WWW Facts ...
Subject: The Good Old Days: Good old days???? Anon WWW
Now that 2001 is history, how did it compare to 1901?
Here are a few items of interest from the last first year of the century.
The average life expectancy in the United States was 47.
Only 14% of the homes in the United States had a bathtub.
Only 8% of the homes had a telephone.
A three minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.
There were only 8,000 cars in the US and 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each
more heavily populated than California.
With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the
twenty-first most populous State in the Union.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
The average wage in the US was
twenty-two cents an hour.
The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
a dentist $2500 per year, a veterinarian between $1500 and $4000
per year and a mechanical engineer about $5000 per year.
More than 95% of all births in the United States took
place at home.
Ninety percent of all US physicians had no college education.
Instead, they attended medical schools, many of
which were condemned in the press and by the
government as substandard.
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month
and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from
entering the Country for any reason, either as travelers
or immigrants.
The five leading causes of death in the US were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma,
New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted
to the Union yet.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was thirty. The
remote desert community was inhabited by only a handful
of ranchers and their families.
Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn't been
discovered yet.
Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer and iced
tea hadn't been invented.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
One in ten US adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high
school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available
over the counter at corner drugstores.
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 News Article by AFP posted on April 10, 2002 at 11:24:05: EST (-5 GMT)
Thieves lead Sudanese authorities to mummy from ancient kingdom
KHARTOUM, April 10 (AFP) -- Thieves in Sudan helped the authorities find a
mummy of what is believed to be a king from the two-millennia-old Napatan
Empire, which shared similarities with ancient Egypt, an antiquities
official said Wednesday.
The well-preserved mummy was found in a grave of the royal cemetery of the
Napata Kingdom (900-400 BC) in the Nile River town of Nuri, about 350
kilometers (200 miles) north of here, Sudan's chief archaeologist Hassan
Hussein Idriss told AFP.
Acting on a tip, tourism police captured four thieves making a deal to sell
the mummy to antiquities smugglers for 800 million Sudanese pounds (more
than three million dollars), the independent Akhbar Al-Youm daily reporting
from Nuri.
It was found three months ago, the daily said.
Idriss, director of the Archaeological Administration, said the thieves
partially unearthed the mummy, and "our men took over and unearthed it
scientifically."
He said the mummy, with hair, nails and black skin still distinct, was "one
of our ancient kings of the 25th dynasty buried in the royal cemetery of
Napata's King Taharaka, who was the first one to be buried in this
cemetery."
Idriss said he and the tourism minister flew the mummy to Khartoum on
Tuesday and placed it in a laboratory of the Archaeology Administration for
treatment before it is taken for display at the National Museum.
The antiquities chief and the newspaper did not say whether treasures were
found with the mummy.
The Blue Guide to Egypt said the Egyptian pharaohs extended their control
into what is now northern Sudan, particulary during the 19th dynasty. That
control later dwindled, leaving behind an indigenous highly Egyptianized
culture centered on the city of Napata, now Nuri, below the Fourth Cataract.
The region was important for its supply of gold, copper and stone, hides and
bows, and as a recruiting ground for mercenary troops who formed a sizeable
part of the Egyptian army and the internal police force, the Blue Guide
said.
By the middle of the eighth century BC, the local people were so powerful
that they were able to invade Egypt, oust the Libyan 22nd dynasty and
contain the Egyptian princes in the Nile Delta provinces.
Later the capital moved south to Meroe but the religious center remained in
Napata.
The Egyptian tradition continued, with many kings buried in pyramidal tombs,
though not the one found three months ago, which archeologists were still
trying to identify.
_________________________________________________________________
Food /Travel
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Note from dvrepublic:
Danny Glover continues to take strong stances in support of human rights .
Please engage in this dialogue by visiting www.dvRepublic.com and
posting your comments on this article...
Right Click on click the photo & open in a new window.
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FIN
I Don't really know what this is about, I think It's filler. STOP! Don't touch that Mouse...
Yet! Let this page keep loading while you read,
This introduction HINT: Right Click on any Logo, icon, animated Gif, Jpg http or URL on this page while this document
is loading. Or after and click on .
