USC professor challenges students to question laws

Updated 12:00 PM ET August 30, 2000

By Rebecca Zak
Daily Trojan
U. Southern California

(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES -- Students should question their
motivations for obeying the law and their fear of anarchy,
said University of Southern California philosophy professor
Sharon Lloyd during a lecture Tuesday in the VKC courtyard.

The intimate audience attended the event as part of the
Student Senate Academic Lecture Series, which is designed
to increase awareness throughout academic levels.

Lloyd challenged students to examine their reasons for
obeying arbitrary laws, asking questions such as, "Should
we fear anarchists? Should we become anarchists?"

In her lecture, entitled "Anarchists and Angels: Are We
Morally Obligated to Obey Our Government?" Lloyd encouraged
students to examine the practical implications of anarchist
ideology. She questioned a California law, which states that
a third felony is grounds for life imprisonment.

"If, after repaying public debts by serving time, a criminal
has exonerated himself, how can we justify the existence of
this law?" Lloyd asked.

She proposed that citizens might have a moral obligation to
act against the government when the laws enforce injustice.
For example, in the case of legalized segregation or slavery,
Lloyd argued that citizens were required by notions of greater
justice to either disobey the law or act within the law to
change it.

Lloyd's discourse was the first of six academic lectures
giving students the opportunity to view a diverse group of
university professors lecturing on their topics of choice.

Lloyd was surprised to learn that the lecture series is the
first of its kind at USC. She called it a "great idea," noting
that it is difficult for students to know what the departments
do. She said these short, informal lectures provide an excellent
sampling of compelling fields and different departments and
enable students to learn without the commitment of taking a
class.

Matt Weir, assistant director of academic affairs for Student
Senate and an undeclared sophomore, lauded the event because it
promotes the "breadth and depth" ideal in education set forward
in the university's charter.

"Students are given the chance to preview a more multidisciplinary
approach to their studies through these lectures," Weir said. "It
promotes the exploration of different disciplines."

The Renaissance Scholarship committee, which promotes
interdisciplinary study by offering a generous scholarship to
seniors, helped support the series, Weir said.

Yishaun Chen, a psychobiology major, said that "the event focuses
mainly on undeclared students and gives them the opportunity to
listen to the best professors the university has to offer."

Cattleya Valencia, a freshman majoring in civil engineering, agreed.

"I'm here to get an idea about what's available," she said. "I'm
interested to see who the professors are."

Richard Fliegel, executive co-director of the General Education
department at the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, encouraged
students to "check it out."

"This is the perfect opportunity for students to get an idea of
what their professors really care about," he said.

The lecture series is co-sponsored by Senate, the Office of the
Provost and Program Board.

Some students already have recommendations on how to improve the
series for next year. Brandon Guerrero, a sophomore majoring in
philosophy, said he hopes the lectures will eventually draw a wider
audience.

"A lot of the people here are from the Thematic Options program
which advocates a multidisciplinary approach to an education,"
Guerrero said. "I hope that as these lectures evolve, they'll
become more like discussions and eventually include a more diverse
sample of the student population."

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

hursday, August 31, 2000

Jam! Music

Jello shaking things up

Former punk rocker remains true to
his anti-corporate roots

By DENIS ARMSTRONG Ottawa Sun

CONTROVERSY and anarchy are Jello
Biafra's mojo these days.

The former frontman of the seminal west coast
punk surfers The Dead Kennedys practically
revived the censorship issue in the United States
with his nasty sense of humour and provocative
political lyrics.

For 15 years, Biafra insulted, provoked, amused,
and embarrassed authority and this Saturday at
the National Gallery Auditorium at 8 p.m., he
wants your $12 to experience his "An Evening of
Social and Political Spoken Word" at Alternafest.

One of alternative music's holy trinity of spoken
word artists -- along with Black Flag's Henry
Rollins and The Swan's Michael Gira -- Biafra
will be performing from his recordings including I
Blow Minds For A Living.

It should prove to be an eye-opening evening of
underground politics, conspiracy theories and
generous dollops of irreverent attitude from the
wannabe president with a squeegee-kid's attitude.
Especially now that his former bandmates are
suing him for rights to sell their hit Holiday in
Cambodia for a Levi's ad.

"Corporate media is designed to make people
stupid," says Biafra from his home in San
Francisco. "Corporate America wants us
preoccupied with meaningless news like who wins
Survivor rather than will we survive an ozone
layer that looks like Swiss cheese."

'Makes me sick'

Speaking in neat sound bites, the articulate
Biafra, 42, who has spent his performing career
crusading against capitalism, mass media and
corporate culture, hasn't lost any edge since The
Kennedys disbanded in 1986, six years after their
first release Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables.

"It makes me sick what those guys have turned
into," he laments. "They've hired a corporate
lawyer who handles bands like Boston, Journey
and the Doobie Brothers, who turned the
Kennedys into a big money whore. They're totally
obsessed with money now. I really regret being
mixed up with those guys."

Biafra has openly courted a political career,
running for mayor of San Francisco in the early
1980s and the presidential primary as the Green
Party candidate in 1999 before losing to
consumer advocate Ralph Nader. He has
indicated interest in running for the Green Party in
the 2004 primary.

"There's no difference between the Democrats
and the Republicans," said Biafra. "They aren't
separate parties anymore, they're one party -- the
corporate party."

-- With files from Ian Nathanson

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

August 31, 2000

Toronto Star

Club Notes

Ben Rayner

Get ready for a night of engaging anarchist's wit

Jello Biafra still true to punk-rock ethos

Jello Biafra is never short of words or opinions, but the past
few months have been unduly generous in providing him with verbal
ammunition.

Last November's World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. The
controversy over genetically modified foods. The fatalistic U.S.
presidential race (Biafra was briefly a potential Green Party
candidate). Survivor. An ongoing legal battle with his former
Dead Kennedys bandmates.

Fine material for a good tirade or two. And rest assured all of
it will surface, filtered through Biafra's engaging anarchist's wit,
when the punk rocker-turned-public-speaker takes the stage at Lee's
Palace (529 Bloor St. W.) tomorrow night.

``It's just sort of `the year of ranting dangerously,' if you will,''
says Biafra, on the line from his San Franciso home.

Half activist, half humourist, Biafra's been taking his subversive
verbiage to concert stages around the globe for nearly 15 years now.

His political streak has been evident since the days of the Kennedys -
the band's first single, ``California Uber Alles'' was a shot at then
Governor Jerry Brown, and Biafra actually ran for mayor of San
Francisco in 1979 - but Biafra's reputation as an articulate rabble-
rouser has come to eclipse his punk-rock past since that seminal
hardcore quartet disbanded in 1987.

He honed his oratorical skills under fire and in public during a
lengthy court battle over a 1996 criminal charge, ultimately dismissed,
of ``distribution of harmful material to minors'' stemming from a
genitalia-bedecked H.R. Giger poster included in the Dead Kennedys'
Frankenchrist album.

And around that time, too, Biafra says, he started playing up the
``buried information'' in his spoken-word performances, ``using my
art to become a form of `info-tainment' - to do the job that mass
media should be doing but no longer does.''

The message at the heart of Biafra's anti-corporate, anti-government
screeds has always remained consistent with the punk-rock ethos of
``question what you're told.''

Biafra views the Seattle anti-WTO uprising, in particular, as a
watershed, since it united everyone from ``tree-hugging'' hippies
to hard-hat unionists to anarchists to street kids in protest against
the increasing influence of corporate agendas on government.

``But now, it's just reached the boiling point where, helpless or not,
people are starting to pour into the streets and, in the process,
running headlong into likeminded folks who actually have some
solutions in mind.''

The WTO protests also provided the backdrop for Biafra's most recent
musical endeavour, a one-off performance with Nirvana/Sweet 75 bassist
Krist Novoselic, ex-Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil and Sweet 75
drummer Gina Mainwal as The No WTO Combo.

A live recording of the band's scrappy protest anthems taped amid the
WTO chaos, Live From The Battle In Seattle, has just been released on
Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label.

``The bigger names like Rage Against the Machine and Pearl Jam proved
unavailable, so finally Krist just called me up and said `Why don't we
be the band?' And I said, `Hell, why not?' '' recalls Biafra.

``I was in a band again for four days. It was a wild time: Rant, rave,
march and protest by day and then, just when you're ready to drop
dead - or just when I was ready to drop dead - it was time for rehearsal
at night. And in three days we actually got something presentable. I
didn't even know it was being recorded.''

A new spoken-word album from Biafra, Become The Media, is due in
October,
but don't expect him to make much racket outside of a courtroom for the
foreseeable future.

An ugly legal dispute with his former bandmates over money they claim
they're owed has escalated to the point where, Biafra says, they're
attempting to exclude him from the Kennedys' ex-band-member contract
``so they can not only pimp my songs, my name, my voice and Dead
Kennedys
any way they want, but also never have to pay me again ...

``It'll go on for years. I don't have the money to appeal, but I have no
choice. You know, I'm fighting to keep Dead Kennedys from becoming the
most painful memory of my entire life. It's already very difficult to
separate my love for the music and what we accomplished from what
dishonest, backstabbing, corporate greedheads the other former members
have become. I wish I'd never met them.''

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

The storming of Melbourne

Sydney Morning Herald

Date: 31/08/2000

IN THE global village, it's the global game. Soccer is more
than a sporting and cultural phenomenon, it's big business for
some of the world's biggest companies. But dark secrets hide
behind its glamorous veneer - like Pakistan's soccer ball
industry.

Notorious for using bonded child labour, Pakistani factories
have for years been the target of the very demonstrators who
will descend on Melbourne next month in a bid to blockade the
World Economic Forum as a protest against globalisation.

Pakistani children as young as eight were working long hours
to earn their freedom, the United States Congress was told in
1996. It heard of children sent to work by their parents, often
to pay off debts. There were tales of sexual abuse and of
supervisors using hot irons to sear cuts so that small fingers
could go on stitching the balls.

But the protests are having an effect. While Nike - the subject
of consumer boycotts during the 1990s over labour practices in
its shoe factories - is producing its new Geo Merlin ball in
Pakistan, it is using a central stitching plant - monitored by
head office and non-government organisations - where no-one under
16 is allowed to work.

Nike has long since abandoned the Indonesian factories that
produced shoes and soccer boots after revelations of appalling
working conditions. "We have lifted our whole level of corporate
responsibility," a Nike spokeswoman says.

But it is doubtful that such assurances will satisfy the hordes
of students, unionists, anarchists, anti-capitalists,
environmentalists who make up the S11 protest group targeting
the WEF gathering. The tag "S11" derives from September 11, the
first day when the politicians, businessmen, academics and
unionists will gather at the Crown Casino.

Allegations this week that Chinese factories were using underage
workers to make and package toys for a company which supplies
them to McDonald's for its "McHappy" meals was a reminder that
the fight against child labour is far from won.

If there is a common cause for this diverse group of demonstrators,
other than a passion to protest, it is exposing the underbelly of
globalisation and pricking the conscience of Western consumers
besotted with global brands. They see the WEF as an opportunity to
confront those they hold responsible for global economic injustice.

In S11 there are no leaders, no hierarchy, no right or wrong view,
just individuals in affinity groups who have come together to
oppose the WEF. For months, various permutations of S11 affinity
groups have been meeting each week to plan their part of the three
days of action outside the casino.

There's the Monsanto Clause, the "jolly fat men", the group of
QUEER progressive activists who say "corporate greed won't save
your ass", the Revolutionary Valley Girls declaring the "revolution
will be silly", guerilla gardeners who plant seeds to free the food
supply from corporate control, the feminist avengers, unionists
"against corporate tyranny" and a myriad other groups.

They've been building puppets, painting banners, creating street
performances, preparing food, learning how to treat people affected
by capsicum spray, making body armour and writing songs for the
carnival-cum-blockade that will run from September 11 to 13.

Anyone with a gripe against capitalism is welcome, except those on
the Right. One Nation is banned, though there is little S11 can do
if Pauline Hanson's supporters turn up.

S11 is the latest in a series of anarchist-inspired anti-
globalisation protests kicked off by J18, the mass demonstration
against G8 - comprising the eight richest economies in the world -
when it met in Germany on June 18, 1999. Since then, there's been
N30 (more commonly known as the Battle of Seattle), A16 (the
protest against the IMF and the World Bank on April 16, 2000),
and M1, which celebrated May Day 2000.

The next big mobilisation after S11 will be S26 when the the IMF
and World Bank hold their 55th annual summit in Prague.

Born of the Internet age, this new radicalism doesn't sit easily
with the old bastians of left-wing warriors. To activists schooled
in hierarchical, marxist-inspired organisations, S11's anarchist
approach can seem like democracy gone mad.

Phil Davey, a member of the Sydney S11 Coalition and an official
of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU)
which is helping organise up to 10 busloads of community activists,
students and unionists to Melbourne, says tolerance has been
required on all sides.

"Students are into sitting in circles and discussing things at an
insane length," says Davey. "But equally they would find the way
we [the unions] operate problematic."

Even veterans of more consensual-style organisations can find S11's
affinity model frustrating. Cam Walker, a campaigner with Friends of
the Earth, which has been battling the big corporations since the
'80s, calls it "the curse of democracy, sometimes you feel like you
are going back to scratch all the time". But he says it is also the
strength that enables the Left to assemble en masse.

And what of their target? The 30-year-old World Economic Forum is
more a debating society than a world government. But it's a debating
society featuring some powerful people - Bill Clinton, Tony Blair
and Nelson Mandela have all addressed it.

Microsoft chief Bill Gates will be at the Crown Casino for the
conference devoted to Asia-Pacific issues, as will Eric Schmidt
from Novell, and Masayoshi Son from Softbank. Australia's Prime
Minister, Treasurer and assorted ministers will attend, as will ACTU
president Sharan Burrow. Malaysia's union movement chief Zainal
Rampak and a host of academics and other critics of the excesses of
globalisation will also be there.

Indeed, the managing director of the World Economic Forum, Claude
Smadja, would be considered by many to have left-of-centre views.

At the National Press Club earlier this year, he called for a
stronger role for the State to combat the painful adjustment that
globalisation brings to displaced workers, and to harness its
opportunities.

Labor MP and author of Civilising Global Capital, Mark Latham, is
bemused by the drive to shut the WEF: "I thought the left-of-centre
movement was all about tolerance," he says. "Trying to stop a debate
about important issues doesn't strike me as particularly tolerant."

James Goodman, an academic at the University of Technology Sydney,
doesn't buy the softer image portrayed by the WEF: "Just as the
Melbourne casino poses ... as a 'family entertainment' centre, so
the Melbourne WEF meeting will be spinning the rhetoric of corporate
responsibility," he says in a paper posted on the S11 Web site.

Latham, for his part, is puzzled by the opposition to free trade at
the forefront of the protesters concerns: "The greatest poverty
alleviation of all time has been the Asian economic miracle, tens
of millions of people have been lifted up," he says. "One of the
many ironies about this whole movement is that it's organised
through the Internet, arguably the instrument of globalisation."

While many may scoff at the protesters, it would be wrong to say
they haven't had an influence. BP, Shell and other corporate
"nasties" targeted by the protesters have adopted new logos and
ad campaigns that emphasise their civil and environmental
responsibility. Companies such as Nike have cleaned up their act.

A recent report by the Business Council of Australia and the Allen
Consulting Group, Corporate Community Involvement: Establishing a
Business Case, based on a survey of 114 big companies, shows
corporations are vulnerable to the rising tide of community concern
about the impact of globalisation which bolstered grassroots
political activism.

