From

Allegations Fly Over Acne Drug's
Risks

Accutane critics claim its use can lead to suicide

By Janice Billingsley
HealthScout Reporter

SUNDAY, Dec. 31
(HealthScout) -- Accutane, the
drug of last resort in the battle
against serious acne, is in a
battle of its own over claims it
can trigger suicide in those who
use it.

(Complete story at: http://www.healthscout.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Af?ap=55&id=106825 )

========================================================

http://www.independent.co.uk/argument/Regular_columnists/Mark_Steel/steel291200.shtml

Smile, and we might yet defeat global
capitalism

Alternative View

By Mark Steel

29 December 2000

"We need a revolution," said the lad, no more than 19, in the packed
meeting organised by People and Planet at the University of Warwick.
"And we, I mean us here, can begin to make that revolution – right
after this meeting by..." He paused. What would he say? By mobilising
the peasantry of the Coventry area? By going on a Long March to
Leicester? "By smiling," he said. "When these capitalist bastards see
everyone smiling, they won't know what to do."

There are obvious flaws to this strategy, not least that such a
movement would be bound to split, with a militant wing breaking away
to laugh, while the smilers denounced them as impatient hot-heads.
But the most notable side to his speech was that somehow it didn't
seem mad. In fact there was an endearing freshness about him. He
was enthusiastic, genuinely interested in what everyone thought of
his idea, and it was positive – his starting point was "we can do
something".

And it came a few days after I'd been on holiday in Athens, during
which I was invited to a meeting about "anti-capitalist protest". The
first shock on arriving was the venue, a beautiful open-air theatre,
bats fluttering through the twilight above clicking crickets while lights
from the Acropolis flickered as a backdrop. I wanted to scream: "This
is all wrong. Don't you know meetings like this are supposed to be in
bare, freezing halls with a broken heater, and start an hour late
because no one can find the bloke with the key? You people don't
know how to organise a meeting at all." Then instead of the customary
10 people, 700 arrived, including the deputy leader of the Greek
equivalent to the TUC, and the writer of the year's best-selling novel
throughout Greece.

These incidents would tell us nothing about the year 2000, except that
unofficial global rumblings tend to back them up. The book No Logo, by
Naomi Klein, a cry against corporate greed, has sold over 100,000
copies. And it's spawned a library of books with titles like Globalize
This!, Globalization and Resistance and Resist Globalization. Soon
all the permutations will be used up, so we'll get books called
"Resisting national global corporate trans-corporate
globo-nationalness". Susan George, a veteran campaigner against
third-world debt, who has spent 25 years speaking largely to handfuls
of academics, now regularly fills theatres holding a thousand or more,
so that long-term fans probably feel like supporters of Fulham or
Sunderland, muttering "Baaah, it was cosier when we were shite."

One "anti-capitalist conference", in Millau, France, attracted 80,000
people. Internationally newsworthy protests against Third-World debt
and huge corporations took place in Melbourne, Prague and Nice.
Ralph Nader, the US presidential candidate supporting this movement,
won 2.5 million votes and attracted between 10,000 and 16,000 at his
rallies. If enough journalists had been covering these events, one of
them would have declared that anti-globalisation was the new rock
and roll.

None of this was sufficient to threaten world leaders. But it was a
sign of changing values. In 1989, at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
consensus was that the free market had triumphed, and was destined
to enrich the planet. Now, while there is little nostalgia for the
grotesque regimes of Stalinist eastern Europe, the free market
staggers across the stage to a diminishing audience. In Russia, life
expectancy has decreased by 10 years, and in Africa the average
income in almost every country continues to decline. "Structural
adjustment programmes", in which economies are taken over by
organisations such as the World Bank, who enforce privatisation and
cuts in public spending, have been imposed on 90 countries.

Gradually, these measures are provoking opposition. One
consequence of this trend is that "globalisation" has become one of
those words – like "glasnost" in the Eighties – that everyone uses
though few can explain what it means. A common definition is that
you can no longer do anything about anything. For example John
Monks, the leader of the TUC, when asked for his opinion on job
closures at Luton, blamed "globalisation". He looked like a football
manager interviewed after a game, wistfully remarking, "I don't agree
with the decision but at the end of the day what globalisation says is
final and we've just got to accept it."

By the end of 2001, if you take a dodgy car back to the dealer you
bought it from, you can expect them to squeal, "Well there's nothing I
can do about that, it's yer globalisation, see."

One strange result of all this has been that the most enthusiastic
backers of the ethos that nothing can function unless someone will
make a profit from it are the old parties once considered to be on the
left – and none more so than Britain's New Labour. They continued to
embrace big business as a virtue, and search for any last utilities to
privatise, like someone with no money hunting down the back of the
settee. Eventually they could yell, "Aha, I've found air traffic control,
that'll do."

So disillusionment with the major parties continued, and when this
was reflected in historically low turn-outs at elections, the excuses
were surreal. "The reason people didn't bother to vote for us," said
New Labour spokesperson Patricia Hewitt, was that "they are
satisfied by us." Which must make for some splendid debates during
canvassing. "Will you vote for us?" "No thank you, because I think
you're marvellous." "Well vote for us then." "No, I don't want to spoil
your splendid record by voting for you."

Across western Europe and America a similar pattern has emerged,
of traditional left-of-centre parties becoming increasingly tied to the
free market, as the failures of that market become more apparent. So
if you're 19, and flushed with a desire to redress the growing
inequality stalking the planet, you're hardly likely to venture in that
direction. And joining Labour to turn it into a radical campaigning party
would seem as ridiculous as joining the RAC to turn it into a radical
campaigning breakdown service.

So the modern generation of activists looks outside the old
organisations. They are often described as anarchists, but only
because "anarchist" has come to mean anyone radical with a
nose-stud. Some are members of groups such as Jubilee 2000,
including the Christian couple who told me that they had taken their
holiday in Prague because "we can go to a museum in the morning
and a protest in the afternoon." But most are not part of any
organisation. Instead, they are the thin end of a wedge that includes
millions around the world who have come to the conclusion that,
when the richest 360 people on the planet own the same amount of
wealth as the poorest two billion, something has gone wrong.

And, when you think about it, if all the two billion got together and
smiled at the 360, that would look pretty spooky.

========================================================

http://zmag.org/zsustainers/zdaily/2000-12/30herman.htm

ZNet Commentary

December 30, 2000

The Pacifica Counter-Revolution Hits WBAI:
Another Call for Action

By Edward S. Herman <hermane@wharton.upenn.edu>

One of the most crushing series of blows to the U.S.
left, and to democracy in this country, has been the gradual
transformation of the five station Pacifica Radio network
from locally-based and left-oriented stations into centrally
controlled, mainstream institutions. Before 1990, all five
stations in the network were locally oriented, locally managed
with strong inputs from local audiences and employees, and
both highly political and progressive. During the 1990s,
however, three of the stations -- Houston, Washington and
Los Angeles -- were pushed into the mainstream by the
Pacifica management, with only KPFA in Berkeley and
WBAI in New York City remaining as holdovers of the
earlier tradition.

On December 26, however, the Washington management seized
control of WBAI, removing the long-time manager Valerie Van
Isler, firing Program Director Bernard White and producer
Sharan Harper without notice, changing the locks on the
doors in the middle of the night, and installing a new
manager from within the WBAI staff secretly primed for
her new job. Only people on an approved list, which did
not include Pacifica Foundation board member Leslie Cagan,
were admitted to the station on December 27. There has
been nothing democratic about any actions of the Pacifica
management for many years, and with one of its board members
a member of a law firm with a specialty in union-busting,
the management has long mastered the art of using every
trick in that trade.

It will be recalled that the Pacifica management had tried
to remake KPFA in Berkeley several years ago, locking out
the employees, firing many, bringing in security forces
and strikebreakers, but meeting such resistance, with
10,000 protesters in the streets, and getting such negative
publicity that the management had to retreat. The stalemate
resulted in a tacit settlement that gave KPFA and WBAI
temporary autonomy and led to the appointment of several
new representatives of the audiences and stations to the
Pacifica board.

But this settlement was only temporary, and the new board
members quickly discovered that they were not listened to
and were kept outside any decision-making process, sometimes
by illegal actions (and two of the dissident board members
have an ongoing suit against the board based on these
illegalities). That the central management was on the march
again, and that a takeover of WBAI might be in the works,
was suggested by the sustained attack on Amy Goodman and her
Democracy Now! program that escalated this past September
and October. Goodman has long been harassed by the Pacifica
top management for her lack of sympathy with Clinton and
general failure to stick with the approved media agenda.
She was brought to Washington in September and told quite
clearly that her focus on East Timor, capital punishment,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lori Berenson (etc.) was excessive. Former
board chair Mary Frances Berry called her "troublesome,"
and said that she had "embarrassed" the network, possibly
meaning Berry herself and her friends and colleagues in the
Democratic Party. In October Goodman was once again brought
to Washington and directly threatened with termination
unless she refrained from using volunteers and cleared her
programs in advance in Washington (among other demands). She
immediately filed a grievance with the union for harassment
and censorship.

A problem for the Pacifica elite is that Goodman's show
heavily outdraws their regular news programs, and most other
Pacifica programs as well. This makes it awkward for them
as they claim to be reforming Pacifica in the interest of
enlarging audience size, which they have been trying to do
by substituting popular music for politics (and softening
any politics that remains). But Goodman's show and its
successes in drawing audiences suggests that critical
politics can be quite popular if done well. That she is
regarded negatively by the Pacifica brass reflects political
bias and a determination to defang and depoliticize the
network in accord with the biases of the top management and
their constituency. The constituency of the "old Pacifica"
was the local audiences and employees and volunteers; the
constituency of the "new Pacifica" of Bessie Wash and Mary
Frances Berry is Washington power brokers, officials of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Democratic
Party.

