Outside the Box

A Vast Array of Online Problems - Total Information Oppression

2004-12-07T13:53:00.000-05:00

I don't know anyone else that is having so many error and loading problems with their blogs at Blogspot. I am also having security violations with one of my main webmail accounts. Close friends of mine that I communicate with online are experiencing multiple virus and worm attacks. Readers should be aware that over the past four years I have personally had to deal with literally THOUSANDS of attempts at virus and worm insertion. Several times world and U.S. leaders were emailed from MY ACCOUNT BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN ME. I know this because I got auto-replies. I have no idea what was in those emails. For all I know, they contained language that could implicate the account owner (me) in, even, threats. In all of my saga (including death threats), neither the FCC nor the FBI has ever responded to my multiple attempts to solicit aid.

I will be closing down for at least a few days. I am referencing this link to folks that currently share my problems and that will wonder why I am AWOL online (I participate in a wide variety of digital forums).

Perhaps a little creative re-organizing will help these problems. Here is a little on applicable information regarding Uncle Sam's "Net Force" and the harrassment I have personally experienced in the past few years (as usual, I am on to something).

To anyone who feels that I have unnecessarily endangered them, I was only trying to get out THE truth.

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But first...these items SEEM to have increased my attention by angry right-wingers recently (oh yeah - that's the gubment). Several months ago I dropped my email accounts and regrouped at another geographical location and it would seem I dropped off the radar from online surveillance outfits until, again, recently. Continue to read on and you will see how my 'file' started:

Origins of the G.W. Bush-Carlyle-Nazi Axis

(February 16, 1997) Oklahoma City, Government-Paid Neo-Nazis, and the FCC

Operation Paperclip Casefile

Who Won WWII?

Leo Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor

Neo-Nazi Al Qaeda

A Tale of Two Brothers: Voting Fraud in the USA

THE GRAND CHESSBOARD - American Primacy And It's Geo-strategic Imperatives

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

Beyond Left and Right - Escaping the Matrix

George W. Bush, The Neocons, & The Nazis

Recently, I have begun switching the posting of the really hard-hitting items to this blog and very soon thereafter, my blog problems began. Just visit some of my other posts of the last couple of weeks and you will see what I mean.

Of course, it was a couple of weeks ago that I published this one, whose relevance will be realized by reading it VERY closely:

If someone said your hero wasn't the man you thought he was, would you REALLY hear him out?

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These items have to do with the harrassment I have experienced revolving around my particular activism (inspired by first-hand knowledge of some of the issues):

Exposing a Goverment Disruptor and Infiltrator at Yahoo

I Have Lost My 40Th Or So Addy Due To NWO Net Force / Cointelpro Ops

DARPA's Information Awareness Office (IAO) to shut down (but TIA will march on) -

Who the hell is Booz, Allen, and Hamilton ?!?

Agent "Souljah" Smiley's Last Stand

PLEASE HELP - DEATH THREAT

Total Information Awareness Relies on Private Sector to Track Americans

Total Information Oppression: Now my mailing list has been killed!

Total Information Awareness, DARPA, and other Relevant STUFF

WHISTLEBLOWER UNDER HEAVY CYBERATTACK (25 Sep 2003)

IMPORTANT - BIG BROTHER ALIVE & WELL AT YAHOO?

SURVEILLANCE, CENSORSHIP, AND ESPIONAGE

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Consider this: the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which would later become the DEFENSE Advanced Research Projects Agency, developed the internet. It was a DOD project before it was a public forum, which would later be turned over to the private sector for "management." DARPA it is that houses the Information Awareness Office which, in turn spawned TIA, the Total Information Awareness effort, headed by one John Poindexter, an Iran-Contra Felon that, like so many others, escaped retribution and now sits high up on the pyramid, under George W. Bush.

Online activists have been thinking globally and acting globally. We need to act locally. Get off the internet and get involved in LOCAL politics. This is what 'grassroots' MEANS.

Blocking out your friends and family and local communities by isolating yourslef online and convincing yourself that you are, by such actions, involving yourself in community is the kind of self-deception that plays into the hands of the global fascist regime.

In the immortal words of the Cult of the Dead Cow, "Save yourself. Go outside. Do something!"

Thwarted lists of mine (lists that I, the owner, lost access to):

Whistleblowers

Arson-Salvage

Psy-Op

It all started here:

(taken from Long Overdue - a short auto-bio)

By 1999, I had been involved in a degree of online activism for about two years. I was just becoming aware of the level of online surveillance that occured, managed by the National Security Agency. The full extent of it would not be made plain to me until about three years later but what I had already found out necessitated resistance, I thought.

So we devised a plan to get millions of people, worldwide, to send out emails on October 21, 1999, that would contain a long list of known keywords in the NSA's Echelon dictionary. Echelon monitors phone calls and emails for known keywords and other 'suspect' patterns. If you mention the word 'bomb', for instance, a hundred times in a months, a human will be reading your emails and evaluating you as a potential threat. If you set up a Hotmail account and send an encrypted email, the same day, to Baghdad, a red flag most definitely will go up. I think you get the idea.

The alert we sent out globally managed to get translated into at least seven languages. Very soon, though I had conducted all of this via webmail, I was getting vaguely threatening emails in my home AOL account. I left family, house, and home in order not to endanger them and went underground for a while. I thought that I would be safe. What I would soon find out was that my interests had been recorded as a signature in some surveillance CPU. I was alright for about a week but when I got online on a public computer in Santa Cruz, California and began to merely catch up on news, suddenly a two-year period of intense harrassment would begin.

Jam Echelon Day had targetted the premier surveillance outfit in the world. What had I expected - that they wouldn't find me? We had brought awareness of Echelon from conspiranoia trash to the spotlight of Sixty Minutes. I had personally done an interview with the Village Voice. Yeah, they had figured out that Robert Kemp was Eric Stewart and I was on their shit list.

Today, according to the Patriot Act, such a fight to publicize a lack of American privacy is categorized as terrorism. We knew we would not jam up the computers but we knew that by getting people to participate we would raise awareness.

Over the next two years I would be harrassed and come to know the meaning of hell, at least my own personal one. When one is homeless, and one has few options, cornering such a person into certain situations becomes easy. Soon, I was experiencing sleep deprivation, constant inuendos by people I didn't recognize, attempts to hook me on methamphetamine, and on and on...

A woman who was a very close friend of mine for over a year, one day, told me she had been assigned to me. With the Aryan overtones that had managed to make their way into my life, I dropped her like a sack of potatoes and have not returned to California since. I went to Boulder, Colorado which turned out, as well, to be a mistake. While California is behavior modification central, Boulder is defense contractor central, where the harrassment is less subtle and more direct.

Here, near the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, near umpteen NRO, NGIA, CIA, NSA, and DOE contractors, I would happen upon a vein of research that would open a Pandora's box of revelations regarding 9-11 (Operation Two Towers) and...here is that "C" word...chemtrails.

It was at the Boulder RTD bus depot that I would receive the first in-person death threat that I had ever had. An Alabama boy (judging by his drawl) with war written all over him would say these words: "I am going to kill you."

Shopping protesters arrested for 'nothing'

2004-12-06T11:41:00.000-05:00

By TERRI SANGINITI / The News Journal

For the past four years on Black Friday, three Newark sisters have been trekking to the Christiana Mall to celebrate a global anticonsumerism movement called "Buy Nothing Day."

This year, they got arrested after police asked the women to leave.

Anna White, 30, said she and her sisters Laura, 28, and Rachel, 25, and their friend Terri Carter went to the mall about 11:30 a.m. Friday on their annual junket to not shop.

They were dressed in Santa hats and white T-shirts printed with the words "NOTHING - What you've been looking for." The back of the shirts read: "Ask me about NOTHING."

Buy Nothing Day began 13 years ago a way for people to engage in symbolic protest against the "frantic consumer binge" by refusing to shop for 24 hours, according to Adbusters Media Foundation, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based organization that sponsors the event.

The foundation is "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age," according to the group's Web site.

White said she doesn't work for Adbusters.

"I like doing quirky things like this," she said. "It seemed like a fun way to get people to think about alternative ideas."

The activists had fliers to hand out. But White said they would only do so if someone came up to them to ask what NOTHING is all about.

"We didn't want to violate the mall's soliciting rules," White said.

But one of the women was armed with a video camera, which violates mall policy.

A security guard told the women they would have to leave because they were, in effect, soliciting - a reaction.

White said she and her sisters then left the mall through the Lord & Taylor exit and headed to their car parked near J.C. Penney.

Outside, a state trooper told them that they were on private property and would have to leave.

En route to their car, White said they were surrounded by four or five state troopers who took them into custody and charged them with criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor.

"They handcuffed us and took us to the [state police] satellite office," White said. "I guess they thought if we let three people dress up in Santa Claus hats, then what's next."

But state police spokesman Lt. Joseph Aviola's version of the story differed.

"These people were in the mall and were observed talking to patrons and also had a camera in their possession," Aviola said. "They were asked by management to leave the mall and they refused twice. They were told if they didn't leave that they would be arrested."

Aviola said a trooper walked the women to their vehicle.

White said that never happened. She maintains that they were walking to their car when troopers arrested them.

"We don't understand because we were following directions to leave," she said. "I don't know how you can get to your car if you can't walk to it through the mall parking lot."

Aviola said mall security told police 20 minutes after the women were told to leave that they were still milling around in the parking lot. He said they were congregating around cars "with a tripod set up with a cord running from it and appeared to be videotaping in the parking lot."

White denied that.

"They showed up last year and were told not to come back, and they came back this year," Aviola said. "It's private property, and they were told if they don't abide by the rules they would be arrested."

Now, it's up to a magistrate to decide their fate Jan. 15. If convicted, the women could be fined $25 plus court costs.

"I definitely am up for it again next year, but I don't want to get arrested," White said. "That was not our intention this year, either."

Source: Delaware Online

Surfing the Blogosphere

2004-12-06T10:15:00.000-05:00

I have assembled what I considered to be the best recent posts from blogs (in English - I seem to get a lot of hits from Brazilian bloggers for some reason) that have linked to this one, including snips.

Enjoy!

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"The Thai government has dropped an estimated one hundred million paper origami birds in an unusual peace bid ..... the birds were dropped by military planes over the country's Muslim south after a surge of violence in the area."

See Origami Peace Bombs

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"Both Hannity and Coulter arrogantly insisted that we need no help fighting terrorism and Coulter added that Canada should be glad we let them share the same contintent."

See

I Love Canadians !

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"...Jacklyn, a trained paediatric nurse, had taken the fatal step of taking the children off the drugs, which had resulted in an immediate boost to their health and happiness ..... As a result she was branded a child abuser in court."

See New York's Guinea Pigs

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"Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found."

See 59 MILLION BUSH FANS CAN'T BE WRONG

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George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US environmental protection.

Bush Sets Out Plan to Dismantle 30 Years of Environmental Laws

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"It's interesting and frightening to compare the struggle during Che's (Guevera) lifetime (1950's and 60's) and the struggle today, in which indigenous people around the world are still having to resist big money interests, sometimes in the form of death squads, coming in to steal their land and their rights."

See suicide rate among indigenous tribes struggling against corporate greed rising at an alarming rate

U.S. admits torture used in interrogations

2004-12-05T11:34:00.000-05:00

Results become evidence, though illegal in U.S court
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Evidence gained by torture can be used by the U.S. military in deciding whether to imprison a foreigner indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an enemy combatant, the government concedes.

Statements produced under torture have been inadmissible in U.S. courts for about 70 years. But the U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of 550 foreigners as enemy combatants at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are allowed to use such evidence, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle acknowledged at a U.S. District Court hearing yesterday.

Some of the prisoners have filed lawsuits challenging their detention without charges for up to three years so far. At the hearing, Boyle urged District Judge Richard J. Leon to throw their cases out.

Attorneys for the prisoners argued that some were held solely on evidence gained by torture, which they said violated fundamental fairness and U.S. due process standards. But Boyle argued in a similar hearing Wednesday that the detainees "have no constitutional rights enforceable in this court."

Leon asked whether a detention based solely on evidence gathered by torture would be illegal, because "torture is illegal. We all know that."

Boyle replied that if the military's combatant status review tribunals "determine that evidence of questionable provenance were reliable, nothing in the due process clause (of the Constitution) prohibits them from relying on it."

Leon asked whether there were any restrictions on using torture-induced evidence.

Boyle replied that the United States never would adopt a policy that would have barred it from acting on evidence that could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks even if the data came from questionable practices like torture by a foreign power.

Source: York Dispatch

In Iraq, the US eliminates those who dare to count the dead

2004-12-05T11:27:00.000-05:00

You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is

Naomi Klein

12/04/04 "The Guardian " --

David T Johnson,
Acting ambassador,
US Embassy, London

Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating".

The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.

In April, US forces laid siege to Falluja in retaliation for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with US troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The reason for the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings across the country, triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. This information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA Today reported on April 11 that "Statistics and names of the dead were gathered from four main clinics around the city and from Falluja general hospital". 2) Arab TV journalists. While doctors reported the numbers of dead, it was al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya that put a human face on those statistics. With unembedded camera crews in Falluja, both networks beamed footage of mutilated women and children throughout Iraq and the Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The reports of high civilian casualties coming from journalists and doctors were seized upon by prominent clerics in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons condemning the attack, turning their congregants against US forces and igniting the uprising that forced US troops to withdraw.

US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during last April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. For instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New York Times last month, labelled Falluja general hospital "a centre of propaganda". But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks. When asked about al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya's reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed in Falluja, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, replied that "what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Falluja - but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around.

Eliminating doctors

The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military control. The New York Times reported that "the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumours about heavy casual ties", noting that "this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons". The Los Angeles Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers "stole the mobile phones" at the hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world.

But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well as a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was working in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four nurses and 35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of Falluja general hospital "had told a US general the location of the downtown makeshift medical centre" before it was hit.

Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was the same: to eliminate many of Falluja's doctors from the war zone. As Dr Jumaili told the Independent on November 14: "There is not a single surgeon in Falluja." When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was used: on entering the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized control of the al-Zaharawi hospital.

Eliminating journalists

The images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively from reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who had covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively been eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has been banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 11 US forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege. Al-Saadi's detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists. "We cannot ignore the possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job," the IFJ stated.

It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US aircraft bombed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of its location to US forces.

On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing José Couso, of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters. Three US soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, which alleges that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the Palestine hotel and that they committed a war crime.

