On September 29, thousands of San Franciscans joined a nationwide rally to protest war, racism, and curbing of civil liberties. The largest rally was in Washington, D.C. The San Francisco rally began at 11 a.m. in Dolores Park. My husband and I arrived about noon. After listening to speakers and musicians, the crowd began a march at 1:15. We walked about a mile through the Mission District and returned to the park to continue the rally.

My sign had "FIGHT CRIMINALS, NOT NATIONS" on both sides, and my husband’s sign had "REVENGE DOES NOT HEAL" on one side and "UNITE FOR PEACE" on the other side. I wrote down a few of the messages on other signs: "RETALIATION BEGETS RETALIATION." "DISSENT IS NOT TREASON." "BORDERS DIVIDE." "LEARN FROM ISRAEL’S MISTAKES: RETALIATION INCREASES TERRORISM." "WAR = TERRORISM." "BOMBING BREEDS TERRORISM." "JUSTICE, NOT VENGEANCE." "SOLIDARITY IS NO GOOD WITHOUT SANITY."

The rally got some coverage on the local news. (Channel 5 estimated the crowd at 5000. Channel 4 gave an estimate of 10,000. I thought Channel 7 gave the best description of the point of the rally.) I assume that the protest in D.C. got national coverage. One of the speakers in Dolores Park estimated the D.C. crowd at 25,000 and said that CNN had announced the protest the night before.

The rally was organized by International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), a creation of the International Action Center, which was initiated in 1992 by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and other antiwar activists. For information about future protests in the Bay Area, see www.actionsf.org or www.internationalanswer.org or call (415) 821-6545.

The International Action Center appears to be a leftist organization, but please don’t let that keep you from joining their protests of U.S. military policy. Leftists are our best allies right now, and the danger is too great for us to wait until we can organize huge Libertarian protests.

The San Francisco Republican Leadership Council has put up with my periodic e-mail propaganda for some time, but when I recently forwarded them a short message from the Dalai Lama about spirituality and peace, they responded with "Please remove." Maybe they realized the Tibetan spiritual leader isn’t in favor of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.–Starchild

$ We will be voting on recommendations regarding propositions on the November ballot. Starchild submitted a ballot argument against Proposition A (Community College District bond), and Chris Maden submitted arguments against Propositions B (renewable energy bond; see p. 7) and H (charter amendment to allow the renewable energy bond), but neither argument was selected by the Elections Department lottery. Starchild subsequently learned one of the reasons: An individual or group can submit multiple arguments on the same ballot proposition; and Republican Assembly activist Terence Faulkner, whose name has been all over the ballot pamphlet in recent years, had submitted three separate arguments for each of these propositions. Vince Grubbs noticed the following comment on this practice in a column in the Independent by Samson Wong–on the same page, incidentally, as a letter Vince had written critical of Warren Hinckle: "Ballot-book hog Faulkner thereby shoved out arguments submitted by former lieutenant governor Leo McCarthy, BART Board president Willie Kennedy, and even perennial candidate Starchild."

$ We will be deciding whether to recommend Joel Hornstein for the Municipal Utility District Board. The MUD Board would be created by Proposition I, if it passes. Hornstein attended the September LPSF meeting, seeking our endorsement; but since he is a Republican, our by-laws would limit us to recommending him. The Republican Party opposes Proposition I. Hornstein himself cannot very well oppose the creation of the MUD Board while he is running for a seat, but he says he is running to make sure the reach of the Board is not exceeded.

$ We will be discussing the perennial LP issue of purity vs. pragmatism, specifically the question of forming alliances with high-profile people who have taken clear nonlibertarian stands.

Among the many remote consequences of the September 11 attack was throwing the tragedy of Flight 800 completely into the shade. Many LPSFers were concerned that a screening of that documentary video on October 20 would be perceived as exploiting the tragedy of September 11, and also that the timing would be the worst possible for raising questions about government conduct. Although a vocal minority favored going ahead with business as usual, the event coordinating committee decided to postpone the screening. Dates in February and March have been suggested, but a final decision awaits a response from producer Jack Cashill.

