-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 160 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Sorry, Wrong President --Masking Up And The Black Bloc: A Pre-Seattle History --The Phony President --The Resurgence of Citizens' Movements --Special forces spied on crowds during Olympics --Church to Be Seized for Unpaid Taxes --We'll create GM humans by 2020, says researcher =================================================================== February 26, 2001 Sorry, Wrong President <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010226&s=alterman> by ERIC ALTERMAN Don't look now, but the various recounts under way in Florida are determining that the wrong guy is in the White House. The media have demonstrated remarkably little interest in this story. Nobody is saying that Bush should be removed, but the fact that he lost both the popular vote and, without the intervention of the Supreme Court, would probably have lost Florida and the Electoral College vote should count for something. Recall that before rendering its decision the Court acted so precipitately to stop the count, as Bush hero Justice Antonin Scalia helpfully explained, explicitly in order to insure public ignorance of the genuine result. "Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires." One aspect of the Court's controversial majority opinion dealt with the validity of Florida's 110,000 "overvotes," where a machine count recorded more than one vote for President. When examined by hand, many of these votes turned out to be legal, since the punch card (or check mark) matched the name of the candidate written in by the voter. The Gore team stupidly ignored these votes, and the refusal of the Florida Supreme Court to consider them (in favor of an "undervote only" count) was one reason given by the Supreme Court for overturning that decision. So count the overvotes and what happens? The final answer is not in yet, but it sure looks bad for Bush. In late December, the Orlando Sentinel took a look at about 3,000 overvotes in Lake County. They found more than 600 valid ballots that had been ignored by the machines, with Gore picking up 130 even in this heavily pro-Bush county. In late January the Chicago Tribune reported that in fifteen counties with a particularly high rate of overvotes, more than 1,700 votes that showed a clear choice had been discarded. Most of the counties in the Tribune's study were small, rural and predominantly Republican. Yet even so, Gore's net gain was 366 votes. And a Washington Post review of the computer records of 2.7 million votes in eight of Florida's largest counties reported that overvotes trended toward Gore at a rate of three to one. Undervotes tell the same story. A study by the Palm Beach Post of 4,513 of that county's ballots set aside for possible court review indicates a Gore pickup of 682 votes, surpassing Bush's alleged 537 statewide margin. These patterns demonstrate that the Republicans' strong-arm tactics in Florida made sense. Without them, their guy would be cutting brush back in Crawford. Today, with the conspicuous exception of the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne Jr., most of the punditocracy appears to think it an act of bad sportsmanship to point out that the man appointing far-right extremists to oversee the nation's legal system and its natural resources is a pretender to the throne. Sam and Cokie mock the idea as a joke. George Will smirks, "I don't think when the country hears media declaring Gore the winner they're impressed." Perhaps the most instructive document of the "Get Over It" school of political science was an angry TRB column in The New Republic penned by the magazine's former editor and famed "gaycatholictory" Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan attacks writers he terms "the usual suspects" for questioning the quality of Bush's mandate. Suspects include such distinguished scholars and writers as Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel, Yale law professor Jack Balkin, New Yorker writer and successful former editor of The New Republic Hendrik Hertzberg and TNR senior editor Jonathan Cohn (whose argument did not even appear in the magazine until after Sullivan's attack on it). Each called upon the Democrats to resist Bush's extremist tendencies, most notably the nomination of John Ashcroft for Attorney General. Sullivan's ire is a bit puzzling. Leaving Florida aside, he is furious at folks opposing a potential chief law enforcement officer who, as senator, refused to approve the ambassadorial nomination of James Hormel because, like Sullivan, Hormel is gay, something Ashcroft believes is "a choice which can be made and unmade." Now, personally, I don't have a dog in this fight, but I can hardly imagine feeling such generosity should a President wish to turn over the legal system to a man who happily discriminates against those of us who have made the "choice" to be, say, Jewish. Sullivan argued that the rejection of Ashcroft would be "without precedent." In support of this view and "as a testament to the level to which liberalism has now sunk," he quoted from a TRB that appeared in 1925, "It is universally conceded the Executive has the right to select his own official family, and their submission to the Senate is merely a form." Leave aside the strange assertion that because somebody said something in TNR in 1925 it must therefore be true seventy-six years later. (A year earlier the magazine had pronounced Pablo Picasso "not a great painter or a great master of composition...and in no serious sense a thinker." Does that make it so?) In any case, Sullivan should have kept on reading. The last time the Senate decided to reject a nominee for Attorney General turns out to beyou guessed it--1925, and the Republic somehow survived. Ashcroft should have been sent packing if only to insure that gays who live and work in communities less tolerant than Sullivan's can practice their "choice" unmolested by people like Ashcroft. Eight Democrats may have lost their nerve this time, but the great thing about mistakes, I keep telling my 2-year-old, is that you can learn from them. As the new Florida counts appear to demonstrate even more clearly than before, George W. Bush and the Republicans hijacked the 2000 election with the help of their discredited accomplices on the US Supreme Court. They have no right to traditional forms of democratic deference, particularly when pursuing an unpopular extremist agenda. An honest media ought do everything possible to insure that no one loses sight of the astonishing circumstances through which Bush acceded to the presidency. Get over