"Internationally the pattern is the same. Community activists put
pressure on traditional institutions and develop movements that
have the political power and logistical capacity to mount the level
of opposition seen in 1999 in Seattle at the meeting of the World
Trade Organisation."

In Britain and the US, business is being asked to rebuild
communities and be more responsive to "stakeholders", says the
report.

In Australia, 75 per cent of companies now think long-term business
success hinges on involving the community. Another 10 per cent has
developed community involvement programs because the companies
believe they are obliged to give back to the
community.

A seachange in corporate attitudes? Or just a canny marketing
strategy? In Melbourne in 11 days, that debate will be held on
the streets and in the conference rooms of the Crown Casino.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

September 1, 2000

Ministry of Justice charges Brand magazine for
incitement to insurrection

Stockholm’s Minister of Justice (JK) Hans Regner has decided to
charge the anarchist magazine Brand in the courts of Gothenburg.

The magazine is suspected of incitement to insurrection, which
is a breach of the freedom of the press, according to Swedish
law. The Secret Police (Säpo) charged the magazine after an
article in the March issue this year. The article concerned
different weapons and violent actions that could be used against
the police in riot situations.

Amongst other things, readers were encouraged to practice throwing
Molotov cocktails and throwing cobble stones during their free
time.

The Ministry of Justice has requested that a policeman who partook
in the actions against a squat in Linköping in March to be a
witness in the case. In that situation, the squatters – 30 youths –
armed themselves with stones and home-made fire bombs which were
thrown at the police. Several of the youths were sentenced for
rioting.

The Ministry of Justice has demanded that the actual issue of
Brand be confiscated. The magazine has been printed in at least
1600 copies.

--
kurt svensson
c/o brand
box 150 15
104 65
stockholm
sweden ksvensson@...
[pgp keys available upon request]

-för revolution i vĺr livstid- --

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--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

[It's pretty nice to see this on MSNBC, even though it somehow
fails to omit the words "anarchism" and "anarchist", and makes
a pretty big error in the line "A syndicalist favors bringing
government and industry under control of labor unions" --
practically all syndicalists are anarcho-syndicalists who advocate
abolishing government altogether. It also fails to mention the
IWW's role in the recent protest movement, in which many members
have played an important part. -- DC]

The IWW:
http://www.iww.org/

Wobblies aren’t so wobbly nowadays
http://www.msnbc.com:80/news/453934.asp?cp1=1

Wobblies preaching radical labor message to new generation
http://www.pioneerplanet.com:80/seven-days/2/news/docs/005947.htm

Iconoclastic IWW still trying to unionize the world

By Dru Sefton
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 4 —  The Wobblies, diehard
iconoclasts of the labor movement, are still
around. Still organizing. Still looking to transform
the world order.

OVER THE LAST few years, the tiny yet feisty
Industrial Workers of the World has seen its membership
grow — to 1,000 worldwide, up from a low of fewer than
100 in the early 1960s.

And those members remain true to the concept of “one
big union.” They’re radical syndicalists, as they have been
since the IWW’s founding in 1905 in Chicago. (Quick labor
history review: A syndicalist favors bringing government and
industry under control of labor unions by means of “direct
action,” such as general strikes and, if need be, sabotage.)

They fight to transfer all profits and power from bosses
to workers, because it’s the workers who do all the work.
That victory would form the shell of a new society, they say
— as they have said, loudly, for all these years.

Their idealistic battle was ignited generations ago by
Wobblies who became legendary: Mother Jones, who
agitated for labor rights into her 90s and inspired a magazine
that still bears her name. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a
co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. Balladeer
Joe Hill, whose last words were “Don’t waste time in
mourning. Organize.” Eugene Debs, who helped create the
Socialist Party in America.

That the Wobblies still exist, much less are growing,
runs against a decades-long decline in mainstream U.S.
labor union membership. It hit a high of 27 percent of the
workforce in 1953; its current 14 percent is an all-time low,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The IWW has made inroads recently, organizing
bookstores, small shops, college-student workers and
temporary employees.

The national IWW headquarters shifted this year from
Ypsilanti, Mich., to Philadelphia, site of former glory days:
Back in 1916, all but two of the bustling docks at this port
were under IWW control.

And now, the top Wob is a young woman. She is
Alexis Buss, a slight, 27-year-old, freckled Philadelphian
who wears her IWW cap backward. Buss was elected in
January, after pledging “to make the IWW a cohesive
fighting organization, rather than a collection of isolated
activists” — to reinvigorate the IWW, once known and
feared as “the fighting union.”

No one remembers exactly why members are called
Wobblies, or Wobs for short, as they have been since the
early 1900s. Some say it’s symbolic of the wobble saw,
mounted to cut a groove wider than the saw is thick. Others
think it’s based on an immigrant’s mispronunciation of the
letters IWW — “eye wobble-you-wobble-you.”

From its founding, Wobblies have made up one intense
bunch:

They wrote and sang the most enduring labor songs,
including “Solidarity Forever,” “Rebel Girl” and “The
Preacher and the Slave,” origin of the phrase “pie in the
sky.”

They staged dramatic job actions: In 1912, Wobs led
10,000 strikers at American Woolen Co. mills in Lawrence,
Mass., forcing managers to give workers significant pay
raises. Strikers were beaten, and a female worker was
killed by shots from the swarms of 22,000 military police.

They were famous for their propaganda: “Keep warm,
burn out the rich.” “The boss needs you, you don’t need
him.” “Good pay or bum work.”

They’ve constantly fought for a seemingly unattainable
goal: As the preamble to the IWW constitution reads, “a
struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize
as a class, take possession of the means of production,
abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the
Earth.”

BUILT-IN BARRIERS TO SUCCESS

Buss heads a movement based on ideals that, ironically,
hinder it from gaining any real power.

The IWW is a pure democracy, controlled by its rank
and file without a traditional leadership structure. Dues start
at just $5 a month, so it’s perpetually cash-poor.

Members, tasked with literally organizing the entire
world, are themselves difficult to corral. Most are
independent thinkers who lean toward the cantankerous.
They are socialists, atheists, intellectuals, dreamers. Some
have multiple piercings and tattoos; others have gray
ponytails.

Even determining just how many Wobblies there are is
tricky. “It varies by month, when people pay their dues,”
Buss said. There is no demographic information on the
thousand or so members. (By comparison, the AFL-CIO
has about 13 million members.)

Wobbly locals are active across the country, from
Boston (Education Workers Industrial Union 620) to San
Francisco (Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union
510). There also are branches in England, Australia and
South Africa — “traditional Wobbly strongholds,” Buss
said.

Tradition is what lures, and inspires, most Wobblies.

“I believe in unionism, that all labor unions must come
together,” said Miriam Fried of Philadelphia, who was fired
after trying to organize a Borders bookstore in Philadelphia
in 1996. “The Wobblies are the most dedicated union
around. I believe workers should make their own decisions.
In the IWW, it’s direct democracy, from the bottom up.”

Sharon Vance, another Philadelphia Wobbly, said the
IWW has “the big advantages without the big disadvantages
of other unions.”

That includes representing workers usually overlooked.
“Even if it’s a workplace with just two people and one
boss, we’re there to organize,” she said.

SMALL BUT CONSTANT PRESENCE

“The IWW reached their real peak during World War I,” said
Melvyn Dubofsky, a history professor at Binghamton
University-State University of New York
and author of “We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial
Workers of the World.” “So, actually, they’ve survived as a
miniscule force for more than 80 years.”

Along the way, the passionate Wobblies have become
part of the cultural texture of America, he said. They appear
as characters in Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest,” in John
Dos Passos’ “U.S.A Trilogy” and in “From Here to
Eternity” by James Jones.

Not to mention the enduring myth of larger-than-life
Wobbly martyr Joe Hill, executed by a Utah firing squad for
a murder that many insist he didn’t commit.

As the song goes, “And standing there as big as life, /
And smiling with his eyes, / Joe says, ‘What they forgot to
kill / Went on to organize, / Went on to organize.’”

What union bosses “forgot to kill” was the Wobbly
dream of one union for all, regardless of race, nationality,
sex, income or occupation.

“Different people and different generations find parts of
that dream that appeals to them,” Dubofsky said.

And that is what keeps the movement going. Just barely.

Buss is a pragmatist. When she took over, the IWW
had an $8,000 deficit; now it’s solvent. She aims to be able
to accept a small salary so she can drop her part-time
typesetting job. She wants to reach out to younger retail
workers and workers toiling too many hours without
overtime. She hopes to circulate more literature, increase
the Wobbly Web presence, organize job actions, build cash
reserves and, of course, sign up more members.

And she has one more goal:

After his cremation, Joe Hill’s ashes were divided and
sent to IWW delegates to be scattered around the world. A
small pillbox of his remains, after taking a circuitous route,
finally ended up back at the headquarters of the IWW, the
union Hill helped make famous.

“I’d like to get an urn, but we can’t afford it,” Buss
said. “We’ll have to raise some money.”

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Sunday 3 September 2000

Former punk rocker is still
fighting the big fight

Peter Simpson
The Ottawa Citizen

Jello Biafra, with his normal haircut and normal clothes,
doesn't look like a punk icon. Then, it's hard to say for
sure, since it seems most punk icons his age are dead.

But Biafra, born in Boulder, Colorado, in 1958 ("six blocks
from the JonBenet Ramsey murder site," the press kit says),
is indeed a giant of the punk rock underground. And 20 years
after he first poked the public eye as frontman for the
outrageously outspoken Dead Kennedys, he introduced his older,
mellower stage character to a capacity crowd in the auditorium
of the National Gallery last night.

"This area is now under martial law," he intoned from off-stage,
as he began the spoken-word performance with a dystopian
fantasy -- one that forewarned of, among other horrors, "mandatory
black velvet paintings of Conrad Black on everybody's living-room
wall."

That one got a hearty burst of applause from the 450 or so fans
who filled the seats and spilled over onto the stairs. "Your
neighbourhood watch officer will be around to collect urine
samples in the morning," he continued, as he walked onto the
stage for the three-hour show, presented as part of the annual
Alternafest music festival.

Biafra is still fighting the big fight, the one against the
mainstream media and corporate malevolence. His public life has
been a series of fights: the pugilistic, electric battles on a
quiver of Dead Kennedys' albums, including Bedtime for Democracy
and Give me Convenience or Give me Death; the fight against
Tipper Gore's corps over naughty rock lyrics in the 1980s; and
his recent battle against the rest of the Dead Kennedys over his
refusal to allow their song Holiday in Cambodia to be used in a
Levis ad.

Most people in the audience were not yet born, or at least still
smelled of diapers, when the Dead Kennedys released Fresh Fruit
for Rotting Vegetables in 1980. Biafra has changed his delivery,
but not his message, and it still pulls in the young and
idealistic.

"The homeless? Give them a home," he said, in a satire of sound-
bite politics. "Balance the budget? Tax religion. We have a
minimum wage: How about a maximum wage?"

He wrote Canadian content into his script: "Mike Harris to drink
water in Walkerton," he said, while calling for suitable punishment
for politicians, landlords and other ignoble characters. "We could
force him to do a blind taste test. Which one's the Walkerton water,
Mike? Which one?"

But, for the most part, he railed against the usual American
suspects -- Tipper Gore and other leading Democrats and Republicans;
Columbine grief counsellors; the drug war; SUV-driving yuppies, CNN,
privatization. "Privatization is the key to everything," he said in
a wry tone. "Get government off people's backs, so you can put
corporations on people's backs."

Still fresh from his run for the Green Party presidential nomination,
he envisioned an unorthodox cabinet of Green candidate Ralph Nader,
lefty philosopher Noam Chomsky, rapper Ice T and "Larry Flynt on the
Supreme Court."

"Nowadays, we're programmed to believe that everything from
immigrants of a different skin colour to Snoopy Doggy Dogg are more
responsible for tearing apart our social fabric than are conniving
Democrats and Republicans."

It may have lacked the edge of a punk band in a basement bar, but
the young audience applauded frequently and loudly.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Mother Jones (http://www.motherjones.com ) currently has up a poll
asking: "Is there a place for anarchists in the anti-globalization
movement?"

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

September 1, 2000

Activists rap report on protests

By SCOTT MABEN
The Register-Guard

Eugene activists have panned a Eugene Police Department
assessment of its response to political demonstrations
between mid-April and mid-June.

Members of the Eugene Active Existence, Anarchist Action
Collective, Independent Police Review Project and Copwatch
criticized the police report Thursday afternoon outside the
Lane County Courthouse.

The groups disagreed with many of Police Chief Jim Hill's
conclusions in an Aug. 18 report on what activists dubbed
the Seven-Week Revolt, which ended with dozens of protesters
being arrested June 17 and 18. In the report, police officials
said they saw no evidence of officer misconduct or excessive
force, contrary to accounts from some who took part in or
watched the protests.

Activists said the police report was full of errors, lies and
unanswered questions, and they characterized it as a case of
"foxes guarding the henhouse" because the conclusions were
based largely on a review of police videotape by the department's
internal affairs coordinator.

Sherry Franzen, with the Independent Police Review Project, a
group of activists, said it's no surprise the police would
absolve themselves of wrongdoing.

"The concept of police policing police is a hollow one. The
inherent bias is clear," Franzen said.

Although none of the activists or 72 people arrested during the
Seven-Week Revolt filed formal complaints with the police
department or sought mediation through the city's human rights
program, Franzen said civil lawsuits alleging excessive police
force "are certain to be filed."

"Knowing this, police management predictably issues a report
denying any police misconduct," she said. Franzen also reiterated
her group's call for "truly independent and external review of
police conduct and policy."

Martha Smith of Copwatch, a group that videotapes officers during
political demonstrations, accused officials of trying to cover up
police misconduct.

"This report should be seen for what it is - a huge whitewash
serving to divert our attention from, as well as justify, a quarter-
million-dollar campaign of terror against the people of Eugene,"
Smith said, referring to the $218,577 that police report spending
on the protests.

Copwatch footage shown on the weekly cable television show
"Cascadia Alive!" in the past few months has "made public the
brutal beating of protesters" by officers wielding their bicycles,
she said.

Smith also said Copwatch videos were "instrumental" in the
acquittal last week of Erin Hauge, who was charged with disorderly
conduct for her participation in an April 24 march supporting
Pennsylvania death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who activists regard
as a political prisoner.

Police Lt. Rick Siel, who attended the Thursday news conference,
said the department continues to stand behind its report.

He also said it's important that people have an opportunity to
share their perspective, and that police will continue to encourage
citizens who have complaints about police conduct to use the
department's internal complaint system or the city's human rights
mediation service.

"We recognize that demonstrations are a healthy thing for any
community," Siel said. "It's healthy to have dialogue, as long as
it's legal and nonviolent."

The activists said their detailed response to the police report is
based on interviews with more than 80 residents. It includes a
chronology of key events during the Seven-Week Revolt, plus five
"damning observations" and a list of 10 police "lies" about the
events.

For example, activists dispute Chief Hill's assertion that there
were no injuries requiring medical treatment during the seven-week
period. They said at least four of those who were arrested suffered
injuries ranging from cuts on an ankle to bruised knees as a result
of clashes with police.

One of those was Dan Heuston, arrested for disorderly conduct when
he crossed a street against the light in the Abu-Jamal march.
Heuston said police tackled him to the concrete, banging his head
just above the right eye. The eye became swollen and required
bandaging, he said, while he sat in jail five days.

