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War Needs Good Public Relations

For some people, war is terror, disaster and death. For others, it's a PR problem.

At the Rendon Group, a public-relations firm with offices in Boston and Washington, pleasant news arrived the other day with a $397,000 contract to help the Pentagon look good while bombing Afghanistan. The four-month deal includes an option to renew through most of 2002.

This is a job for savvy PR pros who know how to sound humanistic. "At the Rendon Group, we believe in people," says the company's mission statement, which expresses "our admiration and respect for cultural diversity" and proclaims a commitment to "helping people win in the global marketplace."

A media officer at the Pentagon explained why Rendon got the contract. "We needed a firm that could provide strategic counsel immediately," Lt. Col. Kenneth McClellan said. "We were interested in someone that we knew could come in quickly and help us orient to the challenge of communicating to a wide range of groups around the world."

As a PR outfit, Rendon has moved in some powerful economic

FBI Eyes Torture

"FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and some are beginning to that say that traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist plans."

Thus began a piece by Walter Pincus on page 6 of the Washington Post on Sunday, Oct. 21 -- and if you suspect that this is the overture to an argument for torture, you're right. The FBI interrogators have been getting nowhere with four key suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, now held in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center. None of these men have talked, and Pincus quotes an FBI man involved in the interrogation as saying, "it could get to that spot where we could go to pressure ... where we won't have a choice, and we are probably getting there."

Some FBI interrogators are thinking longingly of drugs like the so-called "truth serum," sodium pentothal; others, the "pressure tactics," i.e., straightforward tortures, used by Shin Bet in Israel, banned after

Prayer in Schools, Economic Stimulus, and Other Nonsense

AUSTIN -- We had one of those "What was he thinking?" moments with Gov. Rick (Goodhair) Perry the other day. The only governor we've got decided to bring back that old bone of contention: prayer in the schools. Nice timing, guv.

The very first clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes freedom of conscience. The majority does not rule anyone's faith. If we wanted the state to coerce faith, we would have voted for the Taliban. Look, as we all know, the religious majority in Texas is hardshell Southern Baptist. Splendid people, the Southern Baptists, but the fact is, if the rest of us had wanted to join their church, we would have done so. Our next biggest faith is Catholicism, and if the governor wants to spend the rest of his term convincing Baptists to say "Hail Mary," that's fine by me. As is obvious to all but those of the most limited intelligence and the governor, by the time you get the Catholics, Jews, Episcopalians, Methodists, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, Church of Christers, Buddhists, Sikhs, New Agers and the County Line Salt of the Earth

Covert Action Exposes Cruelty at Egg Farm: Advocates Rescue 34 Sick, Injured, and Dying Hens

Investigators from the Ohio animal rights organization Mercy For Animals (MFA) have released the findings of a month-long investigation into animal mistreatment at Buckeye Egg Farm and Daylay Egg Farm, Ohio’s two largest egg producers.

MFA’s investigation at Buckeye’s facility in La Rue and Daylay’s facility in Raymond began after the organization’s requests for tours of the facilities were ignored. Both Buckeye Egg Farm and Daylay Egg Farm confine millions of hens in tiny "battery cages" (long rows of wire cages holding an average of eight birds per cage).

At both facilities investigated, MFA discovered severe
overcrowding and confinement, hens trapped in the wire of their cages, and dead birds left to slowly rot next to their cage mates. At Daylay, a live hen was found thrown in a dumpster filled with trash and hundreds of dead birds.

The investigation uncovered countless

Joe Gotta Go!: A Victory in Selma, Alabama

The last time I was in Selma, Alabama was in 1972, traveling across the South with a group of activists making a movie. (It never came out, which was just as well.) Our group was received with traditional Southern hospitality everywhere throughout the South, except in Selma. We sat down in a café right next to the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge, where voting rights marchers had been gassed and beaten on Bloody Sunday, seven years before. The atmosphere was so thick I had to go stand outside to collect myself. On the street I met an elderly black man in overalls who had worked all his life in Chicago ' 'second worst place in the world' ' before retiring back home to Selma ' 'the worst.' Twenty-eight years later I returned to find the town finally climbing out of that bottom spot.