Even the New York Times notes that the Pacifica Foundation
was initially based on "a lack of corporate control and
its dedication to peace," and represented "grass roots,
alternative broadcasting" (Jayson Blair, "Pacifica
Foundation Locks WBAI Station Manager Out of Office,"
Dec. 28, 2000). The "new Pacifica" has changed course, and
has abandoned both its grass roots base and alternative
broadcasting. Its attack on Amy Goodman and the current
takeover of WBAI are a part of this de-democratization
and political neutering. This process has resulted from
the capture of the Pacifica Foundation by a small group of
liberal technocrats and Democratic Party-linked officials,
who have added to their controlling board membership
businesspeople in the real estate, construction, and
corporate law fields to support them in their remaking
of Pacifica. They have moved Pacifica's headquarters
from Berkeley to Washington DC, in keeping with the
shift in their constituency from audiences and
employees to Washington power brokers.

We are dealing here with a kind of coup d'etat, and a
systematic destruction of a major left institution in the
wake of that coup. Given the importance of the media in
hegemonic processes, and in contesting those processes,
what is happening to Pacifica, and now WBAI, should be
first order business for the left. This was our only radio
network, and it is being destroyed! It is a horrifying fact
that a chunk of the left actually signed Saul Landau's
letter in 1999 which defended the Pacifica management
and urged the left to stop its "Pacifica bashing," with
"Pacifica" identified with the management group that was
destroying the old Pacifica and picking off left journalists
and stations one by one. Some of the signers are people
trying, for example, to contest corporate globalization,
a subject on which Amy Goodman and the old WBAI would give
their contesting position extensive and friendly coverage,
but which the emerging "new Pacifica" will ignore or treat
perfunctorily. (The "new Pacifica" Washington station WPFW,
formerly run by current Pacifica Executive Director Bessie
Wash, has been notoriously uninterested in protests against
not only the dominant political party conventions, but those
against the World Bank and IMF.) The lack of left solidarity
involved in signing the Landau letter is equalled only by
the sheer short-sightedness and stupidity of helping destroy
a media institution that was a natural ally, if not part of
the left itself.

The battle over Pacifica and WBAI is not over. There are
mounting protests against the WBAI takeover, and there are
at least three legal suits in process against the Pacifica
Foundation control group. I would urge people to get into
action now. This is important! It was encouraging to see the
New York Times finally come up with an article on December
28 putting the WBAI takeover in a negative light for both
tactics and implied violation of organizational purpose.
This is the time to move into action with letters, phone
calls, picketing, and contributions to the funding of
legal responses to illegitimate authority. Information
on the issues and names and actions under way can be
obtained from these key sites:

Hotline:
800-825-0055 to volunteer
718-707-7189 for e-mail and updates

Local WBAI sites:
http://www.glib.com WBAI union
http://www.wbai.net WBAI listeners

General info and background sites:
http://www.radio4all.org/freepacifica
http://www.savepacifica.net

Committee to Remove Pacifica Board:
707-526-2867, Carol Spooner for info
mailto:wildrose@pon.net

Copyright (c) 2000 ZNet. All Rights Reserved

========================================================

Were Original Americans Black Muurs?

12-31-00

By Lamont Muhammad

Her Highness Verdiacee Tiari Washitaw – Turner Goston El-Bey, is the 73-year-old
Empress of the Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah, one of the oldest Indigenous nations to be found anywhere in the earth, say her followers and other reviewers at the United
Nations (UN). She reigns over conscious descendants of the Muurs or Moundbuilders of the massive ancient ruins that dart the best or most significant points on the upper and lower parts of what is today called the Americas, the Empress explained.

Invasions from Asia and Europe over recent
centuries have uprooted her people from all but
68,883 acres of northern Louisiana, on paper. But
her land titles and deeds, although recognized by
the UN, the United States (US) government and
State of Louisiana as legitimate, nevertheless have
no teeth to force property and business owners on
Washitaw in Louisiana to pay rent or flee the land.

And so the Empress, like the US Marines, “is
looking for a few good men.” They must reclaim
land her resurrecting Nation can call their own,
said Seth Muhammad, the young Washitaw
organizer who helped arrange an exclusive
interview between Her Highness and this writer in
Reston, Louisiana, last June. The Empress is also
author of The Return of the Ancient Ones.

Her effort represents but one of many afoot in the Western Hemisphere to reclaim land by way of litigation in the courts of the invader/settler. Others are buying land and claiming sovereign status within specific frameworks defined by national and international protocols. But this writer found that they all agree that the entire earth is home to the original family without regard to borders and that the so-called children of Africa in this country where not all brought by whites or Arabs in slave ships. “We been here,” declared the Empress, explaining that the original Native Americans were mostly of a dark complexion. She said the light-skin Indians of Hollywood fame were minority tribes in the Northwest that were mixed with the blood of Chinese invaders. “They made up less than a third of the total population of Indians on this land. White folks don’t owe Black people in America 40 acres and a mule. They need to get up off our land or start paying us some rent and taxes,” she said. Reverend RaDine Amen-ra, author of The Forgotten Truth Behind Racism in America: The Hidden Ancestral Identity of the Black American Vol. I, agreed. She said the new fertile homeland (America/s) was given to the “Black American Mound Builders,” as promised (land), before floods separated the east from the west.

“The Mothers of today’s Black American ancestors were delivered from the obscurity, darkness, and ignorance of the growing NEGATIVE wave of consciousness changing to MASCULINE DOMINATION or the ‘mind of the flesh’ (the Ego) that was consuming the once fertile North Africa into a barren desert,” Rev. Amen-ra wrote. The Empress chimed in with a similar note.

“Our society is based on the woman envisioning the Law and the man enforcing it,” the
Empress said. “Not this machismo garbage that has relegated society to the lower planes of existence. In our world the woman inherits the land, not the man. This world is upside down. Whites rule the land and man rules over woman,” she explained.

One man who organizes around a similar argument is Dr. Malachi Z. York, a.k.a.
Amunnubi Raa, leader of the United Nuwaubian Nation of the Moors. He leads a
community that is based in Eatonton, Georgia. He is building a replica of Ancient Egypt there that sits on close to 500 acres, according to Bro. Howard Jones, a.k.a. Meduty Khefe-Re. They teach that Nuwaubian is derived from the word Nuwba (Nuba), in Southern Sudan, which would include Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya. The root word for Nuwaubians, Nubians and Nabi is Nub or Nuwb, meaning “color inclining to Black…kinky or woolly haired people,” Dr. York wrote in his book: Let’s Set The Record Straight! He described the Olmec civilization, the oldest high culture in the “Americas,” as “the original woolly haired, dark-olive toned people who originally came from Nuwba of South and Central Africa. They arrived in the Americas long before the Christian era, but that would have been long after the arrival of those given the promise before the floods.

Land wars are raging in US and world courts for tribal recognitions and sovereignty
rights within former colonial and imposed borders. The classifications can transform a
tribal group from poverty stricken to filthy rich. According to Qualla Kuthera Howard, a Black (Indian) woman who was born on the Qualla Reservation in North Carolina, the US government is fighting hard to dissuade groups from reclaiming their sovereignty status and land. In a brief telephone interview from Schenectady, New York, she said only 150 of the 350 Indigenous tribes in North America have been recognized and only the Navajo and the Iroquois have been granted sovereignty status. In New York State, she said, the Oneida Tribe signed a 100-year land lease with the US government that has expired. They are in court because “the Oneida want their land back,” she said.

According to Bro. Meduty, the mission of the Nuwaubians is to teach their people in the Americas to stop referring to themselves as former slaves because slavery was a legal institution in America but kidnapping and torture is unlawful. “We have to be prepared to argue our cause with intelligence,” he said.

The Empress, who includes in her family: the Olmecs, Maya, Aztecs, Garifuna, Arawaks, Caribs and many tribes of North America, said she was granted Indigenous status by a UN non-governmental organization in 1993. She said she has addressed the world body as Empress of the Washitaw. Her claim to the land is based on what she called flaws in the implementation of the infamous Louisiana Purchase. She said the illegal land transfer violated bilateral treaties and international law when her 86, 883 acres were included.

In addition to land claim issues, the Empress, who is convalescing from a stroke at a
facility near her son in California, is facing scrutiny from federal agencies tracking money, her son Fredrick said, in an exclusive telephone interview from home December 28.

Beyond those arguments, she and many other voices are making a case for the fact that the entire US sits on lands stolen (mostly) from a dark skin people. “We should not be limited to Africa and the east. Our footprints are throughout our earth and we can not allow others to box us up and rip us off for our land,” she advised.

from: http://www.tbwt.com

========================================================

Suicides versus homicides

by Ridgely A. Mu'min Muhammad

December 30, 2000

On the afternoon of December 22, 2000 as I road in my truck I heard this information on the Peach State National Public Radio:

"Suicides in Georgia have increased 40% among young Black males, ages 15 to
24, over the period of 1994-98 as compared to 1990-94.

Georgia experienced 850 suicides this year which was 18% more than the number
of homicides."

These type of figures may make one wonder if the USA's efforts to reduce drugs and crime has resulted in increased psychological pressure on young Black men. However before this debate can get started the USA Today on December 29, 2000 comes out with a "counter" analysis which you can read by clicking :

http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndsthu09.htm

========================================================

Time For A Semi-United Black Front

12-28-00

By Richard Muhammad

While an anxious Black America awaits its fate under President George W. Bush, one
thing is certain: With Bush's victory, Black conservatives return to the media spotlight and battle lines are drawn between them and "mainstream," generally anti-Bush Black
leaders.

Black conservatives first came to major attention during the 1991 battle over the Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas, largely dropping out of sight during the Clinton years. But ideological skirmishes and name calling have started again. Mainstreamers brand conservatives sellouts and opportunists. Conservatives label mainstreamers poverty pimps, who foolishly put all their eggs in the Democratic Party's basket. The voices of Black nationalists will likely condemn both sides, but won't get as much of a hearing.

