UNDERNEWS Sam Smith July 9, 1999 The Progressive Review 1739 Conn. Ave. NW Washington DC 20009 202-232-5544 Fax: 202-234-6222 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INDEX: http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS: http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINE NEWS: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm ALTERNATIVE NEWS SOURCES: http://prorev.com/hot.htm THE REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/letters.com DONATIONS AND ORDER FORM: http://prorev.com/order3.htm UNSUBSCRIBE: Reply with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. For a free subscription to our e-mail updates send your postal address with zip code. Copyright 1999, The Progressive Review. Matter not independently copyrighted may be reprinted provided TPR is paid your normal reprint fees, if any, and is given proper credit. While there is no subscription fee for UNDERNEWS, donations are welcome and can be made by check to the address above or by credit card at http://prorev.com/order3.htm Because of its quantity, TPR's mail is not always answered, but it is always read. The editor is cheered or remorseful as appropriate and posts some of the more interesting messages at http://prorev.com/letters.htm ---------------------------------------------------------- TPR'S MORNING LINE: Electoral College: Bush: 165 Gore: 25 Tie: 33 Senate: GOP picks up two with one too close to call FOLLOW THE POLLS AND TRENDS http://www.prorev.com/amline.htm AND REMEMBER TO SERVICE YOUR LEXUS REGULARLY For those of you who've done well in the stock market, how can you keep it going? The easiest way to keep it going is go to places where there aren't enough jobs and there aren't enough consumers and create more of both. Create more business owners, create more workers, create more consumers. That's all growth completely without inflation. -- W.J. Clinton speaking to students in a Watts (LA) high school training program JOURNOPROP OF THE WEEK KATIE COURIC ENDING AN INTERVIEW WITH LARRY SUMMERS: Alright, well, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. I know people have called Robert Rubin the best Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton so I know you have some big shoes to fill. All the best to you." THE CASPIAN CONNECTION UPI: The U.S. government has given Bulgaria a half-million dollar grant to explore building a pipeline across the Balkans to pump Caspian Sea oil to the West, sending shock waves through Turkey, a key U.S. ally that wants the potentially lucrative pipeline for itself .... The decision has raised speculation among regional experts that it may be part of a larger economic development plan envisioned by the Clinton administration to stabilize the southern Balkans after the massive dislocations and infrastructure damage caused by the Serbian repression in Kosovo and the US -led NATO bombing of Serbia. EXCERPTS FROM A SPEECH BY HAROLD PINTER http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm#july9 NEWS FROM THE COLONIES ROBERT FISK, INDEPENDENT, LONDON: [A CNN reporter] "astounded one of his English colleagues after NATO had bombed a narrow road bridge in the Yugoslav village of Varvarin, killing dozens of civilians, many of whom fell to their death in the River Morava. ‘That'll teach them not to stand on bridges,' he roared" This was not the kind of language he used on air, of course, where CNN's report on the bridge killings was accompanied by the remark that there had been civilian casualties ‘according to the Serb authorities'all this when CNN's own crew had been there and filmed the decapitated corpse of the local priest .... Two days before NATO bombed the Serb Television headquarters in Belgrade, CNN received a tip from its Atlanta headquarters that the building was to be destroyed. They were told to remove their facilities from the premises at once, which they did. A day later, Serbian Information Minister Aleksander Vucic received a faxed invitation from the Larry King Live show in the US to appear on CNN. They wanted him on air at 2:30 in the morning of 23 April and asked him to arrive at Serb Television half an hour early for make-up. Vucic was latewhich was just as well for him since NATO missiles slammed into the building at six minutes past two. The first one exploded in the make-up room where [a] young Serb assistant was burned to death. CNN calls this all a coincidence, saying that the Larry King show, put out by the entertainment division, did not know of the news department's instruction to its men to leave the Belgrade building." ECO-NOTES ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE One of the marine world's great natural treasures - its coral reefs - faces widespread catastrophe from climate change, according to a new scientific projection. Unrestrained warming cannot occur without the complete loss of coral reefs on a global scale, the report states .... Greenpeace, which launched the report internationally, predicted that the damage would wreak havoc in fisheries and tourism, disrupting the economies of many nations. ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul99/1999L-07-08-04.html FBI CANCELS YEAR-END LEAVES STEPHAN ARCHER, WORLDNET DAILY: The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently notified all their agents that all leaves from Dec. 15 through mid-January -- even those previously approved -- are officially canceled. According to a special agent within the Department of Health and Human Services, a partner in the FBI received a memo stating all end-of-the-year leaves had been canceled for three to four weeks between the middle of December and the middle of January .... When asked what it was the FBI might be planning for, the agent admitted he wasn't sure. However, according to the agent, the memo said, "because of the year 2000." "It's a mess," concluded the agent concerning the FBI's Y2K preparation. "They're very much behind. If it was a 72-hour 'snowstorm,' you wouldn't bring out 12,000 FBI agents on stand-by and, for the first time maybe in FBI history, cancel everybody's annual leave for a 20-30 day time frame. That's very significant. In my line of work, that's called a clue." WORLDNET DAILY: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/ 19990708_xex_fbi_cancels_.shtml BORDER PROTEST NATIONAL POST, CANADA: U.S. farmers and ranchers are gearing up for border protests to be held [July 9] at Sweetgrass, Mont., and at Portal, N.D., citing trade policies they believe are driving producers in their own country out of business. Organizers said the blockades will turn back any truck carrying agricultural products south from Canada. The blockades are scheduled to begin at noon. Hank Zell, a Montana rancher who is organizing the rally at Sweetgrass, says the protests are aimed at U.S. Congressmen, whom the farmers believe have failed to protect their interests by allowing Canadian producers to ship lower-priced livestock and grain across the border. THE WAR AGAINST US I >From Covert Action Quarterly -- Members of the NYPD’s Street Crime Unit are known as "the commandos of the NYPD." In existence since 1971, the unit has undergone a 300 percent build-up since 1997. Former NYC Police Commissioner William Bratton encouraged the men to "become far more aggressive." Currently made up of roughly 400 mostly white officers, this unit, along with the 7,000 strong Narcotics Unit, represent the front line in Mayor Giuliani’s "quality of life" crackdown on - and criminalization of - people of color, especially young, poor, and homeless people. They wear (and peddle) tee shirts that say: "Certainly There Is No Hunting Like the Hunting of Men." And their slogan is, "We own the night." According to police data, the unit’s activity "has in the last two years resulted in 45,000 street searches to net fewer than 10,000 arrests." Nearly all of those stopped by police were people of color. But New York State Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer, who has launched a civil rights investigation into the "stop and frisk" practices of the Street Crime Unit, "said the unit may have searched hundreds of thousands of people in the last two years without finding any basis for arresting them." In fact, the New York Times reported, "half the gun arrests made by the Street Crime Unit in the last two years were thrown out of court." -- Nearly half of the hundreds of para-military police units in the U.S. have "trained with active duty military experts in special operations," while another 30 percent trained with "police officers with special operations experience in the military." A "special operations" trainer had this to say: "We’ve had special forces folks who have come right out of the jungles of Central America. These guys get into the real shit. All branches of military service are involved in providing training to law enforcement." In New York City, ground zero for the "quality of life" police crackdown, these units target "disorderly" areas, in other words, poor communities of color involved in a war for survival .... -- In December 1997, two former NYPD undercover detectives told the story of one of the most secretive units within the Police Department. The unit, which functioned as a "Black Desk" beginning in the mid-1980s, "aimed at investigating dissident Black groups and their leaders." .... "Historically, the department’s political surveillance unit has held some of the NYPD’s most closely guarded secrets. It was nicknamed the Red Squad, because it had investigated supposed Communists and political activists in the McCarthy era. In the 1960s, the unit, known as the Bureau of Special Investigations, turned its attention to Malcolm X and later to the Black Panthers...." These units were, and continue to be, outfitted with the latest in surveillance ("stealth") and weapons technology .... -- Speaking to members of the defense, intelligence, and industrial communities in November 1993, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno contrasted the victory over the Soviet Union to the "war against crime." "So let me welcome you," she informed her guests, "to the kind of war our police fight every day. And let me challenge you to turn your skills that served us so well in the Cold War to helping us with the war we’re now fighting daily in the streets of our towns and cities across the nation." … COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY http://www.covertaction.org/full_text_frameset_67_04.htm THE WAR AGAINST US II Brenda Payton in the Oakland Tribune WHOA, are things getting weird over at KPFA. The dispute between the local station and