Heuston entered a guilty plea and said he expects to be sentenced
this morning to 25 more days in jail. He admitted he jaywalked but
said, "I don't think that deserves the right to be tackled by the
cops."

Robin Terranova spoke on behalf of the Eugene Active Existence, an
8-month-old coalition of people from Eugene's "radical activist and
anarchist community." He said the group formed to create a
framework for coordinating weekly forums, workshops, training,
discussions and direct action.

The EAE mobilized the Seven-Week Revolt to promote "revolutionary
social and ecological change" in a more spontaneous and autonomous
manner than traditionally employed by radical and mainstream
activists in Eugene, he said.

"EAE has no doubt that the lies and distortions presented in Hill's
document will be used to justify yet more requests for funds for
policing of activists in the future," Terranova said. "It seems
that those in power always resort to such propagandizing, under the
mask of `public safety,' to put a friendlier face in their
repressive tactics."

ON THE WEB

Police report on Seven-Week Revolt:
http://www.ci.eugene.or.us/DPS/documents/Report_081600.PDF

Activists' response:
http://www.fruitiondesign.com/eae

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

"The unrest gave the impression of a country in anarcho-syndicalist
ferment, but in fact strikes have declined sharply in France over
the past 20 years."

Paris, Wednesday, September 6, 2000

Fuel Protests Appear Set To Spill Over From France

By Barry James International Herald Tribune

http://www.iht.com:80/IHT/TODAY/WED/FPAGE/france.2.html

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Gunmen attack Guatemalan human rights group

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Assailants wielding machine guns burst
into the headquarters of a leading Guatemalan human rights group
Monday and threatened to kill the organization's leaders before
stealing a truck, computers and files.

Director Aura Elena Farfan said she believes the attack on the
Guatemalan Association of Families of the Disappeared and Detained
was more than just street crime.

The group assists the families of the more than 200,000, mostly
Indian peasants who were killed during Guatemala's 36-year civil
war. It also is listed as a plaintiff on a criminal complaint
filed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu that charges
former military leaders with genocide and state torture, a case
being investigated by Spain's National Court.

"Those responsible knew the names of some of our most important
leaders," Farfan said. "They didn't seem to be common criminals."

The four men robbed everyone in the downtown Guatemala City office
and slashed phone lines before making off with the group's truck,
four computers, a fax machine and a large number of files, Farfan
said.

The organization was still cleaning up and would not know for days
exactly which files were taken, Farfan said.

Farfan said the group had not ruled out its inclusion in the
complaint as a possible motive behind the daytime attack. The
complaint centers around the 1980 arson of the Spanish embassy in
Guatemala City in which 37 people died; the death of three Spanish
priests in Guatemala; and the slaying of Menchu's family members.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Vol. 5 No. 52 September 1 - 7, 2000

OC Weekly

Hatching a revolution
How Chapman U. Produced a Socialist Student Leader

by Nick Schou

When he was still a wide-eyed high school student growing
up in Lake Forest, Steve Hatch was like most kids. His
main concerns were mundane: music, friends, sports and
school. All that began to change when his high school
English teacher posed the following question during a
classroom debate: "Who here believes that the government
really exists only for the rich?"

"I was the only student to raise my hand," says Hatch.

Flash forward to the present. Hatch is now a senior at
Chapman University, where he double majors in history and
political science. He is also a member of the Young Peoples’
Socialist League, a youth affiliate of the Socialist Party
USA, and chairman of the Orange County chapter of the
Socialist Party.

As of this month, Hatch is also president of Chapman’s
student government, which makes him the most powerful
student at what is arguably Orange County’s most conservative
campus.

"I don’t think I’d be a socialist if it weren’t for Chapman
University," Hatch said.

The fact that Chapman made Hatch a socialist may explain the
kind of socialist he is. Hatch’s approach to socialism is the
most inclusive imaginable, inspired less by Karl Marx’s
Communist Manifesto or Leon Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed
than Upton Sinclair’s user-friendly The Jungle, which documented
an immigrant family’s struggle for survival inside Chicago’s
stockyards. Hatch also loves the adventure-oriented novels of
Jack London, perhaps America’s most prominent early socialist —
and an early critic of the sectarian disputes that plagued the
American Left throughout the past century.

Hatch says he became student body president at Chapman only
after being urged to run for the job by friends. His previous
experience in student government was a brief stint as a member
of the student House of Representatives — a position Hatch
automatically received last year after being elected secretary
of Chapman’s Progressive Student Alliance (PSA).

Hatch helped found PSA during his sophomore year at Chapman.
But the idea for the group emerged during his freshman year,
shortly after Hatch gave a speech during an oral communications
class and announced to a bewildered crowd of 150 fellow students
that he was a socialist. "I also denounced communism and the
Soviet Union," he adds, but that distinction was lost on most of
the crowd. While the majority of his audience simply stared at
him in a mixture of fear and loathing, exactly one student
cheered.

"That guy turned out to be a member of the Democratic Socialists
of America (DSA)," Hatch recalls. "At first, we wanted to form a
DSA chapter on campus. But we knew there was no possibility of
that happening because most of the people that were interested
were either disgruntled Democrats, Greens, liberals, anarchists
or communists."

Hatch and his friends chose to name the inchoate group Progressive
Student Alliance, so as not to turn off prospective members who
didn’t consider themselves socialists.

Twenty-five people turned out for their first meeting, but PSA’s
most obvious and immediate impact was on Chapman’s more conservative
students. They quickly formed their own opposition group, the
Conservative Student Association.

PSA’s diversity turned out to be unstable ground for their big
progressive tent. "There was a group of people in the PSA who were
more libertarian-oriented," explained Matt Ishii, a sophomore and
self-declared socialist. "Their main focus was the legalization of
drugs. Considering how conservative Chapman is, this was a source
of contention within the group. We had to tone things down."

Ishii said PSA’s activities were always relatively modest: no
angry demonstrations, just a monthly movie night and an occasional
political debate featuring off-campus speakers. Nevertheless, he
acknowledged that the group’s membership has dwindled to just four
people. "Ever since Steven got his appointment to the student
government, we haven’t done anything," he added. "It’s hard to
gauge how successful we’ve been."

If nothing else, PSA has helped give voice to a minority of Chapman
students disgusted by what they see as a materialistic student
culture that eschews intellectual debate while espousing social
popularity, wealth and fashion. One of those disenchanted students
is Gustavo Arellano, a senior who serves as Chapman’s student
director of multicultural affairs. Arellano considers himself
a socialist and, like Hatch, credits Chapman with making him that
way.

"The libertarian ideology of the school, which worships making
money and embraces consumerism, pushes people like me into Leftist
causes—in my case, socialism," Arellano said. "I always see kids
at Chapman University who have never worked in their lives, gabbing
on cell phones, driving the latest cars and wearing top-of-the-line
clothes. . . . Most of these kids are born wealthy and have no idea
of real work."

Hatch expects his toughest job as student body president will be
trying to change the attitudes held by the school’s administration—
and a majority of Chapman’s white students—about issues like
multiculturalism. Although many minority students support the
creation of a multicultural center, Chapman’s administration
opposes the idea.

"Students at Chapman—and white people in general—don’t even want
to talk about race issues," Hatch lamented. "But it’s really
important to educate people about what’s going on in the rest of
the world and why they should care. It’s a battle."

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

September 2, 2000

Punk 'n' Polk: Eugene photographer
pierces the veil of the New York punk scene

By LEWIS TAYLOR
The [Eugene] Register-Guard

EILEEN POLK was one of the last people to see punk icon Sid
Vicious alive, and one of the only people to see him dead.

On Feb. 2, 1979, Polk learned that the Sex Pistols bassist
had died from a heroin overdose. Returning to the apartment
where she had been the night before, she stayed with the body
while Vicious' grieving mother and girlfriend went downtown
to talk to the police.

For three hours, she sat alongside Vicious' corpse, fielding
phone calls from friends and deflecting calls from scandal-hungry
reporters.

Twenty-one years later, the experience still haunts Polk, now
a legal secretary living in Eugene.

"I don't know if things would have been different if they had
drug programs then like they have now," said Polk, now 46. "I
don't know where he got the drugs, but he would have found
drugs no matter what anybody did."

As a free-lance photographer and a regular on the New York
City punk scene, Polk saw a lot. Now, she is retelling her
story in words and images.

A month-long photography show kicks off today with a reading
at Foolscap Books in Eugene. And she is appearing in an episode
of "VH-1 Confidential," a series that explores the facts behind
famous events in rock history.

Segments from an interview with Polk, conducted by rock
journalist Legs McNeil, will air on VH-1 at 10 p.m. Tuesday.

"I'm not saying that I know the whole story," Polk said. "I
can only tell one story, and that's the story that I know."

Described by others as someone who was always at the center of
the action, Polk observed the rise and fall of the New York punk
scene. She saw poetry, anarchy, all-night parties, bar fights,
sex, love, arrests, drug addictions and suicides. From the
possessed punk performances of Iggy Pop to the rock-star
shenanigans of the New York Dolls, from the rise of Debbie
Harry to the unsolved murder of Nancy Spungen, Polk witnessed
the brilliance, the ugliness, the triumph and the tragedy of a
music scene that remains just as scintillating today as it was
when it happened decades ago.

"Eileen was there from the very beginning," McNeil said. "She
was the kind of person who everybody gravitated toward. She was
young and cute and sexy and funny and smart and everybody liked
her. She was everybody's friend."

POLK'S CLOSE access to the scene not only provided her with
some good stories to tell, but also allowed her to shoot
fly-on-the- wall photographs that offer rare glimpses of punk
stars with their guards down.

Taken in hole-in-the-wall bars, apartments and backstage at
rock shows, her photos depict a human side of a subculture that
often was stereotyped as self-destructive and nihilistic.

"They really weren't paying attention to me. That's what I liked
to do," Polk said. "If you're around someone long enough, they
forget the camera is there."

Neither Polk nor McNeil denies that there was enough debauchery
to go around on Manhattan's Lower East Side during the 1970s.
But both say the rock journalists and the tabloids got it wrong.

By focusing only on the overindulgences, Polk said, the media
created a monster that required bigger and bigger tales. Myths
were created and propagated, and the real story never was told.

"I think the media has just tried to put forth the sex, the
drugs and the violence," Polk said. "It's the same thing the
rap artists say: `We're a reflection of society. We're a mirror.
We're not telling people to be violent; we're showing them what
the culture is like.'

"They were both reflecting what is already in existence and
creating a work of art that showed society what it was like."

Both Polk and McNeil, who interviewed Polk for his book "Please
Kill Me: The Secret History of Punk Music," said the only way
to sum up early punk is to simply recount what happened.
Documenting the scene was the aim of McNeil's book, Polk's
photographs and today's event in Eugene.

Along with readings from McNeil's book and photographs from
Polk's collection, the event will feature punk memorabilia
such as the first Ramones concert T-shirt; tattered, heavily
zippered clothing made by Sex Pistols Manager Malcolm McLaren;
and an orange skydiving jumpsuit that belonged to Vicious.

"We had come out of an underground scene that was very glitter-
oriented," Polk said. "With the punk thing, you wanted shoes
you could run in. Anything that was seen as too contrived was
looked down upon. ... The idea was to look as extreme as
possible."

Polk began hanging out at rock shows as a teen-ager after moving
(with her mother) from Long Island to Manhattan. She saw Jimi
Hendrix, the Doors, Janis Joplin and other big-name rock acts,
but eventually began gravitating toward smaller, seedier clubs.

The punks were taking over dark, cavernous bars such as Max's
Kansas City and CBGB's, where the owners let the bands play
because they thought it might help them sell more drinks, Polk
recalled.

"By the time I was 18, I didn't want to pay $10 to go to a show
and I didn't have to," Polk said. "It was much more fun to see
the Ramones and Blondie at CBGB's."

Polk also frequented Nobody's, a favorite hangout of Janis Joplin;
the 82 Club, a venue played by Debbie Harry's band Stiletto; and
Mothers, a small club that hosted Ramones and the Heartbreakers,
among others.

She dated Dee Dee Ramone, bassist for the Ramones, and Arthur
Kane, bassist for the New York Dolls. She met Andy Warhol and
Frank Zappa. Polk knew Nancy Spungen before she dyed her hair
and started dating Sid Vicious. She started a rock band of her
own, hosted parties at her mother's West 11th Street house, and
made wild punk costumes out of secondhand clothing and discarded
umbrellas.

"We knew something was going on; you could feel it in the air,"
Polk said. "We thought we were all going to get rich and famous."

Polk never did get rich and famous from her music or her
photographs; she said she never wanted to cash in on her story.
She was hesitant at first to talk to VH-1, and she ignored
suggestions that she go to the TV tabloids for more money.

Eventually, she agreed to the interview, partly, she said, to
help set the story straight.

"I wanted to tell the story because it's a good story, it's an
important story and people are interested in it," Polk said. "I
feel as though, as long as I tell the truth, it's OK."

Polk has no revelations about Vicious' death, but her version of
the story is different than the widely accepted version of a drug
party that got out of control.

The night Vicious died, she said, was a quiet night with Vicious'
girlfriend, his mother and the few friends he had. The
controversial punk had gotten out of jail that day, and his
friends were there to look after him.

"I wouldn't say that I was a great friend of Sid's; I don't think
he had any great friends," Polk said. "I was one of the few people
who wasn't selling drugs to him or trying to go to bed with him.
I was just naive enough to believe that when someone said he wasn't
going to get off (with drugs), he wasn't going to get off."

Although she left the punk scene - a decision brought about by
Vicious' death, her mother's illness and her own desire for a
healthier environment - Polk has continued to take photographs.
Her photos have appeared in People magazine, Interview and Premiere,
and she's also shot album covers.

Recently, she's become interested in documenting the campaign to
legalize marijuana, a movement that she sees as having some
similarities to the punk movement.

"I just like people who are doing things that are independent,"
Polk said. "Maybe 20 years from now, if it's legal, they'll want
pictures of the movement, and I'll be one of the only ones who
has them."

Polk said she's changed a lot since her New York days, but not
entirely. She listens to the blues, world music, jazz and other
types of music, and she holds down a 9-to-5 job, but the punk
spirit is still within her. She doesn't consider herself a card-
carrying Eugene anarchist, but she does believe in challenging
the powers that be and in befriending rather than alienating the
troubled outcasts who make life interesting.

"Today," Polk said, "I think I'd still know someone like Sid
Vicious, but I'd be giving him change at the Saturday Market,
not spending the evening with him."

Entertainment reporter Lewis Taylor can be reached by phone at
485-1234, Ext. 2512, and by e-mail at ltaylor@....

September 1, 2000

Bottom feeder takes high road

LEGS McNEIL MAY OR may not have coined the term "punk" to
describe the no-rules, do-it-yourself music scene that arose
in the '70s in Manhattan. But either way, the co-founder of
the fanzine Punk did his part to disseminate the word - a word
he says, that means something different to everyone.

"We were lousy hippies basically," McNeil said, offering one
definition. "We didn't like health food, we liked
cheeseburgers; we didn't like pot, we liked beer or heroin.
We didn't like psychedelics. We didn't want to feel more; we
wanted to feel less."

If there is a definition of "punk," McNeil probably would be
the one to ask. In addition to chronicling the scene in the
pages of his fanzine, McNeil and writer Gillian McCain
interviewed hundreds of people connected to the music in
order to write the book "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral
History of Punk."

