Egypt And SA Must Improve WTO Deal
Business Day (Johannesburg)
June 20, 2003
By John Fraser, Trade And Industry Editor
Johannesburg

The developing world has to make its voice heard at this weekend's World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting of trade ministers in Egypt, Egyptian ambassador to SA Hagar Islambouly says.

She said Egypt and SA were working closely to secure a better deal for developing nations, and she warned that there was a need to prevent the US and the European Union from dominating debate.

"The problem is that WTO results are based on trade-offs between the US and the Europeans," she said. "They first agree together, and then get an agreement with the developing world. This is our major concern they negotiate with each other; they don't care about us."

UN Must Take Action on Threats to Security, Says British Official
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
June 20, 2003

For the UN to remain central to global politics, peace and security, it must take "effective action" to deal with threats to peace and security, the British Foreign Office minister for global issues, Bill Rammell, said on Thursday.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office reported that Rammel was speaking after a meeting in London with the UN Under-Secretary for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie Guehenno.

Rammell said it was Britain's desire to see a resolution to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and that Britain was committed to helping achieve this objective.

Stabilization Force to Be Deployed--Cease-Fire Monitors Arrive Friday
The NEWS (Monrovia)
June 19, 2003
By Moses Zangar Jr.
Accra, Ghana

The Liberian peace talks taking place in Accra, Ghana has produced a number of agreements including the deployment of an international stabilization in the Country. Although there has been no specific time for the deployment, Liberian rebel groups and the Government expressed commitments to cooperate with the deployment of the force and that they would create unhindered access to humanitarian agencies, vulnerable groups as well as the return and resettlement of refugees and internally displaced persons.

France Lifts Travel Ban On Kenya
The Nation (Nairobi)
June 21, 2003
Wahome Thuku
Nairobi

France yesterday became the third country to relax the warning to its citizens against visiting Kenya.

The decision came as a global terrorism risk survey showed the United States and United Kingdom face a greater threat of attack than Kenya yet they have no travel warning against each other.

Friends,

The rather interesting blogger Prometheus 6 (Earl) responded to my rejoinder today. To please myself, Earl's readers and hopefully you (Properwinston's readers) I want provide a quick response to his latest comments. Although Earl did graciously provide a link to Properwinston, so that his readers could find my comments in their entirety, the statements on his blog, Prometheus 6, thoroughly de-contextualized my comments. Even after reading Earl's latest comments, I still doubt that he fully understands the intended connotation of the "white people in black skin" comment. Earl finds irony in the combination of my reference to the source of this statement (an African-American professor) and the following sentence in which I express my distaste for subtle forms of the ad-hominem. Not to take away from Earl's discovery of irony, but I found this combination ironic as well. In fact, I intended the juxtaposition of these two sentences to produce irony.

A society that forces authors to "cover their backs" by referring to another person's identity cannot help but produce unexpected actions. As the omniscient Earl stands from his alter of "being oppressed," I'm forced to grovel for snippets of help from other "oppressed people." I must give credit, however, to Earl for being honest. He states in Prometheus 6 that in his dealings with "whites" (isn't it ironic that the deconstructionists of identity posit universals for "whiteness") the blade of racism is always present. In other words, Earl does not mind labeling another person's thoughts racist. He may use a handle to enter a conversation, but in the end, Earl's goal is not to be changed by the Other but to change it with the knife (only a metaphor of course). Does not this sound eerily similar to the assimilation model, a model that desires not a dialectic but a one way flow of ideas from the anointed to the ignorant. To help Earl out, I must let him know that I preempted the racism accusation not out of a repressed desire to see African-Americans remain in inferior social and economic conditions. Instead, the need to preempt comes from people like Earl, people who like to point the proverbial finger at others as opposed to looking within.

Hopefully not a racist (we have to wait for Earl's decision),

Grant.

We are, by design, "tribal" (or small groupists, or...), and we have a biologically hardwired need still running wild in that deep part of our brains that makes us want to line everyone up into "us's and them's." It's our vestigial tail, we have to compete for scarcity of resources, even when there isn't any scarcity around. The "healthy (?)"
side to this leftover tribalism is "rooting for the home team," or "being true to your school." I wonder how, or if, we can rid ourselves of that tendency. As long as there are "easy targets" to separate people into 'us' and 'them,' (i.e. something as mundane as skin color or religious belief or geographic location) you're going to have people that are going to use that as a dividing factor. Personally, I think we'll all be a lot better off if everyone had brown babies...by that I don't mean "white folks in brown skins," but an elimination of a easy differentiator. But I don't have any good answers--and I wonder (ok, I fear--in the deep, dark night when I hear gunshots down the street over who looked at whom the "wrong" way) if our "evolved" brains can overcome our evolutionary instincts.