the parent company, Pacifica, has gone from nasty to creepy. Recent developments include the posting of security guards believed to be armed, possible pressure from the U.S. Justice Department and a request for a police psychologist to review 2,000 protest letters and e-mails. Is this Berkeley or a junta in Central America? One KPFA staffer called it the Twilight Zone. Another said it feels exactly like the South during the civil rights protests of the '60s. Either way, Pacifica is using tactics that are hardly characteristic of an institution that professes progressive values .... Adding to the creep factor, Pacifica officials turned over 2,000 protest letters and e-mails to [Berkeley police chief Dash] Butler asking that a police psychologist review them Butler said it would be too costly for such a review, but the department is looking through the mail. You might understand if threatening letters were turned over to the police, but 2,000 pieces of mail? THIS WILL ONLY HURT A LITTLE BIT UPI: To bring democracy to Kosovo, international officials must act undemocratically in the short run based on lessons learned in implementing peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to the newly appointed Southeastern Europe coordinator for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe .... In Kosovo, which is likely to become a protectorate, international officials must create the government institutions, and elections should be postponed, possibly for two years, Barry said. Creating an apolitical judiciary and independent media should be priorities. WHY AREN'T YOU RICH? FAIR The idea that the economy is booming and that the rising tide is lifting all boats is a popular one in the corporate press right now. Money magazine's May cover story was entitled simply "Everyone's Getting Rich," while CNN's "Talkback Live" opened up its June 30 broadcast with this introduction: "Behind the mind-boggling wealth of Bill Gates, there are more billionaires and millionaires than every before, and it might seem as if everyone you know is in on the action. Are you being left behind? If so, how can you get your share? And, when you do, is it going to be enough?" Newsweek's July 5 issue added fuel to the media fire, with the cover story "The Whine of '99: Everyone's Getting Rich, But Me." But is any of it true? Newsweek's piece, a variation on the theme, focused on the frustration felt by people who are rich, but who are unhappy that some others have recently become even richer. If that doesn't sound familiar to you, perhaps that's because this rush of new wealth isn't exactly affecting "everyone." Newsweek inadvertently admits their outrageously narrow worldview, when they describe who they mean by Everyone: "Almost half of all people who earn $50,000 or more say they know someone who's become rich." If more than half of all people who make $50,000 or more don't know anyone who's become rich --along with 71 percent of all people, according to Newsweek's online edition --then the number of people who feel that "everyone's getting rich but me" must be vanishingly small. It's not just that the reporters miss the point that it's generally only people who are themselves rich who know others who get rich, and that there's certainly nothing "new" in that. The piece is full of myths about wealth, like the notion that nowadays getting rich is a game of chance, due to supposed equalizers like the Internet or the stock market. Of course, most Americans still rely on their wages for survival--and wages, unlike the stock market, have barely risen in years. Newsweek breezes past such facts: "The income gap remains a thorny problem, but wealth is increasingly spread out as businesses give workers more of a stake. And as everybody starts to pick up his own dot.com business plan, that picks up the pace of innovation." In the face of such happy hype, it sounds downright curmudgeonly to mention that there's not more but less "sharing" going on, with the top 1 percent controlling 40 percent of the country's wealth--more than the bottom 95 percent combined--and CEOs now making 420 times as much as the average worker. Far from getting rich, most American have a lower net worth than they did 15 years ago, when the stock market boom began--with the bottom 40 percent losing 80 percent of their wealth. MORE NEWS: http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm#july9 INCLUDING: SHOULD BUSH AND KISSINGER BE TRIED? EXCERPTS FROM AN IMPORTANT SPEECH BY HAROLD PINTER THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1739 Connecticut Ave NW Washington DC 20009 202-232-5544 202-234-6222 Fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] Editor: Sam Smith INDEX : http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS : http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINES: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm THE REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/letters.htm For a free trial subscription to both our bi-monthly hard copy edition and our regular e-mail updates send e-mail and terrestrial address to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To order "Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual" (WW Norton) direct from Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0393316270/progressiverevieA/