that. =================================================================== Masking Up And The Black Bloc: A Pre-Seattle History <http://www.infoshop.org/texts/blackbloc_young.html> by Daniel Dylan Young "Those in authority fear the mask for their power partly resides in identifying, stamping and cataloguing: in knowing who you are...our masks are not to conceal our identity but to reveal it...Today we shall give this resistance a face; for by putting on our masks we reveal our unity; and by raising our voices in the street together, we speak our anger at the facelessness of power..." --from a message printed on the inside of 9000 masks distributed at the June 18th, 1999 Carnival Against Capital which destroyed the financial district of central London At the WTO protests in Seattle last year, somewhere from 100 to 300 anarchists and others dressed up in black and systematically trashed the storefronts of odious multinational corporations. Since then the tactic of the "Black Bloc" has been getting quite a bit of attention from different people concerned with social change. All sorts of upper middle class, trust-fund progressives and liberals have prattled on moralistically to great length about how there is no room for such behavior in their movement. At the same time, the Black Bloc in Seattle inspired a renewed interest in militant protest tactics which do not placate authority or bow to its power. The N30 Black Bloc, along with many other aspects of the events in Seattle, has also inspired radical anarchists to stop hiding out inside liberal activist groups with reformist agendas, and start being more vocal in their demands for revolution and total social change. Besides the rapid proliferation of anarchist publications and organizations, clear evidence of this resurgence of anarchism in the United States can be seen in the large Black Blocs which were present on April 16th in Washington D.C., at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this summer, and at many other marches, protests and actions from sea to shining sea. For good or ill, it seems that in the last year the Black Bloc has become an American tradition, and it all started with those brave kids back in Seattle. Or did it? In fact, November 30th was far from the first time that a large group of radicals dressed up in black with black masks in order to engage in militant protest in anonymity and solidarity. The Black Bloc as an agreed upon protest tactic may be as much as 20 years old. Its origins in fact lie with the European Autonomen or autonomists, a radical social movement that didn't even necessarily proclaim itself anarchist, though many of its tactics and ideas have become widely appreciated and adopted by self-proclaimed anarchists. About Autonomy Autonomia, Autonomen, or autonomists have been the names used for various popular social change and countercultural movements in Italy, Germany, Denmark, Holland and other parts of Europe in the last 3 decades. All these different movements have sought to radically oppose authority, domination and violence anywhere that they exist in contemporary life (which is pretty much everywhere). Autonomy in this case does not mean some kind of regional superiority complex or isolationism, as with statist nationalism, nor does it mean individual autonomy at the expense of the majority, as is the the basis of capitalism. What autonomists value and desire is the freedom for individuals to choose others with whom they share an affinity, and band together with them to survive and fulfill all of their needs and desires collectively, without interference from greedy, violent individuals or huge inhuman bureaucracies. The first so-called autonomists were those individuals involved in the Italian Autonomia movement that got its start during the Hot Autumn of 1969, a time of intense social unrest. Throughout the 1970s in Italy a widespread movement for total social change was initiated by autonomous groups of factory workers, women and students. Capitalists, labor unions and the statist Communist Party bureaucracy had nothing to do with this movement, and in fact worked hard to repress and stop it. Yet the power structure was often at a loss with how to deal with the near complete refusal of large areas of the population to obey the rules and orders of authority. Despite the rapid proliferation of direct action, strikes, rent strikes, mass squats, streetfighting, university occupations and other popularly supported radical actions during the 1970s, the Italian movement eventually subsided. This was partly due to violent attacks, imprisonment and murders of radicals by the police and the Communist party-controlled central government. At the same time the response to this escalation of state violence was often an escalation of terrorism by elite radical urban guerilla groups. This self-defensive terrorism often served to turn people away from a large scale, public social change movement. Some chose to become more militant and secretive, while others abandoned politics all together for a seemingly more peaceful life of obedience to authority. Building Revolutionary Dual Power -- The Culture of the Autonomen Though the revolutionary potential of the Italian Autonomia in the 1970s died down, their vibrance, confidence and empowerment was an inspiration to young people in West Germany in the 1980s. Inspired also by the Amsterdam squatters' movements and youth organization in Switzerland, young Germans in Berlin, Hamburg and other major cities began building their own autonomous culture and social groups based upon radical resistance and alternative ways of life. The direction and composition of radical organization in West Germany in the 1980s was partly determined by the reigning economic recession and the forms it took. Because of the well established connections between industrial unions and the German government, the effects of this recession were felt not so much by blue collar workers, but by young people who found it increasingly impossible to secure jobs and housing and thereby move out of their parents' home and become socially and financially independent. Therefore points for autonomous youth mobilization included the stifling conformity of rural German society and the nuclear family, serious housing shortages, high unemployment--as well as the continued illegal status of abortion and government plans for a massive expansion of nuclear power. As a result of economic recession and flight to the suburbs, at the end of the 1970s huge tracts of buildings in different German inner cities, especially West Berlin, lay abandoned by developers or government agencies. Squatting these buildings was a viable option for