  (to return use the home or back button)
Open new window, go to that site, then come back here and pick a new page
or TOPIC to open Right click on any interesting location below you want to
visit (while the page is still loading if you wish) and select "Open in New
Window" and you will be able to keep this"smallartobjects" page open and
use it as a home base to browse from.
Keep right clicking and opening new pages and close them when you're
finished and come back to this "smallartobjects" page.
This experiment needs work all kinda of work but it is a of studio visit of sorts.
I was once a Neighbor of Ginsberg , Oldenburg & worked with Herbert Hunker & Warren Finite hung
out with the Irish Rebel Theater & the Black Panthers and was body guard for Genet in the 60's! Sold
Paintings for Food & wrote plays.
"The truth will set you free, Not necessarily pay your rent."
There are approximately 170 pages of notes pictures collected links related to various topics I am interested
in. There are even some examples of my paintings I sold & examples of work I am doing now, the hole idea
(esthetic) is, this is sort of an extension of my studio and sharp stuff I find a sort of digital Cornell Box?
A list of current stuff I am doing at the bottom of this page
 . Or go to top of this page and click the line of text : A-INDEX
Pick any keyword by hitting Ctrl-F or Edit / Find In/On Page.For example hit Ctrl-f or Find, enter the keyword
you're looking for and then keep hitting Next/F3 to find more of the same keyword. Go check out a site (right-
click) and come back here.
Or Pick any keyword by hitting Ctrl-F or Edit / Find In/On Page. For example hit Ctrl-f or Find, enter
the keyword you're looking for and then keep hitting Next/F3 to find more of the same keyword.
Go check out a site (right-click) and come back here.
 (come back soon we update regularly Whatever that is)
  < back next >  |
 There is still some meat on these bones " Gorby forum attendee Willis Harman, New Age philosopher, president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and author of Global Mind Change and The New Metaphysical Foundation of Modern Science, has had a profound effect on our society in the past couple of decades. In "Our Hopeful Future: Creating a Sustainable Society," one of his new essays, Harman reported: "Around the world one detects murmurings that industrialized and 'developing' countries alike have a need for a new social order -- that, in fact, the situation calls for a worldwide systemic change." "In the economy-dominated world, as anthropologist Margaret Mead once put it bluntly, 'the unadorned truth is that we do not need now, and will not need later, much of the marginal labor -- the very young, the very old, the very uneducated, and the very stupid.'" "This dilemma is perhaps the most basic one we face," said Harman. Society can't afford "from an environmental standpoint, or from the standpoint of tearing apart of the social fabric -- the economic growth that would be necessary to provide jobs for all in the conventional sense, and the inequities which have come to accompany that growth. This dilemma, more than any other aspect of our current situation, indicates how fundamental a system change is now required." David C. Korten is a disciple of Harman.
The Royal Institute of International Affairs used the life-time work of Aldous Huxley and Bulwer-Lytton as
its blueprint to bring about a state where mankind will no longer have wills of their own in the One World
Government-New World Order of the fast-approaching New Dark Age. Huxley said: "In many societies
at many levels of civilization, attempts have been made to fuse drug intoxication with God
intoxication. In ancient Greece, for example, ethyl alcohol had its place in the established
religions. Dionysus, Bacchus, as he was often called, was a true divinity. Complete
prohibition of chemical changes can be decreed but cannot be enforced."
Homosexual drug-addict and City of London agent, Aldous Huxley, introduced LSD into the
USA on behalf of the clandestine Tavistock Institute, said to be responsible for the Port Arthur
Massacre.
So much of what 'man' has thought and done has, as we have just read, been folly. However, God,
Whom these 'intellectuals' have left out of the equation, promised us a prophet and a way to escape
the destruction being wrought by such carnal men (Malachi 4:5-6; Revelation 10:7). That prophet was
William Branham (1909-1965). His ministry is reported on Bible Believer's web Site.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. Were Orwell and Huxley preparing us or warning us as Fabians?