Michael Denny will be running for State Assembly in the 12^th District, Chris Maden will be running in the 13^th District, and Ira Victor will be running for Congress in 2002. Each candidate will need valid signatures of 150 registered Libertarians to get on the ballot; hence they will need to collect about 300 signatures each, before the November 22 deadline. The filing fees, if the signature requirement is not met, are prohibitively high: about $1000 for Assembly and $1500 for Congress. Please go out of your way, therefore, to make sure we have your signature on these three petitions. Contact Campaigns Chair Jerry Cullen for suggestions about how to do this.

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A dozen people gathered at the Maharani Restaurant on Sunday evening, October 7, to honor Michael Denny. Denny was certainly due for special recognition. LPSF Chair and LPC Executive Director David Molony expressed appreciation for Michael’s contributions in terms of time, material, and financial resources. It was Denny who set up the LPSF phone line several years ago, and he has borne the monthly charges for this service ever since. He is always among the first to contribute to any local projects, and among the most generous. He has put in much work over the years as Membership Chair, and he has been especially active in building alliances with gun rights groups. His time commitments are the more remarkable because he is one of the few LPSF activists who has young children. Not least among Denny’s assets is his magnificently sunny, outgoing personality. He is one of those rare libertarians who obviously likes people. The importance of such goodwill ambassadors in a party of introverts is hard to overestimate.

In his response to Molony’s encomium, Denny expressed his appreciation to Michael Edelstein for having organized this dinner series, to Starchild for having revived a moribund local Party several years ago, and to all those present for making it so much fun to work for liberty. In a further display of his characteristic generosity, Michael contributed half a dozen bottles of wine for the event which was honoring him. The dinner also provided more support for the Edelstein thesis that libertarians are generous: Several of those present contributed more than their $33 share; the consensus was to keep the excess $15 as a donation to the LPSF.

The Maharani banquet room made a splendid setting for the spirited arguments about guns on planes and other topics of the day. Hope to see you at our next event in the spring.

There was unquestionably a major cover-up by the federal government in the Oklahoma City bombing. The interesting question is why: What on earth is being hidden in this case?

In the official version, Timothy McVeigh had help from Terry Nichols, but no one else, and his truck bomb was solely responsible for the destruction of the Murrah Building. The government insists the case is closed. There were many people, however, who had observations they thought important to the investigation, and they were disturbed to find that the government either had no interest in their reports or pressured them to keep quiet or change their stories. The FBI not only failed to follow up numerous leads on associates of McVeigh’s, it also failed to run checks on over 1000 fingerprints collected in the investigation. In response to widespread concerns about the conduct of the investigation, State Representative Charles Key–recently appointed Executive Director of the Fully Informed Jury Association–formed the Oklahoma City Bombing Investigation Committee (OKBIC), funded by private donations. This 576-page book is the report of its findings.

The government has destroyed–or withheld–so much evidence that definitive conclusions on many questions cannot be drawn. The withholding of hundreds of files in the McVeigh case was of course a major FBI scandal this spring. Perhaps most egregiously, the building was demolished on May 23, as soon as the last body was removed, and the debris was trucked to a secure landfill and covered with dirt. The blue-ribbon Building Performance Assessment Team appointed by the Federal Emergency Management Administration was given false information about the explosion and was not allowed within 200 feet of the building. Bomb squad records were declared not subject to the Open Record Act, and the government has refused to release the high-quality color videotapes made by surveillance cameras on the building. The OKBIC itself was subjected to intimidation; anyone who questioned the official line was characterized as a paranoid antigovernment right-wing extremist.

Among the major issues in the investigation are the involvement of other persons, the nature of the explosion, and foreknowledge of the event by the federal government.

