coup become self-sustaining and permanent. And you know the funny thing? They will respect us more the harder we fight back. I've seen it in their eyes. And I've seen fear, too. Because they know what they are capable of. They remember the Oklahoma City bombing, of course. They remember clinic bombings and the lynching and the gay bashing and shooting the doctors to death in front of their families, these incidents they say are 'regrettable, but understandable.' They understand rage. When they see our rage, they have to wonder, how far will we go? We have the people on our side, and we don't murder, engage in domestic terrorism, or otherwise break criminal law to win the day, but let them wonder. It will do them good. =================================================================== The Spread of News by E-Mail Is Becoming News Itself <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/29/technology/29NECO.html?ex=982097513&ei=1&en=c674aa931a238260?ex=982105454&ei=1&en=bb7884163d66a791> January 29, 2001 By PAMELA LICALZI O'CONNELL Was last week's biggest news story President Bush's education plan? Or was it the study contending that American men may have smaller penises, on average, than Brazilian men? One story dominated headlines; the other was forwarded frantically around the Net. And the episode provided insight into the role of the Web audience in determining, and maybe even increasing, the market value of information once it goes online. People often pass around news articles via e-mail. Some even do it compulsively, in part because it's so easy: most news sites include an "e- mail this article" link on some or all of their stories. But until last spring, apparently, no site made use of the statistics generated by those e-mail links. That was when Yahoo News, on a lark, created a new feature called "Most emailed content." The page (http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/mt/us/dailynews/?u) lists the 20 most-frequently forwarded stories and the dozen photos in the previous six hours from Yahoo News. (The Brazil story was at, or near, the top of the list for several days.), and it has become something of a cult favorite among heavy consumers of news. "We were positively surprised," said Kourosh Karimkhany, a senior producer at Yahoo News. "One of our engineers came up with the idea. It wasn't an editor." As a result of the page's success, Yahoo added "Most- emailed" lists for other news sections, including sports and finance. The company also created another statistics-based feature, this one a bit more conventional: "Most-viewed content," a list of the headlines and photos most clicked on in the last hour. "Most-viewed," which began in August, is heavy on breaking news and entertainment stories, while "Most-emailed" tends toward the quirky or bizarre. Last Thursday, for example, a news article about the pronouncements of the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, topped the "Most-viewed" list, while "Man Accidentally Saws Off Hand" was No. 1 on "Most e-mailed." "Most-viewed" and "Most- emailed" are among the most popular pages on Yahoo News, Mr. Karimkhany said, adding that similar efforts were in the works. Danny Sullivan, who is the editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, compared the "Most" pages to the Yahoo Buzz Index and the Lycos Top 50 — two continually updated lists of the most popular search terms. "Actually, I'm surprised it's taken them this long to turn all that fantastic live data into content," Mr. Sullivan said of the Yahoo News features. For Yahoo, which remains heavily dependent on advertising revenue, there is every incentive to find ways to increase the page views of its material without increasing costs. "I think everyone is looking for ways to produce cheap content," said Robert Hertzberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "Using internal stats seems a sure-fire strategy. The information is there; why not use it?" Of course, Yahoo News is not a typical news site. It does not create articles and photos, but instead culls material from news organizations in exchange for a portion of Yahoo's ad revenues. And so far, major news sites like CNN.com and MSNBC.com seem to take a much more proprietary view of their content and how their audiences use it. MSNBC, for example, adds an email link only to some of its articles. And while these sites sometimes issue news releases on topics — like which streaming-media files have been downloaded the most during a particular time period — that data is not used to repackage content into greatest-hits lists. Michael Silberman, MSNBC.com's executive editor, said he had no interest in developing features based on, say, the most clicked story, despite the pressures to produce content more cheaply. His site has long offered a page known as "Viewers' Top 10," which lists the stories rated most highly by its readers. But the list has a different mission from Yahoo's "Most" pages, he said. "The purpose of this feature is to encourage users to inform other users about interesting stuff on the site — stories not found on the cover page necessarily," Mr. Silberman said. "Our mission is not to try to generate cheap or user-created content." Cheap or not, popular-demand content has its own intrinsic value. "People are interested in what other people are interested in," said Sreenath Sreenivasan, a journalism professor at Columbia and administrator of the Online Journalism Awards. And knowing what most interests the public may prove valuable not only to consumers of news but also to the news media themselves, Mr. Sreenivasan said. He argues that journalists and editors need to pay more attention to sites like Yahoo News, because they are "changing the way readers get news." "There's never been any medium where you get such great detail on what people are reading and talking about," he said. "What we do with that