2. Are the British Royals something we now admire in America?
3. Were drugs intentionally introduced to the U.S. at a time the British gave us no help in
Vietnam?
4. Can we criticize the British royals for being into the cult of Isis after looking at the top of our nation's
capitol?
5. Name a good recent book exposing British Fabianism.
6. Why is Gorby here when he can't get 2% of the vote in Russia?
7. President Bush and Paul McCarthy were both knighted by the Queen. Why?
8. Who presently is a member of the Knights of the Garter?"
 Bible nuts or not the facts are the facts
so far there is no update ??
and any news about there theories
in light of 911 & I don't expect to see any
 This is just plane old dumb copy cat
"The Official Mystery of the Sphinx Page"
with John Anthony West.
THIS PAGE HAS MOVED TO
http://www.jawest.com/ members.aol.com/jawsphinx/
"Same as hollow Earth stuff ED:"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FYI This stuff looks good the name says it all
http://surfbest.net/ ????
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from
generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you
are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."
However, in modern business, education and government, a whole
range of farmore advanced strategies are often employed, such as ...
Buying a stronger whip.
Changing riders.
Threatening the horse with termination.
Appointing a committee to study the horse.
Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses.
Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
Reclassifying the dead horse as "living impaired."
Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed.
Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's
performance.
Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the
dead horse's performance.
Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less
costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially
more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
    "Don't even start with that, "oh, you're not white, how can you have
white trash roots." Let me tell ya, I'm only half non-white, and the
other half is pure white trash.
Growing up in Spokane, Washington, right next to Northern Idaho with Hayden Lake and all the nazis, was right in the middle of Northwest redneck land.
There are some things sacred in Spokane life: bummed/found cigarettes, chevron coffee, tattoos that are paid by trade, Oly beer our local equivalent to budweiser (much cheaper), bars, women with eighties hair and heavy makeup, mullets, beer bellies, meth labs, amateur care racing, gun shows,
stints in jail, junk cars, wage slavery, heavy metal, trailer parks, gun
racks, huntin' fishin' and teenage parenthood." .
 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Or This Thorny morsel
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"
Pick any of the icons below and return to some other part of this page you might
have missed.
I am really tired of wearing black and sitting on the floor, not 4 profit is not sharing
with any one but the new army of self important bosses what's new about it is
the Nu-be wannabe saps getting in line for there second booster shot of bullshit,
IT can be stooped Nancy Reagan was right Just SAY NO!
Thelonius Monk William Hogarth Cecil Tailor Mick Jagger Albert Einstein
all made money. "Capitalism works if you Do!"
Not withstanding the discouraging blather from the so called supper white ultra right stand-ins for the DAR's Scarlet jabberwocky magpies like the aged decrepit moldy Phyllis Shaffley & Ann (the Harpy) Colder the model A&B clones of Father Cogglan and Nute Gingrick banging on the empty promise and blaming there victim foe the so called democrats Ratz or demo-cRat Party rather like all fundamentalist they rant about there fictive polar opposites and do nothing.
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NOT YET RATED
      From Thursday, 04.18.02
Shortcut to advanced warfighting experiments http://www.thing.net/%7Edollyoko/LOSDIAS/MIL/NAP27.HTM
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ttp://freethemedia.org/events/
At this web site there are over 280 Free pages busting with my collection
of stupidity cupidity half truths and out right lies and woeful miss
spellings and errors of syntax & replete with the possibly tragic
misconceptions that a hominid can achieve any thing outside of some silly
concepts of a world of fate & incredibly unenlightened stupid superstitions
and tenants of blind faith in a system of privilege based on lies and tricks
unending string of outright attempts at cutting edge fraud and a special
secret poisons administered at birth to almost everybody on earth that
makes them misuse testeron testeron (http://www.thing.net/%7Edollyoko/LOSDIAS/G8.HTM )
and other semi toxic hormones (Super addictive Adrenaline ) that naturally
occur as a part of becoming a mature adult Sapiens and choosing to replicate
or assist others in there choice to do so ...
