UNDERNEWS Sam Smith August 31, 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 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. 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 ---------------------------------------------------------- THE MEDIACRATS A good test of media quality is to check out what they say about your own hometown. If they can't get that right, how can they possibly understand Moscow or Jakarta? As a Washington native I get a lot of practice in this -- especially reading the New York Times, which regular mangles descriptions of the local city, and the Washington Post, whose reporters often seem to be on foreign assignment when writing about DC. In July, the NYT sent a foreign correspondent to the locale of the Review's summer headquarters, Casco Bay, Maine, with similar disastrous results, proving once again that the paper is not to be trusted abroad. Daisann McLane was, in best Manhattan fashion, so busy reading menus and price tags that she never actually got to see the place. Here, for example, is her description of one of the most beautiful stretches of water in America: "The Atlantic Ocean was out there, beyond the boats, but it was a rough, industrial Atlantic, not a vista you'd want to put on a postcard." She goes on a tour of Portland and ends up eating cheesecake with her guide: "'Izzy's cheesecake is the best in Portland,' he said, but quickly cautioned me that, as a New Yorker, I might have 'issues.' And I did: it had a good flavor, not too sweet, but it was overly creamy." Our sophisticated correspondent also found the clam chowder too creamy and referred to Maine's classic as "the old-fashioned side of Portland cuisine." On the other hand, "the more contemporary restaurants, like David's take standards like crab cakes and rework them into delicate light meditations on the classic theme. My endive salad, appetizer and char-grilled salmon betrayed an intelligent hand in the kitchen of the sort that you find at the better New York restaurants, for half as much as in New York." While she says a cruise around the islands is essential it apparently isn't as interesting as the cost of a hotel room or the amount of cream in the chowder. She skips lightly over the subject, referring in passing to the "quirky gardens" on one island she visited. The only person ever to go to Maine for its endive salad then visited Freeport, never leaving the main street's notorious outlet strip for nearby attractions including one of the best protected harbors on the coast and a highly popular waterfront eatery where the lobsters travel only feet from boat to plate. Still she declared that Freeport a town where the food was "awful" and "there were no fishermen, no docks, no lobsters ... and no trace of ocean smell." This didn't bother her too much for, after all, not only had she found a New York quality restaurant but she had "washed up in a safe harbor, where the sheets were clean and discounts deep." Transfer this sort of uninformed and jingoistic reportage to Kosovo and one has a serious problem. Maine, of course, takes it in stride. A Mainer, when told that "you sure have a lot of characters up here," replied, "Yup, but most of them go home around Labor Day." KOSOVO SOUTH? AGENCE FRANCE PRESS: US anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey has informally urged Latin leaders to organize a military intervention force to pacify Colombia, a Peruvian TV newscast reported Sunday .... Frecuencia Latina -- a station that has close ties with the Peruvian military intelligence service, SIN -- reported that the multinational force would intervene in early 2000 acting on a request by Colombian President Andres Pastrana. The Colombian government denied the reports, with Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez de Soto denouncing them .... At every stop of his recent Latin tour McCaffrey publicly denied plans for any direct US intervention in Colombia. Top US State Department officials have also forcefully denied plans for a US military intervention in Colombia. WACO MASSACRE LEE HANCOCK, DALLAS MORNING NEWS: A Waco federal prosecutor wrote Attorney General Janet Reno on Monday to warn that "individuals or components within the Department of Justice" may have long withheld evidence from her and the public about the FBI's use of pyrotechnic grenades on the day the Branch Davidian compound burned. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Johnston said he felt compelled to warn Ms. Reno after he was given a 5-year-old document that discusses the use of "military gas" by the FBI on April 19, 1993. He said he was concerned because the document, a three-page set of notes detailing an interview with members of the FBI's hostage rescue team, included handwritten notations suggesting that it be kept from anyone outside the department's legal staff. DALLAS MORNING NEWS http://www.dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/0831tsw1waco.htm COME WITH US NOW THROUGH THE PAGES OF HISTORY .... When Hillary Rodham Clinton's third and final choice for Attorney General was put in place, Janet Reno soon discovered the A.G. de facto was Mrs. Clinton's Arkansas law partner, Webster Hubbell: in the aftermath of the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco, Tex., it was the trusted Associate Attorney General Hubbell, not Reno, whom the White House consulted. The moment that revealed the distance between the third-choice A.G. and the President came when she told Tom Brokaw she was unable to talk to Bill Clinton immediately after the suicidal fire; instead, Webb Hubbell was the point of contact. -- William Safire, New York Times, June 20, 1993 Hubbell clearly is the chief link between Justice and the White House. He was in constant contact with Foster on Apr. 19, during the fiery end of the Waco crisis. And his ties with the other Rose alumni run deep. Hubbell, Foster, and Hillary -- all commercial litigators -- lunched together regularly, shared an avid interest in politics, and once invested their bonuses together in an unsuccessful partnership. Foster, 48, often covered for Clinton when she campaigned for her husband .... Those who know the Rose alumni say they're unlikely to abuse their new power." -- Business Week, May 24, 1993 FOSTER DEATH One of the mysteries of the Vincent Foster death is how many Hondas there were in the parking lot at Ft. Marcy Park. On July 20, 1993 between the hours of 4:30 p.m. and 6:05 p.m, there is a record of six witnesses -- Jennifer Wacha, Judith Doody, Mark Fiest, Todd Hall, Patrick Knowlton and George Gonzalez -- having seen an older brown Honda within the Fort Marcy parking lot, parked in the same spot where Mr. Foster's car was later found. Inasmuch as Mr. Foster's Honda was silver/gray and much newer than the brown Honda described by the witnesses, and inasmuch as Mr. Foster was dead by 4:30, how is it that Mr. Foster's car arrived in the park after he was already dead? Also at issue: if Foster drove himself to the park, why were car keys not found at the scene but only discovered later in his pocket at the morgue? Now Clinton scandal independent investigator Allan Favish adds this information: "I spoke with Dale Miller, the person who apparently is the guy who put Foster's gray Honda Accord, as he described it, on a flatbed truck the evening of Foster's death. He said that he took the car to the Park Police Headquarters or the Anacostia stations, he doesn't remember which. He said there was no broken glass or damage to the car. He said he did not tow it to the CIA. He said it was still light out when he got to the park and there was one police officer in a cruiser there. He said the police officer followed him to the destination, which Miller said was standard procedure. He also said there were no keys for the Honda and there was evidence tape around the car. He also said that he doesn't think anybody could look at that car and say it was brown." Incidentally, the comment about the CIA conflicts with a much earlier report by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph which stated: "Up to now there has been nothing to link the agency to Foster's death, but the Telegraph has a tape-recorded exchange involving two of the staff at Raley's Towing, the company that towed Foster's car to the Park Police headquarters after his death. A driver can be heard in the background saying that Foster's car was taken to the CIA. 'That would have gone to Park Police headquarters,' said one of the staff, when asked about Foster's Honda. 'No, it went to the CIA and then went to headquarters,' said the driver. 'Oh, it went to CIA first?' Raley's Towing refuses to elaborate. In fact, it now says that it will divulge information only if compelled under a subpoena. So we do not know why they made this excursion to the CIA." AMERICAN INDICATORS -- Ratio of executive pay to that of a factory worker in 1980: 42 t 1 -- Ratio of executive pay to that of a factory worker in 1998: 419 to 1 -- Annual pay of a factory worker if it had kept pace with executive salaries: $110,000 [Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy] LAND OF THE FREE LA TIMES: It was an hour before midnight when an El Monte police SWAT team, serving a search warrant as part of a broad-ranging narcotics investigation, undertook what it called the "high-risk entry" of a Compton home--shooting the locks off the front and back doors. Their warrant, which named no one in the Paz home, says police expected to find marijuana and cash belonging to a suspected member of a drug ring who had allegedly used the house as a mail drop. They found no drugs, but in the course of the search they shot a retired grandfather twice in the back--killing him. The widow was hustled out of the house in nothing but panties, a towel and plastic handcuffs. She and six others were later taken away and intensively interrogated, but no one was charged. BILLINGS GAZETTE (MONTANA): Believing that the National Cattleman's Beef Association was acting against their interests, and that the federal government was violating their civil liberties