Issue 54 Table of Contents

Issue 54
Table of Contents

	D.A. Sends Bear Lincoln Case to Lungren	by Nicholas Wilson In an apparent last-ditch effort by Mendocino County officials to convict Bear Lincoln for the 1995 shooting death of a deputy sheriff, District Attorney Susan Massini announced at a brief Nov. 20 court hearing that she has referred the case to California's Attorney General for possible prosecution at the state level
	Seven Redwood Tree Sitters In Place As Winter Storms Begin	by Nicholas Wilson As the first major winter storms bear down on the redwood forests of Humboldt County, no fewer than seven tree-sitters braced for heavy rains and high winds
	Uneasy Calm Settles Over Jakarta	by Andreas Harsono Tanks, military trucks and armed soldiers were still guarding many government and business areas
	Unrest Spreads To 16 Indonesian Cities	by Andreas Harsono With a new coalition of student-led activists mobilizing the largest protests since the overthrow of Suharto in May, scores of Indonesian cities saw enormous crowds
	Indonesian Riots After Troops Kill Protesters	by Andreas Harsono Widespread riots broke out Saturday as thousands of students and opposition leaders protested for democratic reform following the death of 8 student protesters and several others killed
	Indonesian Military Controls Business Empire	by Kafil Yamin The business assets of the military total at least $8 billion with a wide variety of business interests, ranging from forestry, to food supply, to real estate. Some analysts attribute the present economic crisis to the military's meddling in business. For instance, they say, there cannot be "pure" business dealings between politically weak business organizations and military institutions: "You cannot make a genuine and fair business decision (at) gunpoint"
	U.S. Makes Token Dues Payment To Stay In UN	by Thalif Deen The United States, threatened with the loss of its voting rights in the UN General Assembly for non-payment of dues, has escaped the penalty clause in the UN charter by advancing a token sum of $197 million to cover some of its arrears
	Clinton And Congress Agree: Guns, Not Diplomacy	Analysis By Jim Lobe The huge omnibus budget bill featured significant, real increases in money for the Pentagon, intelligence, and the drug war. At the same time, spending on foreign aid and the State Department, which are far below Cold War levels, will remain more or less unchanged next year.
	Are Abortion-Linked Killings Start Of New Terrorism?	Analysis By Farhan Haq The increase in abortion-linked violence in the United States has led to the question of whether the anti-abortion movement is involved with the growing terrorist fringe
	Error 404: Information Missing From Your Daily News	Researcher documents olestra deal between public and corporate interests; new questions about "Mad Cow" disease; apparent USDA meat coverup; electric company bailout; Bob Dornan goes down fighting
	Tobacco Settlement Ignores Global Problems	by Farhan Haq The $206-billion settlement unveiled by major U.S. tobacco companies will go towards paying for the health costs of smokers in the United States, but critics argue it will not help the new pool of smokers worldwide
	Smoking May Kill One-Third Of Chinese Men	Smoking could eventually kill a third of young Chinese men, according to the results of two major studies by Oxford University, the Chinese Academies of Preventive Medicine and of Medical Sciences in Beijing and Cornell University, part of the largest investigation ever on the hazards of tobacco
	The 1998 Election Rebellion	by Jim Hightower Stories in all the papers claim the people voted for "the status quo," to "not rock the boat," to demand "centrist policies" -- Hogwash
	Indians Become A Political Force	by Jacqueline Keeler On November 3, American Indian tribes won a stunning victory. Proposition 5, an initiative sponsored by the California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA) passed with 62.5 percent of the vote. The passage makes Native American nations a new political force to be reckoned with
	Incumbent Victories	by David Corn Clinton and the Democrats don't deserve such luck. Yes, it would better for them if Gingrich stuck around, but they were feeling pretty gleeful after hearing the news. The incumbent-friendly, special- interest- money- drenched elections was a defeat for Republicans and conservatives -- who giddily anticipated victory -- rather than a win for Democrats and progressives
	Voters to GOP: Drop The Appeals To Bigotry	by Norman Solomon With varying degrees of subtlety, the Republican Party continues to rely on traditional prejudices to help fuel its political engines. But last Tuesday's election indicates that quite a few right-wing politicians are running out of gas
	Low Turnout Refutes Sign Of Mandate	by Rob Richie and Steven Hill Amid all the post-election buzz about Democratic gains and the political futures of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, most commentators ignored this most glaring fact: fewer than two in five adult Americans participated in the 1998 elections. Some even suggested that a turnout rate of 37 percent was a victory of sorts, given the fact that so many states had record-low turnout in primaries this year