1. Involvement of other persons. A woman standing near the Murrah Building swore that after the explosion she saw two men of Middle Eastern appearance, in blue jogging suits, running from the vicinity to a brown Chevrolet pickup with a driver waiting. The FBI immediately put out an APB for the pickup and the suspects–but withdrew it, without explanation, on the same day as the bombing. Two hours after the bombing, a Jordanian national, Abraham Abdullah Ahmad, was enroute to Jordan from Oklahoma City via Chicago. Airline employees in Oklahoma City thought he looked nervous and alerted security. The FBI questioned him in Chicago and released him. He was wearing a blue jogging suit, and his luggage contained potential bomb-making materials. Ahmad was connected with two other Middle Eastern suspects; one of them owned a brown pickup and the other was identified by a witness as the driver.

In the months before the bombing, Terry Nichols made frequent calls to the Philippines, and traveled there several times. In November 1994 he may have met with Iraqi terrorist Ramzi Yousef, who was indicted for masterminding the original World Trade Center bombing and was convicted of a conspiracy to blow up 11 U.S. commercial jet planes at the same time. (The OKBIC Report was published before September 11.)

In the winter of 1992, Michele Torres overheard her father, a former Communist Party official who was working in the PLO office in Mexico City, discussing a bomb plot against the U.S. with two Arab men. The plan was to bomb an office building in the middle of the country, blaming American white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and "there had to be children involved because of the emotional impact it would cause" (p. 289). The OKBIC notes that a number of disparate groups have been implicated, but that they had in common hatred of the U.S. and of Jews.

2. The explosion. Anyone who saw photos of the Murrah Building must have had trouble believing that the damage was caused by a truck bomb. The front of the building fell straight down; a major column 50 feet from the truck collapsed–at right angles to the blast–while two much smaller columns nearer the truck were left standing. In fact, a number of experts–in explosives, engineering, and physics–have flatly declared it impossible. Not only is the direct collapse consistent only with contact charges having been placed in the columns; the pulverized nature of the fractures is also consistent only with contact charges, not with an air blast. Half a dozen survivors said they felt an initial shaking, which they assumed was an earthquake. They got under their desks, which may have saved their lives. Audiotapes reveal the cracking sound characteristic of contact charges. Four seconds later (by seismograph records) the truck bomb exploded. The truck bomb alone would have killed people in the immediate vicinity, and probably blown the face off the building (judging from the results of other truck bombs in Saudi Arabia and Colombia); but 90% of the victims were killed by the collapse of the building.

To make the truck bomb theory even partly credible, the government had to overstate the diameter of the crater by a factor of 1.6. It reported that the crater measured 28 feet, then filled it with sand and covered it with plywood. But measurements from public-domain photos taken before the crater was filled show it to be only 18 feet. The force from a blast that would create an 18-foot crater would have been too weak by a factor of 10 to break the most distant column; the force corresponding to a 28-foot crater would have been barely sufficient. These calculations assume that the bomb was 100% effective, thought scientists have not been able to get 100% of ammonium nitrate to explode in lab tests.

Although the federal government denies that any bombs were found in the building, government records show several rather specific reports of bombs during the day, at least two of which led to evacuation of the building during the rescue effort. The reason for at least one of the bomb reports was evidently the large quantity of weapons and explosives the ATF had illegally stored in the building: 24 crates of rifles, shoulder-mounted missiles, grenades, thousands of rounds of ammunition, 1200 pounds of C-4 (a high-explosive material), and percussion caps for detonating the C-4. Randall Yount, a Park Ranger for the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department, thought he was being called in to help rescue the children he could hear crying and moaning, but was asked instead to help remove the munitions. (Some observers also thought it unseemly that the government curtailed the rescue effort for several hours on the evening of the bombing in order to remove documents from the ATF and DEA offices.)