Eliminating clerics

Just as doctors and journalists have been targeted, so too have many of the clerics who have spoken out forcefully against the killings in Falluja. On November 11, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the Supreme Association for Guidance and Daawa, was arrested. According to Associated Press, "Al-Sumaidaei has called on the country's Sunni minority to launch a civil disobedience campaign if the Iraqi government does not halt the attack on Falluja". On November 19, AP reported that US and Iraqi forces stormed a prominent Sunni mosque, the Abu Hanifa, in Aadhamiya, killing three people and arresting 40, including the chief cleric - another opponent of the Falluja siege. On the same day, Fox News reported that "US troops also raided a Sunni mosque in Qaim, near the Syrian border". The report described the arrests as "retaliation for opposing the Falluja offensive". Two Shia clerics associated with Moqtada al-Sadr have also been arrested in recent weeks; according to AP, "both had spoken out against the Falluja attack".

"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central Command. The question is: what happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies - the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.

Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.

Source: Information Clearing House

Anthrax: Whistle-Blower Crackdown Spreads

2004-12-05T11:17:00.000-05:00

A judge is ordering government workers to waive their confidentiality agreements with journalists. What impact will the controversial tactic have on the media's ability to report news?

Whistle-Blower Crackdown Spreads
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 5:49 p.m. ET Dec. 1, 2004

Dec. 1 - A hard-edged tactic used by a Justice Department special counsel to smoke out anonymous sources in a CIA leak case is about to be expanded to the 2001 anthrax investigation—despite profound misgivings within the department about the legitimacy of the practice.

As many as 100 FBI agents, federal prosecutors and other department employees are likely to be asked—possibly as early as the next few weeks—to sign broadly worded statements waiving any confidentiality agreements they had with journalists about the anthrax case, Justice officials tell NEWSWEEK. The waiver statement was recently ordered by a federal judge at the urging of lawyers for bioterrorism expert Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who has filed a lawsuit alleging that government officials leaked damaging personal information about him in an effort to connect him with the anthrax attacks.

The language is to be patterned on a similar statement distributed last year to White House officials and others in the investigation headed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney in Chicago, to determine who leaked the identify of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. Like the upcoming Hatfill waiver, the so-called “Plame waiver” was designed to be an end run around journalists’ claims that they are protecting the confidentiality of sources when they refuse to testify in leak investigations. The statement asserts that a government official who talked to the news media waives “any promise of confidentiality, express or implied” that was offered to them by a reporter, according to a copy of the Plame waiver obtained by NEWSWEEK.

It further authorizes any reporter with whom the official talked to disclose to investigators “any communications that I may have had … regarding the subject matters under investigation, including any communications made ‘on background,’ ‘off the record,’ ‘not for attribution,’ or in any other form.”

The Plame case, including the validity of such “waiver” statements, is headed for a showdown next week when a federal appeals court hears arguments about whether two reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, should be incarcerated for refusing to answer questions about their contacts with administration officials who signed the waivers. But largely overlooked is that the Plame waiver appears to be catching on as an accepted practice to pressure reporters to reveal their sources.

This is happening even though some top officials within the Justice Department have serious doubts about the waivers. Indeed, although it got little attention at the time, a Justice lawyer recently acknowledged to the judge overseeing the Hatfill suit that the theoretically voluntary waiver poses “significant issues” for the government, including the fact that they could well be construed as coercive by officials who are asked to sign them.

The lawyer, Elizabeth Shapiro, also questioned whether the waivers would even be effective in persuading a journalist to disclose confidential communications with a source. “I can’t imagine that the breadth of such a waiver would have significant meaning to a reporter,” she said, according to a transcript of an Oct. 7 hearing before U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who is on the bench for the Hatfill case.

“It’s very disturbing that this is starting to become used as a way to out the relationship between reporters and sources,” said Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer who is representing both Miller and Cooper in the Plame case. “On the face of it, [the waivers] are coercive. How could they be anything but?”

In the Plame case, special counsel Fitzgerald has persuaded a federal judge to hold both Miller and Cooper in contempt of court for refusing to testify about conversations they had with White House officials about Plame’s identify. (Plame, a former CIA undercover officer, is the wife of former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had become a critic of the president’s Iraq policy.) In pressing his case that both Miller and Cooper should be jailed if they don’t testify, Fitzgerald has invoked the waiver statements signed by the White House officials as evidence that whatever “reporters’ privilege” the journalists are claiming no longer applies.

But Miller and Cooper have countered exactly how Shapiro, the Justice Department lawyer in the Hatfill case, suggested they would: the waivers are meaningless. One reason is that White House officials were effectively compelled to sign them—and risked even losing their jobs if they did not, according to the journalists. “Whatever may have been said publicly or privately within the government to any source of mine that may have cajoled him or her to sign the form prepared by the government—and I am aware of public statements of the president himself urging all officials to cooperate with the investigation—does not affect my promise of confidentiality to my sources in any way,” Miller said in an affidavit submitted in the case. “I do not feel at all confident that such a form presented to individuals by their employer … is not signed under extraordinary pressure.”

Just how much pressure the government has used can be gleaned from the experience of one former White House official who, after the leaving the government, was still pushed repeatedly by the FBI to sign the waiver form. The former official, who asked not to be identified, said he refused to do so because “I didn’t think it was fair to the reporters. It struck me as a backdoor way to use pressure.” An arrangement between a reporter and a source “has to be all or nothing. It can’t be changed after the fact.”

At that point, the FBI agents called up the former official’s lawyer and stepped up the pressure, saying that other witnesses at the White House had signed the statements. “If he’s got nothing to hide, why won’t he sign,” one of the agents asked, according to the former official’s lawyer.

The new use of the Plame waiver stems from claims by Hatfill’s lawyers that government officials violated his rights under the Privacy Act by allegedly leaking damaging information about him—to NEWSWEEK, among other publications. (The lawsuit is separate from, and unrelated to, a libel suit filed by Hatfill against New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff that was dismissed by a federal judge last week.)

Although he was once described by Attorney General John Ashcroft as a “person of interest” in the deadly anthrax attacks, and was widely reported to be a principal focus of the investigation, Hatfill has never been charged in the case. Still, Hatfill lost his job with a government contractor and remains both unemployed and “unemployable” as a result of the widespread publicity he received in the matter, according to a source close to him.

In the civil suit, Hatfill’s lawyers demanded that the Justice Department conduct a vigorous leak investigation into who provided the news media with incriminating information about Hatfill. As a prod to make them do so, they seized on the idea of pushing Justice to distribute “Plame waivers” to a list of between 50 and 100 federal prosecutors, FBI agents and others who were working on the anthrax case.

Justice Department public affairs chief Mark Corallo said that no pressure will be put upon agents, prosecutors and others asked to sign the waivers in the Hatfill case. “We are simply the facilitators,” Corallo said. “The individuals who will receive these waivers will be informed they are under no obligation to sign them. It is totally voluntary, and no matter what their decision, it will not reflect on their employment.”

But Hatfill’s lawyers clearly have their own ideas. They intend to depose a long list of the agents and prosecutors who have worked on the anthrax case and intend to, they have indicated, target first and foremost any that declined to sign the waivers.

Source: MSNBC

[12/04/04] New in the News

2004-12-04T13:20:00.000-05:00

Returning Iraq Vets Tell All

Administration Official Threatens Venezuela

Sandinistas take giant steps forward

Do Not Forget About Latin America

20 Years After Bhopal, Women Survivors Globalize Fight for Justice

Red Cross: Guantanamo Tactics 'Tantamount to Torture'

Activists Crawl Through Web to Untangle U.S. Secrecy

Internet Critic of Texas Politician Has Right to Anonymity, Public Citizen Tells Court

Humboldt: Anti-logging activists to stand trial in Eureka

Audit: Halliburton lost track of U.S. property in Iraq

Homeland Security's Request For Student Data Stirs Concern

Arafat's successor tells media to lay off Israel

POT AND FEDERAL POWER

Group Seeks Criminal Investigation in Germany into U.S. War Crimes in Iraq

Wal-Mart Loves Unions (In China)

Pesticides in Coca Cola

Emissions double heatwave risk

Russian Air Force Prepared to Strike Foreign Bases Pre-emptively

FBI spying allegations supported by records

Former Guantanamo Detainees Release Report

UK minister criticises US over Guantanamo

History of Marijuana as Medicine

Wolves' Genetic Diversity Worryingly Low

More On Vote Rigging With Saudi/Enron Funds

The Astounding Franklin Coverup Scandal

Jail the War Party for Treason

Florida: Work For State Jobs Agency Sent Overseas

$100M Clergy Abuse Deal Brings Some Relief

Reclusive millionaire tops Schwarzenegger donors

How Bush plans to circumvent congress to ramp up covert paramilitary operations

Wild Horses to be Slaughtered

2004-12-03T14:56:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON -- December 1 -- During the end of year appropriations frenzy, U.S. Senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) inserted language into the Consolidated Appropriations bill to permit wild horses and burros to be killed and their meat sent abroad where it is eaten by people in upscale restaurants.

The measure, tucked in the massive omnibus bill, would undermine the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act by permitting so-called "excess" horses and burros to be sold at auction "without limitation." Killer buyers frequent these auctions to purchase animals for slaughter at one of the three remaining plants in the U.S. The equines are transported and killed under appalling conditions and their flesh, which cannot be sold for human consumption in the States, is sent overseas.

"The Burns amendment will open the floodgates for wild horses to be sold for slaughter," noted Marie Wheatley, CEO and president of the American Humane Association.

In 1971, Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (WFHBA) to ensure that wild horses and burros would be protected. The law was the result of public outrage at the discovery that hundreds of thousands of wild horses and burros were the victims of cruel extermination by ranchers who wanted the animals removed from public lands to make way for livestock. By the time the legislation passed, the population had decreased to only one percent of the estimated two million animals who roamed the West at the turn of the 20th century.

According to the federal government, the current population of wild horses is approximately 32,000, still far less than two percent of what the population had been, and the animals range across ten Western states, principally Nevada.

"Passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (AHSPA), currently pending in Congress, would undo this terrible injustice about to be inflicted on wild horses," said Chris Heyde, Policy Analyst, Society for Animal Protective Legislation. "A majority of Congress has cosponsored the measure, but has failed to enact it yet. The bill would stop the butchery of all horses, both wild and domestic, for sale abroad for human consumption."

The Society for Animal Protective Legislation (SAPL) was founded in 1955 when only two federal laws to protect animals existed. Since then, SAPL has worked for the successful enactment of over 15 additional federal laws. To learn more visit http://www.saplonline.org/.
Founded in 1877, the American Humane Association is the nation's only organization dedicated to protecting both children and animals. Visit http://www.americanhumane.org/ to learn more.

Source: Common Dreams News Center

Psy-Op: Military Uses Networks to Spread Misinformation

2004-12-03T14:45:00.000-05:00

The U.S. military is reportedly distributing misinformation to the media as part of a campaign of psychological operations. The Los Angeles Times uncovered how the military sent spokespersons to major news networks to deliberately lie about military operations in Iraq in an effort to deceive the Iraqi resistance. We speak with retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner. [includes rush transcript]

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The U.S. military is reportedly distributing misinformation to the media as part of a campaign of psychological operations. This according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. The paper has uncovered incidents where the military has sent spokespersons to major news networks to deliberately lie about military operations in Iraq in an effort to deceive the Iraqi resistance.

In one case, on Oct. 14, a Marine spokesperson appeared on CNN from Fallujah and said "Troops crossed the line of departure." CNN was soon reporting the battle for Fallujah had begun. In fact it wouldn't begin for another three weeks.

A senior Pentagon official told CNN that Gilbert's remarks were "technically true but misleading." It was an attempt to get CNN "to report something not true," the official said. The military claimed it wanted to see how Iraqi fighters responded to the so-called news report.

Several top officials told the LA Times that they see a danger of blurring what are supposed to be well-defined lines between the stated mission of military public affairs and psychological and information operations. One senior defense official told the paper "The movement of information has gone from the public affairs world to the psychological operations world. What's at stake is the credibility of people in uniform."

............................................................

Col. Sam Gardiner, retired Air Force Colonel. He has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, AirWar College and Naval War College.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: We are joined on the phone by Colonel Sam Gardiner. He's a retired Air Force colonel. He's taught strategy and military operations at National Air War College and Naval War College. We welcome you to Democracy Now!

SAM GARDINER: Good morning, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to this latest report?

SAM GARDINER: Well it's actually more of the same. Interesting to me that people would pick up on this right now because it was so pervasive before and during Gulf 2. This is just a small incident compared to what we have seen before. The real distinction, however, is in the past, most of these falsehoods, psychological operations, strategic communications, themes came from civilians. This is one of the first times when a military officer has actually and visibly crossed the line. And that's a big deal because the military is the only profession I know where lying is a criminal offense. In the uniform code of military justice, it is a court martial offense for an officer to tell a lie. And frankly, this lieutenant who talked to CNN is subjected himself to potential court martial.

AMY GOODMAN: Last night, watching FOX, the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich basically said whatever it takes to protect our troops.

SAM GARDINER: But Amy, we are supposed to be protecting democracy. The troops have taken an oath to protect democracy. And if we destroy democracy to protect the troops, something's gone terribly wrong. I think--I couldn't disagree more with Newt Gingrich. The other part of that, Amy, is as a former officer, this just is sort of goes to my essence. And that's the notion that an officer's word is his bond. Whether he is speaking to the troops, to other officers, or in public. When we cross the line, when you begin to not be able to trust the word of an officer, we have begun to destroy the military from within.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain this idea of psy-ops, psychological operations, how it's used abroad and what's happening now at home?

SAM GARDINER: Well, Amy, this has a very long tradition in the U.S. Military and in militaries in the world which is the notion that you use bad information or distorted information to target the enemy. Up until probably about 15 years ago, that notion was meant that it would be done on the battlefield. It became a growing idea within the military of a thing called information warfare which was sort of the concept that you would bring it outside the battlefield. And what's happened, and this is what's so serious, is that it has now been taken into the public airways and we can't tell whether or not we are getting the truth from the military or psychological operations. And I have to say frankly, I think, and again I would very strongly disagree with Newt Gingrich, because you don't have to--let's say that this is a valid notion, we wanted the bad guys in Fallujah to think we were coming early. That doesn't have to permeate and distort the worldwide media for that message to get across. That's the kind of thing that you deliver locally. They aren't communicating with the world. If you want to do it by attacks, if you want to do it, by leaflets, that's fine. But don't put it on CNN for all of us to hear.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think should happen right now about this information? I mean, the military at least in this report, being quite clear about what they are doing. That psychological operations is their new approach here at home and abroad. Or not their new approach, as you have pointed out in your own report on the analysis of stories that came out of Iraq from the military that were simply psy-ops, not true, going right to Jessica Lynch.

