News of the Month
November 8, 2003
Our lead article tonight is about Austin’s own home-grown multi-billionaire, Michael Dell. He’s left behind forever the “working out of a dorm room” days to join the world of the Big Boys. In other words, he – and the company he controls – have successfully made the transition from a locally managed, locally staffed, locally concerned high-tech company to global mega-corporation, with all the trappings and villainies thereto. Listen to what Jim Hightower has learned about dear li’l ole Michael:
“(An) example of … corruption cropped up in the trial of Frank Quattrone, the former hotshot banker to the high-tech industry. Frank, a banking “superstar” for Credit Suisse First Boston, has been accused by federal prosecutors of illegally working the system to get his bank to give favorable reviews of the performance of various corporations, thus artificially inflating the value of the corporate stock and deceiving investors.
“During the trial, the feds produced an email exchange between Frank and Michael Dell, the high-flying honcho of Dell Computers. Frank notified Michael that the stock of a privately-held company was about to go public and that a block of the stock could be allocated to him two days before the rest of the public knew about the stock offering. Frank wrote to Michael: ‘My team has gotten word to me that you are personally interested in [receiving] a meaningful allocation of [the stock].’
“This kind of insider scheme virtually guarantees that the Michael Dells of the world make a fat, effortless profit. Sure enough, Michael snapped up shares in the presale at $36 each, and two days later, when the stock went public, his shares almost tripled in value.
“But the emails show that this stock gimme was just an opener by Frank to try to get Michael to throw Dell’s banking business to Credit Suisse. The bank was about to hire a stock analyst who would be reporting on Michael’s business, and Frank asked if the analyst they had in mind was OK with Dell. No, was the answer: ‘You might be better off with a fresh new talent,’ Michael wrote to Frank.”
Cronyism, corruption, and hypocrisy, right here in River City. Whatever will they think of next? I know! Let’s look at our latest national hypocrite, Rush Limbaugh. His rank hypocrisy was recently exposed to the nation, and I’m sure we’ve all heard about it by now. That’s not what I want to talk to you about; rather, take a minute and consider what the Rush drug-addict story means in a larger perspective. Listen to this press release from the national Libertarian Party:
“ ‘One thing we don’t hear from American politicians very often is
silence,’ said Joe Seehusen, Libertarian Party executive director. ‘By refusing to criticize Rush Limbaugh, every
drug warrior has just been exposed as a shameless, despicable hypocrite. And that’s good news, because the next time
they do speak up, there’ll be no reason for anyone to listen.’
“As the Limbaugh saga continues, here’s an important question for
Americans to ask, …: ‘Why are all the drug warriors suddenly so silent?’
“ ‘Republican and Democratic politicians have written laws that
have condemned more than 400,000 Americans to prison for committing the same
“crime” as Rush Limbaugh,’ Seehusen pointed out. ‘If this pill-popping pontificator deserves a get-out-of-jail-free
card, these drug warriors had better explain why.’
“Given their longstanding support for the Drug War, it’s fair to
ask:
“Why haven’t President George Bush or his tough-on-crime attorney
general, John Ashcroft, uttered a word criticizing Limbaugh’s law-breaking?
“Why aren’t
drug czar John P. Walters or his predecessor, Barry McCaffrey, lambasting
Limbaugh as a menace to society and a threat to ‘our children?’
“Why aren’t federal DEA agents storming Limbaugh’s $30 million
Florida mansion in a frantic search for criminal evidence?
“Why haven’t federal, state, and local police agencies seized the
celebrity’s homes and luxury cars under asset-forfeiture laws?
“Finally, why aren’t bloviating blabbermouths like William Bennett
publicly explaining how America would be better off if Limbaugh were
prosecuted, locked in a steel cage, and forced to abandon his wife, his
friends, and his career?
“ ‘The answer is obvious,’ Seehusen said: ‘America’s drug warriors
are shameless hypocrites who believe in one standard of justice for ordinary
Americans and another for themselves, their families and their political
allies.’
“But there’s an even more disturbing possibility, Seehusen said:
that the people who are prosecuting the Drug War don’t even believe in its
central premise – which is that public safety requires that drug users be
jailed.
“ ‘The Bushes and Ashcrofts and McCaffreys of the world may
believe, correctly, that individuals fighting a drug addiction deserve medical,
not criminal treatment,’ he said. ‘That
would explain why they’re not demanding that Limbaugh be jailed.’
“ ‘But if that’s the case, these politicians have spent decades
tearing apart American families for their own political gain. And that’s an unforgivable crime.’ ”
Speaking of the Drug War, there’s some good news on that front. The US Supreme Court has told the “Justice” Department what it can do with its push to persecute doctors who discuss the medical use of that drug with their patients. On October 14, the Marijuana Policy Project issued this press release:
“In a historic victory for medical marijuana patients and doctors,
the U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear “Conant v. Walters”, letting
stand an appellate court ruling barring the federal government from punishing
physicians who recommend medical marijuana to patients.