Rather than offering their own narrative, McNeil and McCain
allowed their sources to speak. Then they cobbled together
bursts of dialogue from different players to create a spoken
history. The technique, which McNeil modeled after a style
used by George Plimpton, creates a sense of immediacy that
serves the subject of punk music well.

"If I was to write my book, my memoir on the punk scene, it
would just be my view and it would be very limited," McNeil
said. "What makes it better and more fun is to have 200
points of view."

McNeil insists he didn't want to write "Please Kill Me" and
only did so to set the record straight. He says most books on
the subject of punk music have either gotten it wrong or have
been more concerned with sociological theories.

"Every time somebody else did a punk book, I'd think I
wouldn't have to do the book. ... No one's really nailed it,"
McNeil said. "I think `Please Kill Me' will hold up."

Now at work on a second book, McNeil is busy compiling an oral
history of the pornography industry. His fascination with seedy
subjects makes sense from a writer's perspective, he said.

"I think literature comes out of the bottom of the barrel,"
McNeil said. "I like writing about the bottom of the barrel.
The extremes are greater."

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Assailants attack Guatemalan human rights group

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Assailants wielding machine guns burst
into the headquarters of a leading Guatemalan human rights
group and threatened to kill the organization's leaders before
stealing a truck, computers and files, group members said.

Monday's attack targeted the Guatemalan Association of Families
of the Disappeared and Detained. The group assists the families
of the more than 200,000 mostly Indian peasants who were killed
during Guatemala's 36-year civil war. It also is listed as a
plaintiff on a criminal complaint filed by Nobel Peace Prize
winner Rigoberta Menchu that charges the country's former
military leaders with genocide and state torture, a case being
investigated by Spain's National Court.

Director Aura Elena Farfan said she believes the attack was not
just street crime.

"Those responsible knew the names of some of our most important
leaders," Farfan said. "They didn't seem to be common criminals."

The four men robbed everyone in the downtown Guatemala City office
and slashed phone lines before making off with the group's truck,
four computers, a fax machine and a large number of files, Farfan
said. The organization was still cleaning up and would not know
for days exactly which files were taken, she said.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Help at hand for protest violence

By Guy Healy

06sep00

Australian News Network

THE International Olympic Committee's spin
doctor, Hill & Knowlton, is spruiking its crisis
management services to multinational
corporations attending the World Economic
Forum, which starts in Melbourne on Monday.

A leaked Hill & Knowlton memo to clients who are
forum members warns that the Melbourne meeting
could face the same violent protest that engulfed
the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle
in December.

The memo claims that S11, the alliance of unions
and left-wing protest organisations aiming to shut
down next week's forum, has close links to the
anarchists that "organised and ran" the WTO riots
and caused the property damage in Seattle.

"Protesters know this WEF meeting presents a
great opportunity to make a significant global
impact – if the protest action is dramatic
enough," the memo warns.

Hill & Knowlton also revealed Victorian police
planned to provide 1700 officers to reinforce
security at Crown Casino, which is hosting the forum.

Senior S11 sources expect their protest to be controlled
by 350 police and 300 specialist riot police who will be
reinforced at Crown by a further 300 private security
guards.

The S11 alliance insists that the protest will be peaceful.

Hill & Knowlton Australia chairman Brian West yesterday
confirmed the authenticity of the letters and advisories
to its clients who are forum members, "a number of which
had welcomed the advisory about activities planned around
the WEF meeting".

Victorian police yesterday confirmed some of their preparations
for the forum, warning of significant disruption to traffic
flows around the Melbourne central business district for the
three days of the event.

Crown Casino will be sealed off along at least three sides
except for casino guests and accredited VIPs and media, a
Victorian police spokesman said.

Crown was unable to advise yesterday whether, during the forum,
the casino would be open to customers other than those staying
at its hotel. But police confirmed that media without
accreditation would not be allowed access to the casino.

Public and vehicle access to the front entrance of the casino –
a main focus of the protest – will also be blocked as will the
street that runs the length of the rear of the casino, police
said.

Victorian police denied reports that the mothballed Geelong jail
could be temporarily reopened to cope with the possibility of
mass arrests.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

On Wed, 30 Aug 2000 16:33:03 EDT MavMedia@... wrote:
If you haven't seen this, I thought you'd be interested.
Regards, Greg Guma

The Independent Media Convergence Project presents

Building Independent Media: Strategies for Change

A Conference in Vermont
October 13-14, 2000

Burlington, Vermont
at Trinity College


Join journalists and activists to discuss how independent
and alternative media can promote global justice and democracy

Explore the role of newspapers, radio, the Internet, video,
and new technologies in the age of mergers and convergence


Invited speakers include Michael Parenti, Amy Goodman, Danny Schechter, David
Barsamian, Manse Jacobi, Michel Chossudovsky, Barbara Nimri Aziz,
and many more

Registration fees:

Before September 30:
October 13, Opening Night (reserved seats): $10
October 14, Conference: $20

After September 30:
Opening Night: $15
Conference Admission: $30

Limited scholarships available

For details and pre-registration, write:
Independent Media Convergence Project
c/o Toward Freedom, PO Box 468, Burlington, VT 05402
(802) 654-8024 * IMCVT@...
http://zenzibar.com/indymedia2000

Conference co-sponsors: Toward Freedom, American Friends Service
Committee-Vermont, Vermont Local-National Writers Union, Green Mountain Fund
for Popular Struggle, Peace and Justice Center, Inc., the Media Channel,
Project Censored, Between the Lines, Citizens for Independent Public
Broadcasting, Alternative Radio, Green Mountain Veterans for Peace, Green
Mountain Circle Works, Old North End Rag, The Watchman, Peacework, New
Hampshire Peace Action, Real Democracy Project, New Hampshire Social Justice
Monthly.


Schedule

October 13, 2000

Opening Night - 8 p.m.
Media Crimes & Misdemeanors, with Michael Parenti (and others TBA)


October 14, 2000

Registration - 8:45-9:45

Opening Session - 9:45 a.m.
Welcome & Keynote Focus: Independent Media - Now More Than Ever

Workshops (10:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.)

Re-Imagining Media

Connecting with Audiences
Foreign Affairs, Content & Technology
Low Power and Short Wave Radio
What Does a Sustainable Newspaper Look Like?
Video Access/Public Access
Web Based Media Potential and Resources

Problems & Prospects

Questioning Objectivity
Examining Vermont Media
Public Affairs & Labor Issues
Globalization and the Mass Media
Indy Media and Party Politics
Overcoming Roadblocks for Indy Media

Organizing a Movement

Breaking through Censorship
Cooperative Models and the IMCs
Media as Community Building
Online Networking and Distribution
Alternative Media: The College-Community Connection
Seizing the Momentum: Activist Opportunities

Lunch

Roundtable Discussions (2 - 4 p.m.)

1) Creating Effective, Alternative Enterprises
2) Using Media to Promote Peace, Democracy, and Social Change
3) Problems and Challenges for Independent Professionals
4) Improving Access and Promoting Change in Mainstream Media

These moderated, open discussions will promote broad exchange of experiences
and insights. Groups will try to reach some conclusions, and present them
later in the schedule.

Plenary Panel (4 - 5:30 p.m.)
"Getting Media Alternatives off the Ground"

Dinner and Social Hour  (5:30-7 p.m.)

Roundtable Reports (7 p.m.)

Entertainment  (8 p.m.)  -- The George Shrub Comeback Tour, plus Dave Lippman

Call for Comments
In order to broaden and deepen our discussion, we urge those planning to
attend, as well as anyone interested but unable to get to Vermont, to write
commentaries that will be distributed during the conference and compiled for
subsequent publication. Commentaries should be no more than 2000 words, and
submitted to either the IndyConvergence egroup list or IMCVT@... by
September 30. Address any topic on our workshop and roundtable list. Be as
bold, creative, and concrete as you can.


ABOUT BURLINGTON

Location: In northwestern Vermont's Champlain Valley, Burlington is the
state's largest city and center of its strong progressive movement. Bernie
Sanders, the only Independent US congressman, was Burlington Mayor from
1981-89, and the Progressive Party, with current Mayor Peter Clavelle, city
council members, and several state representatives, continue the tradition.
The city offers an accessible waterfront, many restaurants, and diverse
cultural fare.

Getting here: Burlington has an airport served by Continental, United, Delta,
US Airways, and Jet Blue, a new airline providing low-cost flights from New
York. Downtown Burlington is less than three miles from the airport. If you
are driving, Burlington can be reached via Interstate 89 and Vermont Route 7.
Amtrak has service to nearby Essex Junction. Trinity College is located on
Colchester Avenue, directly across from the University of Vermont campus.

Accommodations: Conferees planning to stay at area hotels and motels are
urged to make early reservation, since Vermont's famous foliage season can
limit availability. Affordable, but basic overnight accommodations are
available at Trinity College (see below). A limited number of participants
can be hosted in area homes, on a first come basis.

Registration Form

Pre-registration deadline: Sept. 30
(for discount prices, form and payment must be received by the above date)

Name:
Organization:
Address:
City/State/Zip
Daytime Phone:
E-mail:

REGISTRATION & RESERVATIONS
By September 30:
Opening night  (reserved seating) ____($10/person) For how many?____
Conference admission             ____($20/person) For how many?____

After September 30:
Opening night                   ____($15/person) For how many?____
Conference admission            ____($30/person) For how many?____

MEALS
Lunch & dinner will be available on October 14 for a reasonable price, but we
must know how many meals to prepare. If you want meals, please respond below.
Price not yet set.
___ Lunch reservation for ____ people. ___ Dinner reservation for ____ people.

LODGING
___I want lodging at Trinity College ($   /night/person)
     ___Friday, October 13 for ____ people
     ___Saturday, October 14 for ___ people
___I would like to stay in an area home (spaces limited).
     ___I am a vegetarian
     ___I am a non-smoker

Call me at _______________to confirm.

Total amount enclosed: _________

SPECIAL SERVICES
Will you need:
Child care services? ___ For how many?____
Handicap access?___
Sign language services?___
Display space?____ (call to make arrangements)

ROUNDTABLE PREFERENCE

Which roundtable discussion are you most likely to attend (check only one):
__ Creating Effective, Alternative Enterprises
__ Using Media to Promote Peace, Democracy, and Social Change
__ Problems and Challenges for Independent Professionals
__ Improving Access and Promoting Change in Mainstream Media

Please mail this form with check or money order payable to Toward Freedom.
Toward Freedom, PO Box 468, Burlington, VT 05402 Att: IMCVT.


"Telecommunications, computers, and the digital revolution could help to
democratize information, making it accessible to all. They could even spur a
shift in values from uniformity to diversity, from centralization to local
democracy, and from domination of nature and human beings to cooperative
solutions."

-- from the Conference Call


Independent Media Convergence Project

The Independent Media Convergence Project brings together activists,
advocates, and progressive media workers to share experiences, look at the
current media environment, discuss alternatives, develop a common agenda, and
take concrete steps to build a sustainable movement for media democracy.

Our Goals

1) To develop principles and proposals that promote alternatives and improve
access to all media,
2) To create a regional media coalition that supports fundamental social
change, and
3) To launch a new publication, station, or independent media center or
network

An Independent Media Conference

In October -- just as activists return from a season of global protests and
the national elections move into overdrive -- progressive media professionals
and activists will gather to share experiences and attempt to develop a
common agenda. We'll examine the current environment, discuss the
alternatives, and take concrete steps to help build a movement for media
democracy. Workshops will cover theory, organizing strategies, and the
practical side of creating and sustaining new media.

Why Now?

Media merger madness is clearly upon us. At the same time, however,
computers, the Internet, video, community radio, independent newspapers, and
related new technologies offer opportunities for democratization and
empowerment. Activists resisting globalization across borders are already
using independent radio, online, and print outlets to help build a movement
for global justice and democracy. We believe the time is right for a
resurgence of media advocacy.

Coverage of recent events -- from distorting the message of protests in
Seattle, Washington, and around the world, to disinforming the public about
interventions in Colombia, Kosovo, and Iraq, as well as the true impacts of
"free market" capitalism -- demonstrates that we need more powerful ways to
counteract the corporate agenda. With so many possibilities, issues, and
potential strategies -- but limited resources -- we also need a clearer set
of priorities.

A detailed schedule and speakers list will be available prior to the
conference. To learn more or get involved, join the IndyConvergence egroup
(just send a message to IndyConvergence-subscribe@egroups,com), write to
Toward Freedom, PO Box 468, Burlington, Vermont. 05402, Att: Media
Conference; call (802) 654-8024, or e-mail IMCVT@....



_____________________________________________________________
Email your boss can't read - sign up for free disinfo.net email
at http://www.disinfo.com, your gateway to the underground

From:  Kate <sorensen@c...>

The Dirt on the RNC Crack Down
ACT UP and The Brown Collective had a town meeting last week. People
who
weren't directly involved in the demonstrations during the
Republican
National Convention came to find out what really happened and what the
plan is for the future.
I've been calling friends and relatives across the country,
updating
them on my case. I've found that most folks have little
information on
the demos and most of the information that came from the corporate
media
has painted the demonstrators as terrorists. I would like to propose a
"Virtual Town Meeting". I don't know how to set it up.
But it could be
connected to thepartysover.org web page. We would not be able to
discuss
specific cases but we could talk about what occurred broadly and what
we'd like to see happen in the future.

In the mean time here is what I know:

THE CHARGES
There are approximately 400 activists facing charges connected to the
RNC demonstrations. Misdemeanor charges range from one charge to
multiple charges that could add up to years in prison.
36 activist face felony charges. Many  have multiple charges that
could
lead to decades in prison.
There are several folks who have particularly high felony charges, so
high, that it's clear that these cases will be singled out as
showcase
trials for the DA (I am one of these cases). One demonstrator's
case
includes two felony #1 charges, one charge being assault on the police
commissioner. These combined charges equal what amounts to a homicide
charge. That could mean 50 years to life in prison.

FRAMING DEMONSTRATORS
I'd like to talk about this particular activist's case in our
Virtual
Town Meeting. He is an incredibly sweet and loving human rights
activist. He could have been any one of us.
He is from out of town, in Philly for a demonstration that he believed
in, unclear of the landscape of the city. He found himself in the
middle
of a crushing police clampdown on activism. He didn't even know
what
the
police commissioner looks like. He now faces a trial where it's
his
word
against the police commissioner who's practically getting the
nobel
prize for beating the shit out of activists. The media is using this
case and his life to urge us to separate ourselves from the
"bad"
activists. Please keep in mind that you could be picked out of a crowd
at any given demonstration and given what ever charges the police
choose.

SOLIDARITY
The demonstrators showed amazing strength and solidarity while in
jail.
We were faced with constant brutality and psychological abuse. We
chanted, sang, and flushed the toilets enmass to hold together inside
the jail while folks on the outside worked their butts off to get us
out
and to get our message out to corporate media.
Now we are switching to a new form of solidarity, court solidarity.
The
defendant/activists and supporters are meeting and stratigizing ways
to
work as a group in order to:
?start negotiations with the city to cut the charges and the
fines.
?hold the corporate media accountable for the insidious media
blackout
that occurred during the demonstrations.
?make best use of the legal team that we are creating
?launch a civil case against the city.