Mister (or Mrs.) Prometheus 6,

On my blog I've responded to what I believe to be your unfair quotation of
my entry. Let me know what you think. And please, don't bother using the
handle, I can deal with the blade. If you forgot, the link is
properwinston.blogspot.com.

Best,

Grant.

Friends,

A blogger dubbing himself (or herself) Prometheus 6 took offense to my sentence: "Both stories reveal, regardless of what the average American of European descent thinks, that a great deal of African-Americans have yet to become 'white people in black skin.' For whatever reason, Mister Prometheus failed to understand my usage of quotation marks. A common assumption among readers of the English language is that quotation marks can note a change in tone. Clearly, when surrounding the "white people in black skin" statement with quotation marks, I intended to make apparent my distaste for such a statement. With any form of communication, however, sometimes a recipient fails to understand the writer's intent. If this is the case, let me clarify why quotation marks stand next to white and skin.

Under the assimilation model, people from non-Teutonic (sarcasm intended) regions of the world are considered "white" people with different exteriors. From this, the original (original European-Americans) and the assimilated peoples of America attempt to mold the new immigrants (or old ones in the case of African-Americans) into "white" Americans, as opposed to allowing the new immigrants to keep their previous cultures, languages, and nationalisms. One's judgment of the assimilation model depends, of course, on one's judgment of America as a whole. A person enamored by everything American would tend to believe that changing other peoples in "Americans" would be a good thing, and vice-versa.

Either way, one should be careful to avoid treating all peoples within America as "white people in X skin." For one, this line of thought limits genuine understanding of non-"white" cultures within America. Like it or not, African-Americans, Latinos (as if such a monolith exists), Jewish-Americans, etc. have different lifestyles. Many government programs fail because they lack the necessary cultural nuances to influence a certain group's actions. Another problem with this line of thought is that in its extreme form it is white-supremacy. White-supremacy because it posits a one-way flow of cultural transmission from "white" to other. While I support the basics of the assimilation model, I also like the idea of other cultures modifying (this implies a preservation of the core American values) the concept "American."

Mister Prometheus 6 proves himself (or herself) to eager to de-contextualize my comment in order to pervert its intended meaning (now is not the time to talk about the death of authorial meaning). If he (or she) intends to hurl any criticisms at me about my "racist" tendencies in his (or her) upcoming essay about my statement, he (or she) should know that the quote comes from an African-American political scientist, Antonio Brown. Is not it sad that one's identity should have anything to do with one's arguments? Let us see if Mister Prometheus responds to my rejoinder.

Curious,

Grant.

Another problem with this line of thought is that in its extreme form it is white-supremacy. White-supremacy because it posits a one-way flow of cultural transmission from "white" to other.

Since I'm not a psychiatrist, I consulted the work of various experts in the field in order to get a better understanding of the fanatical thinking that is driving the Bush administration's agenda ? and scaring the daylights out of a growing number of observers.

Dr. Norman Doidge, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, lists among the telltale symptoms of fanatics: an intolerance of dissent; a doctrine riddled with contradictions; the belief that one's cause has been blessed or even commanded by God; and the use of reinforcement techniques, such as repetition, to spread one's message.

Sound like anyone you know? George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, come on down!

According to Doidge, one of the essential features of fanatics is their certainty that not only is their cause good "but that it is the only good, an absolute good." Or, as President Bush famously declared: "There is no in-between, as far as I'm concerned. Either you're with us or you're against us."

Why do they support this man?

The current administration calls itself Republican, yet it is betraying most of the traditional Republican constituencies. Everyday, the deficit plunges to new record depths on the watch of the party for whom "balanced budget amendment" was once an article of faith. Everyday, Ashcroft undermines rights and freedoms that the libertarian wing of the party once claimed were sacred. The military supports the party that sends men and women to die in wars that make us less safe while that same party slashes the education budget for their children and the VA benefits for their injuries. What about business? The Republicans have always been the party of business. Bush expects to raise $200 million for the election, most of it from prosperous business people. Surely, the party is good for them.