information could really change our business, if we allow it." Others see the popularity of the Yahoo features as further confirmation of a post-modern interest in "news about news." "News tells us what happens," said Arthur Asa Berger, a professor who teaches about popular culture and the media at San Francisco State University. "News about news enables us to speculate about all kinds of things, trends in society and the like. And it may be more engaging than the news itself." =================================================================== Campuses to acquire automatic weapons http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/docs/020549.htm State OKs new guns for police at Kent State, University of Akron BY JOEL MORONEY Special to the Beacon Journal COLUMBUS Campus police are getting M-16s. The University of Akron wants 10. Kent State? Just eight. On Monday, the state controlling board approved an Ohio Department of Public Safety request to buy about 150 fully automatic M-16 assault rifles for, among others, university and metropolitan park police. Most of the M-16s will be converted to semiautomatic rifles. Police say the weapons will be used for training or to replace older rifles that need expensive repairs. But one controlling member, state Sen. Rhine McLin, D-Dayton, is questioning the need for such weapons on college campuses and in parks, as well as the experience of the officers who will be using them. ``We're going to allow the officers to have M-16s to keep the peace, to help with drug operations?'' asked McLin, one of two controlling board members to vote against the measure. ``I mean, I've seen some of those park people and I don't know how comfortable I'd be knowing -- even though they are classified as peace officers -- that they have access to M-16s.'' Campus police said McClin was misinformed about their training and that they are trained as thoroughly as any other police department. Campus police departments applied to purchase the guns, part of a federal surplus program, because they're cheaper than semiautomatic weapons on the market. =================================================================== Phil Ochs updated Original words and music by Phil Ochs new words - c - 2001 - L.A.Hazard I wept when I heard that a logger had coldly killed young David Chain When they murdered young Matthew Shepard I cried out "My god it's insane" But Mumia was a Black Panther He's no one but himself to blame.. Love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal I go to the permitted rallies I put down the WTO I boycott the Gap, Wal-Mart and Nike I believe all sweatshops must go But don't talk about smashing out windows or lock downs - else I'll be a no show... Love me, Love me, Love me, I'm a liberal I cheered when the Greens got together my hope in new options reflamed I'm glad that the Demos were nervous they'll return to the left I proclaimed but then Al lost the election those damn Naderites are to blame love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal I read the Progressive and Nation Mother Jones, In These Times and Z Earth First, the Baffler and EXTRA and one or two others or three But for rational common sense thinking it's the New York Times for me Love me, Love me, Love me, I'm a Liberal I faithfully email my senators on issues that are bothering me I belong to NOW and SIERRA AFL-CIO, FOE And though I'd gladly'd have danced with Emma the Black Bloc don't deserve to go free Love me, Love me, Love me, I'm a liberal I've been to a couple RAGE concerts That Zack's a hell of a guy I almost voted for Nader Thank god I saw through that lie Yes, I'll sign your petition and statement But don't ask for my ass on the line Love me, Love me, Love me, I'm a liberal The CEO's of corporations should hang their heads down in shame I can't understand how their minds work Don't they read Chomsky, Zinn or McCain? Still if you ask me to divest my holdings I hope the cops take down your name love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal Though most know it's best to keep quiet I've friends who are openly gay and I've friends of African Heritage Who agree that boy Tiger can play And I've friends from south of the border They come clean my house everyday Love me, Love me, Love me - I'm a Liberal Here's a toast to the memory of Gandhi Chavez and the good Dr. King And here's to the memory of Malcolm Since he's dead - praising him risks nothing But that damned ski masked fool in Chiapas might still yet ruin everything love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal Yes I feel your pain and your anger the frustrations raging within When I see you all march with your puppets you're so young and impulsive I grin So I hope when you're older and wiser you'll understand why I'm turning you in love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal =================================================================== National Security Commission Issues Final Report Christopher Hellman, Senior Analyst, [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Center for Defense Information The Weekly Defense Monitor February 1, 2001 This week the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century released the last of its three planned reports reviewing U.S. security issues. Entitled "Road Map For National Security: Imperative for Change" the report is intended to be a blueprint for reforming the U.S. national security apparatus. The Commission, created by Congress, was charged by Defense Secretary Cohen with reviewing current U.S. security (broadly defined) and recommending changes needed to better face the challenges of the future security environment. Also known as the Rudman-Hart Commission after its Co-chairs former Senators Warren Rudman (R-NH) and Gary Hart (D-CO) it issued its first report in September, 1999. That report attempted to define the domestic and international security environment from the present into the next century. The second report, which looked at existing national interest and objectives to determine their relevance in the future security environment, was issued in April, 2000. The new report is broken down into five categories. Here are some of the major recommendations: 1) Securing the National Homeland -- The commission calls on the President to develop a comprehensive plan to improve U.S. capabilities to "prevent and protect against all forms of attacks on the homeland, and to respond to such attacks if prevention and protection fail." Specifically, the Commission recommends the creation of a National Homeland Security Agency which would have authority over the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard. Homeland security would be made the primary mission of the National Guard. 