In Selma, Alabama, there is actually an intersection of Jefferson Davis and Martin Luther King streets. As a spot for a polling place, it asks an obvious question about which way Selma wants to go in the 21st century. The answer, by 57% in a runoff election with a 75% turnout, is Selma's first African American mayor, James Perkins, Jr.

Retribution Follies

A couple of phrases give us useful pointers to the moral and political intricacies of retribution. The Pentagon is talking about establishing "killing boxes" around Kabul, where U.S. helicopter gunships can fire at will. The Pentagon's assumption is that such "killing boxes" contain only Taliban troops, fair game for everything the gunships can throw at them.

Thus we see the return of an old friend from counterinsurgency in an earlier time, when "free-fire zones" meant that any Vietnamese peasant could be swiftly identified as Viet Cong, and thus a legitimate target.

Motorized transportation in Afghanistan mostly consists of old trucks. My brother Patrick, reporting from the Panjshir Valley for the London Independent, told me on his satellite phone Friday morning that he was being driven around in a truck with bullet holes in the windscreen that the Northern Alliance had captured not long before from the Taliban.

From the air an old truck looks like an old truck, whether the fellow driving it is a Taliban warrior or a farmer. In the 50 odd miles

Yugoslavia: Off The Wall

On 28 June 1991, the Yugoslavian Federation fell off the wall. The Humpty-Dumpty of nations shattered into pieces, and years of civil war and domestic conflict blighted the now-independent countries of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. As the decade of the 1990?s waned, the Americans and their NATO allies helped in the continued destruction of Yugoslavia by assisting an ethnic Albanian minority to claim land and independence from what remained of Tito?s Cold War creation.

The Gulf War was still being celebrated during the final days of June 1991. Few people, especially Americans, paid any attention to Yugoslavia. Your correspondent was among the ignorant, reporting on the events in the Middle East and ignoring the crisis brewing in the Balkans until a fateful train ride on 28 June 1991.

The International Train

Iraq: 10 Years After Gulf War

Written by Stephen Zunes, Middle East EditorForeign Policy In Focus Editors: Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS)

Key Points The U.S. effectively coddled Husseins dictatorial regime during the 1980s with economic and military aid, likely emboldening the invasion of Kuwait. The 1991 Gulf War forced the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and led to an ongoing U.S. military presence in the region. Certain provisions of the cease-fire agreement, severe economic sanctions and ongoing military operations, have limited Iraqi sovereignty and have created a severe humanitarian crisis.

Ten years after the Gulf War, U.S. policy toward Iraq continues to suffer from an overreliance on military solutions, an abuse of the United Nations and international law, and a disregard for the human suffering resulting

Highlands Nature Sanctuary

There is an incredibly biologically special place, right here in Ohio. It's called the Highlands Nature Sanctuary. It had been known by its current name for 5-6 years. It's located in south central Ohio, in which (at least) three major bio-regions exist. It includes land where the glaciers came through, and stopped, (depositing seeds of plant species usually found further north), the western front of the Appalachian foothills, limestone bedrock of the west, and sandstone and shale of the east. All of these "edge" effects increase biodiversity exponentially-gifting the area with an extraordinarily high number of rare wildflowers, trees, and ferns. It is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the state, possibly in the country (ok, excluding the Everglades). Although the woodlands in this region have

Compiled News Updates

MEDICAL MARIJUANA RESEARCH FINALLY APPROVED

Source: Marijuana Policy Project http://www.mpp.org/, Marijuana Policy Report Vol. 7, No. 2 ? Spring 2001

(California) On June 13, a federal shipment of marijuana arrived at the San Mateo County Health Center for a medical marijuana study involving people with AIDS. The county will test the feasibility of allowing patients to take marijuana out of a hospital setting to smoke it for medical research. Assuming that there are no diversion problems or other drawbacks, the study? s subsequent phases may generate the clinical data needed to meet FDA?s requirements for the approval of marijuana as a prescription medicine. This study is unique in that it is being funded entirely by the county. (And it is the only study underway in the country.)

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