The party is clearly good for Halliburton and any other resource extraction company with ties to Cheney. And with wars and rumors of wars, it must be good for the fabled military-industrial complex. Right? Not always. Like most modern corporations, the industrial side of the military-industrial complex has become globalized and diversified. There is big money to be made supplying the U.S. armed forces, but that's just part of their bottom line. There is also money to be made selling burgers in Bavaria, autos in Africa, cola in Canada, and airplanes in Asia. Modern corporations need it all. This is where they are screwed.

… Needless to say, the conditions were horrendous, and though not all of the above were caused by prison privatization, they were all exacerbated by the trend, as companies cut back on expenditures in their efforts to save money.

But we won't pay for this now. The cost to society has been put off, postponed for another ten years or so, when masses of prison inmates will be released after they've finished their sentences. Many of them, nonviolent and violent, will have received no measure of rehabilitation, and in fact will be more hardened than when they went in.

A Blogger's Big-Fish Fantasy
By CATHERINE GREENMAN

As most bloggers know, it's better not to fret over how many people are reading your Weblog. In any creative pursuit, recognition (or in the blogger's case, traffic and links) cannot be the only motivator.

And yet, because one of the fundamentals of blogging involves referring to information on other blogs, the question of how to attract readers inevitably enters a blogger's mind.

Larry Doby, 79, Breaker of a Baseball Color Barrier, Dies
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Larry Doby, who broke the color barrier in the American League in 1947, three months after Jackie Robinson became the first black in modern major league baseball, died last night at his home in Montclair, N.J. He was 79.

He had been ill for some time, his son Larry Jr. told The Associated Press.

Doby, who was promoted to the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947, eventually became the second black to manage a major league team and became a member of the Hall of Fame. But his arrival in the major leagues was overshadowed by Robinson's debut.

"The only difference was that Jackie Robinson got all the publicity," Doby later said. "You didn't hear much about what I was going through because the media didn't want to repeat the same story."

Doby was destined to stay in Robinson's broad shadow for most of his career, and it took a half-century for baseball to fully examine his contributions, which included being named a All-Star seven times in a 13-year playing career in addition to his managerial appointment.

By 1997, baseball was honoring not only Robinson but also Doby, who by then had served as special adviser to commissioners and league presidents

Up to 30,000 Troops From a Dozen Nations to Replace Some G.I.'s in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, June 18 ? Between 20,000 and 30,000 allied troops from more than a dozen nations will begin arriving in Iraq in mid-August to replace some of the American forces leading the military occupation there, Pentagon officials said today.

How many American troops will remain in Iraq depends largely on the security situation there and how many other nations ultimately send forces, officials said.

… "We have about 20,000 additional coalition troops that have been volunteered by countries to go to theater within the next 60 to 90 days," General Pace said. He said discussions were under way with another unidentified country to provide 10,000 troops.

Under the Pentagon's current plans, there would be two or three divisions of allied forces, each made up of 10,000 to 14,000 troops. Britain would lead one division, which would also include troops from countries like Denmark and the Netherlands.

The allied forces would be a mix of combat troops and reconstruction specialists. The 380 Danish troops, for example, would include a light reconnaissance squadron, a civil affairs unit, mine-clearing experts and special operations forces.

Poland has committed 2,300 troops to its division, which Mr. Wolfowitz said today would also include forces from Ukraine, Spain, Honduras and El Salvador.

Administration officials met recently with the Turkish foreign ministry's second-ranking official, who offered relief aid and other assistance, as well as 1,200 to 1,800 troops. "Turkey is eager now to assist us in the reconstruction of Iraq," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "That's just one example of a country that has begun to move in our direction."

To put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to war in yourself. Some of you will nod your heads and say, "I agree", and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world's miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent.

They will be stopped only when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else.

Reason to Deceive
WMD Lies Could Be the New Watergate

If media companies want to boost ratings and credibility at the same time, they should follow the lead of New York Times columnists Paul Krugman and Nicholas D. Kristof and make weapons of mass destruction the top story of the summer. Not only have President Bush and his administration exaggerated the evidence that Iraq had WMD, but now that news of their lies has leaked out, the pro-war camp is spinning like mad. The odds of exposing a major cover-up are looking very good indeed.