3. Foreknowledge of the event. A paramedic who arrived at the scene within about 3 minutes of the explosion was told by an ATF agent on the scene that the building had been bombed because of Waco. He was right–at least as far as McVeigh was concerned–but it was rather soon for him to have made that determination. The ATF and DEA offices were McVeigh’s target. ATF agents, however, had been paged and told, without explanation not to come into the office that day. (The children were evidently judged not worthy of that protection.) The government insists, of course, that it had no foreknowledge; and Lester Martz, Special-Agent-in-Charge of the ATF Dallas Region, issued a statement that an ATF and a DEA agent had just entered the elevator on the eighth floor when the explosion occurred, and that they had survived a free fall to the third floor, where they walked out. Elevator inspectors, however, swore that there was no evidence of free fall or doors forced open in any of the elevators. Martz later suggested that the ATF agent had only imagined the free fall, but the agent was still given an award for his heroism in surviving the five-floor drop unharmed.

The ATF, in fact, had two paid informants who had warned specifically about a bomb plot for the Murrah Building. Several people saw a bomb squad truck, and men with "Bomb Squad" on their jackets, near the Murrah Building an hour before the explosion–men who would have watched the truck for 2 minutes and 15 seconds before it blew up. Two reserve deputy sheriffs assigned to guard the building on the night of the bombing reported a visit by Congressman Ernest Istook, who said to them, "We knew this was going to happen. We blew it." Istook referred to a "fundamentalist, right-wing Islamic group operating out of Oklahoma City." Istook later denied making the statement. The two deputy sheriffs offered to take a lie detector test; Istook refused.

There were also some peculiar indications of foreknowledge. (a) On April 16, three days before the bombing, a boiler apparently blew up. An employee was startled when police showed up saying they had received a report of a "major explosion and possible terrorist takeover of the building." He assured them the situation was under control. (b) In the days before the bombing, Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington received two calls from someone identifying himself as a "‘Pentagon’ or ‘Congressional liaison to the Governor of Oklahoma’s office,’" asking about "triage for victims of blast overpressure." (c) Four days before the bombing, three women, moving from California to Ohio in a Ryder truck, were pulled over by three Oklahoma State Police cars. The lead trooper approached with gun drawn, but, after questioning, the women were released without explanation. They freaked out, however, when they heard a Ryder truck had been used in the bombing.

So what is the government covering up? The most plausible scenario appears to be a failed sting operation: that the John Doe #2 who drove up in the truck with McVeigh was a federal witness who was supposed to disable the bomb. McVeigh was to be arrested away from the scene; one source claimed that his license plate had been removed so there would be probable cause for stopping him. John Doe #2 would escape and be taken in as a hero by the militia movement, to continue his undercover work. Presumably either the witness failed to disable the bomb, or McVeigh had a fail-safe back-up. Alternatively (though the Report doesn’t suggest this), the witness may have been a double agent–just the sort who repeatedly foiled Kennedy’s attempts to assassinate Castro. It is not clear whether McVeigh was aware of contact charges having been placed in the building, or of his having been set up to take the rap for a larger operation. Any interpretation of the event, however, confronts the problem of the ambivalent response on the part of the federal government: It is extremely difficult to explain, in a charitable way, the precautions of keeping ATF and DEA agents out of the building, and having the bomb squad on hand, while giving no warning to the other occupants of the building.

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The Bay Guardian reports in its September 19 issue that MUNI is doing its part to help create an American police state (our words, not the Guardian’s) by not only using cameras to spy on its passengers, but audio taping them as well, probably against the law.

"Most San Franciscans are well aware MUNI trains and buses use surveillance cameras, but few city residents know that our public transportation system also records sound," writes Guardian intern Charles Russo. "Yes, your conversations are being recorded by digital audio while you ride the train." He speculates that the practice may be in violation of the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which imposes civil and criminal liability and damages of up to $10,000 per violation for "intentionally intercept(ing) any wire, oral, or electronic communication."

