Issue 58 Table of Contents

Issue 58
Table of Contents

	Fatal NY Police Shooting of African Man Sparks Tension	by Lisa Vives The killing of an unarmed West African by New York police officers has sparked new charges of police brutality against minority residents and widened the gap between the city's administration and black community leaders. Amadou Diallo, 22, a street vendor from Guinea, died February 4 in a hail of bullets from the "Aggressive Street Crimes Unit" which fired 41 shots, hitting him 19 times. The officers said they thought Diallo had a gun and had acted "suspiciously"
	Dutch Suspect Covert 1992 Nuke Weapon Transfer to Israel	by Yoichi Clark Shimatsu October, 1992 airplane crash near Amsterdam was cargo jet loaded with U.S.-made sarin, uranium and plutonium enroute to Israel. If its 27 kilograms of plutonium had bounced into the burning wreckage, nearly all of Western Europe would have faced a nuclear emergency bigger than the Chernobyl accident
	Indonesia Arming Timor Death Squads, Army Admits	by Jeff Elliott The Indonesian military first denied, then admitted this month that it is providing guns to paramilitary groups in East Timor which have killed at least two dozen civilians recently
	Russian Supreme Court Leaves Enviro Whisteblower In Limbo	The Russian Supreme Court refused to dismiss the case against Alexander Nikitin, a former Soviet submarine Captain charged with treason for passing information on military nuclear waste disposal to a Norwegian environmental group. Instead, the court returned the case to the successor to the KGB for further investigation
	Ag Corporations Rushing to Patent Sterile Seeds	by Daniel Knight Major international seed corporations have filed dozens of patents on new biologically-engineered seed technology that causes seeds to become sterile. The "terminator technology" seeds have been genetically altered to produce high yields, or able to resist insects or droughts, but cannot be reproduced without the corporation's permission
	Panic in the Year Zero Part I: The Militias	by Robert Downes Norman Olson, head of the Northern Michigan Regional Militia and one of the founders of the national militia movement, predicts that "War will break out. The haves will fight to keep what they have ferreted away. The government will fight against patriots who will not abide by martial law. The cities will turn into war zones with robbery and tribal warfare on virtually every block. Law and order will collapse as police will refuse to enter the cities. The law of the jungle will prevail"
	The End	by David Corn By the time Lewinsky was in Starr's clutches, the public was already suffering GOP scandal-fatigue. Consequently, when the Republicans struck gold -- lies and sex! -- most of America was unwilling to listen. The manner in which Republicans subsequently conducted their impeachment project hardly cast them as serious-minded, deliberative, investigators of facts. The public was right not to follow this band
	Time For Starr To Go	by Randolph T. Holhut Starr knows he's untouchable. Thanks to the Independent Counsel Law, he can stay on the job as long as he wants. There is no end to the investigation, as we discovered when we saw Whitewater turned into Travelgate, Filegate, the investigation of the "murder" of Vincent Foster and eventually, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. Starr answers to no one. He couldn't even wait for the Senate to render its judgment before leaking his threat to indict Clinton
	GOP: The Party of Prying	by Steve Chapman The distressingly graphic Starr report and the videotaped grilling of Clinton and Lewinsky, however, have stamped Republicans as the sort of people who would barge into your bedroom to make sure you're not doing anything Pat Robertson wouldn't approve of. And the crime of zealotry is com pounded by the sin of hypocrisy, as one GOP leader after another has been abruptly eliminated from the Husband of the Year contest
	The End is Nigh	by David Corn The Senate Republicans, however, pretended to respect the managers' case while undermining their ability to present it. With the final vote little in doubt, the Senate GOPers could only go through the motions
	GOP's "Fatal Attraction" to Bedroom Politics	by Peter Y. Sussman Polls over the past months have made clear that voters do sense there is something wrong within the GOP. Overwhelmingly the voters have made a distinction between the president's private moral transgressions and his official actions. The voters have found an accommodation that the Republicans' complicated history will not allow them to accept
	Texaco Tries to Move $1.5 Billion Pollution Suit Out of U.S Court	Lawyer for the 30,000 Ecuadorian Natives wants case heard by American courts because they have no faith in the justice that would be meted out by the courts of Ecuador. The Ecuadorian government depends heavily on oil revenues and its courts have no experience with tort law
	Rainforest Natives Hold Texaco Accountable	by Jim Hightower The oil executives took the oil (and the profits) leaving people with their oily, toxic mess, and they did this simply because it saved them more money. Plus they thought they could get away with it, since no one was watching, except the tribal people -- and what could they do to mighty Texaco?