SOLIDARITY AND YOU
To those of you who work for non-profits. Here are some of the long
term
consequences that will effect us all.
The minimum budget to defend the activists targeted by the city is two
hundred thousand dollars. Local funding is already tapped out. Funding
for liberal causes has been effectively crushed. When non-profits go
to
their local funders for projects, the cupboard will be bare. They will
turn to blame those "terrorist protesters". The Republicans
are the
terrorists. The city DA and the police and the Mayor are the
terrorists
for imposing insane charges, bails and fines and squashing
demonstrators
right to protest*.
You can help in solidarity by searching out new sources of funding to
pay for the tremendous legal fees and court costs that we are facing.

Here are some things that you can do:
SEND CHECKS - DO LITTLE CHEASEY BENEFITS - HAVE A HOUSE PARTY
get two of your friends to send checks to:
PDAG (Philadelphia Direct Action Group)
PO Box 40663
Philadelphia, PA 19107-0063
Make Checks Payable to:
   ISMCH

?W rite to Mayor Street and tell him that he is being perceived
as a
hypocrite for announcing that the police in LA were unjust for
detaining
his assistant while he sent thousands of police out to detain
activists
for two weeks in prison. Drop the charges or no vote for anyone that
Street endorses.
•Write to Lynne Abraham and tell her that pushing to stifle free
speech
will not get her votes. Drop the charges.
?Tell both them that you or your organization supports the court
solidarity (That'll scare `um)
?Write editorial letters. Let them know that you would like all
of
the
information, not just what the republicans pay them to print.
?Call the Legal Office 215-704-0911 and ask how you can help
with day
to day tasks like a few hours of filing or calls or making food and
bringing it to the volunteers who have been there every day.
?There are several court dates already set. We need folks to
fill the
court rooms, have pickets outside, do reenactments with puppets, set
up
phone zaps, work on media, build local support.

I'm going to set up a hotmail account: eversolid@h... for folks
who have questions about the RNC demos and the impact on the
community.
(You might ask, "What was the point Kate?" or There was one,
it just
got
lost in the media black out) or you might say, "Send me a loose
budget
Kate, so I can go russell up more money" don't hold back from
sending
a
little money now. I'll work on getting you what you need. You
might
ask
"How are you Kate? I'll try and funnel questions to activists
who can
answer them.
The majority of the folks who were arrested are big hearted activists
with high ideals and values.
The majority of these folks are in their twenties. The point of the
police crack down was to break folks' hearts and stop them from
standing
up for what is right.
I will continue to be an activist
Kate



_____________________________________________________________
Email your boss can't read - sign up for free disinfo.net email
at http://www.disinfo.com, your gateway to the underground

On 1 Sep 00 12:31:54 PDT noreply <withnoreply@...> wrote:

hola all,
just something about prague2000 ::


Violent Arrests on the Anti-Capitalist Caravan
by IMC Marseilles 2:07pm Thu Aug 31 '00

Several people were violently arrested Thursday afternoon in
Marseilles during the first day of the Anti-Capitalist Caravan's rally. First
stop, first arrests. The Anti-Capitalist Caravan is not welcome in
Marseilles.

After about 50 people got together for a non-violent assembly (dressed up and
riding bicycles with a sound system), about 30 police including riot police
mollested the participants. A young woman and her 4-year old daughter were
both hit by the police. Several people are still in police detention
now(Thursday, 10pm).

The Anti-Capitalist Caravan arrived in the afternoon (Thursday 31st August) at
the Huilerie squat in Marseille, the first stop on its tour. It will be
criss-crossing round France for several weeks to inform people
about the ravages of capitalism and to encite people to go to Prague in
September to counter the IMF and World Bank meeting.

It should be underlined that the demonstrations organised by the Caravan are
non-violent. No damage to property or provocation took place.

more on france.indymedia.org


[: hacktivism :]
[: for unsubscribe instructions or list info consult the list FAQ :]
[: http://hacktivism.tao.ca/ :]


_____________________________________________________________
Email your boss can't read - sign up for free disinfo.net email
at http://www.disinfo.com, your gateway to the underground

--- In anarchopunk@egroups.com, anok_peace@j... wrote:
Wow, I was wholly impressed with this article. The language could be
construed as being
very accommodating to anarchism, if you were to extend food
production to
other essential
and necessary aspects of life. Through using a model like the CSA
model
does for food
production and distribution, and apply it to such things as mechanical
work, plumbing,
carpentry, construction, homebrewing, electrical work,
weavers/knitters/sewers, education
and so on and so forth, one can begin to understand how a tight knit
community (I should
actually say a group of interlocked tight knit communities, as
exemplified in the section
"Extending the CSA Model") could very conceivably maintain life and
subsist without the
interference of capital(ism), government and hierarchy, with the
invidividual talents of each
member of the collective contributing to the community's benefit as a
whole.


Community Supported Agriculture--The Way Forward
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2000

Social Sustainability: Organic Food at the Crossroads
By Peter C. Reynolds, Ph.D. Fearless Foods, LLC

The Siren Song of Mass Markets
The Connection Channel A Sustainable Distribution System
Extending the CSA Model
The Optimal Size of CSAs
Security in Numbers

Organic farming began with a vision of ecological sustainability and a
commitment to rebuilding community. In fact, ecological sustainability
and social sustainability developed hand in hand by means of the
farmers
market, the community-supported farm, and the local natural food
store.
Until
recently, community values, food integrity, and food security were
ensured by
the marginality of organic producers and resellers. As an embattled
minority,
organic farmers developed a strong sense of community among
themselves,
while unpredictable supply encouraged organic distributors and
retailers
to
maintain good working relationships with farmers. More importantly,
the
dollar
value of the organic industry was too small to attract serious
predators.
This is changing. After decades of being dismissed as a fad, the sales
curve for organic products has risen about twenty percent a year over
the
past five
years.

This trend toward mass consumption promises great ecological benefits.
Even an
increase in market share of only a few percentage points would yield
massive
reductions in the amount of chemical fertilizer and pesticides used by
farms,
creating a healthier environment for everyone. But this growth curve
has
also
caught the eye of big business. Natural foods stores, once primarily
locally
owned, are being consolidated into national chains. Organic farmers
are
scaling up production on an industrial model to meet the increased
demand. Organic
products are being grown in Mexico, packed in plastic containers, and
shipped
by air to U.S. distributors. In short, as organic food becomes more
popular, it is
being incorporated into the systems of finance, management, and
distribution
that prevail in conventional agriculture. In the long run, industrial
models of
mass production and distribution threaten the future of sustainable
farming
and its vision of community.

The Siren Song of Mass Markets
The industrial method of increasing volume is to increase the scale of
production: bigger farms, more high-yield varieties, and more use of
mechanical
sources of energy. To scale up production on an industrial model,
organic

businesses will need massive infusions of capital available only
through
Wall
Street and international financial institutions. Once indebted to
these
lenders, organic
producers will be under increasing pressure to substitute
profitability
for
sustainability, while truncating the ecological time scale into
quarterly
reports of profit and loss. Once organic products are traded as
international
commodities, their distribution will be taken over by the same
multinational
corporations that created conventional agriculture. As organic
standards
erode,
marketers will replace organic food with a perception of organic
integrity created
through advertising and political control of regulatory agencies.

Social sustainability will go too. Once bigness is selected for,
community
values are inevitably left behind. The consolidation of multiple
farms,
packing
plants, and regional hubs under a single corporation requires the
adoption of
conventional big business practices, such as multiple layers of
management and
specialized departments. Soon the organization becomes the product, as
status
competition drives decision making, and meetings proliferate to the
exclusion of useful work. This system is excellent for consolidating
wealth and power at
the apex of a pyramid, but it is antithetical to the goals of
community,
cooperation, local control, and personal responsibility that are part
of
the original
inspiration of the movement for sustainable agriculture.

Sustainable agriculture must be both ecologically and socially
sustainable.
Organic agriculture is socially sustainable when its techniques are
embedded in a social organization that furthers the underlying values
of
ecological
sustainability. Ecological values include consuming only what you
need,
replacing what you take, ensuring that waste products can be naturally
recycled, and that products used in one place are not derived from
extractive
industries somewhere else. Needless to say, the system of
multinational
trade and
corporate capitalism as presently constituted is based on premises
that
are exactly the
opposite of ecological sustainability. The system increases aggregate
demand by creating wants where there are no needs. It seeks to
consolidate production
and distribution into worldwide monopolies through the non-sustainable
technology.
And it selects for get-rich-quick schemes that shift diseconomies to
the
environment and the public sector.

Organic farming cannot feed the population of the planet earth by
being
scaled up on an industrial model. Any radically new system of
production
requires a
system of distribution appropriate to it. At the end of the 19th
century
the sheer volume of industrial products overwhelmed the ability of the
corner
store and the itinerant peddler to absorb them. An entirely new
system of
marketing
and distribution was developed to meet this need; the department
store,
national
brands, the manufacturerís representative, the nationwide
distributor,
and
consumer credit. Marketers invented advertising, show windows, and
mass
media to create demand where there was none before. As William Leach
documents in the Land of Desire, within two generations in the United
States, the Puritan heritage of self-denial and simple living was
turned
on its head,
replaced by an insatiable appetite for consumer goods. A system of
distribution and
marketing, far from being the inevitable outcome of fixed laws of
economics, is an intentional creation adapted to a specific system of
production.

The Connection Channel A Sustainable Distribution System
The critical problem facing organic agriculture today is how to
produce
food in sufficient quantity to feed modern populations without
adopting
an industrial
system of production and distribution. The organic food movement has
developed two distribution channels that are consistent with the
community
values of sustainable agriculture, namely the farmers market and the
CSA
(community-supported agriculture) farm. Both are forms of direct
marketing.
The farmers market is very popular with a subset of consumers, but it
is
not a
distribution channel that can easily meet the needs of most people.
Typically,
markets are held only one day a week in any one community, are open
only
part
of the year, and are very sensitive to weather. They are not ideal for
farmers
either, for they often impose a great transportation burden, while
putting
organic farmers in direct price competition with conventional
agriculture. The CSA
and subscription farm, however, have the potential of providing food
all
year long
with a freshness and organic integrity that is impossible for
conventional
channels to equal.

The CSA began as an offshoot of biodynamic farming, with its concept
of
holistic community and attention to the rhythms of life. As Steven
McFadden
explains it in Farms of Tomorrow Revisited, 'One gift that the CSA
gives
to
individuals, to families, and to culture in general is a vehicle for
re-establishing a
conscious connection with the rhythm of life, the rhythm of the
seasons,
and the
rhythm of the farm'( p.72). As the concept first developed in Europe,
a
CSA
was a group of food consumers who banded together to support a local
farm
by
buying stock in the enterprise, helping with the work, and dividing
the
produce among
themselves. Since arriving in the United States the CSA concept has
diversified into a wide variety of social and legal forms, with the
philosophically
committed CSA at one end of the spectrum (eat only what you grow) and
the
commercially-oriented subscription farm at the other.

>From an institutional perspective, this diversity is a good thing,
as it
allows consumers to place themselves at the appropriate place on a
spectrum of
commitment, from the sustainability activist to the less reflective
eater.
Moreover, this flexibility allows the CSA model to accommodate to
regional and
cultural diversity. In the northeastern United States, community
participation in a local farm is common; in California, where farming
has
been
export-oriented since the railroad arrived, people do not have a
problem
with
subscription farms that deliver a hundred miles or more from where
they
are located.
The definition of 'eating local' depends on oneís culture and
technology.

>From the perspective of social sustainability, 'localness' is less
important than physical connection to the farm, wherever that farm may
be. The
CSA and the subscription farm are both examples of a new way of
marketing
and
distributing farm products that I call the connection channel. In the
connection
channel, farm-direct products and farm brand identity come together to
create in the
mind of the consumer a connection to the land, reinforced through
physical contact
with the farm. The extent of the physical contact is a matter of
consumer
preference and CSA philosophy. Some CSA members are content with a
visitor
day once a year, while some CSAs demand from members actual ownership
and
participation. But in no case is the physical contact dispensable. The
physical farm exposes the contemporary urbanite to exactly those
things
that are missing in modern urban life; the soil, the smells, the
animals,
the look and feel of the countryside, the taste of food before it is
processed, and the rhythms of the seasons. At the farm, people see
whole
plants, roots and all. Moreover, food from a CSA can be traced back
to a
specific piece of land, giving the consumer confidence in its quality,
freshness, and organic integrity. The natural foods retailer, on the
other
hand, can only connect the consumer to yet another commercial
transaction.

Unlike industrial distribution, the connection channel creates
community
instead of eroding it. Since CSA members recognize the farm as their
source
of quality produce, and feel connected to it, they are more committed
to
its
survival and more willing to help out. Even subscription farms with
minimal member
participation educate consumers in organic values, while giving them a
stake in political issues affecting sustainable agriculture, such as
ensuring the
integrity of organic certification standards.

The farmer benefits too. The connection channel bypasses the
middleman,
giving
farmers profit margins more comparable to the farmers market. The
farmer
can
retain a higher portion of the final selling price while bringing the
cost
to the consumer more in line with conventional agricultural products,
thereby
reaching more people. Advance ordering and knowledge of member
preferences
fine-tunes the planting process, reducing the farmerís risk of
spoilage,
surplus
production, storage costs, and missed sales. With a pay-in-advance
policy, the
farmer gets the capital needed for planting and improvements. Most
important of all,
the connection channel can produce organic food in quantities
sufficient
to feed the earthís
population while avoiding the social costs of industrial production
and
distribution. Instead
of scaling up existing organic farms, one multiplies their number, and
uses an extended
CSA model to distribute the product to local and regional populations.
When properly
administered, the connection channel can often deliver in the
afternoon
what was
harvested that morning, providing a field-to-fork time that no
hub-to-retailer
system can match.

Extending the CSA Model
To become a high-volume distribution channel for organic products, the
CSA
movement must take consumer preferences seriously. Our research shows
that
many urban consumers perceive CSA offerings as too seasonal and too
erratic. A
common complaint from former CSA members is that 'there was too much
of
this, not enough of that'. Consumers often get food they cannot use,
while
certain staples, such as lettuce or fruit, have to be purchased
elsewhere.
Many conclude that if they have to go to the natural food store
anyway,
the
extra trip to the CSA pickup point is not a good use of their time.
These
complaints
add up to a serious mismatch between the theory of the CSA movement
and
the
expectations of most consumers.

The solution is not simply telling people to 'eat in season.' The
history
of
agriculture is as much the history of food processing, food storage,
and
food
exchange as it is of food production. Shifting responsibility to the
consumer
conceals the conceptual flaws in the classic CSA model itself. The
unspoken
premise of the CSA model is that the single farm is the basic unit of
both
production and consumption. In some interpretations, 'community'
becomes
redefined as the group of people who support that one farm and
'sustainability' as eating only what that one farm chooses to produce.
But from an
historical and cross-cultural perspective, this is an artificially
narrow
concept
of a human community.

Contemporary notions of self-sufficiency assume that the individual
household
is the basic unit of production and consumption. But in societies
where
people
actually produce their own food, such as village farmers, nomadic
herders, and
bands of hunters and gatherers, it is the community of households
that is
self-sufficient. Should you ever visit such a society, the first thing
you will notice is
that people are constantly exchanging the food that they themselves
produce
with food produced by neighbors and kinfolk. There are often exchanges
with
other groups that live long distances away. Even in so-called
subsistence
societies, where each household could theoretically produce and
consume
everything it needed, the basic units of production and consumption
are
not
co-extensive. The smallest unit of consumption is the household, while
the basic
unit of production is the workgroup recruited from multiple
households.
In the
space between are sophisticated systems of social exchange that
circulate
goods and services to kinfolk, neighbors, and other villages. Any
social
movement
that tries to short-circuit this process by consuming only what it
produces is
bound to fail because it ignores the role of exchange in creating
human
community.