…In retrospect, the Bush administration's most publicized war stories have all been the products of smoke and mirrors. Contrary to the initial hype, the Hussein "decapitation strike" turned up no bodies and no bunkers. Chemical Ali walked out alive. Jessica Lynch was never shot, stabbed, or tortured by Iraqis. And despite all the hot tips Ahmad Chalabi spoon-fed to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, the WMD search teams have not found a single silver bullet or smoking gun. The war on Iraq is a Byzantine puzzle that begins and ends with a lie. The media have an obligation to expose it.

Scale of Democracy

"Of course there are times when it's pretty obvious that we're not living in a democracy, or even a democratic republic. If we want a democratic society we will have make fundamental, radical shifts to the many layers of our lives. It's not just about government. We need to examine the purpose and practice of our "educational" systems. What about the influence of corporations, which are private tyrannies, over public policy?"

Student loans? "Wiped clean." Unemployment insurance? "Wiped clean"? School lunch for your kids? "Wiped clean." National parks? "Wiped clean." Your Mom's Medicare? "Wiped clean." Your Dad's Medicaid? "Wiped clean." And so on. Well, it is certainly "bold" and "audacious."

Forget the Prescription Drug farce now underway. (And why are we not talking about universal health insurance?) Since the tax cuts have gutted the ability to pay for the program long term, it's just a cynical ploy for 2004. It too will be "wiped clean" when the time comes -- especially if it does anything like lowering prices instead of being in essence a transfer payment to Big Pharma.

But the House of Representatives has voted by 253 to 170 to thwart the vast majority of class action suits in state courthouses, limiting all but the smallest claims to federal courts, where the big companies, say citizens' groups, find it easier to delay the progress of suits and 'shop' for courts more favourable to their interests.

'It's the biggest thing for years,' said a jubilant Lawrence Fineran, vice-president at the Association of Manufacturers. 'Just about every industry group is on this bandwagon, because every industry is affected.'

The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney
By Greg Palast, AlterNet

Have you heard about Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman?

According to those quoted on National Public Radio, McKinney?s ?a loose cannon? (media expert) who ?the people of Atlanta are embarrassed and disgusted? (politician) by, and she is also ?loony? and ?dangerous? (senator from her own party).

Yow! And why is McKinney dangerous/loony/disgusting? According to NPR, ?McKinney implied that the [Bush] Administration knew in advance about September 11 and deliberately held back the information.?

… Problem is, McKinney never said it.

That?s right. The ?quote? from McKinney is a complete fabrication. A whopper, a fabulous fib, a fake, a flim-flam. Just freakin? made up

… At BBC Television, we had Florida?s computer files and documents, marked ?confidential? ? stone-cold evidence showing how the vote fix was deliberately crafted by Republican officials. Not a single major U.S. paper asked for the documents ? not from the state of Florida nor from the BBC. Only one U.S. Congressperson asked for the evidence and made it public: Cynthia McKinney of Atlanta.

That was her mistake.

… Did I mention to you that (ex-)Congresswoman McKinney is black? And not just any kind of black. She?s the uppity kind of black.

What I mean by uppity is this:

After George Bush Senior left the White House, he became an advisor and lobbyist for a Canadian gold-mining company, Barrick Gold. Hey, a guy?s got to work. But there were a couple of questions about Barrick, to say the least. For example, was Barrick?s Congo gold mine funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict? Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.

You?ve guessed: Cynthia McKinney.

That was covered in the . . . well, it wasn?t covered at all in the U.S. press.

… Ted Koppel?s Nightline did a kind of follow-up to the BBC elections story. Our BBC team discovered that of the 180,000 votes never counted in the Florida 2000 presidential race, a sickeningly disproportionate number came from black counties. In Gadsden County, where more than half the population is black, one in eight ballots was marked "spoiled" and, thus, never counted.

Koppel?s team got on the case, flying down to Florida to find out why thousands of black votes were never counted. They talked to experts, they talked to important white people, and Koppel reported this: Many blacks are new to voting and, with limited education, have a difficult time with marking the sophisticated ballots. In other words, ABC concluded, African Americans are too fucking dumb to figure out how to vote.

Hey, if true, then you have to report it. But it wasn?t. It was a fib, a tall tale, made-for-TV mendacity, polite liberal electronic cross-burning intellectual eugenics.

