[Peace-discuss] News notes, Feb. 17 (Part 2 of 3 parts)

[C. G. Estabrook]

[continued from part 1]

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2002

FREE SPEECH IN TEXAS. <EnronOwnsTheGOP.com> has been delivered a cease and
desist letter demanding that we shut down our site. Apparently the
Republican Party of Texas doesn't feel like a parody site about their ties
to Enron is very funny - or protected by the 1st amendment. The cease and
desist letter has been posted on our site at:
www.enronownsthegop.com/news/cease.htm

EVERYBODY'S DOING IT. Williams Companies: Enron II. Last month, the Tulsa,
Oklahoma-based Williams Companies, an amalgamation of energy companies and
communications subsidiaries, announced it might face potential losses of
as much as $100 million because of deals it made with Enron. However, a
few weeks later, Williams was hit with a class action lawsuit from
stockholders that claims the firm engaged in the same type of business
practices and accounting "irregularities" that bankrupted Enron. Although
Williams executives claimed the company was simply a victim of Enron, they
were covering up the company's own Enron-like activities with tentacles
stretching beyond Tulsa to the corridors of power in Washington, according
to the suit. [CORPWATCH]

FROM THE MAG THAT CALLS ITSELF "CAPITALIST TOOL." It has been called the
pipeline from hell, to hell, through hell. It's a 1,270-kilometer conduit,
1.2 meters in diameter, that would snake across Afghanistan to carry
natural gas from eastern Turkmenistan-with 700 billion cubic meters of
proven reserves-to energy-hungry Pakistan and beyond. Unocal of the US and
Bridas Petroleum of Argentina vied for the $1.9 billion project in the
1990s. Now, with the collapse of the Taliban, oil executives are suddenly
talking again about building it. "It is absolutely essential that the US
make the pipeline the centerpiece of rebuilding Afghanistan," says S. Rob
Sobhani, a professor of foreign relations at Georgetown University and the
head of Caspian Energy Consulting. The State Department thinks it's a
great idea, too. Routing the gas through Iran would be avoided, and
Central Asian republics wouldn't have to ship through Russian pipelines.
[FORBES]

ONE GUY DID WELL FROM THE 90S. Ex-President Bill Clinton is scheduled to
address a lunch at New York's Long Island Association and will be charging
as much as $15,000 per photo to corporate fat cats who want their picture
taken with him [NEWSMAX]

USE THEM ANYWAY; WHO'LL KNOW? The good news is that Broward County ordered
101 touch-screen voting machines to replace its punch-card ballots. The
bad news is that about 70 of them were found on arrival to be defective.

THEY CONTINUE TO UNITE. Wal-mart workers site includes Radio Free Wal-mart
broadcasts. http://www.walmartworkerslv.com/

COMING TO A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU. About 300 US Marine Corps troops have
invaded the city of North Little Rock, Ark., as part of an experiment to
test tactics and concepts in a real-world urban environment . . . Marines
will test the "three-block" concept, developed several years ago, which
envisions a situation where Marines perform a humanitarian mission on one
block, quell tensions on the next and engage in combat on the next . . .
Troops are also observing the reaction of civilians to determine which
combination of uniform and time of day attracts the least amount of
interest. One of the experiments, according to Maj. Chandler Hirsch, the
senior Marine on the ground in North Little Rock, resulted in "a bunch of
school kids waving at the Marines as they drove by in a school bus,
indicating as we expected that Marines in uniform attract attention." Gen.
Wesley Clarke, who headed the war in Kosovo and now lives in Arkansas,
agreed the exercise is a positive thing. "I think it's important. I think
it's great for the American people to see our armed forces at work," he
said. [CBS]

WOT = WOD. In the latest tussle between local and federal officials over
medical marijuana, the head of the DEA was jeered by city leaders hours
after his agents raided a club that provides pot to sick people. DEA
Administrator Asa Hutchinson was denounced while delivering a speech at
the Commonwealth Club of California. Audience members shouted "liar" when
he said "science has told us so far there is no medical benefit for
smoking marijuana." Demonstrators outside blew kazoos and chanted "Go away
D-E-A." Earlier, federal agents seized more than 600 pot plants from the
Harm Reduction Center and arrested the group's executive director. Three
other men also were arrested.

THIS IS THE WOMAN WHO WANTED TO KILL THE AFGHANS LEADERS AND CONVERT THEM
TO CHRISTIANITY. Ann Coulter, nationally syndicated columnist, speaking to
the Conservative Political Action Conference; "When contemplating college
liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the
death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to
physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be
killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors." [NY
DAILY NEWS]

IF ONLY BUSH #1 HAD LISTENED. First Lady Laura Bush extended sympathy to
family of John Walker Lindh but said his "sad" journey from American teen
to American Taliban provided "a couple of lessons for parents." "Make sure
your children are mature before you allow them to do certain things," Bush
said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. [NY DAILY NEWS]

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2002

1820 Susan B. Anthony is born

1898 Battleship Maine mysteriously explodes and sinks in Havana harbor,
killing 260. US uses it as a pretext to go to war in Spain, gaining Puerto
Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and the Philippines in the process. When a
photographer wires from Cuba that no much is going on; William Randolph
Hearst wires back, "You supply the photos, I'll supply the war."