In the extended model of community-supported agriculture - namely, the
connection channel - the CSA is not a single farm but the place in a
web
of
complementary farms where consumers connect with the land. The flow of
agricultural products from the CSA to its members and the flow of
money
and
services from the members to the farm are only the first level of
exchange in the connection
channel, the on-farm level. This basic unit of production is not
self-sufficient, nor
should it be. For the channel to achieve the stability and volume it
needs to
maintain sustainability, each CSA farm needs to be connected to a
cooperative
web consisting of other organic producers. In the connection channel
approach to community supported agriculture, each CSA farm is a
distribution point for
products that the CSA does not itself provide. For example, a CSA may
receive
eggs from farm A, honey from farm B, and medicinal herbs from farm C,
passing
these through to its members. The flow of goods and money among farms
and
CSAs constitute the interfarm level.

The interfarm level can deliver many of the organic products sold by
natural
food stores, but it differs from the latter in critical respects. The
most
important difference is that the CSA is not selling pass-through
products
as line
items but using them to enhance the mix of products needed to get and
retain an
optimal number of members. For example, a CSA that does not grow fruit
may
determine that its members want at least two varieties of fresh fruit
in
their baskets each
week, so it buys fruit from another farm. Unlike a retailer, it does
not
present the
fruit to members as separately charged line items. Rather, it adjusts
the
subscription
price of the basket so that the additional cost of purchasing and
packing
the fruit is covered in the basket price.

The conventional retail channel is specialized for providing unique
combinations of products on short notice, but the connection channel
is
far better at
fulfilling recurrent orders of perishable and staple foods. Each CSA
needs to develop
categories of subscription products that reflect the food preferences
of
consumers in its delivery area. In California, CSAs have developed
subcategories of
baskets that reflect ethnic and dietary preferences, such as
Mediterranean,
stir-fry, and vegan baskets. Other CSAs offer subscriptions for
supplementary products
not wanted by all members, such as eggs and bread. These are charged
as
optional
add-ons to a basic subscription plan. Unlike the retailer, however,
the
CSA
is not trying to customize orders for each individual customer but
strives to develop
product categories that best reflect the food preferences of its
membership. The
idea is to add product categories that make it easier to recruit and
retain
members; thereby keeping the CSA farm at optimal size, while evolving
it
into
the primary channel for distributing staple food products to a local
community. The CSA farm can provide pass-through products to its
members
at retail price
or less because it recovers the increased cost of customized packing
from
the
difference between the price it pays the supplier for a bulk order and
what it
charges its members for individual subscriptions. Because the
pass-through
products are complementary to the CSA farmís own production, not in
competition with it, it remains the primary producer of staple crops
for
its
members.

Interfarm transactions are critical to the success of the CSA model
because
they address consumer complaints about choice, quantity, availability,
and variety,
while bringing more farmers into the system. Some of the most
successful
organic farmers specialize in one or two crops, such as rice, grapes,
and
apples. These farms can never be CSAs, and their direct marketing
options
are
limited. Few consumers will be willing to enter into a multitude of
subscriptions,
one for each of the specialty organic products they consume, but they
might be
happy to add a number of pass-through products to their basic CSA
subscription. In
reality, if not in theory, interfarm exchanges are already an
important
feature of the CSA movement. On the West Coast, CSAs distribute a wide
range of organic products from other farms and producers, including
bread,
cheese, milk, eggs, tofu, yogurt, honey, preserves, range-fed meat,
citrus,
avocados, stone fruit, grapes, blueberries, olive oil, cider, and
medicinal
herbs.

This extended model of the CSA farm, the connection channel, helps the
organic
community to meet the goal of social sustainability. When pass-through
products are identified as to their farm of origin, it gives the
consumer
a
connection to multiple farms, extending the sense of community. By
increasing
the range of products offered by the CSA, it creates more satisfied
customers while
reducing their need to shop elsewhere. By bringing more farms into the
CSA distribution
system, it provides a more robust and profitable channel for everyone.
The connection channel also helps ensure the integrity of the organic
food
supply in a commercial environment where this will be increasingly at
risk. Since
interfarm products are shipped directly from source farm to CSA; and
as
the
CSA as a whole is a better judge of organic growers than the
individual
consumer, the system preserves a high level of organic integrity
irrespective
of whether the government actually enforces organic standards and
labeling.

The Optimal Size of CSAs
In order to meet consumer preferences while remaining faithful to its
role of
primary producer of fruits and vegetables for its members, the CSA
must
achieve an optimal size. A CSA has reached its optimal size when it is
big enough to
handle interfarm transactions and to provide diversified member
baskets
but
not so big that the social relations of big business are required to
manage it.
Moreover, it must make enough money that the continued existence of
the
farm
does not depend on second jobs by members of the farmer's family. It
must
have
enough employees to meet its commitments through times of ill health,
while
paying them enough to attract young people to farming. These social
sustainability goals are difficult or impossible to meet with the
conventional
CSA model, but the increased sales volume facilitated by interfarm
transactions
holds out a hope of success.

The interfarm infrastructure consists of a loading dock where products
from
other farms are received, a packing shed where categories of member
baskets
are configured, and a vehicle large enough to carry the combined
products
to
drop-off points. In addition, there is an administrative system,
discussed below, that
aggregates the orders of individual CSA members and generates bulk
orders
to
interfarm producers. Finally, there is a permanent crew of people,
either
farm
employees or community volunteers, who staff the packing facility,
handle
order taking, and distribute baskets to members.

Unlike the capitalist farm, the goal is not to make each CSA as large
as
possible but to bring it to an optimal size and maintain it there. If
the
volume of
products becomes so large that multiple packing facilities need to be
built and
multiple shifts employed, then the CSA is getting too big to maintain
the
social
relations of cooperative face-to-face work groups and a sense of
member
participation. The optimal size varies with local conditions, but
there
are simple
indicators of an impending transformation into corporate capitalism of
which farmers
should be aware. Do CSA members know the names of the delivery staff?
Does the
CSA coordinator recognize most members? Are resources allocated on the
basis of
status competition among managers? If an optimally sized CSA cannot
meet
consumer demand in its area, then it spins off another CSA,
independently
owned and operated.

The interfarm CSA must strike a balance between the volume of on-farm
products and pass-through products. If pass-through products appear to
dominate the flow of goods to the consumer, the CSA might come to be
perceived, either by the farmer or the members or both, as a natural
foods
retailer. At this point the psychology of the marketplace kicks in,
placing
self-interest at the forefront of values. Soon the CSA farmer is
maximizing
profit and the members are dickering about price. Even worse, the
connection
to the land is lost, and a great opportunity squandered.

As with the current system of organic commerce, the pitfalls of the
connection
channel are the replication of industrial and commercial values under
the
guise of sustainable agriculture. But unlike the present system, this
development
can be prevented by maintaining an optimal size and balancing
countervailing
forcesóby a social biodynamic process. Once this balance is
achieved,
the
connection channel can be an effective means of preserving the
community
values of the organic farming movement, making CSAs more acceptable to
urban
consumers, and meeting the demand for industrial quantities of organic
food.
Staying Socially Sustainable in a Wired World

The connection channel provides an effective alternative to the direct
marketing and home delivery schemes now being developed on the
worldwide
web. These replace the local retailer with computerized transactions
and
anonymous
deliveries that erode community even more. Also, in the new world
order,
there
is no longer any difference between retail commerce and electronic
surveillance. One of the best exemplars of e-commerce is the online
bookseller,
Amazon.com, which claims over twenty million accounts. To buy a book
from

Amazon, one logs onto their web site, types in a credit card number,
and
selects a book
from literally tens of thousands of titles. When the order is
submitted,
the
book is pulled from the shelves of a warehouse in Seattle, dispatched
by
UPS or air
courier, and arrives at the ship-to address a day or two later. For
getting
a book that is not in your local bookstore the service is hard to
beat,
but it has
potential dangers that are not apparent to the average reader.

Bookstore owners have expressed concern about Amazon's monopolistic
potential, anticipating the day when the majority of book purchases
will
bypass the local retailer and come to rest in the computers of one or
two

companies, thousands of miles away. Even less discussed is the fact
that
Amazon
develops a dossier on each customer based on the person's book-buying
history,
which its computers use to automatically suggest other books that the
customer might
enjoy. In the hands of prosecutor Kenneth Starr, even Monica
Lewinsky's
book
purchases were used against her.

In the grocery business, there is a similar effort underway to
transform
food into customer profiles. At a major supermarket chain in
California
shoppers are
issued e-commerce cards that track the brands and amounts of every
item
they
buy in the store. Once they make a purchase with an ATM or credit
card,
their
food buying habits become linked to their credit history.

In the connection channel, however, customer preferences are buffered
by
the
local nature of the CSA. Members tell their CSA what pass-through
products
they would like to order. A computer at the CSA consolidates requests
for
each
product submitted by members, then scans an online bulletin board for
suitable
products posted by producers. In its search, the computer program can
take
into account such criteria as source farm, purchase price, shipping
distance, and
minimal purchase quantities. If there is enough member demand to
trigger
a
minimal order, the local system alerts the CSA coordinator, who has
the
option
of placing a bulk order with the producer. The system can also be
used to
trigger standing orders at preset times. Because customer records are
administered
on the local level, and any orders leaving the farm are aggregate
orders
for bulk
produce deliverable to the CSA's loading dock, individual members and
their
preferences are invisible to the worldwide databases on the worldwide
web.
More importantly, a web of farms linked by interfarm transactions is
very
hard
to buy up and take over.

Security in Numbers
Changing the buying habits of a nation is a large task, but it has
been
done
before, a little over a century ago, in the transition from familial
to
corporate capitalism. And the goal is no more quixotic than that of
the
organic
food community only a generation ago, when it set out to re-invent
agriculture in
defiance of science, economics, and the conventional wisdom. In the
21st
century
food security and food integrity issues will move to the center of the
political
arena, as people become more aware of climatic changes induced by
global
warming, the ecological costs of conventional agriculture, and the
implications
of such new and controversial technologies as genetic engineering. If
anything,
food will be more politicized, not less. The survival of sustainable
agriculture will
require a large, easily mobilized constituency that can apply the
appropriate political
pressure, as it did in response to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's
proposed
organic standards. The connection channel, by integrating organic food
consumers
with food producers in a tight-knit web of grassroots communities,
linked
by high-
speed telecommunications, is a formidable political force.

The connection channel makes organic farming socially as well as
ecologically
sustainable. It connects food buyers to the land instead of to
retailers.
It makes each organic producer economically stronger while providing
jobs
at
the local level. It increases the volume of organic food while
preserving
the
integrity of organic standards. It gives local communities a more
secure
and controllable
food supply, while preserving product diversity and a high degree of
consumer
choice. Most importantly of all, it provides an institutional
alternative
to the new world order that can inspire the next generation of
sustainability activists.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------
About the Author Peter C. Reynolds received his doctorate in
anthropology
from Yale University. After doing field research in subsistence
societies
in Asia and the Pacific, he moved to Silicon Valley, where he worked
in
technical
product marketing and software development. He is co-founder of
Fearless
Foods, L.L.C. (http://www.fearlessfoods.com), a company that provides
CSA
management tools and transaction processing for sustainable
agriculture.
He
can be reached at organic@f...



_____________________________________________________________
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The FBI has been forced to release hundreds of documents on Albert
Einstein under the 'Freedom of Information Act'.  These can
be found as PDF files at
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein.htm

The opening document includes a letter arguing that Einstein
should be excluded from the USA because of his affiliation
with the War Resisters League which the document describes
as 'Anarcho-communist'.  It further argues that Einstein's
own beliefs are anarchist although the writers seem more then a
little confused in writing that "Not even Stalin himself
is affiliated with so many anarcho-communist international
groups ... as ALBERT EINSTEIN"

------
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---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

[A rather disgusting attempt to smear Subcommandante Marcos,
not for any action he has action, but for his failure to
take action. Shouldn't we at least wait until he does
something before accusing him of being a wannabe dictator?
-- DC]

Published Sunday, September 3, 2000, in the Miami Herald

Is Mexico's Zapatista leader yet another aspiring tyrant?

Bad news for those of us with a congenital weakness for
socially conscious rebels: Mexico's guerrilla leader
Subcommander Marcos may prove to be something very
different from a champion of democracy.

You may remember that, when he led his Indian-supported
1994 Zapatista uprising in Mexico's southern state of
Chiapas, the white-skinned guerrilla leader wearing a
ski-mask to conceal his identity charmed the world with
his claims to be fighting to topple the ``dictatorship''
that had ruled his country since 1929.

Furthermore, even those of us who knew that Subcommander
Marcos -- who turned out to be Rafael Sebastián Guillén,
a Mexico City university professor -- secretly belonged
to the Maoist-inspired National Liberation Front guerrilla
group could not help but admit to the possibility that he
had evolved into a sincere fighter for democracy.

When I interviewed Subcommander Marcos in the Lacandon
jungle in mid-1994, he certainly tried to portray himself
as a Robin Hood-style fighter for basic freedoms. He
repeatedly told me that his goal was not to take power,
but to accelerate political change.

Asked about the early statements by his troops during the
Jan. 1, 1994, uprising, he played down their calls for a
socialist state. He said the main purpose of the Zapatista
uprising was to oust the corrupt Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) ``dictatorship,'' which together with its friends
in Mexico's business elite had become the main obstacles to
social justice in Mexico, and particularly in Chiapas.

Marcos' personality helped give his words some credibility.
Unlike Cuba's Fidel Castro, he didn't talk with the pomposity
of an aspiring world leader. Rather, he played the role of an
anti-hero, a man who seduced his interviewers with casual
talk and self-deriding humor.

What would he do if, by some accident of history, he became
Mexico's president, I asked him at the time. Marcos looked at
me wide-eyed and smiled from behind his mask. ``What? Me,
president of Mexico? You must be crazy! . . . I'm a guerrilla
leader, a poet, a dreamer . . . [Mexico] would go down the
drain.''

Today, nearly six years later, it's time for Marcos to live
up to his claim to be a democrat. Two key events in recent
weeks have changed history in Mexico and in Chiapas, and the
Zapatista leader's rhetoric would prove to be a farce if he
doesn't react to them accordingly.

On July 2, Mexicans broke with the PRI's seven-decade-old
monopoly of power and elected opposition leader Vicente Fox
as their next president. Fox, a former general manager of
Coca Cola in Mexico, will take office Dec. 1 and is promising
to lead a center-left government that will put special emphasis
on reducing poverty.
[Query: How is Fox, who ran as candidate for a right-wing party,
going to lead a "center-left" coalition? -- DC]

But even if Marcos wanted to argue that Fox's victory would not
necessarily change things in Chiapas, the state on Aug. 20
elected Pablo Salazar as its first opposition governor in recent
memory. Salazar was backed by a coalition of eight Chiapas
opposition parties, and is close to Roman Catholic Church groups
that have been close to the Zapatista rebels.

Despite these key developments, the usually talkative Marcos has
not said a word in public since the day of Fox's election.

Was his claim to be fighting the PRI ``dictatorship'' a public
relations strategy to seduce naive gringo reporters? What excuse
could he possibly have now for not opening the doors to a peace
settlement with the next government?

