UNDERNEWS Sam Smith September 13, 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 THE REVIEW UNCLASSIFIEDS: http://www.prorev.com/jobs.htm 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 ---------------------------------------------------------- EAST TIMOR AGENCE FRANCE PRESS: An East Timorese support group claimed here Monday to have received reports that tens of thousands of people had died in a deliberate genocidal campaign by Indonesia. The East Timor International Support Center also believes 300,000 to 400,000 people face death from starvation and thirst and another 250,000 people, a third of the population, have been deported in vast convoys of trucks and ships. AUSTRALIAN: The war-hardened British officer thought he'd seen hell in Kosovo. Then he saw Dili. "I came out of Kosovo, and what I've seen in Timor is worse much worse," Major John Petrie, a former instructor of Australia's military police, told The Sunday Telegraph. NEWS FROM THE COLONIES TELEGRAPH, LONDON: A tour around some of Kosovo's ubiquitous minefields makes painfully clear that many of the casualties suffered by civilians are being caused by cluster bombs dropped by NATO from the air rather than mines sown by the Serbs or Kosovo Liberation Army. Since the refugees returned to Kosovo in June there have been 232 casualties attributed to mines, or around 80 a month. It is officially admitted that at least a third of these have been victims of the cluster bomb; and some estimates put it higher. NATO is known to have dropped a total of 1,300 containers of cluster bombs over Kosovo. Each container carried 208 of these bomblets. So something like 270,000 of these deadly weapons were scattered over the country. WACO DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Some Justice Department officials involved in the Branch Davidian case knew within months after the 1993 tragedy that FBI agents had used military tear gas rounds against the sect, documents submitted to Congress this week indicate. The documents also indicate that FBI agents involved in the final tear gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound freely discussed firing several military CS tear gas devices when questioned by Justice Department lawyers. But not until 1996 did any of the disclosed FBI or Justice Department documents include the acknowledgment that the military rounds were capable of sparking fires. None of the documents submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee indicate that Attorney General Janet Reno or FBI Director Louis Freeh were told that the devices were used despite Ms. Reno's explicit ban on any pyrotechnic devices in the April 19, 1993, assault. DALLAS MORNING NEWS http://www.dallasnews.com/specials/waco/0911waco1papers.htm AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN: In an admission sure to fuel new questions about military involvement in the Branch Davidian siege, state officials revealed in an Austin courtroom Friday that a Texas Rangers' report on evidence collected at the scene contains classified military secrets. Attorneys for the Texas Department of Public Safety said the report can't be made public yet because other agencies needed time to review it to see whether any parts of it should remain confidential. AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/news_2.html HILLARY WATCH NEW YORK POST: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is seriously considering plastic surgery in a bid to improve her public image as she readies for her Senate campaign. Clinton has visited a top Manhattan doctor and is discussing how she can rid her face of the deeply creased lines and bags that have become more noticeable over the past year. Clinton was recently seen entering the Park Avenue offices of Dr. Cap Lesesne, a prominent plastic surgeon. Wearing dark sunglasses and a navy-blue pantsuit, Clinton entered alone and spent nearly an hour consulting with Lesesne, sources said .... "The Lewinsky scandal took its toll on both Hillary and Bill," said one cosmetic surgeon. "Hillary especially has noticeable sagging beneath her eyes and around her neck. It's as if she looks permanently exhausted." GULF WAR SYNDROME PAUL LIKOUDIS, WANDERER: A small group of reputable scientists, sick U.S. veterans, and a handful of investigative journalists [are trying] to unlock the secrets of Gulf War Illness, sometimes referred to as Gulf War Syndrome, which has afflicted between 100,000 and 200,000 military personnel who served in President George Bush's Desert Storm and their families, and which is responsible for perhaps 15,000 deaths .... WANDERER http://www.thewandererpress.com/ YOUTH NOTES REUTERS: Anti-drug policies at many U.S. schools could prevent students who suffer asthmatic attacks from reaching their inhalers quickly, researchers said Tuesday. "Too often in California we're seeing situations in which an asthmatic child's inhaler is locked up in a drawer in the school office -- and the key to that drawer is with the vice principal, who isn't even in the building that day," said Michael Welch, a San Diego physician. .... "Almost no one dies of inhaler abuse; they die because they're having a severe asthma attack and they're not