TESTERON
Rather than continuing this excretion We will suggest that you not
go any deeper into the black hole of enigmatic semi literacy but go out
and buy a book on "semiotics or debunking Steven ALS Hawkins Entropean
missives or some other rarified drivel designed to way lay you and recycle
your precious time misdirect and baffle for the sake of simplifying the
reproductive imperative by suggesting stasis stagnation and neilism without
a Cambridge U 's Isaac Nutty chair auto-felating his ego he and his sycophantic
chorus of positive negativist's would have withered away on the vine of Academic
Free lunch Wallstreet Socicalism oblivion however they and he did [ Have Not]
not as of late but be that as it may it should be said at this point in time
there's no time like the present.
Do it tomorrow plan observe and remember 400 years to emerge as fact that
The Moor ruled Europe before it had a name and they were black with
an ecumenical spirit so grate that they all but mutated themselves so that
today the tale is wagging the god-dog.
What WE In America believe is meaningless with multiple competing fraudulent
histories like the X Files obfuscating the true history with out outrageous it lies
( toled longer than the span of the events they obscure ) so called myths profitable
hoaxes and cover-up's predicated on Homophobia on one hand and a fanticy of
Super Spartan homo- eroticism Killing Cult & an all but total Social Political &
Economic so called Patriarchy ill equipped to Imagine,dream or THINK what to do
with the world once they have convoluted & congerred up enough crap to conquer it...
(Out side of Splooging in the face of mother nature.)
[These guys even lie to themselves like a decrepit sappy comb-over about the size
of the continental masses by creating maps and real looking " World Globes" see the
Peters Projection Map info on page No 1]by right clucking the above link and selecting open in a new window.
There "women abandon them for the greener pastures of self empowerment and the
independent woman they have listened to there parents generation preaching all these
years about Free SOCIETY for better or for worse is totally committed to the Ideological
liberated woman and an end to wage slavery with equal pay for equal work & not a moment
too soon because they not only are smarter but like sex multi partner biblical loving all
be it with each other. So with baby by the numbers they can pick there kids by an esthetic
approach suggesting feminisation ( the existing Anglophilic B & B trend) of some the
species in fact in a Queer twist on Adolph Hitler's master race beliefs, Hollywood, silicone
breasts and DNA recombination,rent-a womb and the fact that they are smarter than men;
Women will likely be the only gender in future... God willing the ball less mono culture will
leave them supine spread-eagle and waiting for a Neanderthal like you.
Yeah sure Guido hold that thought.
What to do what to do.
Weapons Drugs & Oil are not Civilization any more than
Gold Salt and Blood were for our forbears Slavery is not now a true economy now
or in Roman Times so volunteer slavery is not the answer either Do Something Real
to profit Yourself or believe it or not you will disappear as a part of the sweeping broom
of the Whatever new kiss ass regime erases YOU and YOURS.
The real shit has hit the REAL fan like it or not your side is chosen for YOU.
if you're still reading this crap you probably have no excuses such as...
" YOU ARE ABOVE THE TEMPORAL PLANE " You are a Junky...
& other neo-Classiest Simi- Heme- Demos Fascist Bunk.
So...
As Fair Play 4 Cuba's Leroy Jones once exclaim in his poem "Black Da-DA Neilismuthus ",
" Your head may be in the clouds But Your Ass is down here on earth.
Or in the words of Byron Shelly or Keats..
" The world wont be free until the last Priest (prostate)
is strangled to death with the guts of the last lawyer (Testate) .
Now that is Karma man...
I am not saying one IS better than the other but you will likley be jus t like the past
generation that feel in there bones they are the only humans.Thats just what it is.
Mitochondria of Lucy genotype and all the facts can't connivence some people but
consider what has been done in the name of human.
What to Do? What to do?