SAM GARDINER: I think the U.S. military ought not to be allowed to tell other than the truth to the media. The military has no business being in the strategic communications deception business. Let me just give you an example of what ought not to happen. There is, from the special operations command in Florida, an ad on the web right now for P.R. Firms to come and bid a proposal, do government work, so that they can do media operations that have a psychological dimension that, and I will quote the document, to be broadcast worldwide. Amy, the military ought not to do that. You know, this is the kind of thing that politicians do and in fact that was the way the administration controlled the message in the war was to send politicians down to do it. But when the guys in uniform begin to tell untruths, we have problems.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Sam Gardiner, I want to thank you for being with us. Colonel Sam Gardiner is a retired Air Force colonel. Thank you very much.

Source: Democracy Now

Also see PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror

Illegal to be Homeless

2004-12-03T14:30:00.000-05:00

Report targets escalating civil rights abuses against homeless people and identifies "meanest" cities

click here for the full report

WASHINGTON, DC- Today the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) releases Illegal to be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States, the most comprehensive study of homeless civil rights violations. This study is also the most up-to-date survey of current laws that criminalize homeless people and ranks the top "meanest" cities and states in the country. This report examines legislated ordinances and statutes, as well as law enforcement and community practices since August of 2003.

The National Homeless Civil Rights Organizing Project (NHCROP) — an effort of NCH, comprised of local advocates in communities across the country — has compiled quantitative and qualitative data samplings from 179 communities in 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. These cities and towns represent rural, urban and suburban areas of all geographic and demographic varieties across the United States.

This 2004 report finds Little Rock (AR), Atlanta (GA), Cincinnati (OH), Las Vegas (NV), and Gainesville (FL) to be the top five "meanest" cities in the United States for poor and homeless people. California is the "meanest" state, followed by Florida, Hawaii and Texas. Many of these communities have significant histories of violating the civil rights of homeless people and can be considered "repeat offenders."

Michael Stoops, Director of Community Organizing for the National Coalition for the Homeless, said, "There needs to be an end to the patterns of discrimination we have seen repeated in many of these cities, year after year."

In May 2004, Little Rock police implemented a 3-day notice warning in advance to clearing a camp. Police had targeted at least 27 homeless areas to force campers to clear out, and yet, only two months later in July of 2004, police raided a homeless camp during the day without notice, postings, or warrants and arbitrarily threw homeless people’s property into the nearby river. Conducting sweeps of areas where homeless people are living not only extensively opens the City up to potential lawsuits, but also actually does nothing to solve the underlying problems of homelessness. Soon, Little Rock public officials are threatening a massive sweep to remove homeless people as the Clinton Presidential Library opens on November 18.

The city of Fresno, California, authorized the construction of a barbed wire topped public "drunk tank," where people can be put on public display. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a homeless person was arrested for "dancing in the street." Tampa, Florida, arrested individuals for serving food to homeless people. Atlanta’s Ambassador Force, assisted by police, operates a "Wake Up Atlanta" team to roust homeless people from any public or private space and arrest them if there is a delay. And in the past year, the state of Hawaii passed a law that bans homeless individuals from living on all public property.

This report documents laws specifically enacted to target homeless people including anti-camping, anti-panhandling, and loitering laws, but also looks at police abuse of existing laws in an overly broad fashion in order to move society's problems into jails or at least out of sight. In the summer of 2004, CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace was arrested by the New York City Transit Police for arguing and charged with "disorderly conduct," an abused criminal charge that ensnares thousands of homeless people throughout the country. Mike Wallace was caught in a "abuse of power" faced every day by homeless people who are arrested for disorderly conduct for sleeping, speaking, or using public facilities.

According to this report, fifty-one of the cities studied have legislated new ordinances targeting homeless people since August of 2003. Fifty-seven of the cities surveyed conducted large sweeps or destroyed the campsites of homeless individuals. In addition, homeless people face the continual enforcement of existing laws, as well as the selective scrutiny of violating other statutes. This pattern and practice of legislating, targeting and enforcing laws against homeless people constitutes an infrastructure of criminalization. There has been no documentation of any voluntary repeal of an anti-homeless law in the past fifteen months, although several cities have been forced to change their laws as a result of lawsuits, and some have actually had to make large payments to individuals who have been discriminated against.

With unemployment rates still at peak levels, more people have become homeless, and as the economy has tightened, shelters and service-providing agencies face budget cuts and even closures. Though nearly all cities still lack sufficient shelter beds and social services, many continue to pass laws prohibiting homeless people from sleeping outside. Cities are attempting to make it illegal to perform life-sustaining activities in public, while at the same time refusing to allocate sufficient funds for housing, to legislate living wages, or to provide necessary health care, thus hindering these individuals’ basic civil liberties.

This country is building jails instead of creating affordable housing. By enacting the Bringing America Home Act (H.R. 2897—108th Congress) Congress can begin the process of preventing and ending homelessness. Donald Whitehead, Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, who is himself formerly homeless, said, "The criminal justice system is not an answer to the problems that homeless people face. We need solutions that go to the root causes of the issue – affordable housing, livable income, treatment and health care, and civil rights protection."

For more (including a list of the twenty meanest cities from the National Coalition for the Homeless), click here.

Who Rules Afghanistan?

2004-12-03T13:37:00.000-05:00

Who Rules Afghanistan
by Christian Parenti

It is noon in northern Afghanistan, Balkh province. The autumn sky is empty and bright. A tough 60-year-old farmer named Mamood sits for an interview in the shade of a tree. Surrounding us in all directions are fields of marijuana on the verge of harvest. The plants are tall, thick and fragrant, their dark green flowers glistening with potent oils.

Soon the crop will be cut, dried and beaten against linen in small rooms to extract the resin that makes hashish. It's dirty work that falls primarily to women and children. The rooms fill with dust; asthma is a common occupational hazard. In a month the farmers will sow these same fields with opium poppy. After each crop come the marauding gunmen who collect "taxes" of 20 percent on the harvest.

"In the past few weeks they've taken money, some vehicles and kidnapped a girl," says Mamood. "They work for the commanders. They take whatever they want and they will kill you if you try and stop them. When you hear 'commander' just think 'thief' or 'murderer.' That is all they are."

Mamood is not talking about the Taliban or Al Qaeda but rather about Afghanistan's mujahedeen warlords, or jangsalaran in Dari. These men are America's allies, central players in the international effort to rebuild a state in the world's third-poorest country.

These are the same men who killed 40,000-50,000 civilians during their factional fighting in Kabul between 1992 and 1994. Under their rule chaos reigned in much of the countryside: Militias raped, plundered and destroyed the economy. At times there were between ten and fourteen separate currencies circulating, each printed by a different commander. Whole villages fled; trade and agriculture broke down. As John Sifton of Human Rights Watch puts it, "What these guys did made Sarajevo look like kindergarten."

Now, instead of being treated as part of the problem and hunted down, the jangsalaran are being folded into government and given new power and legitimacy by the UN and the US-backed government of Hamid Karzai. The "commanders" now use titles like "security chief," "governor," "minister" or even "presidential candidate." International administrators justify the political inclusion of these mujahedeen commanders as "the price of peace."

Indeed, a return to the open factional warfare of the early 1990s is unlikely. But neither is Afghanistan headed toward real peace and prosperity. Instead, this country of 20-25 million inhabitants is an embryonic narco-mafia state, where politics rely on paramilitary networks engaged in everything from poppy farming, heroin processing and vote rigging to extortion and the commercial smuggling of commodities like electronics and auto parts. And while the Western pundit class applauds the recent Afghan elections, the people here suffer renewed exploitation at the hands of America's local partners.

Back under the tree in the marijuana fields, Mamood is joined by other farmers, who recount a litany of depredations.

"A few weeks ago I had two motorcycles stolen," says Saja Hudin, who also lives and farms in this rural community two hours from Mazar-i-Sharif. "I had a guest and we were going to work some of my land near Kudbarq. Two gunmen stopped us. I thought they were security or I would have tried to escape. They took both motorcycles and all my money. I was holding 12,000 afghani for a cousin. One of the men wanted to kill us, the other stopped him. Now I am in debt." Hudin says that one of the perpetrators was the nephew of a local commander, Shafi Dewana.

"Dewana means crazy," says another man in English.

Saja Hudin reported the theft to the authorities--but in Balkh province people like Crazy Shafi are the authorities. The new Karzai-appointed governor is Mohammed Atta, a powerful warlord and commander of the Seventh Corps of what UN disarmament experts politely refer to as "Afghan Military Forces." These are the private armies that now have government money and sometimes uniforms but are not part of the US-trained Afghan National Army. Crazy Shafi is one of Mohammed Atta's deputies.

"We had an audience with Governor Atta. I told him about the robbery," says Saja Hudin. "He said he'd tell Shafi to give back the motorcycles, but when I left, Crazy Shafi found me and threatened to kill me if I went back to the governor." The farmers explain that Shafi does not control this immediate area but holds sway along the road that leads to Mazar-i-Sharif.

"A month ago Crazy Shafi even took a girl who traveled through his area," says Saja Hudin. In a moment of naïveté I suggest to my driver and interpreter that we go find and interview Crazy Shafi.

"No," says the farmer Mamood. "He is really crazy."

"Yeah, go visit him and he will fuck all of you," says a farmer to peels of laughter from the visibly nervous crew of men under the tree. Unconvinced, I press the point.

"No! Are you crazy?" says my driver, Mobin, in English. "He will steal my car. Why do you think they call him crazy?" Then I realize it's a ridiculous proposal.

Back in Mazar, I track down a local translator with an NGO, who tells me more about the kidnapped girl. The young man, who recently returned from exile in Pakistan and has Western sensibilities, had a tryst with the woman. She was "modern" like him, a free spirit--"not a prostitute," he says, "but she had been with some men." He won't tell me her name.

Crazy Shafi saw the young woman as fair game. So he kidnapped her and raped and beat her for two days. Once released, she disappeared.

"Maybe she is in Uzbekistan or Pakistan," says the young translator. "Nobody knows." Later in the middle of a somewhat formal dinner with some of his colleagues, the young man leans over to me and flips open his cell phone. On the screen is the photo of the young woman, smiling, unveiled, looking over her shoulder. "That's the girl," he says in a depressed, almost drunken tone.

Commanders like Crazy Shafi do not restrict themselves to motorcycles, women and taxation. They also intimidate journalists, kidnap people for ransom and, according to rural Afghans whom I interviewed and to the Kabul-based Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, are engaged in widespread land seizures.

Some stolen plots belonged to refugees who had fled Afghanistan; others were traditional commons used by villages to pasture animals and gather firewood. The boom in drug crops, particularly opium poppy, has put a new premium on Afghanistan's limited arable land. "If you cannot defend your land, they will take it," explains Mamood.

Mazar-i-Sharif sits on a flat plain surrounded by distant mountains. It is an ugly, sprawling town, but it is filled with white doves, called kaftar. The doves congregate at the tomb of Hazrat Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed. People here say that any pigeon of a different hue will turn white within forty days of being set free in Mazar-i-Sharif. And indeed, there are no gray or even speckled pigeons here.

Many of the people who move to Mazar are not so easily transformed. As a prelude to becoming governor here, the warlord Mohammed Atta had his men lay siege to the home and offices of a rival, the provincial security chief Gen. Mohammed Akram Khakrizwal, who is almost universally acknowledged to be an honest man committed to the rule of law. Police loyal to Khakrizwal were driven away, and an armed standoff ensued for the next twenty days.

During the siege, Khakrizwal was resupplied with food and water by the small garrison of British troops stationed here, but the foreign soldiers were unable or unwilling to intervene further. Eventually some accommodation was reached and Mohammed Atta was appointed governor of Balkh province.

Now back on the job, the barrel-chested, thickly bearded Pashtun General Khakrizwal--in charge of a largely Tajik and Uzbek area--describes the real and very imperfect nature of his work: "We have security here in Mazar, but in the districts we have only 10 percent control. There are many serious crimes--murder, drug trafficking--but even more important, there are ethnic tensions between Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks as well as land and water conflicts. We do our best to stop any violence between these groups and between the political parties." The parties he refers to are Abdul Rashid Dostum's Jumbish and Atta's wing of Jamiat, the party once led by the lionized but actually quite vicious Ahmed Shah Massoud.

"Only some of the police are loyal to me," continues the general. "We lack the equipment we need, but I am trying to rebuild my forces." As for the standoff with Atta, the chief is simultaneously blunt and diplomatic. "Atta wants power. Now he is my boss." The general's flat smile says: Welcome to Afghanistan.

Mohammed Atta's offices are considerably more lavish than General Khakrizwal's. The mood inside this walled compound is one of intimidating leisure. Among the men waiting to meet Atta is a bohemian-looking Afghan film director named Wakil Negbin. He claims to have made the only Afghan action flick in years.

Atta's inner offices are spacious, lined with fine red Persian carpets and furnished with long beige couches and several awkwardly futuristic overstuffed lounge chairs. The governor is tall and lean, with closely cropped hair and beard. He wears a superb black business suit and gold Rolex, but the clothes seem to make him uncomfortable: he's still getting used to his new persona. We are served tea and pistachio nuts. Armed men guard the doors.

I ask Governor Atta about the charges that his deputies, like Crazy Shafi, are pillaging the countryside, involved in the drug trade and refusing the UN's requests to disarm.

"I have no military forces anymore; I am just the governor," says Atta, staring at me blankly. "My concerns now are reconstruction and security, building schools and clinics." In fact, it's well-known that Atta is still in command of his troops and that he refuses to demobilize according to the UN-set schedule. And, like most governors, he keeps most of the taxes he collects.

As for his recent military clashes with his rival Dostum: "We have had our disagreements. Dostum is very aggressive, and when I was commander of Seventh Corps I had to defend my people when he attacked."

Was Atta's siege of Gen. Akram Khakrizwal's offices also a defensive move? "What happened there," says Atta in a tone of feigned apology, "was that some of Akram's men were caught smuggling narcotics. So we had to arrest them and fire some of the police. But that incident was really very minor."

As we talk, a dapper Afghan journalist enters and without a word starts shooting video on an ancient TV camera. The man has a finely sculpted goatee, wears a brown velvet Nehru jacket, creased black slacks and spotless designer shoes. After a few minutes he leaves. The interview goes on for another hour.

That night when Balkh state TV--the only channel available in Mazar--starts its three-hour nightly broadcast, the dandy journalist with the goatee and funky jacket appears behind a desk reading the news. Top item: Governor Atta's schedule. Prominently featured: Governor Atta's "cordial meeting" with a journalist from "an important American magazine." The newsreader explains, "The two discussed the progress of reconstruction in Balkh and the importance of Governor Atta's work." My translator is also named as being in attendance. The broadcast has the creepy, stilted feel of old-school dictatorship. We leave Mazar at dawn.