What needs to happen is less shouting and more talking based on potential areas of
common agreement and recognition of the current political reality. The reality, as Dr.
Manning Marable of Columbia University's Black Studies Center notes, is that there has been a rightward shift in American politics since the 1980 presidential election of Ronald Reagan.

With that election, the Democratic Party started a metamorphosis which spawned New Democrat Bill Clinton and sidelined old-school Democrats. Mr. Clinton
grabbed Republican issues: He came out pro-death penalty, lukewarm on affirmative
action, vowed to end welfare and dissed Rev. Jesse Jackson to show his
autonomy from the civil rights leader during the 1992 election.

While on the '92 campaign trail, Clinton returned to Arkansas to preside over the
execution of a mentally retarded Black man, just as Bush returned to Texas to
oversee the execution of Black inmate Gary Graham, despite questions about his guilt, this election year.

The rightward shift in America politics and feelings of exclusion and anger during the
"welfare queen," "Willie Horton" Ronald Reagan-George Bush, Sr., years of attacks and federal cutbacks--with Black women stereotyped as the major problem in a horrendous social service system, Black men scapegoated as criminals and little federal money or sympathy for urban problems--fueled Black anger and resentment.

The shift also left Blacks feeling abandoned by Democrats, unwanted by the GOP and
politically impotent. Clinton's ability to vibe with Black folks in churches, wear sunglasses, play the sax, and just talk about race was a welcome change.

Blacks grabbed it and felt Clinton at least felt their pain. Meanwhile he gutted welfare
needed by poor Blacks, abandoned high level Black appointees at any
hint of political liability, hedged on affirmative action and failed other tests. He did make high level Black appointments, offered more Blacks federal judgeships, launched a shaky national dialog on race and put Africa on America's foreign policy map.

To Mr. Bush's credit, he invited some Black religious leaders to a Dec. 19 meeting in
Austin, Texas, has reached out to Rev. Jackson, spoke to the NAACP during the
campaign pledging to uphold civil rights laws and concedes his party's misuse of race as a political tool was wrong. He also selected two Blacks, Gen. Colin Powell for secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice for national security advisor, for major
positions in his administration.

It's time to face reality and stop looking for a great white political hope.

Clinton wasn't perfect and despite the conservative choirs' most ardent singing, Bush isn't perfect either. Nearly 80 percent of Blacks feel his election was illegitimate, according to a Dec. 18 poll. And it's been well proven that Black areas were hit hard by voting irregularities in Florida, which gave Bush the White House amid questions about whether he actually won Florida's popular vote.

But its Black leaders who need to end name calling and find ways to coalesce. Why?
Neither side has a monopoly on what is right and their champions aren't without serious flaws.

Coming up with some basic points of agreement can extract more from the Bush
administration than attacks and counterattacks on one another by African American
pastors, activists and leaders.

Bush is starting out in a weakened position, having no Reagan mandate to push through any agenda. He lost the popular vote. And he lost 9 out of every 10 Black
ballots cast and counted.

Black voting has steadily risen in national elections since the 1995 Million Man March,
and in 1996 presidential elections an additional 1.7 Black men joined the process.
Congressional elections in two years will likely show the same trend, meaning Bush could be even weaker halfway through this term, if Republicans lose ground.

Another reality is electoral politics is only one tool needed to break through challenges
faced by Black America. Self-help through harnessing billion dollar
Black economic power, personal responsibility and community building are vital tools that fit the conservative ideology.

What could both sides agree on? They could start with more funding for neighborhood
AIDS prevention programs, call for an end to racial profiling, solicit
more financial and technical help for grassroots organizations, lobby for economic
development in urban areas and Africa, fill the gaps in welfare reform, back funding for
religious groups to deal with some social problems, confront racial discrimination in
government and private industry, and promote moratoriums on racially imbalanced
capital punishment at the federal and state levels.

Joint work on problems can help change reality for Black folks in a positive way. It also survives no matter what political party is in power. Putting loyalty to party or
philosophical label above the needs of the community only makes leaders at both ends of the spectrum appear self serving.

(Richard Muhammad is a writer and columnist based in Chicago, where he serves as
managing editor of The Final Call newspaper, published by Min. Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. He can be reached at here and welcomes responses to his columns. The views of the author represent his opinions alone and
all rights are reserved.)

========================================================

http://www.drcnet.org/wol/165.html#traffic

Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet)

December 22, 2000 (Issue #165)

At the Movies: The Buzz on "Traffic"

By Christian Ettinger for DRCNet

"Traffic," the soon-to-be released Hollywood film directed
by Steven Soderbergh and starring Michael Douglas and
Catherine Zeta Jones, merits the attention of drug policy
reform activists. An ambitious, sprawling, and panoramic
overview of the drug war, the film dives into the tragedy
and hypocrisy of the War on Drugs like no Hollywood movie
before it. The film's nationwide release in the coming weeks
is certain to spark popular interest in drug policy, and
that represents an opportunity which drug policy reformers
should seize.

"Traffic" is, at different times, heavy-handed, shrill, and
melodramatic, and it carries mixed messages -- it is, after
all, a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. But its bottom line
-- after all the tragicomic scenes of a futile War on Drugs
in action in Mexico, on the border, on America's streets,
and in Washington's corridors of power -- is that the War
on Drugs is doomed to failure. Instead, the film implicitly
argues that a harm reduction approach centered on drug
treatment is a more realistic approach for reducing
substance abuse and its attendant harms.

Ironically, some of the politicians who designed the current
drug policy and the armed bureaucrats who implement it have
walk-on roles as themselves in the film. Do they realize
their dogma is being questioned? According to the Associated
Press, the filmmakers got Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) appear
in the film by telling his staff, "the movie will be about
how drugs destroy families."

The AP story goes on to say the film has an anti-drug
message, but that is an oversimplification. True, in some
scenes that could have come from "Reefer Madness," teens
fall victim to the allure of drugs. But to call "Traffic" an
anti-drug movie misses the film's primary message, pounded
into the viewer with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer,
that the War on Drugs must end.

The film's plot centers on Michael Douglas as a reluctant
Drug Czar whose high school age honor student daughter dabbles
in drugs and then in an absurdly short time becomes a full
fledged crack whore at the mercy of her demonic African-
American drug dealer. This is the kind of cautionary tale
that fueled the drug war to begin with, and it reads as
if written by Barry McCaffrey himself.

McCaffrey also could have scripted the lurid scenes of the
Drug Czar's daughter and her prep school friends progressing
with astounding speed from smoking pot to using speedballs,
a mixture of cocaine and heroin. In its typically unsubtle
fashion, the movie manages to bring in both the racial-
sexual fears that envelop drug war zealots and the "gateway
drug" theory. If those scenes are to be believed, any teenage
girl who tries marijuana is one step away from ruin.

While these cartoonish scenes certainly convey an anti-drug
message out of the 1930s, it is unlikely that Sen. Hatch and
other drug warrior senators will like the way the movie
plays out. Watching his daughter's deterioration does not
turn Douglas into an even more zealous drug warrior -- far
from it. Instead, Douglas comes to see his job, his office,
and the drug war as a sham. In addition to Hatch's appearance,
in fact, is a cameo by well-known drug war critic Ethan
Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy
Foundation.

(Ed: Well-known in some circles, anyway. According to the
gossip columns, the Screen Actors Guild is threatening to
fine the film's producers $500 each for allowing Nadelmann,
as well as journalist J.D. Podolsky, to play themselves.
Under union rules, Nadelmann and Podolsky are not well known
enough to play themselves, and should have been portrayed by
union actors. Sorry, Ethan.)

Just as the film-makers provide both anti-drug abuse and
anti-drug war messages, they also try to have it both ways
in the production notes used to promote the film.

"Everybody who read the script -- whether from the political
right or left, law enforcement or drug addicts -- thought
the script was on their side," said screenwriter Stephen
Gaghan in the notes.

Producer Laura Bickford agrees, "What was curious about
the reaction to the script was that everybody felt it
represented their point of view. The DEA, which gave us
enormous support, felt it was one of the most truthful
things they'd ever read about what it's like to be in
law enforcement fighting the fight."

But if the DEA liked the script, it may therefore believe
its mission is futile. In an example of art imitating life,
scenes portraying the Mexican drug czar as himself a corrupt
drug dealer drive home the point that trying to stop the
flow of drugs is like trying to plow the sea.

In one of the most eloquently stunning scenes in the film,
Douglas, headed back to Washington after a fact-finding
mission in Mexico, asks his policy experts whether they
have any new ideas or strategies. The silence is deafening.

Gaghan does concede in the notes that after researching
the issue and speaking with drug policy makers, he found,
"Speaking candidly nobody thought the current policies were
working -- nobody."

"We're trying to be as dispassionate as we can," added
Soderbergh.

But he sang a slightly different tune in a recent interview
with Salon. "I came away from this process thinking, 'All
right let's talk about realistic stuff.' Stuff like Prop.
36 (the California initiative passed this year that offers
diversion to treatment programs for nonviolent drug offenders);
finding a way to look at this as a health care issue, not a
criminal issue; something other than filling up prisons with
nonviolent users."

Salon critic Jeff Stark sums up the film's message well:

"'Traffic' is the first mainstream, major Hollywood
production that has come out and said that America's
drug war is not winnable. The film argues both implicitly
and explicitly that going after the suppliers and the
drug traffickers -- where the US spends the bulk of its
$19-billion-a-year budget -- simply doesn't work, that it
kills innocents and turns others into criminals, that it
devastates poor neighborhoods, that it can't stop or even
attenuate an insatiable social maw of illicit drug use"
(http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2000/12/20/traffic_essay/).