impoverished young people looking for independence from the nuclear family home. Vibrant squatters' communities grew up in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, the Haffenstrasse squats of Hamburg and in other concentration points. The cornerstone of these communities was communal living, and the creation of radical social centers: infoshops, bookstores, coffeehouses, meeting halls, bars, concert halls, art galleries, and other multi-use spaces where grassroots political, artistic and social culture were developed as an alternative to nuclear family life, TV dreams and mass-produced pop culture. >From these safe social spaces grew major grassroots initiatives to fight nuclear power; to break down patriarchy and gender roles; to show solidarity with oppressed people throughout the world by attacking the European-based multinational corporations or financial institutions like the World Bank; and after German reunification, to fight the rising tide of conservative neo-Nazism. Similar initiatives for alternative living as resistance were percolating in the 1980s (and in some places much earlier) in Holland, Denmark and elsewhere throughout northern Europe. Eventually all of these northern Europeans living in decentralized social groups dedicated to creating a non-coercive, non-hierarchical society became collectively labeled as "Autonomen." Over time the autonomists' ideas and tactics also migrated throughout the reunited post-Iron Curtain Europe. I personally have visited radical autonomous social centers in England, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. Hardline Oppression, Militant Resistance, And the Origins of the Black Bloc From the beginning the West German state did not take kindly to young Autonomen, whether they were occupying nuclear power plant building sites or unused apartment buildings. In the winter of 1980 the Berlin city government decided to take a hardline against the thousands of young people living in squats throughout the city: they decided to criminalize, attack and evict them into the cold winter streets. This was a much more shocking and unusual action in Germany than it would be in the U.S., and created much popular disgust and condemnation of the police and government. >From December 1980 on there was an escalating cycle of mass arrests, street fighting, and new squatting in Berlin and throughout Germany. The Autonomen were not to be cowed, and each eviction was responded to with several new building occupations. When squatters in the south German city of Freiburg were mass arrested, rallies and demonstrations supporting them and condemning the police state's eviction policy took place in every major city in Germany. In Berlin on that day, later dubbed "Black Friday," upwards of 15,000 to 20,000 people took to the streets and destroyed an upper class shopping area.(1) This was the seething cauldron of oppression and resistance from which the Black Bloc was birthed. In late 1981 the German government began legalizing certain squats in an attempt to divide the counterculture and marginalize more radical segments. But these tactics were slow to pacify the popular radical movement--especially since the period of 1980-81 had seen not only a brutal treatment of squatters but also the largest police mobilization in Germany since the reign of the third Reich in order to attack non-violent, sitting protesters at the "Free Republic of Wendland," an encampment of 5000 activists blocking the construction of the Gorleben nuclear waste dump.(2) Even formerly ardent pacifists had been radicalized by the experience of sustained, violent police oppression against diverse squats and activist occupations. In response to violent state oppression radical activists developed the tactic of the Black Bloc: they went to protests and marches wearing black motorcycle helmets and ski masks and dressing in uniform black clothing (or, for the most prepared, wearing padding and steel-toed boots and bringing their own shields and truncheons). In Black Bloc, autonomen and other radicals could more effectively fend off police attacks, without being singled out as individuals for arrest and harassment later on. And, as everyone quickly figured out, having a massive group of people all dressed the same with their faces covered not only helps in defending against the police, but also makes it easier for saboteurs to take the offensive against storefronts, banks and any other material symbols and power centers of capitalism and the state. Masking up as a Black Bloc encouraged popular participation in public property destruction and violence against the state and capitalism. In this way the Black Bloc is a form of militance that mitigates the problematic dichotomy between popularly executed non-violent civil disobedience and elite, secretive guerilla terrorism and sabotage. Autonomen Black Bloc Accomplishments Black Blocs, Autonomen militance, and popular resistance to the police-state and the New World Order spread among European youth in the 1980s. Though Dutch radicals did not begin calling themselves "Autonomen" until around 1986, earlier Dutch counterculture activists shared tactics, organizing structures and militancy with self-proclaimed autonomists. Holland's squatting movement really got started around 1968, and by 1981 more then 10,000 houses and apartments were squatted in Amsterdam, and there were around 15,000 squats in the rest of Holland. Squatted restaurants, bars, cafes, and information centers were commonplace, and the organized squatters (usually referred to as "kraakers") had their own council to plan the movement's direction and their own newsradio station.(3) Although some Dutch autonomists rejected wearing ski masks while in Black Bloc(4), the movement was no less militant. One book about the Dutch squatters movement reports that "Ever since the beginning there had been a 'black helmet brigade' which felt it had joined battle with municipal social democracy."(5) Battles at the evictions of Amsterdam squats often featured the construction of huge barricades and walled-in squatters tossing furniture and other projectiles of all shapes and sizes out the window at riot police below. In the early years there were certain limits to the violence which Dutch squatters would use to retaliate against police attacks. However in 1985 when a squatter named Hans Kok died in police custody after being arrested during a particularly brutal raid and eviction, the ante was upped. Following the news of his death a night of fiery destruction reigned in Amsterdam, with even police cars set on fire in front of many different precincts. Said one squatter: "Everyone had the idea, now we'll use the ultimate means, just before guns anyway: mollies...Everyone went around with mollies in their pockets, everyone had full gasoline cans...it was the new action method."