Back in Kabul, the presidential elections are approaching. At 1:30 am, the night before the vote, I am awakened by a huge and close blast. The photographer Teru Kuwayama and I run out to investigate. The dark streets are empty except for packs of feral dogs. A dust storm has risen from the rubble of the city's largely destroyed west side. Soon we find the source of the explosion: Two rockets have hit our immediate neighborhood, exploding above a UN media compound. There are no casualties, but the US troops guarding the area are jumpy. "Put the fucking camera down!" shouts a soldier from behind some floodlights. We go back to bed.

The next day more violence is expected, but none materializes. Instead of tragedy, the vote plays out as farce. By late afternoon, it is clear that there is massive vote fraud under way. Most of Karzai's fourteen opponents are calling for a boycott and suspension of elections. Journalists are running back and forth across town to find the most egregious technical errors and blatant fraud. The crisis is getting so bad that President Karzai calls a restricted, invitation-only press conference.

I am rolling with some scruffy American photographers. We are not on Karzai's list, which seems to include no more than a dozen news organizations. But soon we are joined by other journalists all demanding to get in. Finally the press officer relents and we are slowly passed through layer upon layer of DynCorp security guards and across the desolate gardens of the classy but run-down Afghan presidential palace, which looks like an old European hotel. In a small, wood-paneled conference room we meet Karzai.

"The commission will look into all of these problems, but I am sure the vote was free," says the cloaked and karakol-wearing Karzai after a few jokes and greetings.

Throughout the rather intimate press conference, Karzai invokes the image of "a poor, hungry, cold Afghan woman waiting to vote. She cannot be intimidated." Questions are sparse. Karzai seems like a nervous jollier, trying to play down the election debacle with jokes about Lise Doucet from the BBC. "Where is she with her sharp questions? I am ready." He repeatedly asks for questions from "my friend Ahmed Rashid." The distinguished Pakistani journalist has one query but declines to respond to the president's further cajoling.

Finally I am called on. Citing specific examples, I ask about allegations that Karzai's campaign has used fraud and intimidation--in short, warlord tactics. The president grows angry. "What report? Human Rights Watch? They do not understand Afghan culture. Tribal culture, it is very democratic. Tribal elders cannot be intimidated. They do not know what is really going on. The tribal elders from Khost were just here. They signed a document saying everything is OK."

The UN, which essentially ran the elections, likewise does its best to calm the situation with deft spin and dulcet tones from its smoothly effective spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva. "I am not just trying to be some happy guy. I admit there are problems. But there are also genuine efforts to sort this out. Let's give it some time," he says, stopping politely on the way out of the crisis meeting, his hand holding my shoulder as if we were old friends. Before long, the crisis is being beamed back at us by the international media as a matter of "a few glitches" or "questions about ink."

Karzai insists that democracy and freedom are winning in Afghanistan. He denies that he will buy off his opponents and the warlords with cabinet posts, governorships and ministries. Never mind that this is already his government's modus operandi.

Given current dynamics, Afghanistan will remain a weak and fragmented state, easily controlled by outside powers, its economy broken, its common people mercilessly exploited, suffering from a low-simmering but ineffective insurgency. One place to see this is unfolding is on the border with Pakistan.

The road from Kabul east to Jalalabad is an abysmally rutted dirt track that ascends and descends in switchbacks up high mountains, with thousand-foot drops at the road's edge, then passes down through some parched valleys into a desert strewn with huge boulders. The trip takes a full day. Roadside bombs are not uncommon here: Numerous NGO workers and journalists have been killed on this stretch of road in the past year.

This is Nangarhar province, which juts like a peninsula into Pakistan and contains the infamous Al Qaeda stronghold of the Tora Bora mountain range. Most of the province's districts are classified as no-go areas for internationals. All the NGOs have left. The place is crawling with US Special Forces, out hunting. When their convoys of Humvees and white Toyota trucks lurch past on the dusty back roads, they look like landlocked pirates, wearing costumes of mismatched camouflage, Afghan scarves, beards and assorted bush hats.

A security expert in Jalalabad tells me that there's been at least one IED attack every day for a month, and that the local US garrison, or Provincial Reconstruction Team, was recently besieged for five hours straight. Even so, US casualties around here have remained fairly light.

Officially the Taliban are a big problem, but in private, security experts acknowledge that the Taliban and their allies are isolated and under pressure from both US troops in Afghanistan and Pakistani forces across the border. Once backed by the Pakistani state, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are now said to rely only on a network of retired Pakistani intelligence officers.

Although villagers warn that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are around and looking for targets, the insurgency seems to have little support. "They are in Pakistan, but they come into Nangarhar to attack," says a local journalist. "The people here do not want them."

On our second day of driving we leave Jalalabad and head northeast into the district of Kuna. This is poppy country, occasionally traversed by Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters but thoroughly controlled by two warlords: Hazrat Ali, the security chief, and Haji Din Mohammed, provincial governor.

In Khakhi village, we meet with a group of four maliks, or village leaders. All of them farm opium poppy and were mujahedeen during the anti-Soviet jihad, but now all speak openly of their hatred for the commanders.

"They have big houses and the best land. They will take a man's daughter if they want. And what do we have? Nothing," says Askar Khan, who sits hunched over on a wood and rope cot beneath a grape arbor. "All of us were wounded fighting the Russians. We fought for America, and now we are jobless. That is not good."

Another man shows me some gruesome scars and says he was taken to Indiana for treatment back when he was fighting the Red Army. Once these mujahedeen liked the United States, but now they are growing resentful. "Why does America give these commanders positions in government?" asks Askar Khan, the chief malik, who is slumped on the cot.

The poppy crop has already been harvested, but some of the local farmers show me big brown blocks of opium and offer me hash. They say that drought and hunger forced them to grow poppy. "Hazrat Ali controls the smuggling," says one of them. The malik Askar Khan explains, "There are no schools and no clinics in our district. The NGOs just spend money on themselves. When people are hungry they commit sins. If we only grow wheat, we will starve."

The men allege that Mirwais Yasini, head of Afghanistan's Counter Narcotics Directorate, has a deal with Hazrat Ali. When the harvest is done, Hazrat Ali tells the farmers to burn their fields, then Mirwais Yasini can tell the British (who are officially charged with running a war on poppy) that progress is being made. Counternarcotics officials in Kabul vigorously deny these charges.

The trip back to Kabul is as slow and dusty as the trip out. After a few hours of driving we see an overloaded passenger bus with luggage stacked on the roof. The vehicle sways and bounces toward us. Then it sways just a bit too far and topples over the edge of the road into a gully below. A cloud of dust rises and momentarily obscures the wreck.

The bus sits on its roof. Three men are trapped beneath it. About a dozen other people lie around in various states of injury: a young man limps by, his crushed foot wrapped in a bloody scarf. An old man lies by the road moaning. The men underneath the bus are dying; the crowd is growing frantic.

"Help! Push the bus! My brother is trapped," begs a desperate man from down in the gully. The trapped men are migrant laborers, Afghan refugees whose families live in Pakistan. The crowd of men starts pushing the bus back and forth, hoping to tip it one more rotation. But chaos and panic reign, there is no coordination to the effort and the bus weighs too much. A flatbed truck tries to back into an edge of the bus to flip it over but it is no use. The trapped men are being crushed. Someone says one has just died.

The whole debacle is a pathetically fitting, if clichéd, microcosm of Afghanistan's current state: The bus and these people mean little to the great powers that have appointed themselves masters of this place. Out here in the desert and mountains there is no democracy, no nation building, no NGOs, no American patrols--only an appallingly bad road that once, long ago, was a paved link to the world and one of Afghanistan's few symbols of modernity and national progress. Now the only sign of something like state power is a local commander's young gunman with a bayonet on his AK-47. He commandeers a car and orders it to take one of the wounded back to Jalalabad.

Source: The Nation

Name that Extremist

2004-12-02T22:25:00.000-05:00

I'll give you one guess.

New Items from Memes.org [11/30/04]

2004-11-30T22:47:00.000-05:00

(Feb 21, 2002) PR firm hired by Pentagon to lie to the media - Sunday, November 21, 2004

The Billboard Liberation Front - Sunday, November 21, 2004

Returning Amputees to Battlefield - Sunday, November 21, 2004

The Black Mesa Syndrome: Indian Lands, Black Gold - Sunday, November 21, 2004

THE ROCKEFELLER/HERITAGE CONNECTION - Saturday, November 20, 2004

THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY - Saturday, November 20, 2004

Living in a Fantasy World - Thursday, November 18, 2004

Rejoice Not... - Thursday, November 18, 2004

Free Market Anarchism - Thursday, November 18, 2004

Knights Templar seek papal apology for 700 years of persecution - Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Leo Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor - Tuesday, November 30, 2004

(12-19-01) Garlic Blasts Worst Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria - Saturday, November 27, 2004

Industrial Hemp Makes Sense For Us by Joe American Horse - Saturday, November 27, 2004

The Geometry of The Universe - Saturday, November 27, 2004

Saudis, Enron money helped pay for US rigged election - Friday, November 26, 2004

Aeronet (Chemtrails) - Thursday, November 25, 2004

‘Mystery Cloud’ Appears Over Eastern U.S. And Canada - Thursday, November 25, 2004

Noon turns to night as cloud blacks out sun (China) - Thursday, November 25, 2004

Chemtrails And Radio Propagation - Some Observations - Thursday, November 25, 2004

Iran: U.S. Won't Take YES for an Answer

2004-11-30T22:11:00.000-05:00

Thwarted U.S. May Seek Lone Push on Iran Sanctions
By Louis Charbonneau and Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran escaped U.N. censure over its nuclear program but Washington, which accuses it of seeking an atomic bomb, said on Monday it reserved the right to take the case to the Security Council on its own.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a U.N. watchdog, passed a resolution approving Iran's week-old suspension of sensitive nuclear activities as part of a deal between Tehran and the European Union .

Crucially, and in line with Iranian demands, the resolution described the freeze as a voluntary, confidence-building measure and not a legally binding commitment.

Its passage meant Tehran, which denies it wants the bomb, had achieved its immediate goal: to prevent the IAEA from referring it to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.

"This resolution which was approved by the IAEA was a definite defeat for our enemies who wanted to pressure Iran by sending its case to the U.N. Security Council," President Mohammad Khatami was quoted by state radio as saying.

The United States believes Iran is playing games with the international community and wants to see it referred to the Council. U.S. envoy Jackie Sanders told the IAEA's board of governors that Washington reserved the right to go it alone.

"Quite apart from the question of how this board chooses to handle these matters, of course, the United States reserves all of its options with respect to Security Council consideration of the Iranian nuclear weapons program," she said.

Sanders also issued a stern warning to companies, including multinationals, against exporting weapons-related equipment to Iran. The United States "will impose economic burdens on them and brand them as proliferators," she said.

The statement reflected U.S. frustration at Iran's repeated success in evading a referral to the Council, despite what IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has called persistent unanswered questions and a "confidence deficit" over Tehran's activities.

Even if Washington took the issue to the Council it could expect strong resistance to sanctions, including from permanent members Russia and China which both have vetoes.

And a senior U.S. official who declined to be named cast doubt on how far Washington could push the issue on its own.

"I don't know if we're in a good enough position to take it to the Security Council (but) it's a shot across the (Iranian) bow," he said

Sanctions on any European company exporting equipment to Iran could also fan resentment at a time when mending fences with Europe was a priority, he said.

DIPLOMATIC POKER

A spokesman for President Bush said: "The implementation and verification of the agreement is critical."

"Iran has failed to comply with its commitments many times over the course of the past year and a half... We will see, as time goes by, if they are now finally going to comply in full."

The developments capped five days of diplomatic poker over the terms of a deal Iran struck with the EU this month to suspend all activities relating to enriching uranium. Enrichment generates fuel for use in nuclear power plants or, potentially, in weapons.

ElBaradei said Iran had withdrawn a request to continue research on 20 enrichment centrifuges, and inspectors had installed surveillance cameras on Monday to monitor them.

"We have already verified these 20 centrifuges and they are under agency surveillance... We have now therefore completed our verification of Iran's decision to suspend enrichment- and reprocessing-related activities," ElBaradei told reporters.

"Good progress has been made (but there's), still a lot of work to be done. The ball is in Iran's court," he said.

Iran says it has a "sovereign right" to enrich uranium and is only suspending such work to show its peaceful intentions.

BRITISH EMBASSY STONED

In Tehran, some 500 members of a conservative volunteer militia pelted the British embassy with stones and firecrackers on Monday, protesting that the Iran-EU deal was a sell-out.

The mainly black-bearded men burned a British flag and tried to charge the embassy gates but were pushed back by riot police. "Nuclear energy is our right," the protesters shouted.

At the IAEA in Vienna, there were signs of mounting exasperation from Western diplomats over Iranian tactics.

Several told Reuters that Iran had only firmly committed not to test the centrifuges until Dec. 15, when the EU and Iran meet to discuss a long-term nuclear deal.

Those talks will focus on trade cooperation and peaceful nuclear technology that the Europeans are willing to offer Tehran if it gives up uranium enrichment for good.

Washington, diplomats say, will not block such a deal but it will not actively support it either -- a stance that some experts believe will eventually kill the agreement. A previous EU-Iran deal collapsed earlier this year. (Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in London, Paul Hughes in Tehran, Carol Giacomo in Washington)

Source: Reuters

Also see Stop Iran War, a Yahoo mailing list whose list description is as follows:

This group is for NEWS (for educational and research purposes) directly related to the coming Israel/US war of aggression on Iran, one which could lead to regional or even world nuclear war; STRATEGY to mobilize citizens and peace/antiwar, activist and third party movements against such war; ANNOUNCEMENTS of protests, actions, etc. It is moderated to keep messages on topic and down to 3-6 a day. The first two dozen messages present a good overview of the issue. Read Antiwar.com daily to keep up on latest war news. Create a local activist group to work on the issue, if there is not one willing to do so. Members names will remain private. Archives are public.

Secret memo deepens Thatcher link to coup plot

2004-11-30T21:57:00.000-05:00

David Leigh and David Pallister
Saturday November 27, 2004
The Guardian

The Obiang regime in Equatorial Guinea yesterday jailed 11 foreign mercenaries for up to 34 years, as documents surfaced further implicating Mark Thatcher in a British-led coup attempt which has caused international embarrassment.

A long memo from the Old Etonian mercenary Simon Mann, said to be at the heart of the plot, has been seized by authorities in South Africa. A court there ruled this week that Mark Thatcher will face trial in April.

The memo, written before the coup attempt, refers to "MT", identified to the South African prosecutors as Mr Thatcher by a key witness.

The document taken from the plotters' computer says Mr Thatcher's role must be kept secret, or the coup would be at risk: "If involvement becomes known, rest of us, and project, likely to be screwed as a side-issue to people screwing him".

Mann goes on to say that even if mercenaries succeeded in taking over the oil-rich state, news of Mr Thatcher's role "would particularly add to a campaign post-event, to remove us". He then emphasises: "Ensure doesn't happen."