Despite the filmmaker's protestations, Stark writes that
their intentions were unambiguous. "Soderbergh and Gaghan
have a clear opinion and neither are holding back -- they're
not afraid to risk sounding didactic in service of what they
consider a moral high ground."

The New York Film Critics Circle agrees with Stark. When
they awarded "Traffic" the prize for best picture, they
called the film an indictment of the drug war, not an
indictment of drugs or drug users.

"Traffic" is by no means a perfect film, but it does provide
a huge potential opening to expand popular consciousness of
the evils of the drug war and the search for better answers.

"Traffic" opens in New York and Los Angeles next week and
nationally in January.

-----------------------------------------------------------

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========================================================

Freeze damages crops at Muhammad Farms

========================================================

December 26, 2000

What's Hiding In GW's Cabinet?
by Robert Lederman

"I'm very good at delegating authority...I'll surround myself
with the best minds in America". Exactly who are these, best
minds in America, and where is GW Bush getting them from?

There is a common thread connecting all of Bush's appointees
so far-pharmaceuticals, oil, Wall Street and the historical
connection between the CIA, major US corporations and Nazi
Germany. If you've studied the Bush family history in any
depth you won't find many surprises among his nominations.

Paul O'Neill, the Bush nominee for Treasury Secretary, is the
chairman of Alcoa Aluminum, one of the nation's largest toxic
polluters. O'Neill owns 1.6 million shares of Alcoa, worth more than
$50 million. During WWII Alcoa negotiated a deal with the Nazis
and IG Farben to supply Germany's war machine rather than the
US military with aluminum. "If America loses this war," said then
Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes on June 26, 1941, "it can
thank the Aluminum Corporation of America [ALCOA]."

Alcoa is the producer of hundreds of millions of tons of fluoride.
This highly toxic byproduct of aluminum has been scientifically
linked in thousands of medical studies conducted since the 19th
century to cancer and other degenerative diseases. In the 1950's
Alcoa arranged to have it profitably added to our nation's drinking
water rather than disposed of as toxic waste. During WWII the
Nazis discovered that by adding fluoride to the drinking water in
concentration camps they could make prisoners far more
submissive to authority. .

Melquiades R. Martinez, designated Secretary for Housing and
Urban Development, is a Cuban refugee who established his
political reputation by preventing new housing from being built in
conservative Orange Co. Florida-claiming it was a quality of life
violation. As chair of Orange County, Martinez eliminated the
department of community affairs, a civil rights agency that was set
up to give poor people a voice in local government. It is probable
that Martinez received CIA indoctrination after he arrived in the US
at age 15 as part of a government airlift program of children whose
parents did not want them to grow up under the Castro regime.

NJ Governor Christie Whitman is the Bush designee for the
Environmental Protection Agency. Her massively polluted state
hosts some of the world's largest oil refineries and chemical
manufacturing plants. Environmental non expert Whitman has said
she doubts that the giant ozone hole over the North Pole or global
warming are actually serious problems.

Donald L. Evans, the nominee for Commerce Secretary, is an
insider in the Texas "oil mafia" and is GW's closest friend and
confidant. He's also a close friend, confidant and contributor to one
of America's biggest recipients of government contacts,
Halliburton's Dick Cheney.

Rev. Floyd Flake, Dubya's nominee for Secretary of Education,
was the only prominent African American leader in NYC to endorse
Bush pal Rudy Giuliani, the racist NYC Mayor who has executed a
seven year long campaign of violence, harassment and false arrest
aimed at African Americans. Giuliani's most memorable quote on
education was a proposal to blow up the entire NYC Board of
Education.

Last year, to his everlasting credit, Flake publicly denounced
Giuliani as a mental case. Like numerous GW Bush aides and
advisors, Rev. Flake is part of the CIA's Manhattan Institute which
masterminded Giuliani's entire social eugenics agenda. Among the
areas Flake is likely to focus on for Bush is turning public
education over to religious institutions and corporations.

Ann M. Veneman, Bush's appointee for secretary of agriculture,
was deputy secretary for agriculture under President George Bush.
She is known as an advocate for letting corporations exploit public
land and for widespread distribution of foods containing genetically-
altered animal genes, viruses, self-contained insecticides and
bacteria. Bush has said he wants to open up Federal reserves,
national forests and other pristine areas of public land to oil
drilling,
mining and road construction. Under Bush stewardship, we could
see corporations running frankenfood farms in Yosemite or drilling
for oil in the Grand Canyon.

John Ashcroft, GW's choice for Attorney General, is a self-styled
moral crusader as strongly against abortion as he is enthusiastic
about the death penalty. He lost his Senate seat in the 2000
election to an opponent who died during the campaign. Last year,
Ashcroft received an honorary degree from Bob Jones University
and is closely aligned with the Christian Coalition and Pat
Robertson. Ashcroft is also an outspoken fan of Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas. He is known among lobbyists as an
advocate for drug companies and the automotive industry and for
preventing consumers from suing HMO's.

Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., nominated as director of the Office of
Management and Budget was senior executive of the Eli Lilly drug
company-which Bush's father headed from 1977-79. Daniels was
also previously the president of the arch conservative think tank
Hudson Institute. Daniels, who advocates strict enforcement of
laws against casual drug users, was arrested for marijuana
possession in 1970.

Secretary of State designee Colin Powell is a lifelong operative of
the CIA/military industrial complex. While working for the Pentagon
he helped cover up the Mai Lai massacre, the contra/arms deal
and Gulf War Syndrome. Powell's fame derives from presiding over
a war in which US troops were used as guinea pigs for
experimental vaccines so that they could "safely" fight George
Bush's friend Sadamn Hussein-who had been given the go ahead to
attack Kuwait after being supplied with chemical and biological
weapons by the Bush administration. Like many of GW's
appointees of color, Powell proudly admits he owes his career in
large part to affirmative action while joining an administration that
considers ending affirmative action one of its topmost priorities.

Condolezza Rice, Bush's National Security advisor was formerly a
security advisor under President George Bush and an aide to Colin
Powell. She has the job of explaining the basic elements of foreign
policy to GW, about which Bush admits to knowing almost
nothing. A large part of her career was involved in administering the
CIA's foreign policy objectives. She serves on the board of Chevron
Oil-known as one of the African continents most violent human
rights abusers. A grateful Chevron recently named an oil tanker
after her.

The emerging profile of the Bush administration-moderately
conservative and multi-racial-is a facade. To see their real agenda
one has to examine the administration's ideological source-the
Manhattan Institute. GW may cultivate the image of a plain-talkin'
good ole boy who prefers barbecuing to making policy, but virtually
every idea presented as central to his agenda comes from this elite
east coast institution.

A little background MI (The Manhattan Institute) was started in
1978 by William Casey, one of the top intelligence operatives in US
history. During WWII Casey worked with OSS chief William
Donavan and Allen Dulles to bring top level Nazi officials to the US
where they were recruited into the newly-formed CIA, the military,
government-connected medical research institutions and the
media. The stated rational for importing Hitler's top intelligence
operatives, social scientists and propagandists to the US was that
they would be employed in fighting Communism-exactly what Hitler
claimed he used them for. In reality they were brought here to help
establish fascism in America-a goal which they are increasingly
succeeding at.

Before WWII started Dulles was involved with GW's grandfather
Prescott Bush on Wall Street where, along with George Herbert
Walker (Prescott Bush's father-in-law) they operated banks and
shipping companies that were later declared by the US Congress
to be fronts for the Nazis. In 1942 shortly after the US entered
WWII the assets of these Wall Street companies were seized by
the US government under the Trading With The Enemy Act.

Dulles was the legal counsel for both Standard Oil and for Nazi
Germany's I.G. Farben-one of the world's largest industrial
powerhouses-which was co-owned by the Rockefeller family-the
main funders of the Manhattan Institute.

The US ambassador to Germany at the time had this to say about
The Rockefellers, the Bush's, the Mellons (owners of Alcoa) and
the other wealthy Americans who were backing Hitler and
promoting Eugenics, or scientific racism:

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state
to
supplant our democratic government and is working closely with
the fascist regime in Germany. I have had plenty of opportunity in
Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families
are to the Nazi regime. . .They extended aid to help Fascism
occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." -
William Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.-Facts and
Fascism, G Seldes, p. 122 Also, Trading with the Enemy, Charles
Higham, p.167

When IG Farben was broken up after Germany lost the war its
parts became the top pharmaceutical companies in the world-
BASF, Hoechst, Bayer AG, Agfa-Gevaert and Cassella AG. Today
these companies, along with Pfizer and Eli Lilly-which former
President George Bush headed from 1977-1979-are the largest
manufacturers of prescription and over the counter drugs sold in the
U.S. Both the Pfizer and Eli Lilly drug companies are sponsors of
MI.

These oil, pharmaceutical and Wall Street investment banking
elites are the foundations of the Rockefeller and Bush dynasties
and are the real constituents of the new Bush administration.

Being a business partner with the Third Reich posed no problem for
Dulles who became the first CIA director in 1947. In fact, their
relationship with the Nazis and Wall Street was exactly how
Dulles, former Pres. Bush and William Casey all became CIA
directors. GW's father was made CIA director in 1976. Shortly after
creating the Manhattan Institute, William Casey was made CIA
director by Ronald Reagan.

In 1954 Casey put together a consortium of investors including top
US intelligence experts who had made fortunes on Wall Street to
form Capital Cities. In the interim, Casey served as Chairman of the
Securities and Exchange Commission from 1969 to 1977. By 1985
Casey's Capital Cities had so much cash it was able to buy ABC
and operate it as a propaganda arm of the US government-which it
continues to be today.

Casey was the top stockholder in ABC while he was director of the
CIA under the Reagan and Bush administrations. ABC, CNN and
Rupert Murdoch's rabidly right wing network FOX were instrumental
in fabricating GW Bush's illegitimate presidency, the myth that
Colin Powell is a hero and the idea that the Gulf War was a military
victory-rather than a human and ecological disaster fought solely to
benefit the oil industry.