Subcommander Marcos has the opportunity of his life: He could
claim some credit for precipitating the political changes that
led to the downfall of the PRI, take off his ski-mask, and
renew his struggle for Mexico's Indians in the political arena.

If he doesn't do that soon, he will prove once and for all that
he never was an altruist ``dreamer,'' but just another guerrilla
commander who was interested only in one thing: power.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Defiant unions to join global summit protest

Sydney Morning Herald

Date: 07/09/2000

By BRAD NORINGTON

Unions are closely involved in the S11 protest group that
plans to shut down the World Economic Forum in Melbourne next
Monday, in defiance of the ACTU and its president, Ms Sharan
Burrow.

At least five unions are providing funding, logistic support
and demonstrators for the protest against corporate globalisation,
despite Ms Burrow's claims that unions "are not associated".

The ACTU has tried desperately to distance the union movement
from S11 to ward off a public relations disaster in the event
of violence.

Ms Burrow insisted last week that unions were not part of Monday's
protest and would hold a separate, peaceful demonstration the next
day.

But a number of unions will have a strong presence among S11
students, Trotskyists and anarchists whose objective is to stop
the three-day forum of world political and business leaders at
Crown Casino.

The two unions most heavily involved - the Construction Forestry
Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and the Australian Manufacturing
Workers Union (AMWU) - were caught up in the 1996 riot at
Parliament House that ruined an ACTU campaign against Government
workplace legislation.

A Sydney-based co-ordinator of the S11 Coalition, the CFMEU
official Mr Phil Davey, confirmed that five unions were helping
to organise the Monday protest and were sending members to take
part. The first Sydney demonstrators left on buses yesterday and
up to 500 were booked into a Melbourne caravan park.

The CFMEU has come under attack from Government ministers for
providing a first-aid tent and calling for donations of bandages.

Mr Davey said the Monday protest by S11 would be "avowedly and
explicitly non-violent" and would involve up to 10,000 people.

However, posters around the city saying "Bring Seattle to
Melbourne" have evoked the violent clashes with police at last
year's meeting of the World Trade Organisation.

A CFMEU official from the Melbourne S11 group, Mr Steve Jolley,
said: "We're going to blockade it. We're aiming to stop this
meeting. We're aiming to close this down."

A militant Victorian leader of the AMWU, Mr Craig Johnston, said
he would not attend the S11 protest but said it had his support.
"I'm sure some of our members will be there."

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

[Big surprise, huh? -- DC]

"During the convention, which ran from July 31 to Aug. 3,
Commissioner John F. Timoney repeatedly denied that police
had engaged in infiltration."

Pa. State Troopers Infiltrated Protest Groups
Court Documents Reveal Police Convention Tactics

Sept. 7, 2000

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Undercover state troopers infiltrated
groups planning protests at the Republican National
Convention, newly unsealed search-warrant documents show.

The state police operation was detailed in legal documents
filed Aug. 1 by Philadelphia police to gain search warrants
for a raid on a warehouse where about 75 people were
arrested, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today.

Four days before the convention began, state police
operatives posing as demonstrators arrived at the warehouse
protesters were using as a staging area, according to the
documents unsealed Wednesday.

Troopers were said to have seen demonstrators building
street barriers and devices used by protesters to lock arms
together to block streets. They also reported hearing
discussions that protesters planned to throw objects such
as pies and bottles at police, the affidavits said.

'This is an outrage'

Protesters have said the warehouse was used to make puppets,
floats and other props for the demonstrations.

"This is an outrage," said Stefan Presser, legal director
of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Presser and other critics said protesters should have had
the right to organize without fear that police were spying
on them. They also said undercover officers could become
provocateurs.

During the convention, which ran from July 31 to Aug. 3,
Commissioner John F. Timoney repeatedly denied that police
had engaged in infiltration. Police spokeswoman Lt. Susan
Slawson said Wednesday the commissioner could not comment
because of pending litigation, the demonstrators' civil
suit challenging the arrests.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Globalization gets a bigger audience
State of the World Forum lures current, former heads of state

By Gary Seidman MSNBC

NEW YORK, Sept. 5 —  Ever since a teenager — clad
in black and espousing anarchist ideas — tossed
a rock through the window of a downtown
Seattle McDonald’s 9 months ago, world leaders
have scurried about debating the benefits and
detriments of borderless trade. It’s a nod to the
anti-globalization demonstrators at that Seattle
World Trade Organization meeting — who
identified the fast-food chain with global
homogenization — that this dialogue is
happening.

THIS WEEK, the debate is getting a bigger and more
powerful audience. Some 1,500 delegates, including current
and former heads of state like ex-Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev, are tackling the issue at the State of the World
Forum in New York.

While the group includes global investor and
philanthropist George Soros, the grassroots organizer
Vandana Shiva and John Sweeney, president of the 13
million member AFL-CIO labor union, the most aggressive
of the anti-globalization protestors who marched in the
streets of Seattle and later Washington are nowhere to be
seen. The freight train, it seems, will not be stopped.

“Our topic — ‘shaping globalization’ — recognizes
that globalization is a reality,” said Sweeney in his remarks
to the forum. Identifying the phenomenon with the
“corporate offensive and conservative movement” that
swept through the West when America’s Ronald Reagan,
Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Germany’s Helmut Kohl
came to power 20 years ago, Sweeney maintained a broad
focus, avoiding mention of his own constituents, who fear
job losses to lower paying countries, such as China.

CROSS-BORDER CULTURES

Now, said Gorbachev, “there is a danger that
globalization could be like a steamroller creating a
homogenous cultures around the world.” It has made it
“possible to create a vast flow of culture; films, art,” he
said. “But in countries like Russia, 80 percent of films are
American.” The task for leaders around the globe, he said,
is to govern the process and make it work for all.

Like others at the forum — and those attending the
United Nations Millennium across town — Gorbachev
rattled off statistics about the world’s unemployed and
impoverished, people he says who have seen little or no
benefits from increased trade and the most prevalent
aspects of the globalization trend.

One billion unemployed and 1.2 billion people living on
less than $1 a day are the “fourth world” peoples that are
not subject to the benefits of globalization.

Vandana Shiva, the director of India’s Foundation for
Science, Technology and National Research went a step
further in her indictment of globalization. Not only, she said,
are many of the world’s people not enjoying the fruits of
globalization, but small producers such as tea farmers in
India are being forced out of their livelihoods by cheaper,
less quality imports. “We can’t afford globalization. It is too
much of a luxury.”

Soros advocated stronger international organizations to
ensure a more equitable sharing of the wealth. At the same
time, Soros said while the spread of capitalism could very
well lift many of the world’s people out of poverty and
despair, “capitalism and political freedom don’t necessarily
go hand in hand.”

“Perhaps the greatest threat to freedom and democracy today
is the unholy alliance between business and government,” he
said. Markets, he added, are not designed to take care of the
common good.

Perhaps, said Vandana Shiva, “we have to listen to the
people who were on the streets of Seattle.”

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Thursday, September 7, 2000

Philadelphia Inquirer

http://web.philly.com:80/content/inquirer/2000/09/07/front_page/PPROTEST07.htm

State police infiltrated protest groups, documents show

Search-warrant affidavits reveal an undercover operation aimed
at activists in Philadelphia for the GOP convention.

By Linda K. Harris,, Craig R. McCoy and Thomas Ginsberg
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

State police undercover agents posing as demonstrators
infiltrated activist groups planning the protests at the
Republican National Convention, search-warrant documents
made public yesterday showed.

The undercover operation was detailed in legal documents
filed Aug. 1 by Philadelphia police seeking search warrants
for a raid that day on a so-called "puppet warehouse" at 4100
Haverford Ave. in West Philadelphia. The documents were under
a court seal until yesterday.

About 75 people were arrested in the raid at the warehouse.

The infiltration was immediately condemned yesterday by the
state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the
city public defender's office.

"It's worse than sleazeball," said Stefan Presser, the ACLU's
legal director. "This is an outrage."

Presser and other critics said dissenters needed the right to
rally and to organize without fear that police were spying on
them. They said they feared that police  undercover officers
could cross the line from intelligence-gatherers to provocateurs.

"The legality and propriety of this potentially unconstitutional
police conduct will certainly be an issue at the time of trial
in all of these cases," said Bradley Bridge, a senior lawyer
with the defender's office.

During the convention, Police Commissioner John F. Timoney
repeatedly denied that police had engaged in infiltration.

"We had not infiltrated any group," he said the day after police
raided the warehouse that had become one of several gathering
spots for demonstrators during the convention.

A spokeswoman for the commissioner said yesterday that he would
have no comment. Lt. Susan Slawson, commander of the police
public-affairs unit, said the commissioner could not talk because
"it's in litigation," a reference to a civil suit filed by
demonstrators challenging their arrests during the protests.

The use of state police as the undercover operatives took place
as the city itself was restricted from using its own officers for
such infiltration under a long-standing mayoral directive. The
directive says the police may not infiltrate protest groups
without the permission of the mayor, the managing director, and
the police commissioner.

Mayor Street and City Solicitor Kenneth Trujillo declined comment
yesterday.

In seeking search warrants, police cited the work of the undercover
operatives and detailed the intelligence gathered as the convention
approached. The information is sketched out in affidavits of probable
cause seeking warrants to search the warehouse, a U-Haul van, another
van, and a pickup that police deemed suspicious.

"This investigation is utilizing several Pennsylvania state troopers
in an undercover capacity that have infiltrated several of the
activist groups planning to commit numerous illegal direct actions,"
said one affidavit, signed by Detective William Egenlauf of the
Philadelphia Police Department.

It says the state police undercover operatives arrived at the warehouse
on July 27, four days before the convention began.

Once there, the agents assisted "in the construction of props to be
used during protests," the affidavit says.

It says agents observed demonstrators building street barriers and
"lock boxes," devices used by protesters to lock arms together when
blocking streets. The papers say they overheard discussions that
indicated protesters planned on "using the puppets . . . as blockades."

The operatives also reported that "persons indicated they would be
throwing pies, bottles and cardboard boxes filled with water at the
police," the affidavits stated.

Timoney held a news conference after the convention to display items
seized during the raid, including two massive slingshots and chains
wrapped in kerosene-soaked rags. Such devices were not used during
the protests. Police also displayed seized "lock boxes."

Protesters have claimed the facility was nothing more than an art
studio to fashion the puppets, floats and other props that were a
hallmark of the demonstrations.

Demonstrators also said their protests would be nonviolent, with
illegal actions limited to the blockading of streets. Their lawyers
have complained that numerous people were arrested in the warehouse
without any proof they had any connection to illegal items.

A key subject of controversy has been the raid on the warehouse.

The request for the search warrants for the warehouse and lengthy
affidavits detailing police intelligence-gathering was made yesterday,
a month after Municipal Court President Judge Louis J. Presenza
approved the searches.

At the request of the District Attorney's Office, the warrants were
sealed - barred from public inspection - for a month as soon as they
were issued. The legal request for the warrants maintained that
premature "disclosure of this affidavit could endanger the lives" of
the undercover operatives.

The affidavits cite sweeping police intelligence-gathering before
the convention. This included monitoring of unspecified "electronic
messages" sent among demonstrators, an apparent reference to police
scrutiny of Web sites and electronic mailing lists.

The police documents identified what investigators viewed as the key
protest groups and their goals. Funds for one group "allegedly
originate with Communist and leftist parties and from sympathetic
trade unions" or from "the former Soviet-allied World Federation of
Trade Unions," according to the affidavits.

The affidavits go on to identify a handful of leaders of the various
groups. Among those cited by name are John Sellers and Kate Sorensen,
who were later arrested during demonstrations in Center City. The
two were held in jail for days in lieu of $1 million bail - a sum
critics said was extraordinary. In recent interviews after their
release from jail, people who were inside the warehouse said that
they had suspected early on that four undercover officers were working
among them. Four men - known as Tim, Harry, George and Ryan - showed
up together at 41st and Haverford about a week before the convention,
introducing themselves as union carpenters from Wilkes-Barre who built
stages, several demonstrators said.

They were big, burly men who were older than most of the people working
in the warehouse. They did not seem particularly political or well-
informed, according to demonstrators. All four, however, were
considered hard workers.

Soliman Lawrence, 20, of Tallahassee, Fla., worked closely with the
four on a massive satirical float built for a protest march.

"They gained our trust," Lawrence said. "The fact that we didn't know
them very well wasn't a big deal.

"I remember thinking to myself, 'Why does everyone who looks like
that have to be a cop?' " Lawrence said. "I didn't like that I thought
like that."

Linda K. Harris' e-mail address is lharris@...

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Will Cops Ruin the Next Anti-Globalization Protests in Quebec?

by Naomi Klein, Globe and Mail

September 5, 2000

I wasn't thrilled that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
quoted my book, No Logo, in its new report on the anti-globalization
"threat." In some of the circles in which I travel, being a de facto
CSIS informant is a political liability. But there it is on Page 3:
No Logo helping CSIS to understand why those crazy kids keep storming
trade meetings.

Usually, I welcome any and all readers, but I have this sneaking
suspicion that, a few months from now, this report is going to be
used to justify smashing in the heads of some very good friends of
mine.

In April, Quebec City, Canada will play host to the most significant
free-trade summit since the World Trade Organization negotiations
collapsed in Seattle last December. At the Summit of the Americas,
34 states will meet with the purpose of launching the Free Trade Area
of the Americas -- a version of the North American free-trade
agreement for the entire hemisphere (except, of course, Cuba).

The CSIS report is designed to assess the threat that anti-corporate
protests pose to the summit. But, interestingly, it does more than
paint activists as latent terrorists (though it does that, too). It
also makes a somewhat valiant effort to understand the issues behind
the anger.

The report notes, for instance, that protesters are enraged by "the
failure to approve debt relief for poor countries." They believe
that many corporations are guilty of "social injustice, unfair labor
practices ... as well as lack of concern for the environment," and
that the institutions governing trade are "interested only in the
profit motive." It's not a bad summary, really (infiltrating all
those teach-ins paid off). The report even pays the protesters a
rare compliment: According to CSIS, they not only know their stuff,
they are "becoming more and more knowledgeable about their subject."

Sure, these observations are made in the spirit of know thy enemy,
but at least CSIS is listening. Which is more than you can say for
Canada's Minister of International Trade. In an address to the Inter-
American Development Bank this month, Pierre Pettigrew set out a
bizarre George Lucas-style dynamic in which free traders are the
forces of global order and its critics the forces of "global disorder."
These sinister foes aren't motivated by "idealism" -- as the CSIS
report states -- but are driven by a selfish desire "to exclude others
from the kind of prosperity we enjoy." And they don't have some
legitimate concerns -- they don't have a clue. "Globalization, quite
simply, is part of the natural evolutionary process," Mr. Pettigrew
said. "It goes hand in hand with the progress of humanity, something
which history tells us no one can stand in the way of."

If the government is worried that protesters are going to ruin its
party in Quebec City, it should start by admitting that Mother Nature
doesn't write international trade agreements, people do. Better yet,
instead of "monitoring the communications of protesters," as the CSIS
reports calls for, the discussion should be dragged out of the cloak-
and-dagger domain of intelligence reports and the next eight months
should be devoted to an open, inclusive debate on whether we want
NAFTA for the hemisphere.

There is a precedent. In 1988, there was such a debate over NAFTA.
But back then, the pros and cons of trade deregulation were theoretical:
it was a war, essentially, of competing predictions.

