Pubdate: Wed, 16 Aug 2000
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2000 David Syme & Co Ltd
Contact:  250 Spencer Street, Melbourne, 3000, Australia
Website: http://www.theage.com.au/
Author: Duncan Campbell, Los Angeles, The Guardian

GORE STEALS THE SHOW WITH VIDAL STATISTICS

Gore won a standing ovation as the Democratic convention kicked off by 
telling a delighted audience that the US had become "the greatest terrorist 
... and the largest rogue state" in the world.

He was also applauded loudly after announcing that today "only corporate 
America enjoys representation".

This was Gore Vidal, it should be said, the former Democratic politician, 
novelist, playwright, historian, mischief-maker and cousin of young Al Gore.

He was addressing a full house as the delegates assembled for the first day 
of the convention.

He attacked the Pentagon as a major reason for the collapse of the 
democratic system in the US and for the waste of public money.

"Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcers," Vidal 
said. "Our empire is now the greatest terrorist of all."

He said that since the Soviet Union "unsportingly disbanded", the world's 
one billion Muslims had been demonised as wild fanatics in order to justify 
the continuation of military spending.

Since 1946, he said, $7.1 trillion had been spent on defence, while 
national debts totalled $3.6 trillion.

Vidal also attacked American drug laws, saying that "we started the damn 
country" to get away from such restrictions, and he suggested that the 
founding fathers included many who were addicted to laudanum, a narcotic 
painkiller.

"Anything taken for joy is against God's will," had become the 
justification for the drug laws, he said. People had forgotten the effects 
of prohibition.

"We have become the United States of Amnesia," he said, and accused the US 
of "swaggering round the world smashing countries like Colombia".

Tom Hayden, now a Californian senator but arrested at the 1968 Democratic 
convention in Chicago during the anti-war demonstrations, voiced his 
support for the thousands who have already taken to the streets of Los Angeles.

"The Democratic Party should not try to stigmatise the people who raised 
hell in Seattle and gave birth to a new generation of radicalism," Mr 
Hayden said.

"More and more people are feeling that there is no other way than to get 
out on the streets. It is a great blessing instead of a danger to the city 
of Los Angeles. Everyone in this room was someone real and vibrant before 
they became middle-aged."
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