Here?s the real scoop: All races of voters make errors on paper ballots. But in white counties like Leon (Tallahassee), if you make a stray mark or other error, the vote machine rejects your ballot, and you get another ballot to vote again. But in black counties like Gadsden, you make a mistake and the machine quietly accepts and voids your ballot.

In other words, it wasn?t that African Americans are too dumb to vote but that European American reporters are too dumb to ask, too lazy to bother, too gutless to tell officialdom to stop lying into the cameras.

Note to all future blogfeud recruiters

If you're thinking about dragging me into your retarded little slapfight, you should prepare yourself for the possibilty that I'm not going to do exactly what you want, when you want.

It's like this: If a friend gets jumped out of nowhere, I'll try to help. But if a friend picks a fight and then gets mad because it's not turning out the way they think it should, I'm under no obligation to do anything but stand by and watch the learning process take place. If you keep insisting that I step up and say something, don't act surprised if I try to find the lighter side of it and point out how ridiculous the whole thing is. That's kind of what I do.

And if you find any of this displeasing, you're a stupid stinky poopyhead and I don't like you anymore and I'm telling Mom.

Michigan town braces for third night of unrest
Residents outraged over deadly police chase

BENTON HARBOR, Michigan (CNN) --Police in a Michigan town said they were preparing for more violent rioting Wednesday after two nights of burned buildings, gunfire and beatings.

A hospital spokeswoman said 10 people were injured in Tuesday night's violence -- a reaction to a high-speed police chase in which a Benton Harbor, Michigan, man crashed and died. The disturbance lasted into the early hours of Wednesday. Most of injuries were lacerations, and at least person was treated for a gunshot wound.

"'No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer,' replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.

"'I'm interested,' Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."

"The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, 'then destroy their computer.'

"'If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that,' Hatch said. "'If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize'" the seriousness of their actions, he said.

You might start by pointing out that, if someone can destroy your computer through a firewall, we can destroy his, too. And someone likely will.

The nature of secrets is they don't stay secret long. The bigger the secret, the faster the discovery.

The A-Bomb didn't stay secret. The H-Bomb didn't stay secret.

It has been possible to "remotely destroy" another computer for some time. The method is called a virus. …

… What if it were possible to slip something behind a firewall, something that would not be identified as a virus, some sort of power surge, and destroy someone's computer remotely, through the Internet, as they were downloading something a copyright holder identified as theirs that hadn't been paid for (by the person whose computer it was residing on)?

The answer is hackers would get the technology very, very quickly. Terrorists would get the technology very, very quickly.

Bush Issues Federal Ban on Racial Profiling
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, June 17 ? President Bush issued guidelines today barring federal agents from using race or ethnicity in their routine investigations, but the policy carves out clear exemptions for investigations involving terrorism and national security matters.

The new policy, representing the first time that the federal government has imposed across the board guidelines on racial profiling, governs the conduct of 70 federal law enforcement agencies. A narcotics agent, for instance, cannot focus on a specific neighborhood simply because of its racial makeup, the policy states.

In national security operations, however, the policy allows agents to use race and ethnicity in "narrow" circumstances to help "identify terrorist threats and stop potential catastrophic attacks," officials said.

Immigration officials, for instance, will continue to be able to require visitors from largely Middle Eastern countries to register with the government.

And if intelligence officials had information indicating that terrorists of a certain ethnic group planned to hijack a plane next week in California, the authorities could impose "heightened scrutiny" on men of that ethnicity who boarded planes in that area, officials said.

Arab-American and civil rights groups said the exemptions in the White House policy would give the authorities legal justification to single out Middle Easterners and others who may fall under suspicion, and they questioned whether the new policy ? issued as "guidance" ? would be aggressively enforced.

"This policy acknowledges racial profiling as a national concern, but it does nothing to stop it," Laura Murphy, director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. "It's largely a rhetorical statement. The administration is trying to soften its image, but it's smoke and mirrors."

Racial Information Allowed

The authorities receive an "all points bulletin" giving the race, hair color, age range and color of the car being driven by a fleeing bank robber. Officers may use the race to decide which drivers to pull over. [p6: Should read may use race in conjunction with all other information to decide.]