2) Recapitalizing America's Strengths in Science and Education -- The report stated that, second only to the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against a U.S. city, "we can think of nothing more dangerous than a failure to manage properly science, technology and education for the common good over the next quarter century. The Commission recommends doubling federal funding in science and technology research over the next decade and the passage of a National Security Science and Technology Education Act to increase and improve the study and teaching of science, mathematics and engineering. 3) Institutional Redesign -- The Commission called for a reorganization of the Executive Branch to "permit the U.S. government to _integrate_ more effectively the many diverse strands of policy that underpin U.S. national security in a new era." The report recommends redefining and narrowing the role of the National Security Council, restructuring the State Department along regional lines, reducing the size of the offices of the Secretary of Defense, the services, the Joint Chiefs of staff, and the regional commanders-in-chief (CINCs) and cutting Pentagon infrastructure by as much as 25 percent. 4) The Human Requirements of National Security -- The Report notes that as we enter the 21st century, "the United States finds itself on the brink of an unprecedented crisis of competence in government." The Commission recommends expanding the National Security Education Act to include support for social science, humanities and foreign languages in exchange for military or civilian public service, overhaul the Foreign Service system and streamline the presidential appointment process by reducing the number of positions requiring confirmation. 5) The Role of Congress -- While the Commission notes that "it is one thing to appeal to Congress to reform the State Department or the Defense Department, [it is] quite another to call on Congress to reform itself." Nonetheless, future U.S. national security in the next century "mandates a serious reappraisal of both the individual and collective efforts of Congress and its members." The report recommends a comprehensive review of the legislative branch's relationship to national security and foreign policy and a streamlining of the current legislative process through the merging of the relevant authorizing and appropriating committees. There are clear continuities between the recommendations of the Commission on National Security/21st Century and other recent reports such as that of the National Defense University QDR Working Group, the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, and the 2001 Annual Report of Secretary of Defense to the President and the Congress. All conclude that the U.S. homeland will experience a significant terrorist incident in the next 25 years, that government and the civil sector (industry, law enforcement, health system) are ill-prepared and mis-organized, that intelligence capabilities (especially Human intelligence) need to expand and improve, the defense industry has to regain its fiscal footing (although DoD's 2001 Annual Industrial Capabilities Report to Congress says that defense industries are no longer in a financial crisis), and that renewed emphasis on education and training in general and as an inducement for government service in particular is required. But while the 21st Century Commission parallels many recent non-government reports calling for revision of the "2 MTW" concept as the basis for force structuring, the Commission does not provide any suggestions about what specific criteria should be used to develop the force. The 21st Century Commission's 50 recommendations are by far the most far-reaching. But because they concentrate on reforming processes and institutions in an effort to revitalize the national security structure, the probability that the majority of the changes will be implemented - particularly those pertaining to the organization and functioning of Congress - is slim. For additional information and resources, see CDI's "U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century" webpage at: http://www.cdi.org/issues/natsec/ =================================================================== Online Journal - http://www.onlinejournal.com 02-03-01: Fur coats and purple hair, Stetsons and ragged jeans: Inauguration Day 2001 By Bill C. Davis The protests-I had to be there. I tend to watch more than shout. But I wanted to be part of the numbers. I went to Washington to work on a reading of a new musical I had written based on "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" by Jack Finney. It was too perfect. Bodysnatchers: The Musical and the Bush inauguration on the same weekend. I was invited to a Democratic fundraiser on Friday night at Dupont Circle. After rehearsals, as I waited in the lobby of the hotel for a friend to pick me up, there were two very pretty blonde women, in their late thirties, dressed in gowns, with that bright, madcap we-know-how-to-be-girls kind of energy. They were waiting for a