1910 A ILGWU strike is ended with 339 clothing firms reaching agreement
with the garment workers. There are thirteen firms that will not sign,
including Triangle Shirtwaist, with 1100 workers. Two of the unmet demands
are adequate fire escapes and open doors from the factories to the street.
One year later, Triangle Shirtwaist burns with the loss of 146 lives.

ADMISSIONS FROM FOGGY BOTTOM. US Department of State survey of non-US
press reaction to the World Economic Forum in New York
<http://usinfo.state.gov/admin/005/wwwh2f09.html>: First, the State
Department's key findings: "Overseas editorial reaction to the World
Economic Forum was dominated by criticism of the US and doubts about the
merits of globalization. In a shift from the positive coverage of free
trade following Doha, the focus was on the failures and negative
consequences of globalization. Secretary Powell's remarks on 'waging war'
on world poverty received a few nods of approval, but overall, editorials
portrayed the US as insincere about correcting 'global inequalities.'" Nor
was this the world left press from the countries of the South. The very
first excerpt is from the "conservative" (the State Dept.'s designation)
Times of London: "Is America about to snatch defeat from the jaws of
victory? To judge by the incoherent paranoid mood of the World Economic
Forum in New York, American politicians, businessmen and media
commentators appear to be on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown."
Italy's "leading business" daily, Il Sole 24 Ore is quoted as saying "The
gap in the relations between the US and Europe is widening again, on both
the political and economic levels." The "centrist" Irish Examiner observed
that "speaker after speaker at the World Economic Forum lambasted America
as a smug superpower." France's leading conservative newspaper, Le Figaro
headlined its story on the Munich NATO meeting "Europeans growl at the
United States." Meanwhile, the Financial Times (of London) headlined its
report on Porto Alegre on Feb. 5 "Serious ideas behind the theatrics." The
subheadline was "Anti-globalisation lobby has recovered its momentum." On
the same day, its report from the World Economic Forum in New York was
that: "This year, the mood was far more subdued....In today's uncertain
world, Davos [= WEF] no longer provides answers." [I. WALLERSTEIN]

HEY, KISSINGER GOT IT. US President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister
Tony Blair have been nominated for the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for fighting
terrorism and securing world peace, a Norwegian lawmaker announced Monday.
Harald Tom Nesvik, a member of parliament from the right-wing Party of
Progress, said he has nominated the two leaders for the coveted peace
prize, despite their role in ordering war in Afghanistan. [AP]

CAUGHT IN THE TRIANGULATION. "When Secretary of Health and Human Services
Tommy Thompson announced on Jan. 31 that he was extending prenatal
health-care coverage to pregnant low-income women ... the most
conservative administration in a generation signaled its surrender to the
common-sense strength of three liberal principles: That health care should
be extended as widely as possible; that health care for poor children is
especially important; and that the federal government should pay for it if
necessary." Instead of rejoicing, Jefferson Morley writes in Politics,
liberals began kvetching over abortion rights. [SLATE]

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM? In the best of all worlds, doing away with soft
money would improve politics, but the problem is that there is more than
one way to skin a voter. Consider, for example, the study that found Enron
giving most its political money in hard form. Or take a more homey example
from Washington, DC, where the mayor has already raised $1.1 million for a
campaign without a major opponent, $98,000 of which has come in $2,000
individual contributions from employees of one corporation. Or consider
that, even under the "reform," less than a thousand individuals across
this land could make contributions (at state and national levels)
equivalent to what it costs to run a presidential campaign. Or that before
soft money was even an issue, one-tenth of one percent of all voting age
Americans were giving nearly half of all campaign money. Or that, in the
overwhelming number of cases, the money goes to politicians in safe seats,
so hard or soft it doesn't make much difference on who votes for them, but
on how they vote once back in office. The bill itself is a wonder to
behold. For example, there's the "millionaire opponent provision" which
increases contribution limits for congressional candidates who are facing
self-financed opponents. In the case of Senate races, according to the
Campaign Finance Institute, it "creates initial self-financing threshold
of $150,000 plus four cents times the number of eligible voters in the
state. If one candidate's "opposition personal funds amount" (personal
spending of candidate minus that of opponent) exceeds the threshold amount
by:  "a. 2-4 times, the limit on individual contributions is increased
300% to $6,000 "b. 4-10 times, the limit on individual contributions is
increased 600% to $12,000;  "c. more than 10 times, the limit on
individual contributions to opponent is raised six fold and limit on party
coordinate expenditures is removed."

To give you plenty of time to understand such things, this bill doesn't
even go into effect until the day after next election day, which means it
will take even longer before we even find out what's really wrong with it.
In the meanwhile, a few matters are worth noting, such as the fact that
there are readily available campaign reforms that could be put in place at
little cost to anyone, to wit:

- Fair presidential debates: If Nader of the Greens and Browne of the
Libertarians had been included in the 2000 debates there is little doubt
but that the nature of the election would have been dramatically changed
for the better in its issues, debate, and outcome. Further, the two most
watched sets of political debates in history were those in which Ross
Perot provided an alternative view. With the return to two-person debates,
viewership dropped by half. 