Officials receive information indicating that terrorists of a particular ethnicity plan to hijack a plane in California in the next week. Transportation officials may subject men of that ethnicity boarding planes in California to "heightened scrutiny." [p6: If even the NY Times uses scare quotes, I shouldn't have to explain that the term leaves WAY to much space for interpretation.]

Authorities seeking to increase drug arrests use software to plot out patterns of arrests and discover that the clear majority occur in neighborhoods occupied primarily by people of a single race. "So long as they are not motivated by racial animus," the authorities can use that information to increase law enforcement operations in the area. [p6: Software is mentioned because this is how the NYC Police Dept. decided to (or justified its decision to) target minority communities under Giuliani's somewhat despotic reign. It's why the cops that shot up Amadou Diallo were in the area they were in. More, such software WILL be used by those with racial animus as cover for their biases.]

W.Va. Settles With Microsoft
By Darryl K. Taft

On Monday night, Microsoft announced preliminary approval of settlement of the consolidation of two lawsuits. The total value of the settlement is $21 million, the company said. And it settles both class action consumer claims against Microsoft as well as the claims West Virginia made in the federal antitrust case. In addition, the settlement also provides that one-half of any unclaimed proceeds will go to West Virginia's most needy public schools in the form of vouchers for hardware, software and professional development services, the company said.

And, according to Microsoft, additional terms of the settlement include $1 million "in additional vouchers to West Virginia schools for hardware and software from any manufacturer, $700,000 in general purpose vouchers to the Office of the West Virginia Attorney General to be distributed at his discretion to benefit West Virginia citizens, and payments from Microsoft to the Office of the West Virginia Attorney General to be used for consumer protection purposes" and for costs to administer the appeal.

GOP Reports Record Second Quarter Profits

WASHINGTON, DC?At a stockholders meeting Monday, the Republican Party announced record profits for the second quarter of 2003, exceeding analysts' expectations by more than 20 cents per share.

The gain marks the GOP's third consecutive profitable quarter, and puts the party on track for its best 12-month cycle since 1991, the year of the first Gulf War.

"Obviously, we're ecstatic," said Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL), who celebrated with other high-ranking GOP members at a champagne brunch in his chambers Tuesday. "This is heartening news for our party, especially coming as it does during such a sluggish overall period for the American economy."

Democratic Leader Says Blacks Should Lead Quest for Social Justice
2003/06/16 05:16 PM EDT
By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent

BALTIMORE (NNPA) ? Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe is urging African-Americans to take the lead in fighting for social justice as candidates from both parties compete for their support in next year?s presidential election.

?In this upcoming political season, we need African-Americans to lead the call to restore opportunity and equality in government to all people, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender,? McAuliffe said Thursday in Baltimore at the annual convention of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. ?African-Americans have always stood firm on the principle of opportunity and equality for all Americans.?

Muzzling the African American Agenda With Black Help
The DLS's Corporate Dollars of Destruction

"The sellout of progressive politics has been a total disgrace for the Democratic Party. Not only is it morally wrong and politically cheap, but it doesn't even work."
- Rev. Al Sharpton

'We're gonna rebuild America's cities and we're gonna do it with America's steel .... Medicare for all, money pulled out of the Pentagon budget to pay for schools and other domestic programs, and total nuclear disarmament .... This war was wrong! This war was fraudulent! We must expose this administration!"
- Rep. Dennis Kucinich

These are the voices of the Democratic Party's base, the voices that the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is sworn and determined to smother in a sea of corporate dollars.

… The DLC doesn't represent any Democratic Party voters. Its masters include American and United Airlines, Aetna and New York Life Insurance, Microsoft, DuPont, the agribusiness and pharmaceutical industries, Citigroup and, until recently, Enron, among many others. The DLC is an organization conceived in the boardroom and dedicated to the proposition that moneyed interests trump all others. About two hundred corporations comprise its Board of Advisors (fee: $5,000), and nearly 100 pay the cost to be the boss on the DLC's Policy Roundtable ($10,000 each). For $25,000, around 30 corporate executives pretend to be Democrats as members of the DLC Executive Council. Enron sat there, along with Philip Morris, Texaco, Chevron, and Dupont.

Clothing Chain Accused of Discrimination
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing retailer that appeals to the college set with blond-haired, blue-eyed models, was sued yesterday for racial discrimination, accused of favoring whites for its sales floor jobs.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco, charges that Abercrombie discriminates against Hispanics, Asians and blacks in its hiring as it seeks to project what the company calls the "classic American" look.