cab and they wanted to know what I was doing, where I was going and how I would get there. When I told them fundraiser and Democrat, the one with the biggest set of white of teeth-not grotesque teeth; just grand and white-said, "Oh . . . boo. What for? It's over for them" I answered her question and left her statement alone. "What for? We're being occupied-we need to liberate the country." She was stunned but ready-I was wearing a sport coat, so she wasn't going to disrespect me completely. Actually, after she adjusted to her shock, she spoke to me as if she wanted to help. "The country is not occupied, if anything. . . ." A man at the elevator-mid-fifties, blue collar kind of guy-chimes in and agrees with me, tossing in his opinion as he presses the button to go up, "Yeah, where else does the guy with the least votes get sworn in." The pretty, toothy, Southern belle was not going to be distracted from her main mission-which as far as I could tell was to assure me that the impending swearing in will be a very good thing. She said that we have to get rid of abortions and that now this will happen. I said, Bush, as well as being not very smart, is anti-woman; anti gay; racist; pro-gun; anti-environment, and by the way, he didn't win. I had to speak in broad strokes because I thought my ride was coming any minute. The two belles were obviously going to some Republican Inaugural ball and I suppose I wanted her to be a little churned up, but in fact anything I said only froze her to her point-like a tongue on a frosty pole. "He is not anti-woman. He respects women. And I like gay people; they make the best friends, but the Bible says it's wrong-not me-the Bible--etc." You know the rest. We all know the rest. It's not that we don't know they all exist-pretty, ugly, tall, mean, sweet Bible people-but the news is that they're in gowns and high heels, they're smiling broadly and they're in the lobby. The Bible, which Reed, Falwell, Robertson, Bush and Ashcroft believe is the direct word of God, will now have a chance to form legislation, because they want a Holy Land-and the lady in the lobby was dressed in black to celebrate the fact that it will now be happening. I said to the Christian lady in black that if Bush is the Christian you seem to think he is, he would not be the country's busiest executioner-Christ would not be for the death penalty. "But partial birth abortions . . ." she pleaded. I tried to calm her, "Democrats aren't excited about abortions. No one is happy about abortions, but, legal or illegal, they will happen. It seems that what your side wants is punishment. You don't want to get in the way of retribution: no condoms, no needle exchange, and if you get pregnant, deal with it. That's what you guys are all about - etc" Again, you can imagine the rest. You guys-your side-it was unavoidable. She put on her full-length fur coat as she left. I told her to have a good time and she wished me the same. My friend called me on my cell phone to say he was stuck in traffic and that I should take the Metro, which I did. Lots of furs on the Metro; lots of men dressed in tuxedos and boots; all on their way to celebrate the last night of Clinton/Gore. I kept thinking about Al-the real president-the one who knows what to do, the hero in exile. So unnatural that this was happening. The country gearing up-banners; balloons, streets closed-all for the wrong thing, the wrong guy. The bastard event. But act as if it were otherwise. The sorry harvest of Republican smiles-their hair sculpted into place like a ready victim for the rainy night. At the fund-raiser were Stonewall Democrats. Barney Frank and James Hormel spoke. People were blue-many had been in Florida-several had just been laid off. Hormel said Ashcroft lied at the hearings. Hormel never "recruited" him for the University of Chicago. He barely knew Ashcroft, who was a student when Hormel was a dean. He was perplexed by Ashcroft's claim that he knew Hormel-concerned by this "totality" Ashcroft kept referring to when explaining why he voted against Hormel for ambassador to Luxembourg. Barney Frank-smart, ironic, eloquent. Progress will not be taken away, he assured the crowd. They wanted to hear it and wanted to believe it. The food at the fund-raiser was hummus and other vegetarian fare. I looked at it and thought of a news reporter I heard earlier-one of the useless pseudo-journalists who chatter about anything but the elephant in the middle of the country. He reported that there were two and a half tons of beef for the inaugural celebrations. I thought Mad Cow disease. I left the fund-raiser and went to an anti-inauguration party-mostly gay and black. No one minimized the notion that racism and the Supreme Court got Bush in. No one was over it and that felt good to be around. Workers, who were in Florida, seemed to be shell-shocked and angry. The black guys were stoic and smart, and they knew what happened. They knew racism was alive. They knew black votes meant Gore votes and so black votes were blocked. Talk at the party: Did anyone hear that the Enquirer was coming out with a story about a Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris affair? No. Yeah, I did hear that. Wouldn't it be amazing? That would say a lot. Who then would doubt what happened down there? The brother and the brother's lover secured the state with any means possible? Corrupt, racist, fascist. Not about the people-it was all about the Bible and business-oil and Amens. Pharisees and CEOs. More talk at the party: Did anyone hear that George was still on cocaine? No, didn't hear that. But of course, look at those boils that keep popping out on his face. That's how it gets purged. All this talk going around. The energy was fueled by alienation. Alienated people work hard to understand why or they work hard to find a disqualifying truth about the forces that cause the alienation. Bush claimed that he was