These disclosures follow the leak of phone records revealing Mr Thatcher was also in contact with another of the alleged British plotters, businessman Greg Wales, at a crucial moment before the coup bid.

Mr Thatcher is facing a further five months on bail, reporting daily to police from his suburban Capetown villa.

Mr Thatcher, who claims he thought he was financing a helicopter for an air ambulance, gave an interview to Vanity Fair saying: "I feel like a corpse that's going down the Colorado river and there's nothing I can do about it."

The Simon Mann memo now seen by the Guardian does not implicate the British in the coup. Instead, in what seems to be a detailed plan for a takeover, the ex-SAS officer seems preoccupied with getting US backing, to prevent his mercenaries being chased out of Africa once their role is discovered.

"We must follow plan to ensure that neither US government nor oil companies feel that their interests are threatened."

He says the US oil firms, who dominate Equatorial Guinea "must be made to believe very fast that the thing is in their interest; their staff safe; and that we are very powerful."

In Equatorial Guinea yesterday, President Obiang's regime drew back from imposing death sentences. Nick du Toit, the South African arms dealer who this month retracted a confession alleging torture, drew a 34-year jail sentence.

Four other South Africans whom prosecutors said were mercenaries received 17 years each in prison. Three others were acquitted.

Six Armenian air crew received jail terms of between 14 and 24 years each.

Would-be president Severo Moto was sentenced in absentia to 63 years. Eight other opposition exiles were similarly sentenced to 52 years each.

Source: UK's Guardian

Related:

Spain 'backed E Guinea coup plot'

Exiled leader in Spain denies any link to coup attempt

[11/30/04] New in the News

2004-11-30T14:45:00.000-05:00

China and India starts dumping US Dollar and buy Euro Currency

Wal-Mart Low Prices Traced To Taxpayer Subsidies

Journalist Obtains Copy of $29 Milllion Check Used to Rig 2004 Election

Washington, DC: Updates on homeless shelter action

Lockheed Corp: The Nexus of Terror

Cuyahoga County, Ohio: 93,136 More Votes Tallied than Registered Voters

US building army base near Iran border

Russians suggest foreign help in attack

Fiscal Collapse in America: Privatization and Neo-Feudalism

25,000 US Casualties in Iraq

Four British Mercenaries Killed in Baghdad's Green Zone

Paradigm Signs 15 Year Contract To Provide Mil Sat Coms To NATO

Russia Successfully Tests Anti-Missile Defense

FDA Admits Genetically Engineered Crops Contaminate the Food Supply

Chavez in Iran for Cooperation, Oil Talks

Claims by Pro-Bush Think-Tank Outrage Eco-Groups

Turk lawmaker says US in Iraq worse than Hitler

2004-11-29T18:58:00.000-05:00

By Gareth Jones

ANKARA (Reuters) - The head of Turkey's parliamentary human rights group has accused Washington of genocide in Iraq and behaving worse than Adolf Hitler, in remarks underscoring the depth of opposition in Turkey to U.S. policy in the region.

The United Sates embassy said the comments were potentially damaging to Turkish-U.S. relations.

"The occupation has turned into barbarism," Friday's Yeni Safak newspaper quoted Mehmet Elkatmis, head of parliament's human rights commission, as saying. "The U.S. administration is committing genocide...in Iraq.

"Never in human history have such genocide and cruelty been witnessed. Such a genocide was never seen in the time of the pharoahs (of ancient Egypt), nor of Hitler nor of (Italy's fascist leader Benito) Mussolini," he said.

"This occupation has entirely imperialist aims," he was quoted as telling the human rights commission on Thursday.

Elkatmis does not speak for Turkey's government but he is a prominent member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a centre-right grouping with Islamist roots which has become increasingly critical of U.S. actions in Iraq.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul played down Elkatmis's comments but defended Turks' right to speak freely.

"In open societies everybody can say what they want," Gul told reporters.

"Regarding U.S.-Turkey relations we can comfortably discuss any subject," he added.

The U.S. embassy in Ankara rejected Elkatmis's accusations.

"EXAGGERATED CLAIMS"

"Such unfounded, inaccurate, exaggerated claims are not good for relations, especially at a time of strain when Turkish public opinion is so critical of what the United States is trying to do in Iraq," one U.S. diplomat told Reuters.

Tellingly, Elkatmis's comments, which might have sparked outrage in many Western countries, drew barely a flicker of interest in Turkey, where opinion polls point to a growing tide of anti-American sentiment.

Turkey has been especially disturbed by the recent U.S. offensive against insurgents in the city of Falluja in which civilians also died and mosques were damaged.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan relayed Turkish concerns over the Falluja offensive in two recent telephone calls to U.S. President George W. Bush and to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Elkatmis accused U.S. forces of deliberately targeting mosques and schools in Falluja.

Washington says the Falluja campaign was necessary to bring the Sunni Muslim city back under the control of the central Baghdad government ahead of planned Iraqi elections in January.

The U.S. diplomat said Elkatmis had overlooked the fact that Iraqi insurgents like those in Falluja had abducted and beheaded a number of Turkish truck drivers in recent months.

Underlying Turkish criticism of U.S. policy in Iraq is the fear that Kurds in the north of the country may use the general turmoil as an excuse to seek independence from Baghdad, a move which could reignite separatism among Turkey's own Kurds.

Source: Information Clearing House

Dollar Declines for Seventh Week Against Euro, Sets Record Low

2004-11-29T18:50:00.000-05:00

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) - The dollar fell for a seventh straight week against the euro, reaching a record low, amid speculation central banks of the major economies will tolerate the U.S. currency's decline.

Traders also sold dollars on concern foreign investors and central banks may reduce holdings of U.S. assets. Bank of England Chief Economist Charles Bean said international investors are unlikely to keep buying U.S. assets indefinitely, resulting in a ``possibly substantial'' drop in the dollar.

``The key is the lack of fear by the U.S. dollar bears of any intervention'' by central banks, said Enrico Caruso, chief trader at currency hedge fund Tempest Asset Management in Newport Beach, California. ``It seems the market is convinced we will test the $1.35 area before finding a pain threshold for the European Central Bank.''

Against the euro, the dollar lost 2.1 percent this week to $1.3297 at 5 p.m. in New York yesterday, according to electronic currency-dealing system EBS. It set a record low $1.3330 yesterday. The seven-week losing streak was its longest since January. The dollar fell 0.5 percent this week to 102.59 yen, dropping as low as 102.01 yesterday, the weakest since January 2000. It fell for a ninth straight week against the yen.

The U.S. currency fell to the record yesterday after China Business News reported Chinese central bank official Yu Yongding said his country had trimmed its holdings of U.S. Treasuries. He later denied making the statement.

Echoing Greenspan

Bean's comments to business leaders in Colchester, England, two days ago echoed those of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who said at the European Banking Congress in Frankfurt on Nov. 19 that foreigners may tire of financing the record U.S. current-account deficit.

The U.K. holds $134.6 billion in U.S. Treasuries, according to the Treasury Department.

The Fed's holdings of Treasuries on behalf of foreign central banks and official institutions fell in the week ended Nov. 24 by $1.062 billion to $1.061 trillion. It was the first decline since the week ended Oct. 13.

``There's no reason to be brave right now'' and buy dollars, said Robert Sinche, head of currency strategy at Banc of America Securities LLC in New York. Given the ``tacit approval'' from policy makers that the dollar needs to drop, ``why would you get on the other side of it?''

Sinche projects a dollar drop to $1.35 per euro early next year. A weaker dollar has helped U.S. companies that sell products in Europe such as Gillette Co., which said the U.S. currency's drop boosted sales in the third quarter. The dollar has lost 32 percent against the euro since the start of 2002.

DaimlerChrysler

DaimlerChrysler AG, the world's fifth-largest carmaker, said the dollar's decline against the euro will reduce the earnings of the Mercedes-Benz luxury car division. European stocks fell yesterday on concern about a weaker dollar.

``We weren't prepared for the dollar to be at this level,'' Thomas Weber, the DaimlerChrysler management board member responsible for research, told journalists in Frankfurt this week. ``It will influence the results at Mercedes, and 2005 won't be an easy year.''

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet yesterday said he doesn't welcome ``excessive'' currency moves.

``I want to reiterate my recent statement that excessive moves on foreign-exchange markets are unwelcome,'' Trichet said at a press conference after a seminar for Latin American central banks in Rio de Janeiro.

Chinese Selling Reported

Yu, a Chinese monetary policy committee member, said the news report about reducing holdings in Treasuries was ``distorted,'' in a statement on the Web site of the Institute of World Economics and Policies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where he is a director.

China, the second-largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries to $180 billion, China Business News said. The country's central bank declined to comment on the report. China's holdings of Treasuries rose to a record $174.4 billion at the end of September, according to the Treasury Department.

``The real risk is that the sharper and the quicker the dollar falls, that these investors pull out pretty quickly from U.S. markets,'' said Mitul Kotecha, global head of currency research in London at Calyon, the investment banking unit of Credit Agricole SA.

Chinese international reserve assets were a record $514.5 billion in September, accounting for about 15 percent of the world's total, excluding holdings of gold, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Russian Reserves

Russian central bank official Alexei Ulyukayev said this week that Russia may trim the share of dollars in its foreign- exchange reserves. Russian foreign currency and gold reserves totaled $113.1 billion in the week ended Nov. 12.

The central bank keeps about a third of its reserves in euros and the rest mainly in dollars, central bank Deputy Chairman Konstantin Korishchenko said in an interview on Nov. 3.

Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters in Tokyo yesterday the currency market needs careful watching. Japan must act on any unusual moves, Tanigaki said.

The Bank of Japan, at the ministry's direction, sold a record 32.9 trillion yen ($320 billion) in the year ended March 31 to stem the currency's gain.

The gap in the U.S. current account, the broadest measure of trade, was a record $166.2 billion in the second quarter. A wider deficit means more dollars need to be converted into other currencies to pay for imports.

``The market has gone a little bit carried away'' with the dollar's slide, said Tania Kotsos, a currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets in London. Kotsos forecasts the dollar to gain to $1.30 per euro and trade at 103 yen at the end of the year.

Source: Bloomberg

Revealed: how Britain was told full coup plan

2004-11-29T18:18:00.000-05:00

· Straw failed to act on warning
· Foreign Office kept silent over oil plot

Antony Barnett and Martin Bright
Sunday November 28, 2004

Britain was given a full outline of an illegal coup plot in a vital oil-rich African state, including the dates, details of arms shipments and key players, several months before the putsch was launched, according to confidential documents obtained by The Observer.

But, despite Britain's clear obligations under international law, Jack Straw, who was personally told of the plans at the end of January, failed to warn the government of Equatorial Guinea.

The revelations about the coup, led by former SAS officer Simon Mann and allegedly funded in part by Sir Mark Thatcher, son of the former Prime Minister, will put increasing pressure on the Foreign Secretary to make a full statement in Parliament about exactly what the UK government knew of the putsch and when they knew it.

This weekend in a statement, the Foreign Office said: 'We do not comment on intelligence issues. But ministers and officials in the FCO acted promptly on receipt of relevant information.' Last week, The Observer reported that Straw ordered a change to evacuation plans for British citizens in Equatorial Guinea after receiving news of the coup.

Officials added that Straw and African minister Chris Mullin were personally told of the plot on Friday 30 January.

In December 2003 and January 2004 two separate, highly detailed reports of the planned coup, from Johann Smith, a former commander in South African Special Forces, were sent to two senior officers in British intelligence and to a senior colleague of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, according to the documents seen by The Observer .

The new claims raise questions about Straw's recent parliamentary answers in the Commons. In August officials flatly denied any prior knowledge of the plot, but earlier this month Straw was forced to admit that the government was informed in late January. On 17 November he admitted his department had received 'confidential information' on the plan, but played down its significance, saying in a parliamentary answer that the reports contained nothing that 'significantly' added to rumours of a possible coup reported in the Spanish media.

However, the documents seen by The Observer gave names of many of the South African mercenaries involved in the coup who have now been sentenced for their roles. Most significantly, the January report warned: 'These actions are planned to take place in mid-March 2004.' The alleged plotters were arrested on 7 March en route to Equatorial Guinea.

The reports passed to UK intelligence and marked strictly confidential concluded: 'Knowing the individuals as well as I do, this timeline is very realistic and will provide for for ample time to plan, mobile, equip and deploy the force.'

The revelations of Britain and America's prior knowledge of the plan to topple the oppressive regime of President Teodoro Obiang raises questions about whether they ignored clear UN conventions designed to protect heads of state against violent overthrow. There have also been claims that western government were keen to see regime change in the oil-rich state because it suited their strategic and commercial interests.

Smith last week gave a statement to lawyers acting for the government of Equatorial Guinea. He had been tipped off about the coup by two former military colleagues who were recruited to overthrow Obiang by Nick du Toit, a mercenary who was last week given a 34-year jail sentence for his role in the coup,

In his statement, seen by The Observer, Smith said: 'I considered it my duty to warn the authorities in the US and England because some of their nationals might be killed. I submitted a report in December 2003 of what I had discovered to Michael Westphal of the Pentagon [in Rumsfeld's department]. I expected the US government to take steps to warn Equatorial Guinea or to stop the coup. This was also my expectation as regards the British government which I warned through two SIS [Secret Intelligence Service, i.e. MI6] people I knew, and to whom I sent the report by email, also in December 2003 to their personal email addresses.'

In January Smith received more detailed information about the plot from former colleagues. He said: 'After preparing and sending my December report I received further information ... and put this in a second report which I sent by email to the same people as the first one: Michael Westphal of the US and British SIS contacts.'

Smith gave his statement after being detained in the state's capital, Malabo, on the order of the country's national security officer.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram said he will be calling on Straw to make a full statement in parliament.

'This raises more questions regarding the accuracy of the information given by the Foreign Office,' he said. 'The more they fail to give straight answers, the more suspicions are raised.'

Smith, who claims he has received death threats since the plot was thwarted, said there was no response from British or US authorities to his warnings: 'The only thing that happened was that the US authorities froze the Equatorial Guinea money with the Riggs Bank in USA.'

Westphal, the Pentagon adviser who received Smith's report, is one of Rumsfeld's most trusted lieutenants. The former marines officer is currently the Pentagon's deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence in charge of special operations and combating terrorism and was previously responsible for African affairs.

Source: The Observer

Also see Mark Thatcher charged in alleged coup plot and US, UK Knew Of African Oil Coup Plot, Kept Silent

Deride and Conquer

2004-11-29T18:10:00.000-05:00

The Politics of Victimization

[Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some parallels between her work and the reaction of many Democrats to the election.-- Mathew Gross]

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did they beat me?”

And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.

They will tell you, every single day.

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.

Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will never be worthy).

And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.

How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.