Dear MoveOn member,

The President took the nation to war based on his assertion that Iraq posed an imminent threat to our country. Now the evidence that backed that assertion is falling apart. Richard Butler, the chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s and a supporter of the war, recently wrote, "Clearly a decision had been taken to pump up the case against Iraq."(Source below, #1)

If the Bush administration distorted intelligence or knowingly used false data to support the call to war, it would be an unprecedented deception. Even if weapons are now found, it'll be difficult to justify pre-war language that indicated that the exact location of the weapons was known and that they were ready to deploy at a moment's notice.
With a crisis of credibility brewing abroad and the integrity of our President and our foreign policy on the line, we need answers now.

Please ask Congress to establish an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the distortion of evidence right now, at:

http://www.moveon.org/distortion/

On March 17th, in the eve of the Iraq war, President Bush told the American people that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."(2) White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said simply, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."(3) And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld elaborated: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and
east, west, south and north somewhat."(4)

Now, after two months of searching by the most skilled teams in the military, not a single piece of solid evidence of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons programs in Iraq has been found. The top 87 sites identified by U.S. Central Command have turned up only vacuum cleaners, a swimming pool for Iraq's Olympic team, and a
license plate factory.(5)

Officials in the CIA and other intelligence agencies have complained for months that they have been under pressure to "cook the books" on Iraq intelligence.(6) Worse, a number of the key pieces of evidence that the Bush administration has released have come unraveled:

* The President's State of the Union claim that Iraq possessed an active nuclear program was based on fraudulent documents that included the forged signature of an official that weren't even in office at the time.(7)

* The dossier that Prime Minister Blair and Secretary Powell relied upon in critical presentations turned out to have been partially plagiarized from a graduate student's paper from 12 years ago.(8)

* The claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, first made by Prime Minister Tony Blair, now appears to have been fabricated.(9)

* The administration's claim that two tractor trailer trucks found in Iraq housed "mobile weapons labs" has now been disputed by numerous experts inside and outside of the military. An official British investigation has concluded that the trailer trucks were "exactly what the Iraqis said they were -- facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons."(10)

A President may make no more important decision than whether or not to take a country to war. If Bush and his officials deceived the American public to create support for the Iraq war, they need to be held accountable. Join the call now at:

http://www.moveon.org/distortion/

Sincerely,
--Carrie, Eli, Joan, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn Team
June 16th, 2003

References:

(1) Newsweek, 6/16/03:
http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/061603.html

(2) White House Press Briefing, 3/17/03:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html

(3) White House Press Briefing, 1/9/03:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030109-8.html

(4) Department of Defense Briefing, 3/30/03:
http://www.dod.gov/news/Mar2003/t03302003_t0330sdabcsteph.html

(5) The Mirror, 6/4/03:
http://www.moveon.org/r?447

(6) Salon, 10/10/02:
http://www.moveon.org/r?448

(7) Washington Post, 3/22/03:
http://www.moveon.org/r?449

(8) Washington Post, 2/8/03:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42276-2003Feb7

(9) The Guardian, 5/29/03:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,966208,00.html

(10) The Observer, 6/15/03:
http://www.moveon.org/r?450

There Goes the Neighborhood
By WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
Advocates for the poor have protested President Bush's $350 billion tax cut on many grounds, notably its selective use of the per-child tax credit. But few have discussed its potential effect on one of the more remarkable long-term economic trends of the last decade: the decline in concentrated poverty in America.

A recent report for the Brookings Institution by a University of Texas social scientist, Paul Jargowsky, revealed that the number of people residing in high-poverty neighborhoods decreased by 24 percent, or 2.5 million people, from 1990 to 2000. Moreover, the number of such neighborhoods ? the study defined them as census tracts with at least 40 percent of residents below the poverty level ? around the country declined by more than a quarter.

The news has been greeted as a major step forward for inner-city blacks, because their neighborhoods tend to feature the highest levels of concentrated poverty. To some extent this is true, although perhaps not in the way either the political left or right are spinning it. And, as promising as the findings are, they do not signify that we've found a magic bullet in the war on poverty.