The policy has been in effect for about 5 years, MUNI spokeswoman Maggie Lynch told the leftist weekly, and surveillance equipment is installed on all new buses and trains. The Guardian says a few small stickers on trains warn passengers that they may be recorded. It also notes a claim by Nathan Ballard of the City Attorney’s office, which approved the surveillance: "This policy does not require signs."

"Both Ballard and Lynch were quick to point out that the policy is for the safety of passengers," the Guardian reports, with Lynch citing recent increases in pickpocketing and graffiti. "It’s unclear how audio surveillance would be used to thwart pickpocketing or graffiti," Russo writes sardonically. The paper quotes an unidentified Municipal Railway employee to the effect that each new MUNI vehicle is equipped with four cameras and two separate digital audio devices. "The employee said that the surveillance tapes are saved for at least seven years and that MUNI has hired a ‘special crew’ whose sole purpose is to monitor them." If MUNI’s audio surveillance system is anything like its announcement system, however, most of these recordings will be unintelligible. Undoubtedly the spy team will be billing a lot of expensive overtime trying to decipher what city residents say to each other on the bus.

Trust San Francisco’s Democratic establishment to give us fascism without the efficiency!

A new report prepared by San Francisco State University economics professor Philip King for the Committee on Jobs reveals that San Francisco’ municipal spending jumped by 39% over the past 5 years.

Since 1996, the city’s government has been under the grip of crime lord Willie Brown, who became the head of the multi-million dollar protection racket after voters removed former boss Frank. During the December 1995 run-off election for mayor, Brown sought to portray eventual rival Tom Ammiano as fiscally irresponsible. Five years later, the record clearly shows that it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. (In case any race-card-dealing mayoral aides are reading this, we hasten to add that this reference to the color black is not a racial slur.)

"What we did was spend every penny we got," said Supervisor Gavin Newsom. The quote appeared in a page 1 Chronicle story on the report that ran on August 23, appropriately titled "S.F. spent like boom would never bust."

Among the report’s other findings for the period from 1995 to the present, as passed along by the Chronicle:

$ S.F.’s combined city and county government spent 2.5 times as much per resident as city and county governments spent per resident of San Jose.

$ City spending increased 3 times faster than the federal government’s, and twice as fast as spending by the state of California.

$ The city workforce expanded by 4000 employees.

While Libertarians usually recognize this kind of organized crime when they see it, other residents may be honestly wondering why all the extra spending and staffing hasn’t translated into vastly improved services. Even Newsom, who by his own admission helped spend a lot of the loot, seems confused. "You’d think we’d have an exponential improvement, but that’s not the case," he told the Chronicle. "We have a performance deficit."

Hey, Gavin, if we’re going to be politically correct, how about "ethically challenged?" But like the drunk who wakes up in a pool of vomit, the Supe (unlike some of his colleagues) may now recognize the prudence of restraint, if only in hindsight. "More money is not always better," he acknowledged.

An 80-year-old San Francisco man suffering from congestive heart failure, colon cancer, high blood pressure, and dementia died last fall in a city jail, according to a chilling story in the September 26 Chronicle. Tim Leung, a Chinese immigrant who spoke no English, was jailed for allegedly hitting his wife in their apartment on Clementina Street.

Soo Kein Chan told police that her husband of 59 years had never hit her before, and that his behavior was caused by a combination of alcohol and his heart medication. Nevertheless, Leung was arrested and taken to the San Francisco County Jail. Without access to his medication and refused medical attention, he died there within a day. The Chronicle reported that one of the officers who came to the couple’s apartment, James Barber, then in training, said he and his training officer had no choice but to arrest Leung under a state law that requires an arrest if there’s evidence a spouse has been injured.

Two of the inmates housed in the jail’s medical ward with Leung said they repeatedly pushed the emergency button and asked nurses to get help for the old man. Rodney Pool, a Filipino inmate who understands some Cantonese, told the Chronicle that Leung had patted his chest and stomach with his hand to indicate pain. "He could say ‘Help me’ in English, and he said, ‘I hurt.’" He also said, "My heart, my heart," according to Pool.