(6) Though Hans Kok's death and the fiery retribution that followed had a negative effect on the popular squatters' movement, the new militancy of tactics proved useful in some activist circles. In 1985 the Dutch Anti-Racist Action Group (RARA) mounted a successful campaign to force the Dutch supermarket chain MARKO to divest from South Africa: the campaign was accomplished through a series of extremely expensive and damaging firebombings of MARKO's stores and offices.(7) In Germany in 1986 mounting police attacks and attempted evictions against a complex of squatted houses in Hamburg called the Haffenstrasse were met with the counteroffensive of a 10,000 person march surrounding at least 1500 people in a Black Bloc, carrying a huge banner that read, "Build Revolutionary Dual Power!" At the march's end, the Black Bloc was able to successfully engage in street fighting that put the police on the retreat. On the following day fires were set in 13 department stores in Hamburg, causing nearly $10 million in damage.(8) That same year, the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant brought new militance to demonstrations against nuclear power plants under construction in Germany. Once account of these anti-nuclear demonstrations reported, "In scenes resembling 'civil war,' helmeted, leather-clad troops of the anarchist Autonomen armed with slingshots, Molotov cocktails and flare guns clashed brutally with the police, who employed water cannons, helicopters and CS gas (officially banned for use against civilians."(9) In June of 1987 when Ronald Reagan came to Berlin, around 50,000 people demonstrated in the streets against this Cold War-mongering old man, including a 3000 person Black Bloc.(10) A couple of months later police antagonism against the Haffenstrasse intensified again. In November 1987 residents and thousands of other Autonomen fortified the complex, built barricades in the streets and fought off police for nearly 24 hours. In the end the city chose to legalize the squatters' residence.(11) Over ten years before Seattle and the American WTO protests, the Autonomen mobilized a similar event with a greater number of resisters. In September of 1988, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund met in Berlin. Autonomen used this meeting as a focal point for worldwide resistance to global corporate capitalism and government's destruction of grassroots autonomy and community. Thousands of activists from throughout Europe and the U.S. were mobilized, and 80,000 protesters met the bankers (at least 30,000 more than in Seattle).(12) The totally outnumbered police and private security at the event attempted to maintain order by banning all demonstrations and brutally attacking any public assembly, but riots still ravaged fashionable upper class shopping areas (as was tradition). Pre-Seattle Black Blocs In the U.S.A. In November of 1999 the Black Bloc tactic seemed new to many Americans partly because the actions and ideas of the autonomist movement in Europe were mostly blacked out of the American media and have been barely written about at all in English. However, ignorance of the Black Bloc also stems from the fact that most Americans get news of domestic events from a corporate-controlled media that ignores any happenings that don't fit their view and purposes, and which represents every event that takes place as singular spectacle disconnected from past and future, to be forgotten in a blur even when it is only a few months old. Radicals in the U.S. have never been totally ignorant of the actions and ideas of European autonomists, and the development of the punk rock subculture in the U.S. throughout the 1980s in many ways mirrored that of the autonomists. By the beginning of the 1990's anarchists and other radicals in the U.S. were masking up at marches and protests to build solidarity and create anonymity for militants. When the Gulf War was going one protest in the streets of Washington D.C. included a Black Bloc that smashed in the windows of the World Bank building. That same year on Columbus Day in San Francisco a Black Bloc showed up to help show militant resistance to the continuing genocide of North American domination by Europeans.(13) Personally, the largest Black Bloc that I've ever seen was at the Millions March For Mumia in Philadelphia in April of 1999. I'd say there were at least 500 dressed in Black, masked up, and carrying banners such as "Vegans For Mumia." Though there was no street fighting and no particularly noticeable property destruction, some kids did manage to get into a parking garage along the march route, climb to the roof and wave the black flag. The Global Future of the Black Mask The symbol of the black-masked autonomist militant has spread to the third world as well. As the North American Free Trade Agreement's destructive neo-liberalalizing economic policies took effect on January 1st, 1994, a guerilla uprising took place in Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico. The uprising sought to create space for the development of autonomous social organization among downtrodden Mayan indigenous peoples. The armed wing of this struggle for community autonomy and direct democracy without coercion or hierarchy has been and continues to be the Zapatistas, men and women who wear black balaclavas (similar to ski masks) whenever they appear in public. Many autonomists and anarchists have visited and tried to help them in their struggles with knowledge, money, materials and by building inernational awareness and solidarity of the situation in Chiapas. Back in Germany, the Autonomen are seeing dark days. It is said that in the past squatters held at least 165 large, five-story apartment buildings in eastern Berlin, but by late 1997 only 3 remained.