First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don’t do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don’t do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don’t resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you’ve learned, and that you aren’t going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it’s better than the abuse.

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don’t know how.

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.

Source: Mathew Gross

2004: An Epic Year of Betrayal

2004-11-29T14:30:00.000-05:00

2004: An Epic Year of Betrayal
posted by Reverend Chuck0 on Saturday November 27 2004 @ 10:37AM PST

LIBERAL MASOCHISM AND ITS BOUNDS: STILL UNKNOWN
2004: An Epic Year of Betrayal
FROM THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION OF FORTUNE 500 KILLERS

The amount of insult and betrayal those on the center-right-to-left-liberal spectrum will take seems to have few limits. Below, the Federation surveys one year's worth of pre- and post-election betrayal from the Democratic Party. By its end, we hope the Federation rank-and-file and sympathizers agree that the time has arrived for all those on this spectrum to abandon this Party.

The year began with phony "anti-war" center-rightist Howard Dean leading in the Democratic Party primaries. The conservative, rabidly pro-business Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) panicked in response. Their two picks, war criminals and "heroes" (the latter their term, not ours), Wesley Clark and John Kerry, lagged pathetically behind in the polls. Both Clark and Kerry had difficulty articulating firm stances on the Iraq war. Clark's criticisms of the war jibed poorly with prior effusive fall statements supporting not only the war effort, and not only members of the Bush cabinet, but also his registration as a Republican throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Kerry, meanwhile, took to baiting Dean's "anti-war" stance, a variant of which he would later adopt, and which the Republican Party (accurately) used to characterize him as a "flip-flopper."

By summer, Dean had earned undeservedly the "anti-war" label, despite never being "anti-war" in principle. Rather, he simply disliked the "unilateral" way in which the Bush Administration carried out the war -- bypassing the United Nations and NATO. The invasion having finished by Summer 2003, however, Dean remained as hawkish as most of his fellow candidates. The occupation, they argued, had to continue, in spight of journalistic and official reports on the impending difficulties and long-term hostilities to military occupation, permanent establishment of military bases, and private US contracting of Iraqi industry.

Still, Dean played the "anti-war" role marvelously, and his public persona admittedly contained more magnetism than the cardboard Kerry, Clarke, Gephardt, and Joe "Joe-Mentum!!!" Lieberman combined. Scared, the DLC began a concerted campaign to take Dean down.

DLC machinations from many corrupt characters within the organization lasted right up to the disastrous Iowa caucus, in which Dean placed third, and pretty much derailed his chances of winning the nominations. As Dean recounts in his recently released campaign memoir, "You Have the Power," DLC co-founding member, star, and former President Bill Clinton placed a wave of influential phone calls to Dean supporters during the months prior to the Iowa caucus, urging them to throw their support to Wesley Clark. Clinton's rationale? A homophobic one. Dean, declared Clinton, had "forfeited his right to run for President" because he had signed a bill in Vermont as governor permitting civil unions. This homophobic position would repeat itself during the Kerry 2004 campaign, when Clinton urged, albeit unsuccessfully, Kerry to embrace the proposed federal gay marriage ban.

Other DLC elements, however, also worked actively to portray Dean as an unstable radical. The DLC's flagship publication labeled him "misguided," "an aberration," and an "activist" who was "defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home." Other DLC bankrollers, meanwhile, founded ad hoc groups that aired negative ads in Iowa that attacked Dean from the faux-left, noting his NRA endorsements and support for NAFTA, among other positions that betrayed the "progressive" persona he attempted to present. The torrent of attack ads and underhanded DLC background activity from the likes of Clinton and his ilk effectively doomed Dean's candidacies (as did the fact that most of his supporters were activists of the credit card sort, unable to realize that political mobilization extends beyond the world of inane political blogs and button clicking).

With Dean neutralized, however, one anti-war candidacy soldiered on -- that of Dennis Kucinich, who opposed the war in principle throughout and called for an end to occupation within 6 months. As Democratic candidate after Democratic candidate dropped out of the race, and as the Yale war criminal ascended and locked up the required electoral votes for the nomination, Kucinich nonetheless declared that he would stay in the race until the Democratic National Convention (DNC), so as to influence the Democratic Party's platform and to allow principled anti-war voters an outlet and voice.

But as the DNC date approached, Kucinich's independence appeared to wane. In a public speech that evoked reflexive pity from so many who watched it, Kucinich endorsed his party's pro-war candidate, John Kerry, in the weeks before the DNC, despite having throughout his campaign declared the Iraq war *the* central issue. "Unless we have a firm and unshakeable resolve for John Kerry, we will have no opportunity to take America in a new direction," he declared. "Unity is essential." Kucinich repeated this later in the fall of 2004 with a video on his website that implored supporters to "close ranks." "Do we have differences of opinion? Yes. But the time is over to continue talking about those," he remarked elsewhere at "breakfast in my backyard."

Meanwhile, Kucinich delegates at the convention predictably felt dejected. Initially, the man for whom the had devoted much time and energy intimated that he would "release" them, paving the way for their robotic votes for John Kerry. Later, after impassioned (and tearful) testimonies from his delegates, Kucinich changed his mind, and told his delegates to "vote their conscience." Good enough. Most ended up voting for Kerry anyway. What did they receive in return for their candidate and most of their delgates' support for Kerry? Little. Despite the generally symbolic role of the platform in modern politics (G.W. Bush in 2000 famously bragged that he had never read the GOP platform), seventeen Kucinich platform demands were dropped in exchange for a borderline nonsensical statement with no resemblance to exit strategy or impending pullout. It pledged to remove troops "when appropriate so that the military support needed by a sovereign Iraqi government will no longer be seen as the direct continuation of an American military presence." Missing from the platform was support for Palestinian rights, LGBT rights, and a repudiation of the pre-emptive war doctrine in principle and as executed in Iraq.

"I ask you, are millions of anti-war/anti-occupation Americans welcome in the Democratic Party? If such voters are indeed welcome, I urge you to demonstrate this by permitting debate within the Party on the war and occupation issue, both in Miami and in Boston," wrote Jessie Jackson, before months of campaigning for a candidate who said nary a word about the exponential proliferation of the racist prison-industrial complex, increasing poverty as a result of Bill Clinton's welfare reform, or black male unemployment, now over 50% in New York City.

The Federation appreciates Congressman's Kucinich's past efforts with the exception of his abominable anti-choice positions (which he has since reversed and to which he shows no signs of returning). But still, Dennis, fuck you. How spineless.

The Convention itself was a nervous affair for many attending. As Nation corresondent John Nichols reported, 80-90% of the attending delegates declared themselves anti-war. Those trying to express such a view quickly recieved a muzzling. Charles Underwood, the only Minnesota Kucinich delegate to vote for Kucinich ultimately, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!: " I am just very disappointed that had there is no ability to express any hope for peace on the floor of this convention. We’ve had our signs confiscated, we’ve had our scarves for peace – you know – Delegate For Peace, confiscated. We’ve had people that tell us to sit down and be quiet."

Meanwhile, that 80-90% heard zero speeches from the candidates matching their point of view, and in fact, two gung-ho militaristic ones. Said Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards to the anti-war delegates: "We will always use our military might to keep the American people safe. And we, John and I, will have one clear unmistakable message for al Qaeda and these terrorists. You cannot run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you." Ooooh.

DISSENT SQUASHED

Having neutralized Dean and Kucinich, the two major voices of dissent in the Party (one superficial, one genuine), Kerry embraced the pre-emptive war doctrine on live national television during the Presidential debate, all while declaring alternately that the Iraq war was a "mistake," and all while expressing support for continued occupation. Classification as flip-flopper worked beautifully for the GOP.

Meanwhile, Kerry allowed a growing number of war criminals to assist his crafting of foreign policy advice. Richard Holbrooke, secretary of state to Jimmy Carter and green-stamper of additional arms shipments to Indonesia during the Suharto regime, wrote many rapid-response memos on Kerry's web site. Holbrooke's actions during the Carter administration occurred as Indonesian repression of East Timor reached genocidal levels. Kerry's other foreign policy appointee, Rand Beers, crafted the notorious Plan Colombia, which Kerry took the lead in boosting through the legislature towards the tail-end of the Clinton Administration. Plan Colombia allocates billions of dollars in military aid (monetary and supply) to the country's right-wing government. Though Plan Colombia is ostensibly for defoliation of coca crops (which have devastated the peasant economy), investigative reporting has linked it to violent repression of trade unionists. Colombia is now the top site for trade unionist murders in the entire world. Kerry supporters threw fits when informed of these facts. A particularly obnoxious twit and self-described "political junkie," one Karl Tobias Steel, denied Holbrooke's relationship to Kerry, claiming he could not find the link through his Google searching, and therefore it couldn't be true. He might have tried johnkerry.com or washingtonpost.com. You're not very politically up-to-date, Karl. But you are junkie. And lame.

Kerry's loss did not surprise the Federation, which continued to maintain that the lack of any positive economic and social program would result in marginal attraction to a pro-war candidate that appeared to most people as nothing more than Bush-lite. When all the hype about the "youth vote," "e-activism," "buses to Ohio," and "house DVD parties" cleared so tragically and so pathetically on election day, the pious Kerry-Edwards supporters in tears, the Federation, antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, Press Action, Counterpunch, Ralph Nader, and a handful of other sources emerged vindicated.

THE BLEAK FUTURE

But those on the center-right-to-left-liberal spectrum still aren't learning. Nicholas Kristof, just days after the November disaster, urged additional incorporation of religion. Bill Clinton homophobically decried Kerry for not being even more homophobic, for the latter had not taken his advice and openly supported the state-level gay marriage ban propositions. Chat room and bulletin board rumbling suggested a drive for a Hillary Clinton Presidential DLC run in 2008.

Meanwhile, the Democrats continue their self-destruction. Recently, they nominated pro-war, anti-choice, anti-gay marriage Nevada bigot Harry Reid for Senate Minority leader. Reid received slightly under a 30% rating from NARAL, the largest abortion rights group in the country. Reid's nomination came after months of cheap Nader-baiting, in which Democrats and liberals accused Nader's run of threatening abortion rights. Comparable bile directed against the anti-choice Reid's nomination for Senate Minority leader, however, does not appear to exist, even though Reid's elevation to one of the most influential Senate positions will determine the strength or the weakness of Democratic oppostion to federal judicial appointments.

The most morally reprehensible action, however, comes with the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. Much of the mainstream press describes him as "moderate." Gonzales, however, wrote the infamous memos essentially authorizing the Bush Administration to flout international humanitarian law as expressed in the Geneva Convention. So what have the liberals done? The ACLU "won't take an official position." Pro-war Democrat Charles Schumer opined: " "It's encouraging that the president has chosen someone less polarizing." And Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, chimed in, pithily and tellingly, as follows: "I like him."

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

Some might recommend "reforming the Democratic Party from within." Many Nader bashers adopted this line, claiming that if Nader would only run as a Democratic candidate for the party's Presidential nomination, he could do oh-so-much to influence the party. Yet the examples of Dean and Kucinich have shown us what happens when one makes such attempts -- relentless attacks, backstabbing, and silencing. Reformism within the Democratic Party, at this point, seems a hopeless endeavor.

The Federation calls for a clean break from the Democratic Party and a new third-party politics that caters to those 80-90% of DNC delegates, so rudely betrayed by their Convention, and to the 40% of eligible voters who didn't bother to vote. It is time for an end to a bankrupt fusion politics that continues to sell us out election after election. Future pamphlets with expound on these new solutions and alternatives in far greater detail.

Source: Infoshop News

[11/26/04] New in the News

2004-11-26T13:18:00.000-05:00

Two opponents of the US occupation assassinated in Iraq

High Court to Weigh Medical Marijuana Laws

Bush Orders the CIA To Hire More Spies

Two More Top CIA Officials Resign - NY Times

War on terror 'vanishes from agenda'

Gold hits new 16-year high

SAS joins US forces in major Iraq offensive

Washington, DC: Activists Occupy School to Protest Homeless Policies

Karl Rove's White House "Murder, Inc."

Saudis, Enron money helped pay for US rigged election

The CIA's Role in Venezuela's 2002 Failed Coup

2004-11-26T11:46:00.000-05:00

By: Eva Golinger - VenezuelaFOIA.info

On April 12, 2002, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer stated:

“Let me share with you the administration's thoughts about what's taking place in Venezuela. It remains a somewhat fluid situation. But yesterday's events in Venezuela resulted in a change in the government and the assumption of a transitional authority until new elections can be held.

The details still are unclear. We know that the action encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis. According to the best information available, the Chavez government suppressed peaceful demonstrations. Government supporters, on orders from the Chavez government, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors, resulting in 10 killed and 100 wounded. The Venezuelan military and the police refused to fire on the peaceful demonstrators and refused to support the government's role in such human rights violations. The government also tried to prevent independent news media from reporting on these events.

The results of these events are now that President Chavez has resigned the presidency. Before resigning, he dismissed the vice president and the cabinet, and a transitional civilian government has been installed. This government has promised early elections.

The United States will continue to monitor events. That is what took place, and the Venezuelan people expressed their right to peaceful protest. It was a very large protest that turned out. And the protest was met with violence.”[i]

On that same day, U.S. Department of State spokesperson Philip T. Reeker, claimed:

“In recent days, we expressed our hopes that all parties in Venezuela, but especially the Chavez administration, would act with restraint and show full respect for the peaceful expression of political opinion. We are saddened at the loss of life. We wish to express our solidarity with the Venezuelan people and look forward to working with all democratic forces in Venezuela to ensure the full exercise of democratic rights. The Venezuelan military commendably refused to fire on peaceful demonstrators, and the media valiantly kept the Venezuelan public informed.

Yesterday's events in Venezuela resulted in a transitional government until new elections can be held. Though details are still unclear, undemocratic actions committed or encouraged by the Chavez administration provoked yesterday's crisis in Venezuela. According to the best information available, at this time: Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans gathered peacefully to seek redress of their grievances. The Chavez Government attempted to suppress peaceful demonstrations. Chavez supporters, on orders, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors, resulting in more than 100 wounded or killed. Venezuelan military and police refused orders to fire on peaceful demonstrators and refused to support the government's role in such human rights violations. The government prevented five independent television stations from reporting on events. The results of these provocations are: Chavez resigned the presidency. Before resigning, he dismissed the Vice President and the Cabinet. A transition civilian government has promised early elections.

We have every expectation that this situation will be resolved peacefully and democratically by the Venezuelan people in accord with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The essential elements of democracy, which have been weakened in recent months, must be restored fully. We will be consulting with our hemispheric partners, within the framework of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, to assist Venezuela.”[ii]

Why re-cite these statements here? These statements from the highest levels of the U.S. Government show the prepared version of the events that took place during the April 11-12 coup d’etat against Venezuelan President Chávez. Moreover, these revealing statements now prove, in light of documents recently obtained from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that this prepared version of events was knowingly false and made with the intention of deceiving the international community in order to justify a violent overthrow of a democratic government.