	Congress Pushes For Greenhouse Pollution Trades	by Danielle Knight Congress remains opposed to the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gases, and Senate lawmakers are moving ahead with legislation to allow industry to "reduce" such heat-trapping emissions via an international trading scheme
	Environmental Risks Trigger Japanese Wave of Fear	by Suvendrini Kakuchi A recent spate of media reports quoting scientific data and surveys indicate alarming levels of pollution that have been found to have drastic consequences not only on the environment, but also on wildlife, animals and people. The rumpus forced the government to release in December the results of an air pollution report conducted for fiscal 1997 that ended in April 98. It found that 14 out of 68 sites in 11 prefectures exceeded recommended levels of dioxin, trichloroethylene and benzene, a potent carcinogen contained in gasoline
	Summit on Third World Lead Poisoning	by Frederick Noronha Experts from around the world are to congregate this week to study one of the world's most widespread environmental pollutants affecting two-thirds of the world's children in urban environments: lead
	DDT Off Southern California Beach is Spreading	An underwater Superfund site contaminated by DDT and PCB may be breaking up and spreading contamination towards popular Southern California beaches, research shows
	Japan Whaling Under Guise of Science	by Gustavo Gonzalez Japan is preparing to capture some 450 whales inside a sanctuary for the mammals in Antarctica, for what it says is the purpose of scientific research. However, environmentalist groups charge that the whales are being hunted as part of a multi-million-dollar deal
	Japan's Ivory Imports May Doom Elephants	by Suvendrini Kakuchi They are elegant, exquisite, and are status symbols among rich Japanese. But the handcarved "hanko" or seal that many top Japanese businessmen use to sign contracts or letters are also life-threatening -- at least to the fast disappearing elephant population worldwide
	"Banned" Tiger Products Still Sold Openly in Japan	by Suvendrini Kakuchi Japanese laws ban trade in products that are clearly endangered tiger parts such as the animal's nails, claws and skin. But activists point to a legal loophole -- products that contain crushed bone or penis of the animal, as well as derivatives of other endangered species, can come in without problems and do
	Cambodia's Genocide Investigation Turns to U.S. Role	by Boonthan Sakanond As the international clamor grows to bring former Khmer Rouge leaders to trial for crimes against humanity, attention is turning to an earlier genocide in Cambodia caused by the U.S. bombing of the countryside in the Indochina war
	Fears of Eco-Disaster in Caspian Sea	by Danielle Knight Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, global energy giants -- including Chevron, Unocal, Exxon and British Petroleum -- have been aggressively pursuing petroleum reserves in this politically unstable, war-torn area. But a new $7.4 billion project is proceeding with no environmental review in pristine wilderness area
	Error 404: News Not Found in Your Daily Paper	Monitor impeachment predictions were accurate; possible sex extortion in Olympic scandal; pharmaceutical fraud; Nestle ethics
	Immaculate Contraception	by Jennifer Baumgardner The "Ethical and Religious Directives" -- Catholic healthcare's seventy commandments, drafted by the Church's American Bishops -- prohibit abortion, birth control, most vasectomies, tubal ligation and the morning-after pill even for rape victims. The result is a healthcare system that effectively bypasses not just Roe v. Wade but Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that allowed married couples to seek contraception
	EPA Takes a Giant Step Backwards	by Simon Chaitowitz Last October, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- deciding it needed more data on 2,800 commonly used industrial chemicals -- launched a six-year effort to coerce manufacturers into testing them on animals. Is this in the least bit necessary? Is there really anyone alive who considers butane and turpentine safe?
	IMF and World Bank: Twins in Trouble	By Boonthan Sakanond Under intense attack for their failures in dealing with East Asia's economic crisis, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are desperately launching fire-fighting measures to ease the recession's social impact while trying to distance themselves from blame
	Fired Med Journal Editor Shows Hypocrisy of Sex Debate	by Jessica Leigh Lebos It's fine for people to disagree about the definition of oral sex. It may even be acceptable that our President's attitude about the act doesn't jive with our idea of what a moral leader, or even a regular guy, should believe. But is it wise for a medical journal to fire the messenger who added science to the conversation?