(14) Legalizing some squats while brutally evicting others has been an effective policy for the police state. Many people living in legalized squats are unwilling to rock the boat by encouraging or expressing solidarity with militant tactics practiced by other squatters, and this marginalization makes it easier for the squatters to lose out in street-fighting against an increasingly militarized police force. The resurgence of neo-Nazism in what once was East Germany and other areas of the country has meant no end of troubles for German Autonomen. They face violence and death from neo-Nazi attacks, especially in most of eastern Germany which neo-Nazi gangs police as a "no-punk, no-foreigner zone." Massive amounts of Autonomen time and effort goes into organizing to oppose the spread of neo-Nazism, but this means neglecting the tasks of developing new viable alternatives to authoritarian society, one of the main original goals of autonomists. "Antifa" or anti-fascist organizing brings the Autonomen into more and more violent confrontations with the German police, who basically support neo-Nazi groups and their nationalist, racist ideologies--when individual police officers aren't directly involved with fascist groups. Rumour has it that many militants in areas of northern Europe where the Black Bloc was a common demonstration tactic have been increasingly given it up, as it has ceased to serve its purpose. The forces of state repression have caught on, and use ever greater technological, legal and physical force to observe, isolate, pursue and target those involved in Black Blocs. A similar process is taking place in the U.S., with a resurgence of COINTELPRO-style tactics aimed at radicals who oppose the global capitalist-statist American empire. Whether the Black Bloc continues as a tactic or is abandoned, it certainly has served its purpose. In certain places and times the Black Bloc effectively empowered people to take action in collective solidarity against the violence of state and capitalism. It is important that we neither cling to it nostalgically as an outdated ritual or tradition, nor reject it wholesale because it sometimes seems inappropriate. Rather we should continue working pragmatically to fulfill our individual needs and desires through various tactics and objectives, as they are appropriate at the specific moment. Masking up in Black Bloc has its time and place, as do other tactics which conflict with it. 1. Katsiaficas, George. The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements And The Decolonization of Everyday Life. New Jersey: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1997, p. 91. 2. Katsiaficas, p. 82 3. Katsiaficas, p. 116 4. Katsiaficas, p. 116. 5. ADILKNO. Cracking The Movement: Squatting Beyond the Media. Trans. Laura Martz. New York: Autonomedia, 1990. p. 25. 6. ADILKNO, 123 7. Katsiaficas, 119. 8. Katsiaficas, 128. 9. Katsiaficas, 211. 10. Katsiaficas, 131. 11. Katsiaficas, 130. 12. Katsiaficas, 131. 13. Mid-Atlantic Infoshop. "Black Bloc For Dummies." <http://www.infoshop.org/blackbloc.html> 14. Thompson, A. Clay. "Street Battles--German Squatters Squeezed to Near Extinction." <http:www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/3.21/971014-squatters.html> =================================================================== The Phony President <http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0210-02.htm> by Barbara Ehrenreich Published in the February 2001 issue of The Progressive In the tradition of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes, there is now the President Who Doesn't Have Quite Enough Votes. The Miami Herald is estimating that Bush will come out 20,000 votes short in Florida when the press recount is finished, making him the first President in American history to win neither the popular vote nor the bizarro, archaic, Electoral College vote. So you have a choice: You can be rude. You can put on one of those "Reelect Gore in '04" bumper stickers. You can start sniggering about how the band ought to play "Hail to the Thief." Or you can try to make a courteous adjustment. We may not have a President, but we certainly have a "president," so let's try to make the most of it. True, it takes a little getting used to. All through the long, dismal campaign, everyone remarked on how "real" W. seemed compared to the congenitally phony Gore, a man who cannot say "pass the salt" without evincing the painful facial exertions of a liar at work. W., with his jaunty stride and trademark Alfred E. Neumann smile, won praise for looking "warm" and "genuine," while Al looked like a fellow whose doctors never could get the lithium dose quite right. Yet the outcome of the election, or should we say "selection"?--is that the "phony" Gore is now a "real" loser, and the "real" W. is only a phony President. Odd, too, that one of the purposes of the unseemly rush to declare someone, anyone, President, regardless of the actual vote count, was precisely to preserve the "legitimacy of our democratic process." Very early on in the sporadic Florida recount process, the chin-strokers on CNN started to fret that if the recounting dragged on too long, Americans might begin to doubt the infallibility of our institutions and even our system. In much the same spirit, a state will often execute some poor fellow, despite the discovery of exculpatory evidence, because, hey, the electric chair's already plugged in and any appearance of hesitation might call into question the infallibility of our criminal justice system. No dithering! That's the American way. Fry 'em, bomb 'em, beam 'em into the Oval Office, and let God sort out the evidence. I should mention parenthetically that there is at least one tragic difference between an overly hasty execution and a circumvented election: The executed person is no longer with us and is all too quickly forgotten, while the not-actually-elected person can be expected to live for four years or even longer. In the one case, a life of "crime" is abruptly ended; in the other, it's given an enabling boost. But enough whining! Let's get constructive here and try to figure out, among other things, the etiquette of the situation. For example, when addressing George W., will it be necessary to raise both hands and make quote marks with one's index and middle fingers while uttering the words "Mr. President"? Should anchorpersons refer to him as the "so-called President," or is the "quote-President" marginally more respectful? One thing seems clear already: Other nations will not have to send their actual heads-of-state to meet with him. Any third-generation ex-pat czarina will do. Here's a weightier question: Do the quote marks now extend to the federal government itself? Can a "president" preside over an actual government, or should his jurisdiction be considered only a "government"? Here we turn to no less an expert than W. himself, who has sent numerous signals that the government he will be running should not be taken too seriously. How else to interpret his assertion that Social Security is not a federal program, or his recent playful reference to HUD as the "Department of Housing and Human Development"? Then there's that tax cut. By renouncing the power of taxation, in fact, persisting in his proposal for a $1.6 trillion tax cut, W. is clearly signaling that ours is just a "government." Other, far deeper