Now, we are in a position to examine the track record. We can ask
ourselves: Have the NAFTA rulings allowed us to protect our culture?
Has the labor side agreement protected the rights of factory workers
in Canada and Mexico? Has the environmental side agreement given us
the freedom to freely regulate polluters? Have human rights, from
Chiapas to L.A. to Toronto, been strengthened?

We can also look at the proportion of our GDP that relies on trade,
and at the standard of living for average citizens (stagnant). Then
we can ask ourselves: Is this the best economic system we can imagine?
Are we satisfied with more of the same? Do really we want NAFTA x 34?
Such debate in itself would be evidence of a healthy democracy, but we
could go even further. Our entry in the FTAA could become a core issue
in the next election and -- here's a crazy idea -- we could vote on it.

It won't happen, of course. Democracy will be relegated to a petty
haggling over tax cuts. The critics of our economic path will become
more disenfranchised, and more militant. And the job of the police will
be to protect our politicians from real politics, even if it means
turning Quebec City into a fortress impervious to protesters.

Setting the stage for this use of force, the CSIS report concludes that,
"given the virulent anti-globalization rhetoric ... the threat of
summit-
associated violence in Quebec City cannot be ruled out." Perhaps it
can't. But given the virulent anti-activist rhetoric, and the collusion
of our politicians, the threat of police violence in Quebec City is
virtually guaranteed.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Friday 8 September 2000

Security to be tight in Quebec
Protesters vow to disrupt event

KEVIN DOUGHERTY
The [Montreal] Gazette

A tight security perimeter will enclose the core of the provincial
capital for three days in April, when the heads of 34 western
hemisphere governments meet for the third Summit of the Americas.

The event will probably be the first international forum outside
the United States attended by the new American president - George
W. Bush or Al Gore, depending on the outcome of the Nov. 7 U.S.
election - summit organizers said yesterday.

While the leaders meet April 20-22 at the Quebec Hilton and in
the Citadel, a fortification dating back to the 18th century,
protesters - some peaceful, others intent on disrupting the
gathering - will stage parallel events.

Among the sovereign states in the hemisphere, only Cuba is excluded
from the summit.

Organizers explained that Premier Lucien Bouchard will not attend
because only national governments are participating. The federal
government is host of the event.

The centrepiece of the gathering will be talks on negotiating a
Free Trade of the Americas Agreement, creating a free-trade zone
from Alaska to Argentina, by 2005.

A group called CLAC, the French acronym for Anti-Capitalist
Convergence, plans a "Carnival Against Capitalism" in Quebec City
during the summit.

On the Internet, CLAC states that it "adopts a confrontational
attitude and rejects reformist alternatives, such as lobbying,
which cannot have a major impact on anti-democratic processes.

"We intend to shut down the Summit of the Americas and to turn
the FTAA negotiations into a non-event," CLAC said in an Internet
posting.

In a paper titled Anti-Globalization - A Spreading Phenomenon,
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns that, "the threat
of summit-associated violence in Quebec City cannot be ruled out."

Jaggi Singh, a self-described anarchist and one of the organizers
of protests against the 1997 Asia Pacific Economic Asia Pacific
Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum in Vancouver, is working with
the Anti-Capitalist Convergence.

"It's hard to talk about shutting down a conference when the police
are shutting it down for you," Singh said from Montreal, referring
to the tight security planned for the event.

"They have declared a security zone where 35,000 people have to
undergo security checks to go to places where they live and work
and do business."

Singh said CALC has already mobilized "hundreds" of organizers
and, while it intends to disrupt the summit, it does not advocate
violence against summit participants.

The protesters fear the FTAA could erode labour, environmental
and human-rights protection.

Marc Lortie, who is Prime Minister Jean Chretien's "sherpa" or
chief organizer for the event, told reporters yesterday that the
contents of the FTAA negotiations could not be revealed because
the issues are still being negotiated.

Lortie added that the summit organization will work with organizers
of a peaceful Peoples' Summit slated for April 17-20 in Quebec City.

Labour unions, social activists and other groups, considering
themselves part of "civil society," will participate in the Peoples'
Summit.

But Sebastien Bouchard, who speaks for activist groups in Quebec
City, said at least 10,000 protesters will gather in the provincial
capital to demonstrate peacefully against globalization and the
proposed hemispheric free-trade agreement.

"Nonviolent civil disobedience is being prepared," Bouchard said,
dismissing the parallel Peoples' Summit as the "phony alternate
summit."

Rights & Democracy, a federally funded human-rights advocacy group
based in Montreal, which is headed by former Liberal cabinet
minister Warren Allmand, is among the groups participating in the
Peoples' Summit.

Diana Bronson, of Rights & Democracy, said yesterday that she is
worried the tight security could shut down the peaceful event,
noting that during a preparatory meeting for the Quebec summit
held in Windsor in June, security forces denied access to a meeting
hall at the last minute.

"We don't want to find out the day before that we don't have a
meeting place for the event," Bronson said.

Constable Julie Brongel of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said
the precise dimensions of the security perimeter have not been
determined. She did not say how many police officers would
participate.

In addition to the RCMP, which is responsible for the security of
summit participants and summit venues, the Surete du Quebec, and
the municipal forces of Quebec City and neighbouring Sainte-Foy,
will be assigned to the event.

Some bodyguards for foreign heads of state will be designated
special constables, allowing them to bear arms in Canada, Brongel
said.

Organizers expect 9,000 people, including as many as 3,400 media
representatives, will attend the summit. That figure does not
include protesters.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

September 2, 2000

Bruce Baechler - RIP

by Carol Moore

I’m sure Bruce Baechler’s many friends spread all over the country
will be sad to hear that Bruce died on September 2, 2000, after an
automobile accident and subsequent heart attack, in Ohio. Bruce was
49 years old. He is survived by family in Connecticut.

Bruce grew up in Connecticut. A Quaker and pacifist who came to
Washington, D.C. right after high school to join in anti-Vietnam
War activism, Bruce refused to register for the draft. After a
dramatic arrest at a Quaker meeting, Bruce was convicted of draft
evasion and spent two years in a federal prison. Bruce later
became a war tax resister and has resisted paying federal income
tax since the 1970s.

Bruce was a long time member and organizer with both the Libertarian
Party and the International Workers of the World (IWW). I used to
tell him he was the only “Wobbly Quaker” I’d ever known–but he assured
me he knew others. Bruce could always be depended on for help during a
libertarian petition drive any where from Alaska to the District of
Columbia, to help manage a local, state or even Presidential campaign,
or to help with accounting or database help for any of the libertarian
or IWW groups he worked with.

While Bruce spent much of the last twenty years in Texas, he also lived
for several years in North Carolina and Washington, D.C. He made his
living as a computer programmer. Currently, he was taking time off from
working on his Masters in Political Management from George Washington
University, with the goal of becoming a professional campaign manager.
He was working on various year 2000 election projects and had just
helped two local D.C. candidates get on the ballot in D.C.

I first met Bruce in 1987 when we both supported Russell Means for the
presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party. We discovered we both
were War Tax Resisters. We kept in touch over the years and hung out
together when he lived in D.C. in the late eighties and the late
nineties. I also visited Bruce in September of 1993 when he was living
in Austin and we went up together to the ruins of the Branch Davidians
church outside of Waco. Bruce was a committed supporter of the Waco
Justice work.

I’m sure that many people receiving this e-mail will have fond memories
of Bruce, and stories to share about him. He will be missed.

Carol Moore

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

[Considering the source of this article it's no surprise that the real
story was missed. The Internet has indeed been crucial in the growth of
libertarianism -- i.e., libertarian socialism -- as the protest movement
against corporate globalization attests. If the pro-capitalist
libertarian ideology has in fact diminished, it is probably because the
Internet has put libertarian socialism on the table and the capitalists
cannot compete with true libertarianism in the marketplace of ideas. As
more and more of the public learns about the crimes of capitalist
states, corporations, and international financial institutions, the
glossing over of these crimes as inherently "voluntary", and thus
unworthy of mention, by pro-capitalists has become untenable. -- DC]

Published: Wednesday, September 6, 2000

St. Paul/Minneapolis Pioneer Planet

Sebastian Mallaby
Syndicated columnist

Increasingly crowded information highway pushing
libertarians off to the shoulder

In real space these days, the clash of ideologies
sometimes seems muted. In cyberspace, it's only getting
fiercer. The lone-ranger programmers who pioneered the
Internet face an onslaught from suits, snoops and
millions of ordinary mouse potatoes who regard the Net
as some new kind of TV. As a result, the libertarianism
that used to dominate cyberpolitics is under assault.

A decade ago, libertarians believed their triumph was
inevitable. The Net would empower individuals at the
expense of government and corporate hierarchies. The
little guy could disseminate his views without a
publisher or distributor; the humble activist could
download reams of free data, and so debate government
officials on a newly equal footing.

Peter Huber, a celebrated cyberprophet, proclaimed the
inversion of George Orwell. Technology would not empower
Big Brother. Rather, it would subvert him.

This argument had a Marxian feel. Shifts in the technology
of production would force shifts in the superstructure of
ideology, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
In the revolutionary world to come, digital communes would
trump outdated national boundaries. The state would wither
away. The architecture of the Internet would evolve without
top-down direction. Nobody would own it.

Instead, programmers would produce and share the code of
cyberspace under rules resembling the Marxian dictum: From
each according to his abilities, to each according to his
needs.

None of this now seems inevitable. Nearly all the big Net-
connected stories of the past year have been about the assault
on that original libertarian vision. The flap over the FBI's
Carnivore software is about big government using the Net to
snoop on unsuspecting citizens. The dot-com buzz is about
entrepreneurs turning the Internet into a giant shopping mall.
The AOL-Time Warner merger is about a megacybercorporation
that wants to own the cable pipes on which the future Internet
will run. The Microsoft lawsuit features big government vs.
big business. In all these cases, libertarianism is irrelevant.

The one exception, arguably, has been the flap over Napster, a
software that created a sort of dot-commune for music. Anyone
who logs on to the Napster Web site can live by Lenin's rule:
You make your computerized music available for copying by other
visitors to the site and in exchange you get the chance to copy
everybody else's. No gatekeeper demands to know how much music
you contribute to the commune, and nobody meters what you take
away from it. Property rights have been suspended. As Napster's
boss told a congressional hearing last month, the site is ``a
return to the original information-sharing approach of the
Internet.''

The basic problem for libertarians is that cyberspace is getting
crowded. People can organize their affairs by informal consensus
when they live in villages; they need lawyers and cops when they
move to the city. Now that one in two American households has a
home Internet connection, the Net's scale is more than
metropolitan. It has crowds, commerce and inevitable conflict.

When the Internet was small, nobody minded that it was used to
violate intellectual property; now that it is vast, an army of
entertainment-industry lawyers has descended upon it. When the
Internet was small, it would not have occurred to Shawn
Fanning, Napster's teen-age founder, to guard the rights to
his software. But because it is vast, Fanning's entrepreneurial
uncle seized upon Napster's commercial potential and hired a
grown-up manager to build a company on it.

The libertarians have not given up. Within the urban landscape
of the Net there still lurk village-like communities. The open-
code movement, which develops software cooperatively and free
of charge, thrives on the energies of villagey hackers. Their
pride and joy, a free operating system called Linux, is said
to work better than Microsoft's standard-issue product.

The open coders argue that, in cyberspace, disparate hackers
can triumph over urban power centers: They will crack the
encryption that protects corporate Web sites; they will destroy
authoritarian order with anarchic viruses; they will devise
decoys to confuse Carnivore-type eavesdropping programs.
Perhaps, but the Powers That Be are equally determined.

Mallaby is a member of the Washington Post editorial page staff.
Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.

Friday, September 8, 2000

City police knew of infiltration, state police say

A mayoral directive puts restrictions on undercover action by
city officers against protesters.

By Craig R. McCoy and Linda K. Harris
[PHILADELPHIA] INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

The Philadelphia Police Department knew that undercover state
police officers planned to infiltrate groups organizing protests
during the Republican National Convention, a state police
spokesman said yesterday.

"We told them in advance that we would be infiltrating certain
groups," said Jack Lewis, state police spokesman.

The state police did not seek permission from city police before
starting the undercover operation.

Philadelphia police "were not involved in making decisions about
what we were doing," Lewis added. "We just ran our own operation."

The infiltration took place as the city itself faced restrictions
on using its own officers for such undercover operations under a
long-standing mayoral directive.

The infiltration continued to draw sharp criticism yesterday from
the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union as well as
from participants in the demonstrations.

Stefan Presser, the Pennsylvania ACLU's legal director, said the
use of state police undercover agents was "an end-run around the
mayoral directive. Through the state police, they accomplished
indirectly what they couldn't accomplish directly."

The directive became binding on city police in 1987, after the
ACLU and other groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the
Police Department's infiltration of leftist groups planning to
protest during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the
U.S. Constitution.

The directive says the city police cannot infiltrate protest
groups without the permission of the mayor, the managing director,
and the police commissioner. This requirement, say the civil-
liberties lawyers who pushed for it, was designed to ensure
accountability when police go undercover against protest groups.

While Mayor Street and Police Commissioner John F. Timoney continued
yesterday to refuse comment on the state's undercover operation, it
was enthusiastically endorsed by Gov. Ridge.

Ridge's spokesman, Tim Reeves, called the state police action "a
basic step to ensure public safety in the face of a clear threat."
Lewis said the undercover work was appropriate to "our primary role
at the convention, which was providing protection for governors in
attendance."

During the convention, Timoney repeatedly denied that police had
engaged in infiltration.

At a news conference yesterday afternoon, representatives from
various protest groups, along with the city public defender's office
and members of the ACLU, denounced the contents of search-warrant
documents made public Wednesday.

The documents were the first public acknowledgement that police had
infiltrated groups planning to protest during the Republican
National Convention.

The documents were part of the probable-cause affidavits for search
warrants for three vehicles and a warehouse at 4100 Haverford Ave.
in West Philadelphia, where more than 100 puppets and a large float
were being built.

Jessica Mammarella, who was arrested inside the warehouse Aug. 1
along with 75 others, said yesterday that the protesters inside knew
there were undercover police among them.

"We're a movement trying to build, and we didn't think we should
exclude people," Mammarella said.

"Those people were involved in almost every process of what we did.
We're a little bit upset about that. There was a trust thing there.
I feel very betrayed."

Mike Morrill, organizer of the Unity 2000 march held the Sunday before
the convention began July 31, said his group was cited in the search
warrant, even though it had a legal permit to march.

"Unity 2000, from the beginning, was a legal action. We did everything
according to their rules. Yet from Day 1, we were still investigated
and harassed."

The protesters say they are also concerned about the return of their
property seized in the warehouse raid.

Attorney Andrew F. Erba has written several letters to the city's Risk
Management Division requesting the return of the property. The city's
response, he said, has been unsatisfactory.

"Generally, they don't come in and take all your property," Erba said.
"What's unusual about this is, they went into the warehouse after all
the kids were taken out, and they took all the property and took it
away."

Morgan Fitzpatrick Andrews, 29, who lives in West Philadelphia, was
not arrested during the raid. He was putting on a puppet show with his
Shoddy Puppet Company the afternoon of the raid. He said he lost six
pairs of scissors, a drill, two hammers, two saws, staple pliers, and
other tools that were in the warehouse when it was raided.

"I went to Risk Management. I went to L&I," Andrews said. "After getting
this claims form, I was told that my stuff was in the seventh floor of
City Hall in the evidence room. They said, 'That's being held for
evidence.' "

Craig R. McCoy's e-mail address is cmccoy@...

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.