	D'Amato Collected Million$ In "Soft" Money	by David Corn As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the last election cycle, D'Amato collected $29 million. As a leader of the state Republican Party, he helped it pocket $3.6 million in soft money in the first half of this year. Any sentient citizen would have to wonder how all this money-chasing has colored his votes
	Voters Wanted Campaign Finance Reform	by Keri Hayes Campaign finance reform won a major victory November 3rd, as voters in two states dealt a blow to wealthy campaign contributors with their approval of "clean elections" measures
	Election 2000: Winner-take-all Sweepstakes	by Franz Schurmann A winner-take-all war is going on between Republicans and Democrats whose outcome will likely be determined on election eve, 2000. On that night one party will likely win both the White House, Congress and a good number of state and local offices
	Fred And Pat Have Cookies And Milk	by Donella Meadows Imagine a campaign that makes you smile, not cringe. Imagine political talk so civilized you actually want your children to hear it. Imagine candidates who talk about their own ideas and lives, rather than the insidious evil of each other's ideas or the mortal flaws in each other's characters
	The Crack Up	by Gary Webb As a result of the controversy over "Dark Alliance," the CIA was forced by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee to review its records on contra drug dealing. The agency's new report -- which was released in two volumes over the course of this year and reviewed by Webb in this story -- contradicts every major point The New York Times and Los Angeles Times have asserted about Iran-contra drug running since the term entered America's public consciousness more than 10 years ago
	The Pusher Man: White-Out: The CIA, Drugs and the Press	by Alfred W. McCoy Author of The Politics of Heroin : CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade analyizes new Alexander Cockburn book on clandestine Agency drug deals
	Pinochet Investigation Raising Questions On U.S. Ties To Political Murders	by Lucy Komisar Known as "Operation Condor," a terrorist conspiracy by six-U.S. supported governments -- Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay -- murdered their political opponents around the world. Now, Spanish authorities handling the Pinochet investigation want to know what the U.S. knows about Operation Condor, and Washington has been sending them declassified documents. But it has balked at requests to release all relevant papers in the archives of State Department, the Pentagon, the FBI, and the CIA
	"Made in USA" Garments Coming From Controversial Island	by Kalinga Seneviratne Clinton administration had gotten complaints from the U.S. garments industry about the fact that "Made in the USA" labelled garments, made by cheap and often Asian labor, are flooding the American market from the Marianas. Last year, U.S. industry sources complained to the Clinton government that most of the factories are owned by foreign companies, notably from China, that used foreign fabrics and were completely staffed by overseas labor
	Major Agreement On Sweatshop Monitoring	by Jim Lobe The agreement, announced by the White House November 3, capped two years of negotiations between the companies -- including such major labels as Nike and Reebok -- rights and consumer groups, labor unions and the Clinton administration
	Forest Firest Choke Russia's Far East	by Andrei Ivanov and Judith Perera In a much less widely reported re-run of last autumn's Indonesian forest fires, which blanketed major Asian cities in a pall of acrid, choking smoke, a similar crisis is overtaking a corner of Russia's remote Far Eastern provinces
	Corporations Can't Be Penalized For Supporting Dictatorships	by Jim Lobe Court decision has major implications not just for human rights activists opposed to the military regime in Burma, but also for similar laws in New York, California, Pennsylvania and other states and cities targeting Swiss banks and insurance companies which had failed to account adequately to Nazi Holocaust survivors
	Climate Change May Be Driving Arctic Caribou To Extinction	A recent survey has revealed the dramatic 95 percent decline of the Peary caribou in Canada's western Arctic, and indicates these losses may be caused by climate change. Footage and photos released by Greenpeace shows the remains of the animals strewn across the Arctic landscape
	Corporations Join Enviros In Global Warming Alliance /A>	by Danielle Knight A rare combination of automobile, oil, chemical and environmental leaders announced a joint plan of action October 28 to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions blamed for global warming
	INS Freed Violent Criminals, Wasted $77 Million	by Samuel J. Scott The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has unknowingly released thousands of criminal aliens -- some of them violent -- and wasted $77 million housing others over two years because it is hugely inefficient, a recently released Government Accounting Office (GAO) study says
	EPA Lax Policies On Child Lead Exposure	by Jim Feuer Federal policies regarding residential lead poisoning favor the lead industry or economic concerns at the expense of children's health