questions come into play: Can a population headed by a "president" be considered a bona fide nation, or is it only a "nation," as in the magazine or the Nation of Islam? During the recount process, the phrase "banana republic" was batted around, suggesting that the USA had become something less than an actual nation, perhaps an overpriced clothing chain. Once you start chipping away at the "legitimacy of our system," you are well along the way to the kind of looking-glass world occupied by Nicholas Cage in The Family Man. Who are you, really? What are you doing here, and why are you doing it? Finally, the question that Al Gore and his lawyers are probably pondering right now: Can a "president" be impeached? In this case, probably not, since he will always be able to fall back on the argument that he was not actually elected, and hence that the only legitimate impeach-ee is Al Gore himself. Should W. commit any high crimes or misdemeanors, you can expect to see Al go to jail for him, with the Supreme Court's hearty approval. After all, W. is just impersonating a president, which is no crime at all, look at all those Reagan masks. And speaking of masks, there was serious discussion about having the inauguration blast be, for the first time in history, a masked ball. The Secret Service nixed the plan, but why not? Be what you want to be"Pope," "Napoleon," "Hillary," "President." Reality is for losers (or winners, depending on how many of the votes you bother to count). So get into the spirit of it! Don't pay taxes in April; just send the IRS a bill. All that time you wasted watching campaign coverage and following the recount process should now be considered billable hours. You took the election seriously, earnest soul that you are, and deserve to be paid for playing the role of "citizen" in the drama that led to our first American "president." =================================================================== The Resurgence of Citizens' Movements by Paul Hawken We are beginning a mythic period of existence, rather like the age portrayed in the Bhagavad Gita, in The Lord of the Rings, and in other tales of darkness and light. We live in a time in which every living system is in decline, and the rate of decline is accelerating as our economy grows. The commercial processes that bring us the kind of lives we supposedly desire are destroying the earth and the life we cherish. Given current corporate practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global market economy. We are losing our forests, fisheries, coral reefs, topsoil,water, biodiversity, and climatic stability. The land, sea, and air have been functionally transformed from life-supporting systems into repositories for waste. Feeling the momentum of loss at the beginning of a new century, one wants to close one's eyes. Yet that is the very thing that will bring forth ruin. I believe in rain, in odd miracles, in the intelligence that allows terns and swallows to find their way across the planet. And I believe that we are capable of creating a remarkable future for humankind. In the United States, more than 30,000 citizens' groups,nongovernmental organizations, and foundations are addressing the issue of social and ecological sustainability in the most complete sense of the word. Worldwide, their number exceeds 100,000. Together, they address a broad array of issues, including environmental justice, ecological literacy, public policy, conservation, women's rights and health, population growth, renewable energy, corporate reform, labor rights, climate change, trade rules, ethical investing, ecological tax reform, water conservation, and much more. These groups follow Gandhi's imperatives: Some resist, others create new structures, patterns, and means. The groups tend to be local, marginal, poorly funded, and overworked. It is hard for most groups not to feel justified anxiety that they could perish in a twinkling. At the same time, a deeper, extraordinary pattern is emerging. If you ask these groups for their principles, frameworks, conventions, models, or declarations, you will find that they do not conflict. Never before in history has this happened. In the past, movements that became powerful started with a unified or centralized set of ideas (Marxism, Christianity, Freudianism) and disseminated them, creating power struggles over time as the core mental model or dogma was changed, diluted, or revised. This new sustainability movement did not start this way. Its supporters do not agree on everything-nor should they-but remarkably, they share a basic set of fundamental understandings about the earth, how it functions, and the necessity of fairness and equity for all people in partaking of its life-giving systems. This shared understanding is arising spontaneously from different economic sectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts. And it is spreading throughout this country and the world. No one started this worldview, no one is in charge of it, no orthodoxy is restraining it. I believe it is the fastest-growing and most powerful movement in the world today, unrecognizable to the American media because it is not centralized, based on power, or led by charismatic white males. As external conditions continue to worsen socially, environmentally, and politically, organizations working toward sustainability multiply and gain more supporters. We will never recover what we have lost. It will take 5 million years to restore the diversity of lost species. Nevertheless, in 50 years we can begin the very necessary work of restoration. We can begin to reduce carbon in the atmosphere; recharge aquifers; bring back lands that have been taken by deserts; create habitat corridors for buffalo, panthers, and gray wolves; and thicken our paper-thin topsoil. What is possible in 50 years is a world that is wonderfully messy and deliriously creative. It doesn't fit a single scenario written anywhere by anyone. As for the United States, it will not be a country defined by technologies, measured in money, or summarized by demographics. It will be, perforce, a country in a world defined by the acts of restoring life on Earth-dancing, donning costumes, singing, performing rituals, enjoying magic, praying, worshiping, and playing. This is the work of carefully reconstituting what has been lost by creating conditions conducive to life.In 50 years, America will be a culture whose industrial materials cause no damage to anyone, on the short term or the long term; it will be a society that emulates the design brilliance of nature, which we have yet to fully appreciate. The great work of this era will be extraordinary for defining its goals