The reason this history is crucial to understanding GW Bush and
his ties to the Manhattan Institute is that these same themes-Wall
Street investing, Eugenics, the oil and drug industries, working for
the Rockefeller family, manipulating the media and the directorship
and ideology of the CIA-are the foundation on which the MI and it's
influence within the new Bush administration can be understood.

The connection between Nazi Germany, the Bush family and the
CIA is simultaneously political, financial and ideological. It
encompasses investment banking, legal and illegal drug dealing
and Eugenics, the pseudo-science of population control. Unlike
openly racist groups, they are equal opportunity employers
carefully cultivating operatives among all races. Academics,
politicians, doctors, clergy, prominent new anchors, social
scientists and in some cases even street gangs are among their
assets in the war to exert social control.

If you visit the MI website you will find a list of academics who are
their roster of so-called conservative experts. Their areas of
expertise are race, eliminating welfare, deregulation of business
and the privatization of virtually everything the government presently
manages-including education, prisons, parks, streets, social
security, courts and welfare.

A number of their experts, including Bush's domestic policy advisor
Stephen Goldsmith and Rev. Floyd Flake, are slated for cabinet
positions. Others MI notables, including Myron Magnet, are the
inventors of Bush's doublespeak theme, "compassionate
conservatism". GW has stated that next to Jesus and the bible,
Magnet's book on the so-called underclass has been the single
greatest influence on his ideas.

The Pioneer Fund, perhaps the world's greatest promoter of
Eugenics, funded MI's best-known resident scholar, Charles
Murray, during eight years in which he wrote The Bell Curve.
Despite tremendous controversy about his ideas Murray remains
the MI's leading expert on welfare reform, IQ and affirmative action.
The Bell Curve advances the idea, as do virtually all Pioneer Fund
projects, that African Americans are genetically inferior, disease
prone, have low IQ and are a drain on the US economy. Murray's
books have been heavily promoted by the MI and are the
intellectual foundation for the movement in the US to end affirmative
action and welfare.

Murray is glowingly mentioned hundreds of times on their website,
speaks at their seminars and is cited as a brilliant scholar by none
other than GW Bush's top domestic policy advisor, Stephen
Goldsmith.

Many Americans didn't seem to mind seeing the CIA ruthlessly
manipulate the political and social fabric of other nations for the
second half of the 20th century. How they will feel about America
being openly run by the CIA and this circle of racist corporate
gangsters may well determine the history of the next century.
Robert Lederman 12/23/2000

NY Times June 12, 2000 Bush Culls Campaign Theme From
Conservative Thinkers ???Gov. George W. Bush has said his
political views have been shaped by the work of Myron Magnet of
the Manhattan Institute.??? Also see: The Dallas Morning Star
4/16/2000 The Godfathers of 'Compassionate Conservatism

NY Times Monday, May 12, 1997 Turning Intellect Into Influence
Promoting Its Ideas, the Manhattan Institute Has Nudged New York
Rightward "...the institute was founded as a free-market education
and research organization by William Casey, who then went off to
head the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan
Administration."

See: Sarasota Herald-Tribune 11/11/2000
http://www.newscoast.com/headlinesstory2.cfm?ID=35115 Director
of Florida Holocaust Museum links Bush family to Nazis

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just
so long as I'm the dictator." -12/18/2000 GW Bush See CNN
transcripts
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html

Boston Globe 12/11/2000 Conspiracy theories on election abound -
"Robert Lederman spies a conspiracy around virtually every corner
of American government, and nowhere more so than in the post-
election drama playing out in Florida. Lederman...spotted signs of
a sinister plot from the moment Florida Governor Jeb Bush flew
home after election night. Since then, the rulings by various courts
and elections officials have only confirmed his worst suspicion: the
existence of a ''vast right-wing conspiracy,'' probably tied to the
CIA, orchestrated to win the White House for George W. Bush."

Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists??? Response To Illegal State Tactics)
ARTISTpres@aol.com (718) 743-3722
for much more detailed info on all of the above see
http://Baltech.org/lederman/spray/

Please feel free to forward and repost-Happy Holidays!

========================================================

Subject:
FW: FW: Another reason to eat at home
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 11:10:32 -0500
From: "Eure, Michael" <MEure@es.st-aug.edu>

"Chicken head found in wing box"

Mother still dealing with her discovery

by Keith Rushing Daily Press

Newport News

Katherine Orteaga was looking forward to eating a chicken dinner after a family outing Tuesday.

She ordered a box of fried wings from McDonald's and was putting them on plates for her two children when she found a chicken part that definitely wasn't a wing.

(more including picture of chicken head)

========================================================

Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 12:12:59 -0800
From: TheBlackList News <kwasi@theblacklist.net>
Subject: JAMAICA: Court probing 'Mad Cow' calamity

21/12/2000
Jamaica Observer:
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/2000/12/438423_1.asp

Court probing 'Mad Cow' calamity
Observer Reporter & AFP

BRITAIN insisted yesterday that its officials who handled the mad cow
disease outbreak had acted "in good faith," as a French court considered
bringing charges of manslaughter against them.

News of the Franco investigation came a day after the French trade
commissioner to Jamaica, Jean-Pierre Laclau, issued a strong defence of the
purity of French corned beef on which Jamaica has placed a temporary ban
because of the disease.

Yesterday, a Paris court opened an investigation into claims that French,
British and European Union officials were guilty of involuntary homicide for
allowing the disease to spread from Britain to mainland Europe.

A spokesman for Britain's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said
a two-year inquiry into the handling of the outbreak led by Lord Nicholas
Phillips had not found any individuals to be culpable.

"As the Phillips report concluded, officials and former ministers acted in
good faith," he said.

The investigation in Paris was initiated by two families of French people
who have died from the human form of mad cow disease, variant
Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD).

In their writ the families said that Britain bore a heavy responsibility
for "authorising the mass export of animal meal, which they recognise as
being the main source of contamination".

Britain was the first European country to identify mad cow disease, or
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), in its cattle herds and suffered the
worst outbreak anywhere. More than 80 people in Britain who contracted vCJD
from eating contaminated beef have died, and two have died in France.

The disease in livestock has been brought under control but it has since
cropped up on farms in a number of other countries in Europe.

Meat-and bone-meal (MBM), manufactured from ground-up carcasses is widely
held to be the main vector for propagating BSE. The meal was banned for
cattle in Britain in 1988, two years after the outbreak of the disease
there, but continued to be exported to Europe.

The victims' families also blamed the European Union (EU) for having
"helped by its passivity ... the spread of infection," and accused France of
"complicity ... for not making public health a top priority."

Yesterday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it would be alerting
countries that import beef products from the EU about the economic impact of
BSE.

WHO experts Maura Ricketts and Francois Meslin told a news conference in
Geneva that the cost of BSE to Britain had been US$7.5 billion (8.1 billion
euro) between 1986 and 1996.

"If this agent is introduced into a country the economic impact for the
country is enormous," Ricketts said, adding this would be particularly the
case for developing countries.

The Jamaica Bureau of Standards did not highlight the economic cost of the
disease, but said its temporary restriction of imports of French corned
beef, announced Wednesday, was a precautionary measure to protect the
public.

According to the Bureau, the concern for health and safety became more
glaring as the agency learnt that a recent study by an Argentine
veterinarian revealed that Jamaica, on a per capita basis, was the largest
consumer of corned beef in the world.

Two local distributors -- Grace, Kennedy and Lasco -- have volunteered to
remove their brands that are imported from France from the market.

But commissioner Laclau, in a statement Thursday, vouched for the safety
of French corned beef, saying that the produce comes from cattle that are:
* under strict veterinary control;
* tested before and after killing;
* killed in controlled and certified slaughterhouses; and
* certified safe and free of BSE.

Commissioner Laclau also said that French corned beef is processed in
"dedicated plants with no risk of contact with other animal parts", and that
the meat used by the plants can be traced back to the individual animal for
each batch of the product.

In addition, Laclau said there are only three producers of corned beef in
France, therefore the source of the products is well established. He also
said that each shipment of corned beef is certified safe and free of BSE
contamination by French official veterinary authorities.

Laclau said, too, that the French Embassy in Jamaica remained confident
"that proper consultations, sincerity and good faith will lead to a prompt
re-establishment of trade in meat products with France".

========================================================

December 21, 2000

Electoral Racism: Chance For New Alliances?

By Frances M. Beal <fmbeal@igc.org>

There are two good things that could be said about
the events in Florida and the shameful U.S. Supreme Court
ruling that anointed Bush as president. One is that the
election exposes once again that race is central to U.S.
politics. The other is that political activists have a rare
opportunity to forge new alliances among disparate forces
in the current struggles for democracy, and social, economic
and racial justice. In embryonic form, these new coalitions
have already begun to emerge.

Members of the Electoral College met in 50 state
capitals around the country on December 18th. Inside these
imposing edifices, they went through the motions of casting
votes to select the next U.S. President. Outside, however,
thousands of people amassed to count the ways that this
election has no legitimacy and to demand an end to electoral
racism along with fundamental reform of the electoral laws.

There are those that sneered that the gatherings are
merely an exhibition of sour grapes, but these protests go
far beyond partisanship for the GOP, the Dems, the Greens or
any other political party. The speakers represented a broad
spectrum of groups across the ideological divide and sectors
that heretofore have not recently found common ground:
the civil rights movement, the anti-corporate forces,
environmentalists, trade unionists and electoral
reform groups.

The breadth of the coalition is based on a
developing consciousness on the part of whites that race
plays a central role in U.S. politics and the struggle for
democracy. Ironically, we have the state of Florida to thank
for this new understanding of electoral racism. That state
wrote a shameful page in the electoral history book that
is already crammed with shameful events.