… Almost 30 years ago, the African-American economist Vivian Henderson pointed out that "the economic future of blacks in the United States is bound up with that of the rest of the nation." So, just as blacks suffered greatly during the decades of growing separation between haves and have-nots, they benefited considerably from the incredible economic boom in the last half of the 1990's, which not only substantially reduced unemployment, including black unemployment, but sharply increased the earnings of all low-wage workers as well.

Undoubtedly, if the robust economy could have been extended for several more years, rather than coming to an abrupt halt in 2001, concentrated poverty in inner cities would have declined even more.

This cannot be proved now; data on concentrated poverty are provided only by the decennial census. But the Brookings report clearly shows that the favorable trend of the 1990's may be temporary rather than long term. Unemployment and individual poverty rates are on the rise again; more than 2.4 million jobs have disappeared in the last two years. And given the continuing increase in the Hispanic population, the number of high-poverty barrios is likely to grow rapidly in a sluggish economy.

'Powerful Forces' in WTO Using Famine In Africa For Own Farmers, Says Museveni
June 12, 2003
By Charles Cobb Jr.
Washington, DC

In a toughly-worded comment to a luncheon audience Thursday that seemed aimed at the agricultural policies of the United States and Europe, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said there are "powerful members of the WTO (World Trade Organization) who would like to continue crippling our agriculture and subsidizing our famines with aid."

Speaking about the current international trade negotiations that were begun at a November 2001 WTO ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, he also spoke of unnamed governments that "would be happy to see the Doha round stall" over patent rights and access to medicine. "That would not be in Africa's interest at all," he said.

The trade talks are currently stalled, with the United States refusing to accept a mechanism that would give developing nations easier access to medicines and European Union members resisting reform of their agricultural subsidies programs.

Africa Subsidizing the West, Says Museveni Following Meeting With Bush
June 11, 2003
By Charles Cobb Jr.
Washington, DC

African commodities and raw materials are processed in wealthy nations and then resold by companies and corporations in those nations at prices many times greater than what is paid to the producers, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Tuesday night at a well-attended reception just hours after his meeting at the White House with President George W. Bush.

"The value of the coffee market is 70 billion dollars," he said. "We coffee producing countries get 5 billion. Who takes the remaining 65 billion? -- somebody else!" said Museveni, whose laughter accompanying the comment only partially hid the seriousness of his point. "Africans are being donors but they do it in ignorance."

Trade, not aid is what's crucial for nations like Uganda, Museveni said. "I don't want aid; I want trade. Aid cannot transform society. If I get aid it must be aid that enables me to trade." He said the marketplace "and its discipline" can "set us free." But trade barriers stand in the way, he said, pointing in particular to agricultural subsidies in Europe and the United States, which he said undercut Africa's agricultural economy.

Slaves in the Family: One Generation's Shame Is Another's Revelation
By BRENT STAPLES

Those of us who write about our families inevitably dig up secrets having to do with petty crime, infidelity or children born out of wedlock. I encountered similar domestic dramas while writing the history of my family a decade ago. The most dramatic discovery was that my great-grandfather was conceived in the fading days of the Confederacy, had several ex-slaves among his siblings and narrowly missed being born a slave himself. He died just 11 years before I was born.

I had always known ? at least in the abstract ? that slavery was somewhere in the past. But it startled me to realize that it was so recent and that my life had overlapped with the lives of people who had been bought and sold. I learned this not from my uncles ? who talked ceaselessly about the family ? but from a mimeographed family bulletin I came across when I was nearly 40.

… Black families have commonly dealt with slavery by leaving it behind when they moved north in the Great Migration, sometimes bringing relatives who had once stood upon the auction block. The memory of enslavement was too fresh to be anything but stigmatizing and shameful. Families elected to bury this harrowing past and sometimes forbade their elders to speak of it.

Concealment of slavery at home was matched by dishonesty about it at school, where slavery was addressed superficially ? and incorrectly ? if it was addressed at all. Most Americans, both black and white, grew up believing that the North was always made up of "free" states ? dominated by fire-breathing abolitionists ? and that the evils of slavery were confined to the downy white cotton fields of the South.

Many present-day New Yorkers, for example, were made aware of their state's slave history only in the years since 1991, when a construction crew uncovered a colonial-era African burial ground while digging the foundation of a federal office tower in Lower Manhattan. The surprise was palpable in New York and beyond, even though Gotham in the 18th century was a capital of human bondage, with more enslaved people than any other American city, with the possible exception of Charleston, S.C.