As My Grandpappy use to say "Boy, Boy, Boy...Life is Long Time is Short. "
ED:Checkout this tart "Real full working Free demo"
map academy http://www.mapacademy.com/explorer.htm
SoundFont Descriptions and Downloads
ED:Checkout this tartar from "Dan A. Marmorstein"
Galleri Bo Bjerggaard: Nanna Häninnen
Introduction.Anna Krogh, 2001
translated by Dan A. Marmorstein
There's not really much all that much you can say about
infinity. How do you go about describing something that has
no beginning and no end? Infinity has no boundaries and
precisely because it is unfathomable, we are fascinated and
enthralled by it whenever we encounter it. An awareness about
the infinite is necessary. Necessary because our understanding
of space and our perception of space are conditioned by its
existence. In order to apprehend the bounded, definable space,
you must also comprehend the unbounded, nothingness, and
infinity. ...
Excerpt E-book http://www.pussyland.dk/front_uk/page4.htm
Pussyland Print ... up and look at Andy Warhol's pictures at the Museum of Modern Art. After all, it
was our honeymoon. Henrik List translated by Dan A. Marmorstein & Henrik List.
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MudBoy
 Says ThankYou Dharmagirl.
Check out Mani's website, and look at his art.
Enjoy! Love & Blessings, From Dharmagirl .
Modern Art - A Skeptical View
Silly Art Books
Good and Evil
Critique by
Comparison
Raising Prices How brand name artists are created.
No Skill No Art
Some of My Work
Behind the behind
You have The CIA to thank give credit where credit is duel . ED.
Before the advent of the Internet this
kind of criticism was impossible.
Modern Art - A Skeptical View Copyright 1997-2002 Mani de Li
by Mani de Li My book is now available
Modern Academic Art certainly doesn't need another
boring revolution but it could use a small revolt.
These pages contain some amusing short essays and a few examples of my artwork.
If you have any doubts about the greatness of Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, de Kooning,
Rothko, etc. and wish to hear a view from another perspective, read on.
Modern Art, Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Pollock, de Kooning, Johns,Rothko, Miro,
Warhol, Cezanne, Kline, Chagall,Dali, Greenberg, Bauhaus, Barnet Newman, Calder,
Castelli, Dubuffet, Duchamp, Gorkey, Guston, Kandinsky, Hans Hofmann, Clement
Greenberg, Paul Klee, Motherwell...
Modern Academic Art certainly doesn't
need another boring revolution but it
could use a small revolt.
THE LAST WORD
   More Back 2 Home
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 ------------------------------------------------------------
   Stop um in there tracks
 Rumor Mill News
&
RMNews Products
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store/store.aspx?storeid=rayelan
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))::::::::((
Not yet rated.
I SORT OF stole (CANT FIND SOURCE. ?) this link set to the sound track in
my head Channeling! Song of whales fade up mix with stampeding elephants
distant in a helical audio Doppler surrounding and never arriving to trample the
listeners ear add to that the sound of dry auto tires peeling off or on (you pick
it's only an imaginary sound track anyway) the newly drizzled lazy summer
afternoon asphalt of a deserted desert gas station with a very clear sharp as
a razor loop of a car tire crushing a once pointlessly cranky scorpion as it tried
to fight it off over and over with those little hisses and pops that mimic faux video
scrifitte on new footage or digital video to try to make it look like it is vintage
stock film but skipping the ubiquitous amber tint. OK? OK. not every thought is
inspired as most of the drollery & such referenced below)...Ps I will load this
page and it will have all of it's original luster So It Grows (I Just don't Know what
to delete from the site or the this page. Yikes! Talk about Your Amoebas, Yawn!.
))::::::::((
 Not yet rated.
Romenesko's Media News
Mother of all media sites
Romenesko's Obscure Store
People sure are idiots
Slate
The Saturday Evening Post of the Web
Salon
The Collier's of the Web
Kausfiles
MP stole this link shtick from him
Drudge Report
Excitable right-wing semi-crackpot
The Onion
You know it, you love it
Borowitz Report
One-man Onion
Yahoo Solitaire
Anything to avoid work
Elephant Jokes
Anything to avoid solitaire
Taliban Singles Online
Bring a chaperone…and a gun
Bin Laden Calypso
We will, we will rock you
The Nation
Ranting lefties
New York Observer
Pinko newspaper
BBC News
Her Majesty's favorite website
Weekly World News
Best avant-garde fiction in America
Laid-Off Land
Amusing `toon by OddTodd
http:// www.oddtodd.com
The New Yorker
The New Yorker of the Web
Celebrity Morgue
Rotting celebrity flesh
World Sex Records
Everything you always wanted to know
http://www.world-sex-records.com/
Knickerbocker Bar & Grill Media Person's
favorite restaurant
(Warning: If he is present, do not approach him)
Mighty Big TV
“television without pity”
Snopes.com
Urban legend dismantler
http://www.snopes.com
You know some one that you thank god every day that you're not them, Me too.