by forcing them to associate with the NCBA, the Steve and Jeanne Charter refused to pay a fee which federal law requires all beef producers to pay. Barry Carpenter, a high ranking USDA official responsible for enforcing the law, said in a recent hearing that the department could fine the Charters $1.8 million for refusing to pay! Instead, the government is "only" seeking $12,000 in penalties .... The Charter case raises important constitutional issues. If the Charters' prevail, their case could significantly change the way the beef check-off program operates and set an important precedent protecting our freedom of association. The Charter's primary complaint is that the federal government is forcing them to fund a private organization whose policies they vehemently disagree with .... The NCBA, they believe, has consistently aligned itself with the economic interests of the meat packers and other transnational food corporations against the economic interests of farmers and ranchers and rural communities. BILLINGS GAZETTE http://www.billingsgazette.com/opinion/990830_opi02.html JUST POLITICS A Rasmussen Research survey finds that Bush holds a 53% to 35% lead over Vice-President Al Gore. If Bush were to admit he used cocaine more than 25 years ago, 54% of those surveyed say they'd vote for Bush while only 34% would vote for Gore. The survey offers several hints as to why the issue may not hurt Bush. First, 75% of Americans have already heard the rumors. Second, 53% believe that President Bill Clinton has used cocaine (a charge the President denies). Third, even though no allegations of drug use have been made against Democratic front-runner Al Gore, 21% of Americans believe he has used cocaine. Only 39% are confident that he has not, while 39% remain unsure. In fact, only 13% believe that Bush has used cocaine while also believing that Clinton and Gore have not. This group consisted overwhelmingly of Democrats, a group Bush would not expect to carry under any circumstances. RASMUSSEN RESEARCH http://www.portraitofamerica.com:/html/poll-516.html Meanwhile, Gore continues to be headed for a Goldwater-like defeat. There are few changes in any of the Senate races, either. One slight shift: Bradley now leads Bush in New York state, something that Gore has been unable to do. MORNING LINE http://www.prorev.com/amline.htm GUNS Unlike the White House and the media, the public doesn't seem to think that guns are at the heart of the problem involved in recent shootings. In fact, in a CBS new poll, only 12% of the public listed guns as the main reason why such events happen. Top explanation: lack of parental supervision at 27%. For a solution, better parenting beat gun control by 20 to 14 points. DETAILS You can now buy Scotch Rocks made of Scottish Highlands water, supposedly known for its "physical and spiritual purity .... for at least 3,000 years." Forty reader to freeze ice cubes are only $8 plus shipping and handling. CLINTON SCANDALS WASHINGTON WEEKLY: Little Rock Police Department last week responded to a report of 576 books stolen from the office of author L.D. Brown. Apart from the books [about Brown's experiences as a state trooper working for Clinton] about $6 in change was missing from the office. .... An investigation by the Little Rock Police Department (revealed that a security company had reported to the police that the outside door to the office building from which L.D. Brown sells and markets the book was found propped open at 4:20 a.m. Monday morning .... Brown is convinced that the motive behind the burglary is political. He is prepared for the worst. "I am putting to use my retired state police gun permit for the first time in a long while," he says. Retired police chief SA Rhoads has been teaching a cop course on "subconscious communications" since 1978 to hundreds of police officers, most recently including some 500 from DC. Among the model liars he uses to illustrate his course: Timothy McVeigh, OJ Simpson, and W.J. Clinton, the last having made than 120 gestures of "textbook deception" during his deposition. FURTHERMORE BOSTON GLOBE: An arms race of sorts is being waged on America's highways. And two recent studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are probably going to fuel it. The first study estimates that 2,000 people who died in 1996 when their cars collided with sport utility vehicles would have survived had they crashed with another car, even one as heavy as an SUV. The second showed that, in head-on crash tests conducted last year, colliding with a light truck (a category that includes SUVs, pickups, and minivans) produces far more injury and death than colliding with another car. FIELD NOTES WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION ACTION PACKET prepared by the Alliance for Democracy. 120 pages of information and tools. The packet also includes a copy of "A Citizen's Guide to the World Trade Organization." $12 from Alliance for Democracy 681 Main Street Waltham, MA 02451 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/