The White House and the State Department both claimed that the Chávez government had provoked violence and actions that resulted in the President’s alleged resignation. They also asserted that the Chávez government had fired on unarmed, peaceful protesters and that the Venezuelan military and police had refused orders to “support the government’s role in human rights violations”. The U.S. Government referred to the protests and actions of that day as though they were spontaneous, unplanned events. The U.S. Government has also continued to deny to this day any involvement whatsoever in the April 2002 coup d’etat.

However, there is a vast amount of evidence that has surfaced since the coup demonstrating that the events on April 11, 2002 were entirely premeditated by a sector of the opposition intent on overthrowing the Chávez government. Furthermore, my own investigations have provided a plethora of evidence proving the U.S. involvement in the coup on various levels. Most revealing on the Venezuelan front was a news program on Saturday morning, April 12, 2002, “24 Horas” with host Napoleon Bravo. On that program, Bravo interviewed Vice-Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo, a professed coup leader, and Victor Manuel Garcia, Director of the polling company CIFRA who claimed to have represented the “civil society” during the coup. Both Molina Tamayo and Garcia gave a jaw-dropping, detailed account of the events leading up to the coup and those key Venezuelans involved, including crediting the private televisions stations for their complicity and aide. Their testimony, along with Chacao municipal mayor Leopoldo Lopez of the Primero Justicia political party and Napoleon Bravo’s own admissions of complicity in the coup, provided plenty of proof that the overthrow of Chávez was a premeditated event.

Later, an extraordinary and award-winning documentary by filmmaker Angel Palacios, “Puente Llaguno: Claves de un Masacre”, revealed how the Venezuelan private media had manipulated and distorted the events that unfolded on April 11, 2002 in the opposition march, which resulted in widespread violence and death. The documentary also provided sufficient proof that snipers unrelated to the Chávez government had provoked the violence in the opposition march that justified the forced removal of Chávez from office. Furthermore, the documentary succeeded in proving that a well-planned military-civilian coup d’etat had taken place that day and that those involved were connected to the highest levels of the U.S. government.

But the evidence of actual U.S. involvement in the coup itself remained scarce up until recently. On www.venezuelafoia.info, I have posted hundreds of documents that evidence the intricate financing scheme the U.S. government has been carrying out in Venezuela since 2001, that includes financing well over twenty million dollars to opposition sectors. The funding of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental entity in the U.S. financed entirely by Congress and established by congressional legislation in 1983, has provided more than three million dollars since late 2001 to opposition groups, many of which were key participants in the April 2002 coup. And in June 2002, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), set up an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, allegedly for the purposing of helping Venezuela to resolve its political crisis. The OTI in Caracas has counted on more than fifteen million dollars in funding from Congress since June 2002 and has recently requested five million more for 2005, despite the fact that it was only supposed to be a two-year endeavor. All evidence obtained to date shows that the OTI has primarily funded opposition groups and projects in Venezuela, particularly those that were focused on the August 15, 2004 recall referendum against President Chávez.

I have written other articles explaining the intervention model applied through NED and USAID in Venezuela. This method of intervention is very sophisticated and complex, as it penetrates civil society and social organizations in a very subtle way and is often either undetectable or flimsily justified by the concept of “promoting democracy”, which is what the NED claims to do around the world, despite evidence to the contrary. The mere fact in Venezuela that the NED has financed exclusively anti-Chávez groups and those very same organizations that were involved in the April 2002 coup shows that “democracy” is far from the NED’s intention.

But the CIA intervention in Venezuela is of the crudest, simplest kind. Top secret documents recently obtained and posted on www.venezuelafoia.info show that in the weeks prior to the April 2002 coup against President Chávez, the CIA had full knowledge of the events to occur and, in fact, even had the detailed plans in their possession. An April 6, 2002 top secret intelligence brief headlining “Venezuela: Conditions Ripening for Coup Attempt”, states, “Dissident military factions, including some disgruntled senior officers and a group of radical junior officers, are stepping up efforts to organize a coup against President Chávez, possible as early as this month, [CENSORED]. The level of detail in the reported plans – [CENSORED] targets Chávez and 10 other senior officers for arrest…” The document further states, “To provoke military action, the plotters may try to exploit unrest stemming from opposition demonstrations slated for later this month…”[iii]

So the CIA knew that a coup attempt would take place soon after April 6, 2002, and moreover, they knew the plan would include Chávez’s arrest and an exploitation of violence in the opposition march. In other words, they knew the plans before the coup occurred and surely they knew the actors involved, many of whose names are probably in the censored parts of the top-secret documents. One could assume that if the CIA had the detailed plans in their possession in the weeks prior to the coup it was because they were associating and conspiring with the coup plotters. So, when Ari Fleischer and Philip Reeker made those statements on April 12, 2002 on behalf of the U.S. Government, they did so with full knowledge that a coup had taken place, Chávez had been arrested and the violence in the opposition march, which they attributed to Chávez, had actually been a premeditated part of the coup plot. The top secret documents that prove this information show they were sent to the U.S. Statement Department and the National Security Agency, which means frankly, the White House knew what was happening all along.

Furthermore, the CIA documents make no mention of any attempts to have Chávez forcibly resign from office. The CIA warnings indicated as early as March 5, 2002 (which is the date of the earliest document provided) that a coup was on the rise and even hinted that prospects for a successful coup were limited. The CIA rightfully felt the opposition was too disperse and divided to successfully overthrow Chávez. But the concept that Chávez had “resigned” as the White House and State Department “confirmed” on April 12, 2002 was merely a set-up, a false claim made with the intention of deceiving the U.S. public and the international community. Remember that the U.S. stood practically alone in the world in its endorsement of the coup-implemented Carmona Government, which it later weakly condemned but only after the coup came tumbling down and the U.S. realized it needed to save face quickly.

A top secret CIA document from April 14, 2002 shows concern that Latin American governments will view U.S. foreign policy as “hypocritical” because of its sole endorsement of the Carmona coup government. The CIA also seems surprised that the region of Latin America so quickly rejected the coup in Venezuela and that the Carmona government “stunningly collapsed”, which demonstrates a possible out-of-date view of the hemisphere and a failure in intelligence gathering and analysis. In fact, the CIA never imagined the coup would buckle because of support for Chávez – their analysis all along showed possible failure due to lack of opposition unity and hasty actions. This is a very important point, because it demonstrates that although the CIA was involved in the coup plotting and the collaborations with dissident military factions and opposition leaders, it was fairly detached from the reality of Venezuelan society.

The CIA’s intelligence failures in Venezuela were apparently repeated during the oil industry strike later in 2002 and the guarimba destabilization attempt, an old-school CIA tactic applied in Chile and Nicaragua. Both of these harsh actions injured the Venezuelan economy and affected the government’s international image, but failed in their goal to oust President Chávez. The NED’s and USAID’s tens of millions of dollars in financing to build and maintain the opposition movement and finance the recall referendum campaign against President Chávez also failed to achieve their mission. In fact, all of these bungled attempts by the U.S. government and its marionette opposition movement have served to strengthen Chávez’s support within Venezuela and paint him as a strong and solid international leader.

Now that some of the top-secret documents have surfaced that show the CIA’s complicity and involvement in the April 2002 coup, it leaves one to wonder what is next on the agenda. In September 2001, shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, President Bush unconditionally authorized former CIA Director George Tenet’s “Worldwide Attack Matrix”, which targets leaders and prominent figures in 80 countries around the world for assassination. The authorization of the Worldwide Attack Matrix provided the CIA with a virtual carte blanche to conduct political assassinations abroad, justified under the “war against terrorism”. The “Attack Matrix”, a top secret CIA document, authorizes an array of covert CIA anti-terror actions that range from “routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks”.[iv] The plans give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in history. Some analysts have indicated that Venezuela is possibly included in the plans.

The recent assassination of Venezuelan Prosecutor Danilo Anderson, conducted in a style reminiscent of CIA operations, could be setting the stage for future political murders. History shows that when the CIA fails to remove a target via non-lethal means, more desperate measures are taken. Despite the fact that the Venezuelan government and its supporters appear to have foiled the CIA numerous times already over the past few years, vigilance, intelligence and increased security measures should become a priority.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/04/20020412-1.html

[ii] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/9316.htm

[iii] http://www.venezuelafoia.info/CIA/SEIB_04-06-02-pre-Coup-conditions_ripen/CIA-04-06-02.htm

[iv] http://www.i2osig.org/cia.html

Source: Venezuela Analysis

Scalia: founding fathers never advocated the separation of church and state

2004-11-26T11:41:00.000-05:00

Scalia in shul: State must back religion
By URIEL HEILMAN

US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used an appearance at an Orthodox synagogue in New York to assail the notion that the US government should maintain a neutral stance toward religion, saying it has always supported religion and the courts should not try to change that.

Speaking at a conference on religious freedom in America on Monday hosted by Manhattan's Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in North America, Scalia said that the founding fathers never advocated the separation of church and state and that America has prospered because of its religiousness.

"There is something wrong with the principle of neutrality," said Scalia, considered among the court's staunchest conservatives. Neutrality as envisioned by the founding fathers, Scalia said, "is not neutrality between religiousness and nonreligiousness; it is between denominations of religion."

Scalia cited early examples of support of religion in the public sphere by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, the last of whom went so far as to argue at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 for the institution of daily prayers.

Today, Scalia noted, the government exempts houses of worship from real-estate tax, pays for chaplains in Congress, state legislatures, and the military, and sanctions the opening of every Supreme Court session with the cry, "God save the United States!"

"To say that the Constitution allows the court to sweep away that long-standing attitude toward religion seems to me just wrong," he said. "I do think we're forgetting our roots."

Scalia's speech, at a conference marking the 350th anniversary both of Jews in America and of Shearith Israel, elicited a standing ovation.

Scalia was nominated to the nine-member Supreme Court in 1986 by president Ronald Reagan to fill the seat vacated by William Rehnquist, who became the chief justice after Warren Berger retired. Now, with speculation that Rehnquist is on the verge of retirement after a recent diagnosis of thyroid cancer, Scalia may be the leading candidate to take his place.

It is widely believed that President George W. Bush will appoint a staunch conservative as chief justice if he gets the chance, and the only other Supreme Court justice considered sufficiently conservative is Clarence Thomas, appointed by president George H.W. Bush.

Originally from New York, Scalia wore a black skull cap as he addressed the congregation with his back to the ark.

"The founding fathers never used the phrase 'separation of church and state,'" he said, arguing that rigid separation of religion and state – as in Europe, for example – would be bad for America and bad for the Jews.

"Do you think it's going to make Jews safer? It didn't prove that way in Europe," he said.

"You will not hear the word 'God' cross the lips of a French premier or an Italian head of state," Scalia said. "But that has never been the American way."

Most establishment Jewish groups, however, are staunch supporters of church-state separation. Earlier this month, for example, the American Jewish Committee was part of a coalition that won a lawsuit to block a Florida program allowing state aid to go to parochial schools. In 2000, the Anti-Defamation League led several Jewish groups in criticizing vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman for talking too much about God on the campaign trail.

Scalia said expunging religion from public life would be bad for America, and that the courts, instead, should come around to most Americans' way of thinking and to the founding fathers' vision for the US. He noted that after a San Francisco court last year barred the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools because it includes the phrase "under God," Congress voted nearly unanimously to condemn the decision and uphold use of the phrase.

Continued1 2 Next »

Source: The Jarusalem Post

Geomagnetic Manipulation

2004-11-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

Aeronet (Chemtrails)

‘Mystery Cloud’ Appears Over Eastern U.S. And Canada

Noon turns to night as cloud blacks out sun (China)

Chemtrails And Radio Propagation - Some Observations

A Sense of Urgency

2004-11-24T23:13:00.000-05:00

A Sense of Urgency - a woman whose heart AND mind are both in the right place...

[11/24/04] New in the News

2004-11-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

G. Gordon Liddy: listening to Hitler "made me feel a strength inside I had never known before"

Tension rises as China scours the globe for energy

The Election Fraud Whitewash Begins

If bin Laden was dead, Would the U.S. admit it?

Venezuela's Chavez gets rock star welcome in Spain

President Hannibal Lector & the Thing That Ate the Constitution

Propaganda in a Democratic Society

American Fascism

Like Father Like Son

School orders boy to cover up t-shirt

Venezuela, Colombia May Build Oil Pipeline To Supply China

China Rocks The Geopolitical Middle East

Ads back Schwarzenegger for president

Fallujah - What The Media Won't Show Americans

John McCain's 'Global Warming' Hearings Blasted by Climatologist

Outsourcing of jobs is accelerating in U.S

GOP poised to repeal food labeling law

USA military success in Iraq greatly exaggerated

China tells US to put its house in order

A Salmon Sleuth's Disturbing Find

The Project for the New American Century

How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer

Venezuelan Assassination blamed on 'U.S.-trained terrorists'

2004-11-24T10:42:00.000-05:00

Bomb kills Venezuelan prosecutor of failed coup leaders
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:43 p.m. ET Nov. 19, 2004

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez’s spokesman on Friday accused “terrorists” training in Florida of being behind the assassination of a top prosecutor who intended to try backers of Venezuela’s 2002 coup.

Danilo Anderson was killed by two explosions that tore through his SUV as he was driving in the capital just before midnight Thursday. The killing shook this oil-rich South American nation and raised the specter of further violence.

As authorities called for calm, hundreds of mourners, some weeping and others angrily shouting “Justice!”, watched while a coffin bearing his body was brought into the attorney general’s office building in Caracas.

Information Minister Andres Izarra said the assassination of Anderson — known among Venezuelans as the “super prosecutor” — was clearly aimed at derailing his investigations and prosecutions of those who supported the coup, in which 19 people were killed and almost 300 wounded.

Izarra blamed Venezuelan exiles in Florida, echoing Chavez’s earlier accusations that Cuban and Venezuelan “terrorists” were training in Florida to execute him and were using the media to call for his removal.

“We want the government of the United States to explain how it is that these terrorist groups that act with total freedom in Florida ... make these statements through the media under the government’s nose,” Izarra said.

Tense relations

The U.S. Embassy did not immediately return calls seeking comment. While the United States remains Venezuela’s main buyer of oil, relations between the Chavez and Bush administrations have been testy.

Chavez has blasted the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, while Washington is unhappy with Chavez’s close links with Cuba’s Fidel Castro and attempts to centralize power.

The killing of the 38-year-old prosecutor heightened tensions in the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter just as a political crisis that gripped the country for the past 2½ years was easing.