Not yet rated
Not yet rated
A class project about demining from around (Nov. 1995 - Dec. 1997)
Updated version, April 19. 1997 | Current Status of activities:
see the Home Page
A virtual mountain of value for any one with the slightest imagination
Not yet rated
They are still fighting WW2 or what , And why
all the complaint about Kosher food change
the channel all ready...
Are they free ISP's?
#1. Click
 #2. Click
#3. Click
but ? This is not the end its just the bottom
There is something familiar about these
2 sites like mad magazine was there bible
1
2
Link to RubberAnchovie disclamer
RubberAnchovies is a work of parody and is consequently
protected by the "fair use" exemption to copyright law.
I claim no authoring or copyright protection with any of the
messages, pictures, or executable programs displayed on this
web page except where noted, as I only collect and distribute them.
From 19 Things That It Took Me 50 Years To Learn by Dave Barry " 4. People who want to share their religious
views with you never want you to share yours with them." © 2001
++++++++++
The other planets are just a heap of dust, balls fir or frozen piss.
Mantra for the remainder...
Sex, Religion & Politics
Weapons, Drugs & Oil.
EARTH 2/3 Water 1/3 Granet.
Saipan Mitochondria DNA FAQ's
Eve out of Africa &. Real Time 20 k Year
South Pole End Game or polar shift
& Species Prerogative.
No Contest
Are you un hypnotized ?
)) ::::FIN :::::((
If your reading this I am gone fishing for ( 2 weeks).
Life is what happens while You're making Your Plans." John Lenin
Be well CM3
 MORE
Light...
A-index
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Overlooked Millions:
Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust
Nazi Nuremberg laws Black Holocaust Victims
Once the Nazi regime took power, sterilization was often performed on these
children in the name of the preservation of "racial purity." When the Rhineland
was remilitarized by the Nazis (its first violation of the Treaty of Versailles),
the black population residing there was attacked directly and forcibly sterilized
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Remember to remember to remember
 Subject: "A Confederate in the Cabinet" / Baltimore Sun
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 10:24:18 -0800
I guess this is a Web Hiccup!
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
[Distributed by the LA Times - Washington Post wire service on Monday, January 8]
The Baltimore Sun
Sunday, January 7, 2001
A CONFEDERATE IN THE CABINET
Opposition: Should the attorney general be someone who doubts that the
preservation of slavery was a "perverted agenda"?
By Norman Solomon
More than 13 decades after Robert E. Lee surrendered at
Appomattox, the U.S. Senate is getting ready to confirm as attorney general
someone who has voiced fervent admiration for the Confederacy. It's an
almost unbelievable situation. Yet many news outlets -- and the vast
majority of senators -- are perpetuating a state of denial.
John Ashcroft, defeated for re-election to the Senate last
November, is the incoming president's most controversial Cabinet pick.
Arguments are raging about Ashcroft's hardline positions against civil
rights, affirmative action, school desegregation, women's rights, abortion,
gay rights and protection of civil liberties. Media attention has focused
on the extraordinary actions that he took in 1999 to block the appointment
of African-American Judge Ronnie White to the federal bench by smearing him
as "pro-criminal."
If he becomes attorney general, Ashcroft will be the nation's
chief law enforcement officer. He'll have enormous power while running the
Justice Department and making weighty recommendations to the president on
judicial appointments. For good measure, Ashcroft will oversee such
agencies as the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Immigration
and Naturalization Service and federal prisons.
