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."