It came as quite a shock to many white progressives
that even the fundamental right to vote was still being
denied to people of color. But now, few progressives can
doubt that Jeb Bush made a conscious decision to deliver
Florida's 25 electoral votes to the Republicans by a
systematic and conscious scheme to curtail the vote of tens
of thousands of African Americans. No other explanation can
account for the outrageous violations of the Voting Rights
Act that have emerged since the election.

The tenuous unity being forged is likewise based on
a growing consciousness among many people of color that the
Democrats cannot be excused from the disenfranchisement
scheme. Under the aegis of the Democratic Leadership
Council, these Dixiecrats have worked for eight years to
push the Democratic Party & nation to the right. One only
has to look at the assault on welfare recipients, or their
promotion of NAFTA, or their refusal to uphold affirmative
action. Above all one can look at their misnamed criminal
justice policies, where social and health ills are
criminalized and the ensuing highest incarceration
rate of any industrialized country.

These policies came back to haunt the Dems in
Florida, since it is one of ten states, mostly in the South,
where a felony conviction means you lose your vote FOR LIFE!
As a result one in three Black male Floridians (200,000) can
never vote again.

Even some of the Gore faithful are asking why
he refused to sign on to a court challenge of all these
violations of the Voting Rights Act. The Gore faithful can
shake their heads in despair, but few can dispute the fact
that he made sure to distance himself from the demands
of Black voters for an immediate remedy to the massive
deprivation of their suffrage. They are more prepared
to listen to an analysis that explains his seemingly
self-destructive behavior by exposing the racist DLC
strategy of ignoring African American concerns and
interests in favor of making the party more
appealing to white surburban America.

Many Black people understand more than others,
however, that much of the impetus for the massive voter
fraud in the 2000 election is not just an aberration. It
can be traced to our undemocratic and racist election
procedures: the winner take all rules in general and
the Electoral College in particular.

This institution is rooted in America's racist
history. When the country was founded after the war for
independence, the slaveowners fearful that they would not
have enough power, insisted that their slaves be counted
as three-fifths of a person in determining congressional
representation and Electoral College strength. This is the
reason that 32 of our first 36 presidents came from Dixie.
>From that time until the civil war ended formal slavery,
the U.S. national government spoke with a southern accent.

Today, that accent persists. This apparent
anachronism is more than a hold over from a less enlightened
era. The Electoral College was established to maintain white
supremacy then and it operates to maintain white supremacy
today. Fifty-three percent of African Americans live in the
South, but in no state do they represent a majority. This
means that in every presidential election, the reactionaries
from the South literally wipe out the votes of millions of
Black citizens.

This helps explain why the South remains a bastion
of reaction - it is anti-black and other people of color,
it's anti labor, it's anti immigrant, and it's a hotbed
for the Christian right wing and militarism. And yet,
Black people,the most progressive base in that region,
are rendered voiceless by the winner take all rules that
prevail. The Civil Rights movement may have destroyed the
monopoly over power by whites, but we have not yet put to
rest the tyranny of a white reactionary majority that is
still institutionalized in the two-party, Electoral
College system.

It should be evident that one of the most important
political lessons of elections 2000 is that those who fight
for a progressive agenda and racial justice must place
electoral racism at the top of their activist agenda. This
is an opportune moment to do so since millions of people
have been exposed to and shocked by the pervasive dirty
underbelly of racist and exclusionary electoral practices.
If we act decisively against electoral racism, the peoples'
movements for peace and justice can take great strides in
beginning to challenge the political stranglehold of
conservative politics over the nation as a whole.

--

Frances M. Beal is a columnist for the San Francisco Bay
View newspaper and the National Secretary of the Black
Radical Congress. The views and opinions expressed in
the above article are her own.

Copyright (c) 2000 Frances M. Beal. All Rights Reserved.

========================================================

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 14:03:08 -0500
From: "Louis Posner" <lposner1@nyc.rr.com>
Subject: INAUGURAL VOTER MARCH - IMPORTANT UPDATE

Thousands of us will be meeting at Dupont Circle In Wash. DC at 10:00 am on
Saturday, January 20th. We will have a stage set up for our
counter-inaugural demonstration at Dupont Circle where we will have various
speakers and entertainment figures performing. We will then have an
organized protest march from Dupont Circle to the Capitol and then to the
U.S. Supreme Court.

Bob "Hawk" Rogers from DC has been doing a great job in securing the permit
applications and Joshua MacFarlane has done a great job in redesigning our
new website at www.VoterMarch.org. Inquiries regarding the website should
be made to webmaster@votermarch.org.

I was also interviewed by the Washington Post which will be publishing an
article this Thursday about VoterMarch.org and other groups who will be
protesting the Inauguration.

If you have any questions for us, please email to info@votermarch.org

Louis Posner, Esq.
Chairman
Voter March

========================================================

WASHINGTON POST
Thursday, December 21, 2000; Page A10

Election Anger Fuels Inaugural Protesters
By David Montgomery and Arthur Santana
Washington Post Staff Writers

The raw wounds left by the presidential election finale have created
enough irritation to unleash one of the largest inauguration protests in
years, according to veteran organizers and police officials.

"This will be by far the biggest counter-inauguration since the 1973
Nixon counter-inauguration," predicted Brian Becker, co-director of the
International Action Center in New York, who has demonstrated at
numerous presidential swearing-in events. "We organize protests not
infrequently, and we know when something has legs and when it
doesn't have legs. This one does."

At the second inauguration of President Richard M. Nixon, police
estimated there were 25,000 to 100,000 demonstrators, including
some who threw fruit and stones at Nixon's car. The total crowd was
about 300,000.

D.C. police are expecting about 750,000 people on Jan. 20 when
President-elect Bush is sworn in, and they said they think many
demonstrators will be content to voice their displeasure peacefully.

Becker's group, like several others hoping to flood parts of the city on
Inauguration Day, had been planning to be in Washington no matter
who won the election. But enough people think the outcome was
illegitimate, he said, that it has cranked up protest passion. Within
hours of the Dec. 12 U.S. Supreme Court decision blocking Vice
President Gore's effort to recount votes in Florida, Becker and other
organizers said, their Web sites were deluged with inquiries.

"There's a tremendous amount of spontaneous organizing going on,"
said Becker, 48.

A rainbow of left-leaning groups had planned to rally on the Mall to
vent outrage at a variety of demons, including racism, the death
penalty and the corporate influence on politics. But complaints that
some Florida votes were not counted, including those of many African
Americans, have given demonstrators powerful common issues.

Unlike the street protests against the World Bank in April, no civil
disobedience has been planned, organizers say. They said the
demonstrations will feature signs, chants, giant puppets, skits and a
squad of radical stilt walkers being trained in Philadelphia.

"We are not planning to shut down the inauguration," Becker said. "We
are planning to make it plain that the inaugural route is not the private
property of those who support the death penalty, so we're going to be
well-represented on that parade route."

D.C. police aren't taking any chances with protesters' intentions,
according to Executive Assistant Chief Terrance W. Gainer. He said he
expects fewer than 5,000 unruly demonstrators might try to disrupt the
inauguration, along with thousands of peaceful demonstrators.

In addition to the D.C. force, thousands of suburban and federal
officers will participate in what officials described as an unprecedented
level of security.

The Justice Action Movement, an alliance of Washington area
protesters, yesterday sent D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey a letter
requesting a meeting to discuss plans for peaceful protests. Cmdr.
Michael Radzilowski, who is in charge of special operations, said
yesterday that he would be happy to meet with the protesters.

Half a dozen groups have requested permits, but none have been
granted. A National Park Service spokesman said the agency is waiting
for inauguration planners to make final arrangements before it allots
space to protesters.

The National Organization for Women plans to be there. "It's important
for our own spirit to let people know there is a place to plug in, take
that anger and use it to fuel some additional activism," NOW President
Patricia Ireland said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Walter Fauntroy plan a "shadow
inauguration" outside the U.S. Supreme Court to swear in those
pledging to uphold the Voting Rights Act.

"We feel the act was violated by George Bush," Sharpton said.
Fauntroy, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Shaw, said he has
witnessed every swearing-in since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
fourth in 1945, and "I know of no inauguration that has been the source
of greater controversy than this . . . following a shameful election."

Other activists are planning a Voters March to call for election reform
and the abolishment of the electoral college. "Our nation has been
traumatized by what has happened in this election," said Louis Posner,
a New York attorney leading the effort.

Another group, the D.C.-based New Black Panther Party, and its allies
plan to stage a Day of Outrage march, said spokesman Malik Shabazz.

Other local protest efforts are being coordinated by the Justice Action
Movement, a coalition of many who protested the World Bank. They
have been holding public meetings for several weeks at George
Washington University. They scheduled a news conference today to
bring together organizers of various protest efforts.

On Monday, several dozen people attended a Justice Action Movement
meeting. Most were students or young members of progressive
organizations and unions, but several were old enough to have
protested Nixon's inauguration. Justice Action Movement has dubbed
Jan. 20 the "InaugurAuction," a reference to members' belief that the
major parties buy the White House with corporate funds.

"Because of a corrupt political system, we now have a president who is
going to be threatening the lives of many innocent people because of
his support for the death penalty, military policies abroad and free
trade," said Adam Eidinger, 27, a movement organizer.

At the meeting, the group voted not to use violence, vandalism,
weapons, alcohol or drugs. They also decided to remain in small
groups scattered all over the Mall, employing creative visual effects and
stilt walkers to make their points.

After the meeting, several organizers said they suspected a police
infiltrator was in their midst. A man with a goatee looked just like a
plainclothes officer who figured prominently in confrontations with
World Bank demonstrators, according to organizers who said they have
videotapes.