not solely in terms of a decade or even a century, but of millennia. The American people will have thrown off the tyranny of compressive time, coercive work, and erosive competition. It will be a country still rent by massive discontinuities as the momentum of today's world extends far into the future, but it will be a country that is connected, aware, and committed to the future. It will be an America that can see, and can see that it knows all it needs to know to sustain and honor life. That alone will distinguish it from where we are today. ---- Paul Hawken is the author (with Hunter and Amory Lovins) of Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution and The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. =================================================================== February 9, 2001 Report: Special forces spied on crowds during Olympics SYDNEY, Australia (AP) _ The government admitted Thursday that troops from an elite Australian special forces unit spied on crowds at the Sydney Olympics _ and that the Cabinet did not initially know about it. The embarrassing admission followed revelations in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that crack troops of the Special Air Service (SAS) regiment were assigned to 15 undercover intelligence teams that mingled with crowds at the Olympics last September on security duties, an apparent violation of defense regulations. The newspaper cited confidential Defense Department documents which said the teams should, ``conduct activities such as maintaining a discreet presence within the general public at key venues to report activities which may cause a chance in the security situation.'' The Herald reported that then-Defense Minister John Moore did not know about the undercover operation until a senior officer found out about it and told a Cabinet official. The government's National Security Committee met during the games and allowed the covert surveillance to continue. Late Thursday, the government admitted it had not approved the deployment until midway through the games. ``Ministerial approval was not sought beforehand because of an oversight and it should have been,'' a government spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. ``Once the matter was brought to the government's attention approval for this support was given and ended at the conclusion of the games.'' Earlier, Defense Department spokesman Colin Blair dismissed claims that the minister's office was not aware of the operations, saying it was all made public last year. Defense chief Adm. Chris Barrie issued a statement in September saying his department was contributing over 4,000 defense and civilian staff to work on the games in ``Operation Gold,'' including in ``information collection'' and analysis. Opposition defense spokesman Stephen Martin said Prime Minister John Howard and new Defense Minister Peter Reith must explain the deployment. ``There is no doubt that Adm. Barrie I'm sure was acting in the best interests of all Australians and our international visitors here for the Olympics,'' Martin said. ``But there are rules, rules of engagement and rules about the use of Australian troops. Clearly this government was kept in the dark and we need an explanation as to why that was allowed to happen,'' he said. Under Australia's Defense Act, troops can be used to help police in normal duties, but they must wear uniforms and should only be deployed where there is ``no likelihood'' they will have to use force. The government spokesman played down the troops' role. ``They were not armed and they had no more rights than an ordinary citizen,'' he said. ``Essentially they were walking around keeping an eye out for trouble spots.'' But Green Party Sen. Bob Brown slammed the troops' use. ``This is just not on,'' Brown said. ``It is an encouragement to the military to increase its intervention in civil matters.'' =================================================================== February 6, 2001 Church to Be Seized for Unpaid Taxes <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/06/national/06CHUR.html> By JOHN W. FOUNTAIN INDIANAPOLIS, Feb. 5 — The watchmen inside the Indianapolis Baptist Temple slapped cards into the night. "Bang, that's good stuff right there," said David Hill, 38, as a Draw 2 Uno card hit a coffee-stained folding table. "Uno!" announced one of Mr. Hill's card-playing church brothers moments before laying down his final card in victory. Then there was the clumsy after- midnight reshuffling of the deck, the emphatic unfolding of yet another hand of Uno, the cracking of sunflower seeds. Gregory A. Dixon, the church's pastor, sat nearby sipping a cup of cappuccino and downing his second doughnut of the evening. "You know how much NyQuil I'm going to have to take tonight to counteract this thing?" Mr. Dixon, 45, said, half laughing. The men laughed, settling in for another long night at their church. The midnight card game at Baptist Temple has been played and replayed for nearly three months now inside the cramped office on the second floor of the brick church. Church members began the vigil on Nov. 14, after a federal district judge ordered that they hand over the property to the federal government because they owed millions of dollars for failing to withhold income taxes from the wages of about 60 employees from 1987 to 1993. Federal officials have said the church's tax bill is $5.9 million, including penalties and interest. The church maintains that the payments to workers were gifts, not wages, but Mr. Dixon added that the workers had paid the Social Security and Medicare taxes normally paid by an employer. The church also rejects any connection to the government, defies laws on tax withholding and refuses tax-exempt status and any government money for ministry- outreach programs it runs. "I don't want my conservative tax dollars to go for liberal causes, and I don't want liberal tax dollars to go to my conservative causes," Mr. Dixon told his congregation at a service Sunday night. "We just want to be left alone to do what God has called us to do," he said. Mr. Dixon says the vigil is being maintained so there will be someone in the church at any hour to peacefully resist a federal takeover. United States Marshals Service officials would not comment on what they planned to do. Over the last few months, the imminent seizure of the church has drawn supporters from across the country. Many are conservative Christians, and they also see this case as a test of religious freedom. They began arriving in November to help keep the vigil with prayers, rallies and the making of T-shirts and placards for what the church has called