"This man has a heart problem–you got to get him out of the room," Pool recalled telling a nurse. Instead of giving Leung any medical attention, nurses told Pool and fellow inmate David Hidalgo, "Quit pushing the button," and one told Pool in Tagalog to "go and sit down, you son of a bitch."

Chronicle reporter Jaxon van Derbeken continues: "Hidalgo told investigators that he heard Leung trying to get out of bed about 4 a.m. A few minutes later, Leung clicked his dentures and let out a moan. Hidalgo summoned the nurses with his call button, but Leung was dead. "He could have been helped," Pool said. "If they’d done an EKG, his life would have been saved. I don’t know why they refused to do anything."

In a report by medical examiner’s investigator David Le Noue, nursing staff denied that Pool or Hidalgo had ever told them about Leung’s problems. But Le Noue told the Chronicle he didn’t know any reason the inmates would fabricate their story. Jail medical officials insisted that Leung was treated properly, according to the paper.

The Chronicle noted a conversation confirmed by a report filed for Deputy Sean Warren in which the inmate spoke to Warren about Leung having stomach pains and bowel and stool problems. "We’re doing what we can," Warren replied, according to the sheriff’s incident report.

Indeed, the government had the power to kill Tim Leung and that’s exactly what it did.

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Proposition B will not ease the power "crisis" for San Francisco residents, nor will it help the environment.

Proposition B will take money from the pockets of San Francisco families for another government boondoggle that may add to environmental damage from San Francisco’s power usage.

Environmental activists know that conservation is the most effective approach to minimizing energy usage. Reaction to the recent crisis–consumption has dropped statewide–has demonstrated that private conservation works better than government programs.

A city-run program to acquire renewable energy resources will face no pressure to be competitive or efficient; rather, it will become an easy target for patronage politics. We also risk an ongoing drain on city funds, with no clear benefit to the city’s residents.

Solar energy as an alternative to other sources of electricity is not environmentally friendly. Solar-based electric power is produced by solar panels, which are nothing more than large semiconductors, manufactured with the same toxic chemicals as the semiconductors in computer chips. It is debatable whether the manufacturing process is more or less damaging than generating the same amount of electric power from petroleum or coal; at best, it would be fair to say that it is differently damaging.

Interest on bonds is paid back through higher taxes. Taxes to fund this measure will come out of the pockets of homeowners; renters will also face higher costs as landlords pass their higher taxes on to tenants. Those under rent control are not immune; higher property taxes usually mean higher annual rent increases. Don’t burden the public with energy intiatives; let those who use more power carry the costs.

Conservation, environmentalism, and freedom all say vote NO.

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Saturday, October 13: Richmond District meeting, 3-6 p.m., Round Table Pizza, 5160 Geary. Decide whether to recommend Joel Hornstein for MUD Board. Decide recommendations on ballot propositions. Discuss alliances with high-profile nonlibertarians.

David Molony

chair@lpsf.org

(415) 820-3923

Chris Maden

vice-chair@lpsf.org

(415) 504-8677

Vince Grubbs

secretary@lpsf.org

(415) 682-9482

Mike Acree

treasurer@lpsf.org

(415) 668-5794

Jerry Cullen

elections@lpsf.org

(415) 567-9642

Mike Denny

membership@lpsf.org

(415) 750-9340

Starchild

outreach@lpsf.org

(415) 626-3036

Bryce Bigwood

webmaster@lpsf.org

(415) 824-0327

Chris Maden

contributions@lpsf.org

(415) 504-8677

Opinions expressed in unsigned columns of the Golden Gate Libertarian do not necessarily represent those of anyone but the Editor. Submissions are encouraged. The deadline (including agenda and calendar items) is the penultimate Friday of the month.

Next meeting: October 13, 3-5 p.m. (business), 5-6 (social), upstairs at Round Table Pizza, 5160 Geary Blvd. (at 16th Av.).