Before ending a brief telephone interview with The Washington Post,
the man denied he was an undercover officer. A police spokesman said
there is no one on the force with the name the man used at the
meeting. Gainer confirmed that the police have infiltrated the
protesters, but he didn't identify anyone.

"They're looking for excuses to shut us down," Eidinger said.

This week, a few members of Justice Action Movement held a practice
InaugurAuction in front of the White House, offering to auction the
building for $10 to carpenters building bleachers for the parade.

"I don't feel this particular election demonstrates ideally what the
presidency is for this country," said Elizabeth Croyden, 30, an actress
and film producer who participated. "It exposes a lot of flaws in the
system, and I'm upset about it. If you don't get involved, how can you
make a difference?"

International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@iacenter.org
web: http://www.iacenter.org
CHECK OUT SITE
http://www.mumia2000.org
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
*To make a tax-deductible donation,
go to
http://www.peoplesrightsfund.org

========================================================

December 22, 2000

Mad Cow Angst Dampens Germans'
Holidays

By ROGER COHEN

ERLIN, Dec. 21 — The
sausage is sacred in this
country, so there was little surprise
when Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder's cabinet was summoned
today for crisis talks as Germans
panicked over possible connections
between mad cow disease and their
favorite fare.

Mr. Schröder, an epicure who
prefers pasta but likes to down a
sausage in carefully rehearsed
meet- the-people moments, issued a
statement after the cabinet meeting
saying, "Ministers are doing their
utmost to ensure that we have the
best possible consumer safety."

In fact, his health minister, Andrea Fischer, an environmentalist Green,
seems to be doing her utmost to ruin the German holiday season, warning
Germans this week that some sausages might contain beef that was
machine-cut from the spines of animals and urging producers to withdraw
any suspect sausage.

Today, the Health Ministry backed away from formally ordering the
withdrawal from stores of any of Germany's many sausage varieties, but
the government crisis talks reflected the damage done.

Two more cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy — commonly
known as mad cow disease — were found in German cattle today,
bringing the total to five since testing began a few weeks ago and
stimulating further concern among an already near-hysterical public.

For full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22GERM.html?pagewanted=1

========================================================

December 22, 2000

Israel Acknowledges Hunting Down Arab
Militants

By DEBORAH SONTAG

ERUSALEM, Dec. 21 — Senior Israeli
officials have acknowledged a new tactic
of hunting down and killing individual
Palestinian militants whom Israel holds
responsible for planning attacks on or attacking
its citizens.

The Israeli radio and the newspaper Haaretz
have quoted senior military officials on a
"liquidations" policy that has provoked an outcry
among Palestinian officials, who call it "state
terrorism." While Israeli officials never denied
that they were tracking down and killing armed
operatives, they are now beginning to
acknowledge this publicly, explicitly and even
proudly.

Carmit Guy, an Israeli radio interviewer, today
asked Ephraim Sneh, the deputy defense
minister, about "our eliminations."

"When we say that we will punish the murders
and we will prevent terror attacks, we really
mean it," Mr. Sneh said. "The good thing is that
we have succeeded in getting to, in an exact,
pinpoint and clean manner, people who have
launched terror attacks, murdered Israelis and are planning even more
murderous attacks."

Ms. Guy said, "But they then accuse us."

"So let them accuse all they want," Mr. Sneh said. "You can't beat terror at
symposiums at the university. The most effective and just way to deal with
terror is the elimination or incarceration of the people who lead these
organizations."

The Israeli Army unveiled this approach quite openly in early November,
but then proceeded quietly.

In early November, it assassinated a paramilitary commander in Beit
Sahur, near Bethlehem. During peak daylight, Israeli helicopter gunships
dropped missiles on his car as he left a site from which Palestinian gunmen
often fired on an Israeli Army post. The missiles killed the commander,
Hussein Obaiyat, and two middle-aged women passing by.

The army admitted the killing, which it referred to as a "surgical strike," in
contrast to the shelling of security force headquarters and other Palestinian
government offices. At the time, several senior government officials were
beginning to question Israel's retaliatory bombardments as
counterproductive displays of force. The shellings damaged public buildings
— which were evacuated because the Israelis gave warnings — but also
hurt private homes, terrified civilians and harmed Israel's image, they said.

The changing nature of the conflict also called for different tactics, they
said. The uprising began with large clashes between Palestinian rioters and
Israeli soldiers. But it mutated into something more akin to a Lebanon-style
guerrilla war, in which Palestinian gunmen mounted shooting attacks and
planted bombs. Israel, too, began thinking as it had in Lebanon, using
intelligence information to track down field commanders.

In three consecutive days last week, Israeli soldiers shot dead three
Palestinian militants — one from the Hamas organization, one from the
Islamic Jihad and one from Yasir Arafat's Fatah organization. All died
instantly in a hail of gunfire.

An Israeli radio report today cited a senior Israeli officer who called the
policy "very effective" in thwarting attacks and damaging the operational
ability of Palestinians. Using their one public case, army officials have
pointed to what they consider the positive aftermath of the Obaiyat
assassination; the shooting from Beit Sahur onto the Israeli Army outpost
dwindled to almost nothing.

Since the Obaiyat attack, the army has carried out its hits more quietly.

"After a dozen such revenge attacks, the army has developed a tactic that
takes into account media coverage of the event," Amos Harel, the military
correspondent for Haaretz, wrote this week. "When operations do not
involve an exchange of live fire, the Israeli Defense Forces spokesman
declines to respond. When attempts are made to stop activists and those
activists open fire, Israel immediately disperses its version of events."

The army generally says it was trying to stop and arrest the militant, who
responded by shooting and was shot dead in an ensuing gun battle.

The Palestinians say Israel has killed about 20 operatives, but the Israelis
say that number is exaggerated. Still, Israeli Army officials believe that the
killings, which they say are not directed at political leaders, have had a
chilling effect on the Palestinian paramilitary operations. Several
well-known Palestinian commanders are keeping a lower profile now, out
of fear that they will be chosen for attack.

Haaretz reported this week that several Islamic militants who were
recently released from prison have asked the Palestinian Authority for
protection. Some have been taken into protective custody, it said.

Meeting with Israeli lawmakers this week, Mr. Arafat said the
"assassinations" fueled violence. He urged them to intervene with their
government, but in Israel there has been little protest over the policy.

========================================================

Monday December 18 11:56 PM ET
Bush Pledges Healing, Interviews Job
Prospects

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect
George W. Bush (news - web sites) pledged to help
heal ``whatever wounds may exist'' from the bitterly
contested election as he introduced himself to the
powerful elite who could make or break his
presidency.

Bush sounded a humble, bipartisan theme on his
first visit to Washington since officially becoming
president-elect on Dec. 13 when Vice President Al
Gore (news - web sites) conceded the election to
him after a 36-day legal war over Florida's electoral
votes.

``I look forward to listening and occasionally talking, to work with both the
Republicans and the Democrats,'' he said Monday.

Bush, setting a hectic pace during a three-day visit to Washington, interviewed
prospective Cabinet appointees at the Madison Hotel as electors across the
United States carried out the traditional formality of meeting and officially
picked Bush as the 43rd president of the United States.

Normally the Electoral College (news - web sites) official count is routine but
this year took on added drama, although the final tally was not in doubt.

Bush won 271 electoral votes, just one more than needed to become president,
when Nevada cast its four votes in his favor. Democrat Gore should have won
267 votes but one elector in the District of Columbia cast a blank ballot in
protest of the nation's capital not being a state and having representation in
Congress.

Bush advisers, who asked to remain unidentified, said Bush was meeting Alcoa
aluminum company head Paul O'Neill, who is emerging as a top contender for
Treasury secretary but is a Wall Street unknown and is getting a lukewarm
reception there.

He also met former Republican Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana, a former member
of the Senate Armed Services Committee who is now believed to have the
inside track for defense secretary.

They also said Bush was meeting former California agriculture chief Ann
Veneman as a possible agriculture secretary.

Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman was to meet Cheney
and was spotted at Bush's hotel. She has been under consideration for a
Cabinet post like labor secretary.

Bush expressed confidence in Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
(news - web sites), who is credited with helping push the U.S. economy to its
longest peacetime expansion. The two men had a breakfast meeting and Bush
said they focused on high energy costs.

May Be ``Head-Knocking''

At a news conference after his talks on Capitol Hill with the two Republican
and two Democratic leaders of Congress, the Texas governor playfully said he
might have to resort to ''head-knocking'' and arm-twisting.

``I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with
each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot
easier, just so long as I'm the dictator,'' he chuckled.

But turning serious, he said he wanted to work with both parties because the
closeness of the election ``should make it clear to all of us that we can come
together to heal whatever wounds may exist, whatever residuals there may
be.''

Even Democrats who feel Gore was probably the
rightful winner but had it taken away from him by
the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme
Court (news - web sites) were willing to give Bush
a honeymoon greeting, calling him now the
legitimate president-elect.

``It's an opportunity for us to wipe the slate clean, to begin anew, with a
recognition that we have many, many challenges ahead,'' said Senate
Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. ``And as we face those
challenges, the only real choice for us is to recognize that bipartisanship isn't an
option, it's a requirement.''

Republican leaders, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and
House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois, said they hoped Bush would improve
what has been a partisan tone during Bill Clinton's presidency.

``This is a time for a new beginning, a new atmosphere, a new tone. I believe
we have a leader in George W. Bush that will provide direction toward a more
cooperative atmosphere,'' Lott said.

In his meetings, Bush said he would push for his proposed 10-year, $1.3 trillion
tax cut despite concerns about it on Capitol Hill, particularly among Democrats.

Laura Bush At White House

At the White House, Bush's wife Laura paid a visit to first lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton (news - web sites) for talks about the Bush transition to the venerable
old mansion.

``I'm glad to see you,'' Mrs. Clinton told Mrs. Bush after the Texas first lady
overcame a jammed door and finally managed to get out of her limousine.