	Clinton More Conservative Than GOP on Cuba	By Jim Lobe "If ever Clinton wanted Republican cover for a major policy change, he had it on Cuba," said one disappointed Congressional aide, who noted that Clinton had also taken years to normalize relations with Vietnam despite outspoken support for the move by senior Republicans, including most of the Vietnam War veterans serving in Congress. "He just chickened out." It appears that Clinton and Gore, the frontrunner in the 2000 presidential race, balked at taking bolder action after the zealously anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) and its supporters in Congress launched an all-out campaign against the commission proposal in November
	Taiwan Used Bribes, Corruption to Dump Mercury Waste in Cambodia	by Johanna Son The dumping of Taiwanese toxic waste in Cambodia is the latest confirmation that the waste trade flows toward countries with lax rules and ill-equipped bureaucracies. And even as negotiations continue between the Phnom Penh government and Taiwan on the return of the 2,779 tons of industrial waste, the toxic trash sits in a Cambodian village two months after its delivery there
	Singapore Exports Toxic "Landfill" to Indonesia	by Mohan Srilal The story told by an Indonesian company seemed too good to be true: Singapore was not only going to give landfill to help in mangrove growing in an Indonesian island, it would also pay Indonesia more than two dollars for each cubic meter it "donated." Environmentalists say the Singaporean dirt is toxic and that the island state's dumping of it on Indonesia flouts the Basel Convention that bars the transport of hazardous waste substances
	Enough is Enough, Austrialian Natives Say of Nuke Dump Plan	by Andrew Nette Until it decided on her desert homeland of Billa Kalina, Rebecca Bear-Wingfield had not even heard of the company which for five years had been scouring the world looking for sites to dump high-level nuclear waste
	"McLibel" Appeal Rekindles Censorship Debate	by Dipankar De Sarkar When two dogged penniless British campaigners took their case against the American food giant McDonalds to the Appeals Court in mid-January, they reopened a debate on the increasing use of libel laws by transnational companies' armies of lawyers, to silence their critics
	Native Groups Try Again For International Rights	by Gustavo Capdevila U.S. and other nations oppose draft declaration for years because of "free determination" clause might promote secession and disintegration. Closely linked to that argument, the governments question the term "indigenous peoples" because the existence of a "people" and its respective culture could prompt their recognition as an independent nation
	Anti-Migrant Border Policies Not Working, Often Fatal	by Jim Lobe The United States is deliberately channelling illegal immigrants into areas where their lives are at risk, according to two U.S. human rights organizations. Operation Gatekeeper, and a similar operation, called "Hold the Line," in the El Paso, Texas, area, were designed to make it more difficult for migrants to cross the border in well-populated and well-travelled areas. Instead, they were forced to take more circuitous routes in dangerous terrain. According to the INS' own statistics, the total flow of illegal migrants across the border had not been reduced since these measures took effect -- but the death toll has climbed sharply
	Relax, Al Gore: You're Running Unopposed	by TJ Walker The Senate trail oozes on, Ken Starr wants to burn the constitution and indict President Clinton, but the worst new development for the Republican Party is the entry of Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council into the presidential race. In Bauer, the Democrats, the media elites and all enemies of the conservative Republican establishment have the perfect symbol of how the Republican Party has morphed into Operation Rescue
	Falwell Explains The Antichrist	by David Corn Falwell holds firm to the view that the Antichrist is Jewish. No, he's not sorry for what he said; he's just sorry it caused a fuss. This is a Clintonesque apology. Maybe Bill Bennett is right: The past year has chipped away at moral values throughout the nation
	Expert Journalists Create Bad Journalism	by Allan R. Andrews Inside journalism, when our critical words are turned against ourselves, we tend to by hypocrites. Forget for a moment that readers find us less than credible. We hardly are credible within our own profession
	Coke's World Takeover Plot	by Donella Meadows Don't help Coke take over the world. Don't help Pepsi either. Don't buy soft drinks period. Go for juice, coffee, tea, or best of all, water. How would that improve the world? Let me count the ways
	Politics As Performance Art	by Norman Solomon These days, what we call "politics" is some mangled form of performance art. Journalists often sound like drama critics as they review the work of politicians on the national stage. But the roles have little to do with illuminating human truths; instead, the process relies on prevarication and deception
	Poverty Kept Off National Agenda	by Norman Solomon Today, in the United States, one out of five babies is born below the poverty line. So, at this time of bountiful surplus, why not declare war on poverty? To mainstream journalists and powerful politicians in Washington, such questions are irrelevant
	Clinton's Environmental Sham	by Alexander Cockburn With Clinton's environmental initiatives, as with his grand jury testimony in the Lewinsky affair, it's necessary to parse every line and scrutinize every clause
	The Problem With Hitchens	by Alexander Cockburn Many people go through life rehearsing a role they feel the fates have in store for them, and I've long thought that Christopher Hitchens has been asking himself for years how it would feel to plant the Judas kiss. And now, as a Judas and a snitch, Hitchens has made the big time
	The Prosecutorial State	by Alexander Cockburn For almost three decades, ever-more powerful prosecutors have roamed America. Conservatives, plowing yesterday's furrow, rant on about the power of judges, but in truth, judicial puissance is, these days, a mangy thing when weighed against the power of prosecutors who cut the deals and dictate the pleas, while judges' hands are tied by all those mandatory sentences that flout the constitutional precept of the separation of powers
	Letters	Witness in David "Gypsy" Chain case; prison conditions; Jerry Falwell and the Antichrist; the drive to get Bear Lincoln
	Stop Wasting Tax Dollars on S.U.V. Terrorists	by Ted Rall With the possible exception of Slobodan Milosevic, there can't possibly be enough room in hell for the vicious, selfish thugs who drive these metallic monstrosities. Far from eliminating SUV-unfriendly guardrails, we ought to install them everywhere -- let's get SUV road terrorists off the roads, dead or alive
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