	"Terminator" Seed Nears Approval	by Danielle Knight Developed jointly by the USDA and Delta and Pine Land Co., a subsidiary of the U.S.-based chemical and biotech giant Monsanto, the new bio-engineering process is called Technology Protection System. Opponents charge that the new process will force farmers to return to the commercial seed market every year since they will no longer be able to save seed from their harvest
	Angry Biotech Firms Slam Monsanto For Industry's Bad Image	by Andy Coghlan Monsanto was convinced that smooth acceptance of transgenic soya in the U.S. would be mirrored in Europe. The entire industry is now having to deal with the consequences of that miscalculation
	Protesters Stop Nuclear Dump On U.S. - Mexican Border	by Diego Cevallos After six long years of protests, environmentalists and politicians in Mexico celebrated the cancellation of a U.S. project for a nuclear dump close to the border, and urged the government to renegotiate accords with Washington to avoid any repeat of the problem
	"False" Memory Is Common, Study Shows	by Gerry Everding Even when you give people fair warning that you are about to trick them into recalling something that never happened, most will still fall prey to the deception, creating "illusory" or "false" memories that sometimes include vivid details, according to new research from Washington University
	Asian Activists Tell Al Gore: Your Corporations Are Causing Our Problems	by Kalinga Seneviratne While Vice President Al Gore called for greater political reforms in Malaysia, activists say a more serious problem is the impact of globalization on people's individual and economic rights
	Clinton's Asian Flim-Flam	by Jim Hightower Clinton and Gore, cheered by a Hallelujah Chorus of Republicans in Congress, were gaily traipsing across Asia last week peddling the same Wall Street Snake Oil that is ruining economies (and millions of lives) everywhere. It's essentially the same voodoo that two other economic flimflammers, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, hawked: allow speculators, brokers, bankers, and global corporations to work their will, unfettered by any concerns for workers or the environment, and these geniuses will "magically" pull prosperity out of their hat for all of us.
	Russia's Lost Suitcase Nukes	by Eric Margolis The colonel admitted he had no knowledge any devices had actually been smuggled into the US, but said 'it was possible,' because many of the weapons had disappeared from Russia's inventory. Meaning the mini-nukes are either missing -- and possibly in the hands of terrorists -- or secreted in the United States, Canada, and Europe
	A New Low For Rupert Murdoch	by Joe Shea A story that ran in the November 15th Sunday Times in London charges that Israeli scientists are hard at work on a biological warfare weapon that would target Arabs based on a supposed difference in their genetic structure
	Media Bloodlust For Saddam Attack	by Norman Solomon Often, the paramount U.S. media concerns have been framed in macho terms. Recent news coverage focused on a question that led off a front-page New York Times article: "Who blinked?" Many American journalists lamented that Clinton did not entirely stare down Saddam Hussein
	What Those "Got Milk?" Ads Ignore	by Norman Solomon Just how much of a problem is fatty milk in the diets of young people? A new study, published by the medical journal Pediatrics, found that milk is the foremost source of saturated fat congealing in the arteries of America's kids. Saturated fat "is a major contributor to heart disease -- the leading killer of both men and women," Wootan notes. The ominous signs start with kids who are still in grade school. "Fatty streaks -- an early stage of heart disease -- are seen in the arteries of children as young as 10 years old"
	Letters	More on the fight for Headwaters Forest and the death of David "Gypsy" Chain, the meaning of Sonny Bono's death, media coverage of Mumia Abu-Jamal
	Phony Sweatshop Reform Plan	by Alexander Cockburn A little more than two years ago, Bill Clinton and Nike CEO Phil Knight embraced each other in a Rose Garden ceremony celebrating the creation of the Apparel Industry Partnership. The details were released on Nov. 2, Election Eve, a well-chosen moment if publicity for the plan was deemed to be undesirable. And indeed there were several reasons for this stealth approach
	The Politics of Hurricane Mitch	by Alexander Cockburn Humans caused the disaster just as humans made sure that the governments of Nicaragua and Honduras were incapable of responding to the catastrophe. After a decade of "structural adjustment" imposed by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and USAID, these governments are hollow shells, mutilated by enforced cutbacks
	The CIA And Drugs	by Alexander Cockburn Hitz report enumerates the Contra leaders ("several dozen") the CIA knew to be involved in drug trafficking, along with another two dozen involved in Contra supply missions and fund raising. He confirms that the CIA knew Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador was an arms-for-drugs Contra transhipment point
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