“By deciding not to hear this case, the U.S. Supreme Court has
eliminated any doubt that states have the right to protect medical marijuana
patients under state law, and that physicians have the right to give patients
honest advice and recommendations, whether the federal government approves or
not.
“After California voters passed the state’s medical marijuana law
…, the federal government threatened to revoke the DEA registrations of
physicians who recommend marijuana – taking away their right to prescribe any
controlled substance, and effectively putting them out of business.
A group of California physicians and patients, led by AIDS
specialist Marcus Conant, M.D., sued in federal court, arguing that physicians
have a First Amendment right to freely discuss any potentially beneficial
treatment with patients. The doctors
and patients won on both the district court and appellate levels, winning a
unanimous ruling in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Justice Department, led by Attorney
General John Ashcroft, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 9th
Circuit ruling. Today, the U.S. Supreme
Court declined to hear the case, thereby letting the 9th Circuit
court victory stand.
As we’ve been reporting, and our government continues to prove, the United States is still the number one international terrorist nation in the world. Oh, they’ll try to use a bit of misdirection, that old stage magician’s trick, to say that the people in Iraq who fight against our army of invasion are terrorists, rather than citizens legitimately defending their homeland against a foreign aggressor. But we are the terrorists, as I’m sure everyone watching is well aware. Here’s yet one more example of US terrorism against the civilian population of Iraq, published on October 12 in The Guardian of Britain. It describes our soldiers’ actions in the town of Dhuluaya, Iraq:
“US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms, as well as orange and lemon trees, in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.”
Hmph! Reminds me of some things the Nazis did in Europe during World War II.
“The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.
“Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: ‘They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons.’
“Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district.”
“ ‘They made a sort of joke against us, by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees,’ said one man. … Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as ‘a punishment of local people because “you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us”.’ What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added.”
Now we’re learning from Israel’s’ atrocities, rather than their learning from us!
… “Farmers say that 50 families lost their livelihoods, but a petition addressed to the coalition forces in Dhuluaya pleading in erratic English for compensation lists only 32 people. The petition says: ‘… poor families depend completely on earning their life on these orchards and now they became very poor and have nothing and waiting for hunger and death.’
“… When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to take a photograph of the bulldozers at work, a soldier grabbed his camera and tried to smash it. The same paper quotes Lt Col. Springman, a US commander in the region, as saying: ‘We asked the farmers several times to stop the attacks, or to tell us who was responsible, but the farmers didn't tell us.’
“Informing US troops about the identity of their attackers would be extremely dangerous in Iraqi villages, where most people are related and everyone knows each other. The farmers who lost their fruit trees all belong to the Khazraji tribe and are unlikely to give information about fellow tribesmen ….
“Asked how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a distraught voice: ‘It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked me how much my hands were worth.’ ”
Finally, in preparation for our speaker tonight, I want to read to you one of the clearest short explanations of what’s wrong with the WTO (the World Trade Organization), posted anonymously on a discussion web site last month:
“Submerged within the mind-numbing verbiage of the World Trade Organization treaties and their interpretations are a handful of principles that subordinate all other values – environmental sustainability, consumer and worker safety, public health, freedom of labor and human rights— to maximizing trade. The provisions and interpretations articulating these principles impede nations from enforcing their own laws to protect the public good. They imperil rights and protections won by citizens over the last century and undermine national and local democracy and transparency.
“Most of these strictures are not intrinsic to international trade. Rather, they have resulted from the veiled efforts of the most powerful nations and corporations, who use WTO rules and rulings as crowbars to wrench open markets and batter down laws defending the quality of human life and the environment. The record of the past six years is clear: nearly all WTO decisions have gutted democratic restrictions on trade, effectively lowering environmental, consumer protection, public health, and human rights standards. Even when reasonable standards were applied equally to all domestic and foreign producers, the WTO has repeatedly struck them down as trade barriers, demolishing shelters that citizens have built against the stormy side effects of market forces.”
A powerful denunciation – but a valid one. Even Joseph Stiglitz, the former Chief Economist at the WTO’s partner in crime, the World Bank, and one of the chief architects of what is falsely called “Free Trade” by those in power, could stand it no longer. Rather than continue supporting the “whited sepulcher” of false globalization, he resigned his position at the World Bank in despair. In an interview, he said that the only nations that survived unscathed the World Bank’s and WTO’s attempts to bully them into submission were the ones who said, “No.” The nations who acceded to those agencies’ demands have, without exception, become poorer, less productive, and essentially vassal debtor states to the rich and powerful West.