It was unclear whether Greenspan told Bush about his concerns about the
president-elect's proposed 10-year, $1.3 trillion tax cut.

Greenspan differs with Bush on the need for across-the-board tax cuts, saying
surplus tax revenues should go toward paying down the national debt. Bush's
father, former President George Bush, has groused in the past that Greenspan
did not take steps to revive the U.S. economy in the early 1990s, helping seal
Bush's re-election defeat by Clinton.

``I talked with a good man right here. We had a very strong discussion about
my confidence in his abilities,'' Bush told reporters after the meeting.

He is to meet Gore and Clinton separately on Tuesday before returning home to Austin, Texas, where a Bush
news conference is possible on Wednesday.

Clinton told reporters at the White House he would ``do what I can to help President-elect Bush have a good
transition.'' The White House predicted a cordial meeting between Clinton and Bush, including lunch, despite
Bush's campaign vow to ``restore honor and dignity'' to the White House.

Bush's recently named national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), met for an hour and a half
with her Clinton counterpart Samuel Berger. White House Chief of Staff John Podesta will meet his Bush
counterpart, Andrew Card.

========================================================

December 21, 2000

THE CHOICES

Woman in the News: Ann M. Veneman

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

OS ANGELES, Dec. 20 —
For California Republicans,
President- elect George W. Bush's
selection of Ann M. Veneman to
be secretary of agriculture came as
little surprise.

As a deputy secretary of
agriculture for Mr. Bush's father,
Ms. Veneman had been the
highest-ranking woman ever to
serve in the department. If
confirmed as secretary, she would
become the first woman to lead it.

And last year, when Mr. Bush
began organizing his presidential
campaign, Ms. Veneman
volunteered to serve on his
exploratory committee in
California. That posed a daunting
challenge since Vice President Al
Gore, as a candidate, was far
more popular, and even among
Republicans, Mr. Bush had his
opponents: Bill Jones, the
secretary of state who is the senior elected Republican official in
California, was an early supporter of Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Thus, by his selection today, Mr. Bush has returned a favor.

"She's bright. She's capable. She'll do an outstanding job," Mr. Bush said
of Ms. Veneman, 51, a former secretary of the California Department of
Food and Agriculture.

Representatives of farming, timber and mining groups applauded her
selection, characterizing Ms. Veneman as a centrist willing to balance the
interests of all sides in any policy debate.

But as a possible prelude to conflict, environmental groups and
organizations representing small farmers called her a troubling choice.

They complained that as a strong proponent of free-market trade and
multiple-uses for public lands — and as a chairwoman of Mr. Bush's
campaign in California — Ms. Veneman would favor a larger role for
business and a retreat from policies that have helped family farms and
protected national forest lands.

Mr. Bush's comments today in Austin, Tex., were echoed by
representatives of interest groups whose fortunes are tied closely to
policy set by the agriculture department. The agency regulates such
disparate issues as price supports for farmers, food safety and national
forests, which the department oversees through the Forest Service.

"She is a great choice," said Bill Pauli, president of the California Farm
Bureau, a group that represents 90,000 farmers and ranchers.

"She clearly knows and understands process and procedure of
agriculture," Mr. Pauli said. "Equally important, she understands the
importance of good trade policy, relative to agriculture."

Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association,
said the selection of Ms. Veneman meant that "the pendulum is going to
swing the other way" in a Bush administration, after a series of initiatives
by President Clinton to withdraw nearly 70 million acres of public lands
from resource development or recreational use.

"We expect she'll be more friendly to natural resource development," Ms.
Skaer said.

Pete Wilson, who as governor of California from 1991 through 1998
was Ms. Veneman's boss, recalled a 1996 incident that demonstrated to
him her ability to analyze a problem and deal with it.

"There was a scare with respect to California strawberries being tainted
and fears they could cause hepatitis," he said. "I was out of Sacramento,
but she was unflappable. She determined there was no evidence of a
problem. She called a news conference. She stood before the reporters
and ate a considerable portion of the strawberries.

"To me," he added, "that took moxie."

Yet to others, the naming of Ms. Veneman, now a lawyer in private
practice, is problematic, and could presage a contentious Senate
confirmation.

Environmentalists said they were disturbed by Ms. Veneman's clients,
which have included groups that favor less strict protections for public
lands. "We have some very serious concerns about her background,"
said Bruce Hamilton, conservation director for the Sierra Club

========================================================

Published December 20 - 26, 2000
villagevoice.com exclusive

Shrub Pushes Faith-Based Welfare, Appoints African Americans to Key Posts
Bush Makes End Run Around Black Leaders
by James Ridgeway

WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 19—With Jesse Jackson calling George W. Bush
the victor in "a coup d'etat, led by the U.S. Supreme Court," African
American leaders stepped up their attacks on the "legitimacy" of the new
administration.

Jackson plans rallies at federal buildings around the country during the
days before the January 20 inauguration. L.A. congresswoman Maxine
Waters says she'll boycott the inauguration itself. "I think I will not have
healed by that time and will not be prepared to be in a celebratory
mood," she told Roll Call. Ditto for Congressman Donald Payne from New
Jersey, who won't attend either.

Congressional Black Caucus members in Washington are furious with Bush,
who they believe is trying to blindside them by appointing African
Americans to highly visible posts, such as Condoleezza Rice as national
security adviser and Colin Powell as secretary of state.

Meanwhile, Bush is moving to circumvent black civil rights leaders by
creating a new office of faith-based welfare in the White House. All this
is very much according to a script written at the Republican convention
in Philadelphia. There, Bush's chief domestic adviser, Stephen Goldsmith,
former mayor of Indianapolis and current contender for a cabinet post as
secretary of Housing and Urban Development, led a revival meeting of
black ministers in a Baptist church, promising churches, especially black
churches, a major new role in a Bush administration. Both Bush and GOP
theoreticians at the Heritage Foundation argue belief in a God of some
sort makes a person a better citizen. That being the case, they want to
pump up churches, giving them control over day care centers, drug
rehabilitation projects, welfare-to-work programs, schools funded by
vouchers, and even—as in Texas—parts of prisons.

For this to happen, Congress must pass legislation increasing tax benefits
for giving to charities as well as liberalizing government rules so that
churches can receive more public welfare funds. Bush wants to introduce
a $500 tax credit for individuals who contribute to charities that work
with the poor.

Despite his telephone exchange with the new president last week,
Jackson lay down a blistering attack at a Los Angeles press conference,
in which he charged that Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
has a conflict of interest because she supposedly said at an election
night party that what then appeared to be the election of Gore would be
"terrible." Jackson said Clarence Thomas has a similar conflict, because
his wife works at the Heritage Foundation, which is pushing individuals for
top jobs in the Bush administration and driving key parts of the
Republican agenda.

=========================================================

SafetyAlerts
December 14, 2000

16.7 Million Pounds of Ready-To-Eat
Poultry Products Recalled

Waco, TX (SafetyAlerts) - Cargill Turkey Products has
announced it is recalling approximately 16.7 million pounds
of ready-to-eat turkey and chicken products produced at
its Waco, Texas facility, the product may be contaminated
with Listeria monocytogenes.

The products were produced from May 1 to December 11
and distributed nationwide through grocery stores,
restaurants and institutions - and to Venezuela and
Iceland. The affected product is marked with the
establishment number "P-635".

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and
the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) are studying whether
some products from the Waco facility might contain
Listeria monocytogenes associated with 25 cases of
listeriosis, most of which have occurred since July 2000.

Listeria monocytogenes is an organism which can cause
serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children,
frail or elderly people, pregnant women and individuals with
weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals
may suffer short-term symptoms such as fever, headaches,
stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, listeria
infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among
pregnant women.

Affected Product

Retail Sliced Packages: In 10 to12-ounce packages.

Owens's Hickory Smoked Pre-Sliced Turkey Breast,
fresh
Plantation
Fiesta Pre-Sliced Turkey Breast, fresh
Mesquite Smoked Pre-Sliced Turkey Breast,
fresh and frozen
Pre-Sliced Smoke banquet-style Turkey
Breast, fresh and frozen
Black Forest Turkey Ham, fresh
Pre-Sliced Turkey Pastrami, fresh and frozen
Pre-Sliced Star Turkey Breast
Riverside
Pre-Sliced Hickory Smoked Turkey Breast,
fresh and frozen
Pre-Sliced Oven prepared Turkey Breast,
frozen
Honeysuckle White Pre-Sliced Oven Prepared
Turkey, fresh and frozen

Un-sliced Products: For slicing or consumer sale whole.

Dine Rite Picnic Dark Turkey, fresh and frozen
Old South Turkey Ham, fresh
Plantation Cajun Fried Turkey, frozen
Honeysuckle White Cajun-Style Fried Whole
Turkey, frozen

Wholesale: Products sold in bulk and sliced at
delicatessens, restaurants, and institutions

Boar's Head:
Our Premium Low Salt Turkey, frozen
Golden Catering Skin-on Turkey Breast, fresh
Carmel Colored Our Premium Turkey Breast,
fresh
Our Premium Low Salt Skinless Turkey
Breast, fresh
Smoked Turkey Breast, fresh
Oil Browned Chicken Breast, fresh
Oven Prepared Skinless Turkey Breast, fresh
Smoked Chicken Breast, fresh
Other products were sold in bulk and would not be
labeled at the point of purchase.

The Waco facility sold other products in bulk and that were
sliced at delicatessens and restaurants and would not be
readily identifiable by consumers. Cargill Turkey Products
has contacted establishments who purchased those
products, which are being removed and returned.

Consumers with questions about the recall may call Cargill
Turkey Products at 888-621-2717 or visit the website
www.plantation-foods.com. Cargill Turkey Products is
based in Springdale, Ark., and is part of Minneapolis-based
Cargill, Incorporated.

==========================================================

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