being treated." ASSOCIATED PRESS: In Allen, Texas, senior Jennifer Boccia is back in school after having last spring's suspension expunged from her record. She and nine other students wore black armbands to class to mourn the Columbine victims and to protest new rules imposed in their school as a result. Jennifer, an honors student, was suspended after defying an order to remove the armband. Schools in the Washington area have begun having emergency drills, emulating conditions in a shooting incident. Maybe it's high school principals who should stop watching TV. School slayings actually peaked in the 1992-93 year and are but a fraction of youths murdered by members of their own families. ECO NOTES REUTERS: Scientists said on Wednesday they had found evidence that carbon monoxide levels are falling over the eastern United States -- evidence that efforts to curb pollution and global warning are working .... Kristen Hallock-Waters and colleagues at the University of Maryland measured air levels at Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park in 1988 to 1989 and 1994 to 1997 .... They said they found a steady annual decrease .... The mean level of carbon monoxide at Big Meadows in 1988-1989 was 204 parts per billion by volume as compared with 166 in 1997 -- a decrease of nearly 23 percent. The EPA estimates that over the same period, human-made carbon monoxide emissions fell by 18.3 percent, mostly due to more efficient cars. DOLLAR BILL A reader writes to inquire whether TPR will endorse Bill Bradley for president. TPR gave up the practice of regular endorsements after it noticed that the most glaring exception to its general prescience came whenever it said anything nice about a politician. Nothing is more embarrassing than to read 30-year-old encomiums to a failed political hack. To avoid this problem, it is now our general practice to endorse only grudgingly and at the last possible minute. This is not to say that TPR will not offer judgments, factual and otherwise, about candidates from which you may deduce what the editor is going to do whether he says it or not, only that sticking to the issues has proven a far more useful and less hazardous occupation. As far as Bradley is concerned, I long was of the opinion that he didn't exist, but was merely a holograph created by the Council on Foreign Relations. Further, if he did exist, he should comply with the provisions of my proposed Aging Jocks in Politics Act, which would require that any ex-athlete who is elected to public office be accompanied by his coach, so as to more closely replicate the conditions that led him to being selected in the first place. Thus I'm a bit behind the curve on the Bradley phenomenon and so will turn further comment over to Jason Vest of the Village Voice who writes this week: "Though there are those who see Bradley as "something different," or an in-house alternative whose appeal is rooted in being the antithesis of Clintonian character without being as saddled with sleaze as Gore, his candidacy is, nonetheless, simply another symptom of the ideological poverty and business-as-usual nature of American politics. While vaguely reassuring, he's no populist. He's more of a free trader than Gore, and enthusiastically backed NAFTA and GATT, which have done little for the average income earner. While Gore has been "a heartbeat away" from the president whose administration has been gracious to Manhattan's financial brokerage houses, Bradley truly is Wall Street's candidate; even without the PAC money, he's raised more from New York than Gore .... "So why are bona fide liberals like Paul Wellstone- who disappointed the progressive wing when he announced he wouldn't run for president- throwing their support to Bradley, or hedging their support for Gore? According to many, it has less to do with genuine enthusiasm for Bradley, and they are inclined to believe that his nomination is a less-than- realistic possibility. Yet they see him as a way to 'keep Gore honest,' as one legislator put it: 'He's the only potential way we have to remind Gore not to abandon the party's base.' They may be in for a few surprises as they get to know their man better. Vest points out: "Despite reams of documentation from human rights groups during the 1980s about the lethal and illicit actions of right-wing regimes and paramilitaries in Central America, Bradley - who modestly notes in his pre-presidential campaign memoir, Time Present, Time Past, that he 'oversaw the [Nicaraguan] contra war for the [Senate Intelligence] committee' - nonetheless voted for a 1986 contra-aid package. His explanation was a masterpiece of equivocation: while he said at the time that he had 'misgivings and reservations' about Reagan administration policy, he nonetheless asserted that 'we know the Sandinistas will try to destabilize fledgling democracies in Central America.' In the book, he also accurately notes a later apostasy, explaining that he reversed his position after 'I saw that many of the recipients and much of the process had been corrupted by a lack of accountability.' Yet at the time of his vote, most of his colleagues were incredulous that, as the Times' Anthony Lewis put it, 'even a man as