Less than two years ago, in an extensive interview with Southern
Partisan magazine, Ashcroft was emphatic about his admiration for Jefferson
Davis and other Confederate leaders. At the time, the senator was
considering a run for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, a quest
that would have involved cultivating support among white voters in GOP
primaries in the South.
During the interview, Ashcroft praised Southern Partisan as a
magazine that "helps set the record straight," adding "You've got a
heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like Lee,
[Stonewall] Jackson and Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do
more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be
taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred
fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."
Should the attorney general of the United States be someone who
doubts that the preservation of slavery was a "perverted agenda"?
That's not the only question arising from the interview. And to
fully understand the impact of Ashcroft's words, you must understand who
reads Southern Partisan, which has been described as "a leading journal of
the neo-Confederacy movement."
In 1996, the magazine asserted that slave owners "encouraged
strong slave families to further the slaves' peace and happiness." And in
1990, Southern Populist touted former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke as "a
Populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal."
Some Ashcroft backers have strained to pooh-pooh the fallout from
the interview. For example, a Dec. 31 editorial in the Detroit News scoffed
at any suggestion that Ashcroft's comments "call into question his
commitment to civil rights and may be grounds for a challenge to his
appointment."
The newspaper declared: "That's a nonsensical smoke screen. The
views Sen. Ashcroft shared several years ago with Southern Partisan
magazine reflect a curious American reality -- the ability to reconcile
admiration for the courage, nobility and commitment of the rebels with an
objection to their cause."
In fact, Ashcroft derided the idea that pro-slavery leaders had a
blameworthy agenda, and he did not express any "objection to their cause."
The Detroit News editorial was misleading in another important respect:
Like so much other media coverage, it did not scrutinize -- or even mention
-- Ashcroft's sweeping endorsement of Southern Partisan as a magazine that
"helps set the record straight."
Avoidance of Ashcroft's overall record has been typical of
editorials by newspapers supporting him for attorney general, including the
Boston Herald, the Atlanta Journal and the Chicago Tribune.
But at least as many daily papers -- notably the New York Times,
the San Francisco Chronicle and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis -- have
editorialized against the Ashcroft nomination. And quite a few other
dailies (such as the Baltimore Sun, Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe, Los
Angeles Times and St. Petersburg Times) have expressed editorial misgivings.
Perhaps most telling has been the response from the most prominent
newspaper in the prospective attorney general's home state of Missouri, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- which swiftly urged the Senate to "investigate
Mr. Ashcroft's opposition to civil rights, women's rights, abortion rights
and to judicial nominees with whom he disagrees."
The Post-Dispatch recalled that "Mr. Ashcroft has built a career
out of opposing school desegregation in St. Louis and opposing
African-Americans for public office."
It's no surprise that Bob Jones University, notorious for bigotry,
gave Ashcroft an honorary degree in 1999. Accepting the award in person, he
was proud to deliver the university's commencement address.
While the country's editorial writers and columnists are deeply
divided over whether Ashcroft should become attorney general, there is much
less division in evidence on Capitol Hill. Republicans, of course, are
marching to Bush's drum. Meanwhile, the Senate's 50 Democrats have been
mealy-mouthed at best.
Democratic politicians are fond of preening themselves as
champions of civil rights. But now, at a pivotal moment in history -- while
some complain that Ashcroft's ideology makes them uncomfortable and promise
that the nominee will face tough questions -- the bottom line is that the
Democrats in the Senate seem very willing to cave.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont lost no time signaling pacific
intent toward Ashcroft, a six-year-member of the club: "I do not intend to
lead a fight against him."
Another purported liberal on the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, was quick to say: "Unless there's
something I'm unaware of, I'd be inclined to vote for him."
The Ashcroft nomination could turn out to be the defining issue of
the presidential transition. Right now, the cowardice of Senate Democrats
is sending an obscene message of contempt toward all Americans who have
struggled against racism since the Civil War.
_________________________________________________
Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy
( http://www.accuracy.org ), a nationwide consortium of policy researchers with
offices in San Francisco and Washington.
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