SECTION SEVENTEEN
EMAIL PAGE FIFTEEN

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COLUMN SEVENTY-TWO, JUNE 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)

FROM PORTSIDE
Portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a
news, discussion and debate service of the Committees
of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It
says it aims to provide varied material of interest to people
on the Left. Heretofore , we were  under the impression that Portside  is the Internet's voice of the Left.  But it turns out to be the Internet's voice of the fundamentalist Far-Left, which, like all fundamentalist organizations, adheres to an orthodoxy and consequently refuses to post dissident or differing opinions from within the Left---such as HATE YOUR GOVERNMENT BUT LOVE YOUR COUNTRY, available to be read in SECTION ONE of COLUMN SEVENTY.  Fundamentalists, like fascists, will not tolerate any disagreements or variations from the fundamentalist orthodoxy.

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BRIEFS

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ANOTHER U.S. LIE UNEARTHED

In the summer of 1975, with the cold war raging and the memory of Saigon's fall terribly fresh, the United States sponsored a covert operation to prevent another Communist takeover, this time across the world, in Angola.

The effort failed to keep a Marxist government from taking power but ushered in a long and chaotic civil war, involving American, Chinese and Russian interests, and Cuban and South African soldiers.

Now, coinciding with the death last month of Washington's longtime rebel ally in Angola, Jonas Savimbi, a trove of recently declassified American documents seem to overturn conventional explanations of the war's origins.

Historians and former diplomats who have studied the documents say they show conclusively that the United States intervened in Angola weeks before the arrival of any Cubans, not afterward as Washington claimed. Moreover, though a connection between Washington and South Africa, which was then ruled by a white government under the apartheid policy, was strongly denied at the time, the documents appear to demonstrate their broad collaboration.

"When the United States decided to launch the covert intervention, in June and July, not only were there no Cubans in Angola, but the U.S. government and the C.I.A. were not even thinking about any Cuban presence in Angola," said Piero Gleijeses, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University, who used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the documents. Similarly, cables of the time have now been published by the National Security Archive, a private research group.  

"If you look at the C.I.A. reports which were done at the time, the Cubans were totally out of the picture," Dr. Gleijeses said. But in reports presented to the Senate in December 1975, "what you find is really nothing less than the rewriting of history."  ##

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IS UNWANTED EMAIL A TRESSPASS?

March 29, 2002; CNN

http://europe.cnn.com/2002/TECH/industry/03/29/email.pamphleteer.idg/index.html

(IDG) -- The California Supreme Court agreed this week to review a lower court's decision that effectively allowed companies to sue parties that send unwanted e-mail to their employees, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group.

The case concerns former Intel Corp. employee Ken Hamidi, who was sued by the chip maker after he sent six mass e- mail messages to Intel employees, complaining about the way the company treated its workers.

Intel won an injunction against Hamidi in November 1998, claiming that he was flooding its systems and trespassing on its property. Hamidi appealed the case with support from the foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, claiming that his right to free speech was violated.

Last December, the Third Appellate District Court of California ruled (download PDF) that sending the unwanted e-mail was an illegal trespass, citing a legal argument called "trespass the chattels."

The doctrine prohibits others from interfering with personal property. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the interference must be intentional physical contact with someone else's property that results in substantial interference or damage to the property. But civil liberties groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, fear that this doctrine, if applied to the digital world, would open the door for any number of claimants who contend that an unwanted e-mail or search-engine crawl served as a trespass on their property.

No one from Intel was immediately available for comment on the case.  ##

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KISSINGER MAY HAVE TO TESTIFY

March 29, 2002 The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,675745,00.html

The former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger may finally have to face court action over Washington's role in the overthrow of the Chilean government in 1973 and the bloody events that followed it. Mr Kissinger has been formally asked by an investigating judge in Chile to respond to questions about the killing of an American citizen, Charles Horman, in the wake of the coup. The story of the journalist and film-maker's death became the basis for the 1982 film Missing.

Ever since the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in Britain in 1998, there have been attempts to show what part the US government played in the coup that brought him to power.

Of particular interest has been the issue of whether the US effectively gave the military dictatorship carte blanche in dealing with dissidents, even if they were American citizens.

Part of the impetus for the new legal moves has come from declassified documents. One such US state department memo, dated August 25 1976, says: "The GOC [government of Chile] might have believed this American could be killed without negative fallout from the USG [US government].

"There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest US intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman's death. At best, it was limited to providing or confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the GOC. At worst, US intelligence was aware that GOC saw Horman in a rather serious light and US officials did nothing to discourage the logical outcome of GOC paranoia."

Juan Guzman, the judge leading the investigation, has determined that there are sufficient legal grounds to consider Mr Kissinger an important witness to the events surrounding Horman's death.

Witness statements from many of the key players in the case will be taken over the next six weeks.

Mr Kissinger's lawyers indicated this week that the matter should be dealt with by the US state department, as he was working there at the time. Mr Kissinger is said to be willing to assist with whatever he remembers from "those distant events".

Fabiola Letelier, a lawyer with the Chilean human rights group Codepu, has said that a number of "VIP surprises" will arrive in April to give evidence.

Codepu lawyers have also secured the cooperation of retired military officials in giving testimony. According to one lawyer, these officials include witnesses to Horman's execution.

Mrs Letelier said yesterday that more than 150 declassified documents "affect this case one way or another", and that Mr Kissinger appeared in several of them.  ##

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ROCKER TELLS PARLIAMENT IT DOESN'T REPRESENT MOST BRITS

LONDON (AP) - Rock singer Billy Bragg hiked up his sweater to show off a T-shirt featuring the punk band the Clash as he testified in Parliament, telling legislators they were out of touch with the British people.

"I look at you here in your suits and ties and me sitting here in my Clash T-shirt, and I don't really see myself represented here," he told the House of Commons Public Administration Committee Thursday. 'the majority of us don't see ourselves."

Asked to speak about how public appointments are made, Bragg blamed Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor party government for making young people cynical by failing to live up to its promises.

He rebuffed a 44-year-old Welsh legislator who pointed out that he and the 44-year-old Bragg were from the same generation and both grew up on punk rock.

"You should see my audience," the musician told lawmaker Kevin Brennan. 'they are all the same age as us, and they don't look like you, mate."

Bragg, whose music has a leftist political message, said it was important to convince young people that they could have an impact on government.

He urged lawmakers to change the way members of the House of Lords are selected, saying the legislative body should include ordinary people who lack political connections.  ##

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