a force for inclusion - so bland and sickening to hear. Using words to recommend him and disarm us-neutralize the words, just use them-like a shot of Novocain. The hermit outside Waco wants to include and unify? His ranch, his spread, his squint, his agonizing smile, his disconnected strut-he moves as if his body doesn't know anything about his center-there is no center to inform the locomotion of his rhythmless body-snatched. Does George know how clueless he is? He does say he will surpass expectations. But like a dancing dog-everyone is amazed at the dog but no one judges the quality of the dance. The day of the protests-the day it was going to happen. I wore a sport coat and a button that read "Bush doesn't count." A woman on the Metro could not disagree with me more. She was convinced the Democrats were trying to steal the election in Florida. "In the candidate's brother's home state? How? No, Gore won." "No, the voters were dumb. They didn't know how to vote. The Democrats made a mess of it. Nothing you say will change my mind." I got up and let an elderly woman sit in my seat. The woman whose mind I was not going to change chatted up a younger woman who was going to "celebrate" the inauguration. She and the younger woman noted that in New York City no one would get up and surrender his seat for anyone, no matter how old or infirm. The older woman went on to say that "those feminists really messed it up for us. They lost us all our fringe benefits." And the two of them laughed in agreement. I thought, No, this can't be-I'm writing this and I think she's saying it. No, she said it. They are dressed and smiling and they are in the lobby. I got off at Gallery Place and I asked a girl with purple hair and a pierced lip where the International Action Committee was meeting. She looked at me suspiciously. The sport coat. I was profiled. No, I was not undercover. No, I was not a journalist. She helped-tentatively. Streets were empty . Groups poured in to 14th and Pennsylvania-they were loud, angry and clear. Signs-Bush=racism-a sea of them facing a wave of black cops. One cop spoke to a protestor and said, "If I wasn't in my official capacity I'd tell you what I think, but I can't right now." The mounted police arrived-facing the barricade which funneled the crowd through check points: fur coats and purple hair, Stetsons and ragged jeans, (fur coats and Stetsons a minority at 14th and Pennsylvania Avenue) all merging at the bottle neck set in place because there was concern someone might try to hurt the man who was just sworn in by the chief justice who dismissed the voice of the people. Today the voice was going to find its way to the "unifier". What a pathetic, vague and disrespectful term! What does that mean? You'll be patient as the other side realizes how wrong they are? You'll be sympathetic as you cram your reactionary, retro policies down the throats of the people who did not vote for you, which happens to be most Americans? (That woman in the lobby would feel so sorry for me for what I was thinking.) Families protested-kids on their father's shoulders. A retired Navy man rode a bus for 26 hours to get here to protest. What good would it all do? What good was the egg that hit the limo? What good was the umbrella hurled in the path of the car that made the secret service nervous? The man marching on inauguration day is valuable, because he is the distilled personification of a revered process. Today that man looked like graffiti. And each protesting voice represented 100,000 people who feel, in some measure, the same thing. It's an equation one hopes the forces that have put themselves in power will reckon with. Before leaving for the protest, I read on the Internet that if you have an anti-Bush web site, you most likely are being watched. Paranoid perhaps, but my reflex response was, of course. I believe it's more than possible. I don't know what they'll do with the information. Audit you? I suppose just keep an eye on you-like an extended checkpoint. Like the nervous secret service-what are those angry noisy people going to do? Will temperamental Bush have to see them, hear them? Is he going to be so insulated from dissenting voices for fear he will blow? He talks about "I'm honored;" "I'm humbled;" "It was a friendly meeting-he's a friend." It implies how invested he is in the opposite of those things. He is terrified of being dishonored, because he knows he should be and he knows how angry he'll get if he is. He claims to be humbled because he is keenly aware of his arrogance and how unattractive it is, but how necessary it is for his psychological survival. He wants a friendly meeting as opposed to an enlightening, spirited, useful, informative meeting. A meeting in which he gets along with someone is more important than a meeting in which he learns something. Back in snow-banked New York City on Sunday, a cab driver, with a Puerto Rican flag hanging from his rearview mirror, takes me from Penn Station to Grand Central. He wasn't happy with what happened. He loved Gore; loved that he danced after his concession speech-Bush hates to dance in public, it was reported. Ashcroft thinks dancing is a sin. Who was it who said that to dance is to live? If it is, what does that say about life as seen through the eyes of Bush and Ashcroft? Keep it private-keep it sinful. =================================================================== Study Casts Doubt on Gateway Theory http://www.jointogether.org/jtodirect.jtml?U=83952&O=265894 Researchers say that today's young people who use marijuana are not likely to become hard drug users when they get older. =================================================================== "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. The only information passed on to me via this process is your email address and the amount you transfer. Thanks! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