sensible as Bill Bradley' could vote for contra aid in the face of the facts ranging from human rights abuses to drug smuggling." JASON VEST ARTICLE http://villagevoice.com/features/9936/vest.shtml SUDDEN DEATH SYNDROME Speaking of the Voice, my old colleague and new landlord Jim Ridgeway -- we move shortly to the 5th floor of 1312 18th St NW -- points out that three members of the White House Marine helicopter crew have died suddenly in recent months: "The latest occurred the week before last when Lieutenant Colonel Mark Cwick, a Marine Corps helicopter pilot who was a member of the unit that ferried the president and other high-ranking officials around the Washington area, died when his car swerved off the road to avoid a collision with an auto that had just passed him. Cwick, 41, was pronounced dead on August 20 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. "Within Cwick's elite Marines unit, two other strange deaths are known to have occurred. In April, Major Marc Hohle, who had been a pilot for Clinton in the first year of his first term as president, died in a helicopter crash on Okinawa. In March, another member of the special unit, Corporal Eric S. Fox, a helicopter crewman, was found dead of a gunshot wound to his head. Fox's body was found near a West Virginia schoolyard after his auto crashed. His death was ruled a suicide, but no explanation was given." JAMES RIDGEWAY ARTICLE http://villagevoice.com/columns/9936/ridgeway.shtml TEST RUN? Also in the Voice, from Mark Boal: "The strangest site on the Internet has to be freevibe.com. Check it out if you're skeptical, and read the bizarre postings about the dangers of illegal drugs. They are written in the style of Seventeen magazine, in which grown-ups pepper their prose with the buzzwords of youth, like, uh, cool, man. But you could browse a long time and learn all about young Jake in the grip of addiction, "tabbing acid during basketball games," before discovering that the man behind the site is in fact The Man. "You would never know it, but Freevibe is pure government issue, a product of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the White House. That office is best known for sending armed agents into crack dens and having its director, former general Barry MaCaffrey, tour Peru on a mission to stop cocaine production in the Andes Mountains. But Freevibe is as much a part of the war on drugs as the helicopters and crop eradication routines. It is just a more covert salvo, and the war here is for the mind of America's teens." This is a particularly sleazy piece of covert propaganda, especially since you have to look on the obscure 'privacy policy' page to find out who is responsible. Interestingly this exercise by the White House -- part of a $183 million anti-drug campaign -- springs up contemporaneously with publicly announced plans for coordinated foreign policy agitprop that some see as structured to create lies for the American media as well. MARK BOAL ARTICLE http://villagevoice.com/columns/9936/boal.shtml THE WAR AGAINST GENERIC DRUGS The model for Freevibes is the National Partnership for a Somewhat Drug-Free America which, the media is careful not to mention, gets major backing from the tobacco and liquor drug industries anxious to not face still more competition from pot. Rare for a mainstream outlet, therefore, was this week's New York Times Magazine article by Michael Pollan, which addressed the hypocrisy: "You would be hard-pressed to explain the taxonomy of chemicals underpinning the drug war to an extraterrestrial. Is it, for example, addictiveness that causes society to condemn a drug? (No; nicotine is legal, and millions of Americans have battled addictions to prescription drugs.) So then, our inquisitive alien might ask, is safety the decisive factor? (Not really; over-the counter and prescription drugs kill more than 45,000 Americans every year while, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, "There is no risk of death from smoking marijuana.") Is it drugs associated with violent behavior that your society condemns? (If so, alcohol would still be illegal). Perhaps, then, it is the promise of pleasure that puts a drug beyond the pale? (That would once again rule out alcohol, as well as Viagra.) Then maybe the molecules you despise are the ones that alter the texture of consciousness, or even a human's personality? (Tell that to someone who has been saved from depression by Prozac.) "At this point our extraterrestrial would probably throw up his appendages and ask, can we at least say that the drugs you approve of all have a capital letter at the beginning of their names a (tm) at the end?" FIELD NOTES TIMOR TODAY http://www.easttimor.com/ TIMOR HISTORY http://www.easttimor.com/history/history.html TIMOR BIBLIOGRAPHY http://www.easttimor.com/bibliography.htm NEW YORKERS: WANT A SECOND OPINION? An extensive web based research site on the effects of Malathion http://www.chem-tox.com/malathion/research/index.htm INEXPLICABLY DELIGHTFUL SITE OF THE DAY http://bodin.org/ MORE NEWS http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm#11 More Waco news The CBS-Viacom merger And lots more 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/