- Instant runoff voting under which Al Gore would have probably won in the
last election and Ralph Nader would have been considered by Democrats to
be a savior rather than a scourge.

The problem with such approaches is that the politicians who wrote the
bill belong to two small but powerful interest groups namely (1)
incumbents and (2) a couple of parties that, even combined, represent less
than a third of us. 71% of all voting age Americans are independents,
non-voters, or belong to an alternative party. There was no one
representing the bulk of America when the legislation was written, thus it
reflected the bipolar depression of current politics. Which is why, in the
end, the measure speaks of $150,000 plus four cents rather than, say,
public financing, fair debates, or instant runoff voting. [PROG REVIEW]

WHAT'S ON TV? The wave of American jingoism and intense security that has
marked the first week of the Winter Olympics here has led to senior
officials of the International Olympic Committee privately expressing
concerns about whether the US can ever stage another Olympic event. The
games have already been dubbed the "red, white and blue Olympics" because
almost every event has patriotic overtones in the wake of the terrorist
attacks on September 11. Nationalism has always been a part of the
Olympics but IOC officials here feel the event is being used simply as
propaganda for the US war effort . . . The IOC is embarrassed that the
very public presence of the 15,000 police and military is projecting a
tense and uncomfortable atmosphere for an event that, since its first
staging in 1924, has been a sedate, friendly festival. There are more
American security personnel here than in Afghanistan and three times as
many as were present at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles during the
cold war with the Soviet Union . . . The heavy-handed security operation
could have serious repercussions for a proposed bid from New York for the
2012 Summer Olympics. IOC officials have been speculating openly that if
it requires this much effort to protect an isolated area in the mid-west,
then how many troops would be needed to secure the world's most famous
city. "It just can'thappen," said another IOC member . . . The host
broadcaster, NBC, also linked the opening ceremony with the war effort
when, during the parade of nations, it referred to the Iranian athletes as
part of Mr Bush's "axis of evil." . . . Earlier this week the FBI and CIA
were forced to tone down the intense security searches of competitors
following complaints from many international teams that their athletes
were being harassed. Athletes have everything searched repeatedly, and
must often queue in sub-zero conditions for more than 30 minutes. A
Russian silver medallist was upset that she was asked to drink from her
water bottle to prove it contained water as she was trying to get into the
cross-country venue. "Every day we have to go through the same annoying
procedures," said Larissa Lazutina. "It's a put-down for the athletes." .
. .[GUARDIAN UK]

AFTER THEY BUSTED UP HIS COMPUTER. Federal charges will be dropped against
the teen-aged operator of anti-government site Raisethefist.com, a
spokesperson for the US attorney's office in central California confirmed.
Sherman Austin, 18, was arrested Feb. 2 in New York at a demonstration
against the World Economic Forum. He currently is being held in a federal
transfer detention center in Oklahoma City, enroute to his home state of
California. "We have opted not to seek an indictment at this time. We are
continuing to investigate the matter, but as of right now, he's off the
hook," said Thomas Mrozek, public affairs officer for the US attorney's
office in Los Angeles. A self-described anarchist, Austin was charged Feb.
4 with violating US Code title 18, section 842, which prohibits the
publication of information about making explosives. The teen was also
charged with possession of a Molotov cocktail, which is considered an
"unregistered firearm" by the FBI. The case is seen by some as a test of
First Amendment rights on the Internet following the terrorist attacks on
America on and following Sept. 11. [NEWSBYTES]

I MEAN EVERYBODY'S DOING IT. Microsoft's budget for political lobbying
exceeded that of Enron, the judge residing over the antitrust case has
heard. The software giant's budget for its Political Action Committee
increased from about $16,000 in 1995 to $1.6 million in 2000, according to
Edward Roeder, a self-styled expert on efforts to influence the US
government, and founder of Sunshine Press Services, a news agency devoted
to investigating money in politics. Roeder's report was submitted to Judge
Kollar-Kotelly at the end of January. Microsoft has been unable to
comment. Judge Kollar-Kotelly heard that total donations to political
donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties,
candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1
million. During this period, Microsoft and its executives accounted for
$2.3 million in soft money contributions, compared to $1.55 million by
Enron and its executives for the same period. Soft money is the term
generally given to unregulated corporate and individual contributions that
cannot go directly to candidates, but which typically goes to political
parties. [ZNET]

NO ONE CAN BE WRONG ALL THE TIME. First at www.flashpoints.net in
RealAudio there's a tremendous exposè of the ongoing Enron coverup with
Catherine Austin Fitts, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing- Federal
Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration -- full text is also
there.) Explains what a Dept. of Justice would do if it was serious about
prosecuting Enron and illuminates connections Enron/DynCorp and the Dept
of Justice. Second. she made reference to www.insightmag.com to an article
about "DynCorp Disgrace." Americans were seen in Bosnia as defenders of
the children, until US contractors began buying children as personal sex
slaves <http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=163052>
[E. SIZEMORE]

[continued in part 3]