Operation Occupy 2000. But what began with an outpouring of a thousand supporters and members on Nov. 14 has now diminished, leaving only the church faithful. They continue to hold on, despite the the United States Supreme Court's refusal last month to hear the case, and the absence of tangible answers to their prayers for relief. As the last of the clergy and nearly all other out-of-state supporters returned home late last week, Mr. Dixon and the church's members have been left to contemplate what some here say may be their final days in a church where many of them and their children were baptized. For some, it is the death of a church that for more than 50 years has ministered to Indianapolis, a church that Mr. Dixon's father, Gregory J. Dixon, now pastor emeritus, still hopes will prevail. After the father's four- bedroom home, a parsonage where he reared his three children, was seized in November, he moved into the basement of his son's home. For the past few weeks, he has slept in a room inside the church. On Day 83, the elder Mr. Dixon, 68, said his prayer was for "compassionate conservatism." It is after midnight. Inside the church, the hundreds who had kept a vigil here have gone. Gone too are the local paramilitary groups, Ku Klux Klan members and skinheads who showed up to offer their support and resistance to any effort by marshals to seize the church. That kind of support was something that Mr. Dixon publicly denounced, saying his church was seeking a peaceful resolution from God. The lobby, once filled with reporters, is empty except for three older men, sitting in chairs, keeping watch in front of the locked glass doors. No one tonight has even seen the "church mouse," a friendly gray rodent who crawled out of his hole to be hand-fed by a television cameraman. A bullhorn rests atop a small wooden table, near two Bibles and a half-eaten bag of pork rinds. The smell of coffee rises in the cool air like the men's chatter. The church has vowed not to use force to resist a seizure. In fact, the church members' protocol upon the appearance of any marshals is to lock the doors; anyone in the church is to go to the sanctuary to pray, and then allow themselves to be carried out in prayer, if their God deems it so. But on a cinder block wall in the basement of the church school that was shuttered in November are the prayers and hopes of the church's children scribbled in colored markers. One reads: "I hope you don't take this building away." =================================================================== We'll create GM humans by 2020, says researcher Daily Telegraph By Roger Highfield, Science Editor, in Lyons Friday 9 February 2001 MAN will take charge of his own evolution within a few decades, when it will be possible to produce genetically modified people safely and predictably, according to the director of the United States National Human Genome Research Institute. Prof Francis Collins said humans are made up of fewer genes than was previously thought and by 2020 it will be possible to create GM humans with reasonable safety by "germ line gene therapy". Within another decade, this would lead to a "chilling debate" about whether humans should alter their own biology. Prof Collins, one of the senior figure in the global effort to unravel the secrets of the human genetic code, was addressing senior scientists and politicians at the World Life Sciences Forum in Lyons. He predicted that, within a decade, most common disease genes would be known, general practitioners would begin to use genetic medicine, and widespread debate would be triggered by the use of pre-implantation diagnosis - where embryos can be screened for disease before implantation. Prof Collins forecast that by 2020 it would be possible to tailor drugs to suit an individual's genetic make-up to ensure that they do not cause side- effects, to design a cancer therapy to combat individual tumours in a patient and to make big advances in treating mental illness. "We are certainly close to understanding hereditary contributions to mental illness, to schizophrenia, to obsessive compulsive disorder, to autism, in a way that should lead us at last to a better biological understanding of the vexing problems and perhaps an opportunity to stop blaming the victims and treat them as victims of a disease that deserves compassion and better opportunities for therapy." He believes that by 2020 it will be possible to repair genes before they are passed to the next generation. "I wouldn't be surprised if in another 30 years some people will begin to argue that we ought to take charge of our own evolution and should not be satisfied with our current biological status." However, he added: "I find this an interesting but somewhat chilling discussion. I think from my own perspective that is an enterprise that I hope we would not undertake for a long time, if ever." But Prof Collins gave a warning against genetic determinism, the mistaken belief that all human characteristics can be boiled down to DNA so that people are merely "robots that are controlled by invisible signals from our DNA sequences". He said: "Understanding the human genome will not take away the concept of free will. Understanding the human genome will not help us very much to understand the spiritual side of humankind, or to know who God is or what love is." The professor underlined this by explaining the perils of using genetics to enhance traits, given the profound influence of environment on behaviour. He described the example of rich parents who hoped to produce a baby genetically enhanced to be artistic and musical but ended up with "a sullen adolescent who smokes marijuana and doesn't talk to them". At the same time, computer simulations of human cells would be used in medical research to replace animal experiments, and the average human lifespan - in the developed world - would probably stretch to 90. There are a "number of significant surprises" in the forthcoming human genetic code analysis, which will be published in Science and Nature next week in 36 papers. He said: "We don't have as many genes as we thought we did." The analysis will be a "milestone of the highest order", said Prof Collins. He added that the finished human genetic sequence would be published in 2003. =================================================================== "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 ====================================================== "The world is my country, all mankind my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -Thomas Paine ______________________________________________________________ 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