Opponents of Chavez, a fiery leftist and former army paratroop commander, failed to oust him in the two-day coup in April 2002, in a two-month national strike later that year and in a national referendum last August.

The political opposition has been largely silent and licking its wounds since pro-Chavez candidates swept all but two of 23 governorships in regional elections on Oct. 31.

Volatile political situation

But the assassination underscored that the political situation remains unstable with the potential for further violence.

Interior and Justice Minister Jesse Chacon said C-4, a military-grade plastic explosive, was apparently used, set off by remote control. The explosions were so powerful they shattered windows in nearby buildings.

Anderson was alone in the car, and his body was so badly burned and mutilated that it was hours before authorities could conclusively identify him. A pistol he carried amid death threats and a cell phone were found intact in the wreckage.

Hundreds of Venezuelans gathered in front of the attorney general’s office in downtown Caracas to show their outrage at the attack. His coffin was brought in for a wake by a crowd of people singing the national anthem.

Charges of terrorism

“We are convinced that this was a brutal act of terrorism,” said Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel.

Anderson had been involved in several cases against opponents of Chavez, who was elected on his promises to help Venezuela’s majority poor. At the time of his death, Anderson was preparing a case against nearly 400 people who signed a declaration supporting interim President Pedro Carmona during the coup.

Chavez was returned to power amid a popular uprising denouncing the coup and a split among Venezuela’s armed forces into whether it should have been carried out. Carmona, a former business leader, is now living in exile in neighboring Colombia.

Source: MSNBC

As Ice Thaws, Arctic Peoples at Loss for Words

2004-11-24T10:36:00.000-05:00

by Alister Doyle

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (Reuters) - What are the words used by indigenous peoples in the Arctic for "hornet," "robin," "elk," "barn owl" or "salmon?" If you don't know, you're not alone.

Many indigenous languages have no words for legions of new animals, insects and plants advancing north as global warming thaws the polar ice and lets forests creep over tundra.

"We can't even describe what we're seeing," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (news - web sites) which says it represents 155,000 people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.

In the Inuit language Inuktitut, robins are known just as the "bird with the red breast," she said. Inuit hunters in north Canada recently saw some ducks but have not figured out what species they were, in Inuktitut or any other language.

An eight-nation report this month says the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and that the North Pole could be ice-free in northern hemisphere summer by 2100, threatening indigenous cultures and perhaps wiping out creatures like polar bears.

The report, by 250 scientists and funded by the United States, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, puts most of the blame on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from human use of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

The thaw may have some positive spin-offs for people, for instance by making chill Arctic seas more habitable for cod or herring or by shifting agricultural lands and forestry north.

But on land, more and more species will be cramming into an ever-narrowing strip bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, threatening to destroy fragile Arctic ecosystems from mosses to Arctic foxes or snowy owls.

LK SHOCK

In Arctic Europe, birch trees are gaining ground and Saami reindeer herders are seeing roe deer or even elk, a forest-dwelling cousin of moose, on former lichen pastures.

"I know about 1,200 words for reindeer -- we classify them by age, sex, color, antlers," said Nils Isak Eira, who manages a herd of 2,000 reindeer in north Norway.

"I know just one word for elk -- 'sarvva'," said 50-year-old Eira. "But the animals are so unusual that many Saami use the Norwegian word 'elg.' When I was a child it was like a mythical creature."

Thrushes have been spotted in Saami areas of the Arctic in winter, apparently too lazy to bother migrating south.

Foreign ministers from the eight Arctic countries are due to meet in Reykjavik on Wednesday but are sharply divided about what to do. The United States is most opposed to any drastic new action.

The U.S. is the only country among the eight to reject the 127-nation Kyoto protocol meant to cap emissions of greenhouse gases. President Bush (news - web sites) says the U.N. pact would cost too much and unfairly excludes developing states.

In some more southerly areas of the Arctic, like Canada's Hudson Bay, receding ice means polar bears are already struggling. The bears' main trick is to pounce when seals surface to breathe through holes in the ice.

The Arctic report says polar bears "are unlikely to survive as a species if there is a complete loss of summer-ice cover." Restricted to land, polar bears would have to compete with better-adapted grizzly or brown bears.

"The outlook for polar bears is stark. My grandson will lose the culture I had as a child," said Watt-Cloutier, referring to Inuit hunting cultures based on catching seals, bears or whales.

SALMON, OWLS

Around the Arctic, salmon are swimming into more northerly waters, hornets are buzzing north and barn owls are flying to regions where indigenous people have never even seen a barn.

Watt-Cloutier said indigenous peoples lacked well-known words for all of them.

The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report says that the region is set to warm by 7-13 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, twice the rate of the rest of the globe. The Arctic warms fast partly because dark ground and water, once uncovered, soak up much more heat than snow and ice.

"Overall, forests are likely to move north and displace tundra," said Terry Callaghan, a professor of Arctic ecology at the University of Lund, Sweden. "That will bring more species -- birds that nest in trees, beetles that live in bark, fungi."

The lack of words to describe newcomers does not stop at animals and plants. "Words like 'thunderstorm' don't exist because they are phenomena indigenous peoples have never known," said Robert Corell, chair of the ACIA study.

© 2004 Reuters

Source: Common Dreams News Center

Hawks push regime change in N Korea

2004-11-24T10:32:00.000-05:00

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The coalition of foreign-policy hawks that promoted the 2003 invasion of Iraq is pressing US President George W Bush to adopt a more coercive policy toward North Korea, despite strong opposition from China and South Korea.

By most accounts, North Korea ranked high in bilateral talks between Bush and Northeast Asian leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, at the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Santiago, Chile, this past weekend, although the final communique did not address the issue.

Bush reportedly tried to make clear that his patience with Pyongyang and its alleged efforts to stall the ongoing "six-party talks" was fast running out and that Washington will soon push for stronger measures against North Korea in the absence of progress toward an agreement under which Pyongyang would dismantle its alleged nuclear-arms program.

Bush claimed on Sunday that his interlocutors, who include the leaders of the four other parties to the talks - Russia, China, Japan and South Korea - agreed with him, but Hu and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun have not backed down publicly from their strong opposition to a harder line toward Pyongyang.

Indeed, just before the weekend summit, Roh told an audience in Los Angeles that a hardline policy over North Korea's nuclear weapons would have "grave repercussions", adding, "There is no alternative left in dealing with this issue except dialogue." The South Korean leader also denounced the idea of an economic embargo against Pyongyang.

That the hawks back in Washington are indeed mobilizing became clear on Monday when William Kristol, an influential neo-conservative who also chairs the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), faxed a statement titled "Toward Regime Change in North Korea" to reporters and various "opinion leaders" in the capital.

PNAC issues statements relatively infrequently, so its formal statements are carefully noted. PNAC boasts Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney's powerful chief of staff, I Lewis Libby, among a dozen other senior Bush national security officials, as signers of its 1997 charter.

"It's clear that they see the transition [between the Bush administration's two terms] and before any new round of the six-party talks, as the time to try to set policy direction," one veteran analyst told Inter Press Service on Monday.

Kristol's statement referred in particular to two recent articles, including one published last week by Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), that appeared in the neo-conservative The Weekly Standard, which is edited by Kristol.

The article, "Tear Down This Tyranny", called for the implementation of a six-point strategy aimed at ousting North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-il, in part by "working around the pro-appeasement crowd in the South Korean government", which apparently includes President Roh himself.

The second article, published on Sunday in The New York Times, detailed a number of recent indications cited by right-wing officials and the press in Japan - including high-level defections and the reported circulation of anti-government pamphlets - that Kim's hold on power may be slipping.

The article noted in particular a recent statement by Shinzo Abe, secretary general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), that "regime change" was a distinct possibility and that "we need to start simulations of what we should do at that time".

"Recent reports suggest the presence of emerging cracks in the Stalinist power structure of North Korea, and even the emergence of serious dissident activity there," wrote Kristol. "This should remind us that one of President Bush's top priorities in his second term will have to be dealing with this wretch[ed] regime," he went on, citing Eberstadt's strategy as "useful guidance for an improved North Korean policy".

Eberstadt's article, which criticized Korea policy in Bush's first term for being both "reactive" and "paralyzed by infighting", proceeds from the explicit assumption that efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear program - which US intelligence believes may already include as many as eight nuclear weapons - are almost certainly futile.

"We are exceedingly unlikely to talk - or to bribe - the current North Korean government out of its nuclear quest," wrote Eberstadt in an implicit rejection of the basic goal of the six-party talks.

Moreover, he wrote, the nuclear crisis and the North Korean government are essentially one and the same: "Unless, and until, we have a better class of dictator running North Korea, we will be faced with an ongoing and indeed growing North Korean crisis."

To achieve the desired "regime change", Eberstadt called first for a purge of US State Department officials who had argued for engaging Pyongyang during Bush's first term. Washington, according to Eberstadt, should also increase "China's 'ownership' of the North Korean problem" by making clear to Beijing that it "will bear high costs if the current denuclearization diplomacy failed".

At the same time, US officials must recognize that South Korea has, under Kim and the"implacably anti-American and reflexively pro-appeasement" core of his government, become a "runaway ally" - "a country bordering a state committed to its destruction, and yet governed increasingly in accordance with graduate-school 'peace studies' desiderata".

"Instead of appeasing South Korea's appeasers (as our policy to date has attempted to do, albeit clumsily)," wrote Eberstadt, "America should be speaking over their heads directly to the Korean people, building and nurturing the coalitions in South Korean domestic politics that will ultimately bring a prodigal ally back into the fold."

Washington should also ready "the non-diplomatic instruments for North Korean threat reduction," he wrote, arguing that preparing for the deliberate use of such options - presumably an economic embargo or even military strikes - "will actually increase the probability of a diplomatic success".

Finally, echoing Shinzo Abe, of Japan's LDP, Eberstadt called for planning for a "post-Communist Korean Peninsula" with other interested parties, "to maximize the opportunities and minimize the risks in that delicate and potentially dangerous process".

Eberstadt's strategy, according to a number of analysts, largely echoes the views of John Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, a former American Enterprise Institute vice president who is openly campaigning to become deputy secretary of state under Condoleezza Rice.

Bolton, perhaps the administration's most extreme hardliner, has strong support in Cheney's office and other right-wing strongholds, including The Weekly Standard and on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.

On Saturday, Tokyo's right-wing Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who claims to be on friendly terms with Bolton, told Fuji Television that Bolton wants to impose economic sanctions against North Korea, which in the US official's view, would lead to Kim's ouster "within one year".

Source: Asia Times

Pepper Spray 8 Gain Momentum

2004-11-23T21:03:00.000-05:00

Noel Hewitt Tendick

Seven years ago, sheriff’s deputies in Humboldt County, California, used Q-tips to apply pepper spray to the eyes of eight peaceful protesters and delivered full sprays to some of our faces. Seven years ago, we filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on the claim that our First and Fourth amendment rights had been violated.

This September, after seven years of appellate court victories, including three US Supreme Court rulings and one trial that ended in a 4-4 hung jury, we got our retrial. With a new judge, a new jury selection process and the FBI-trouncing Judi Bari legal team on our side, we had tremendous hope.

And the jury hung again.

While it’s tempting to rend our garments and gnash our teeth, consider this: six of the eight jurors voted our way. Some were so upset with the mistrial that they left the court in tears. Furthermore, another trial gives us another opportunity to make our voices heard. We will sharpen our case and drive home the point that the police were acting as thugs for Maxxam/Pacific Lumber (PL), trying to smash our forest defense campaign with torture.

We have always known that this case reverberates far beyond the Pepper Spray 8. Though centered in the ancient Headwaters Forest, the ripples from these acts touch the lives of people across the country.

Everyone in the activist community knows the heartbreak of throwing your life into something and then watching it get eaten by the system. We’ve watched so many trees fall, and we have given an exhausting amount of energy to this case, but all of us—plaintiffs and lawyers—are committed to taking it to another trial.

This one case isn’t going to save the Bill of Rights, nor is it going to stop police from stomping on dissent. But it is one strand in our web.

So what was this trial all about? Well, if you followed the logic of defense attorney Nancy Delaney, it was about how the use of pepper spray is benign compared with the potential catastrophe of using grinders to access lockboxes, the metal sleeves that we locked down with in each incident. The defendants claimed that they wanted to prevent a grinder injury by pepper spraying us. To conjure the horror of the grinding process, Delaney said in her opening arguments, “What if your child put their arm in the turkey to grab some stuffing while you were carving it with an electric knife?!”

Using the Orange Alert principle, fear of the possible was used to numb the mind to the horror of the actual. While police testified that they had no problems cutting people out of lockboxes 300 times before, they still apparently feared that the grinding wheel would fly apart, traveling up to “two miles away” and resulting in untold harm.

Indeed, all of the cops who testified sang the harmlessness of pepper spray while contradicting themselves about whether it actually caused pain or was just uncomfortable. A disturbing moment was when we learned that Marvin Kirkpatrick, the deputy who applied the pepper spray in each case, is now a statewide police trainer in the chemical’s use. None of the cops considered the American Civil Liberties Union study in which pepper spray was implicated in the deaths of 26 people.

Just when you were going to burst from being fed piles of bullshit, the plaintiffs took the stand. I’m honored to be part of such an amazing group of people, who were not only willing to hold on through the worst physical pain of their lives, but who were willing to open themselves up and share that in a courtroom. Everyone spoke beautifully about the forest we work to protect and the damage that we suffered—and continue to suffer—from police crossing the line.

I watched repeatedly as Delaney and William Bragg—the attorney who represented the PL logger who killed David “Gypsy” Chain in 1998—tried to cut into us with all sorts of distortions and ended up spinning themselves into the ground.

After the police and plaintiffs had their say, it was time for closing arguments. Delaney’s recurring theme was, “I submit to you that it makes no sense whatsoever.” For instance, “If we’re going to do nothing when protesters are nonviolent, are we going to allow them to lock down to the emergency room of a hospital? Does that make sense?” I would submit, no.

She attacked with, “But I also think of environmentalism as being something that is the antithesis of the conspicuous consumer. Ask yourself whether you’ve seen the most conspicuous consumption of law enforcement services ever.” Take that, hippies!

Actually, most conspicuous was Delaney’s profiting from the situation. Not only has she dragged this case out by filing endless appeals and stonewalling settlement negotiations, she also represents PL in its SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) against North Coast Earth First! activists. This is one of the clearer examples of the collusion between police violence and corporate profit.

Our attorneys urged the jurors to drag the police back across the line they crossed when they used violence against nonviolent individuals. The legal team spoke of the damage that is done to everyone when such behavior is allowed.

As one of our lawyers, J. Tony Serra, said, “There are certain aspects of the case you are never going to forget. In your dream life and in your future, the images that have been brought forward during this trial will persist, echoing in your imagination. They are so horrific that no civilized society can accept this behavior as legal, moral or ethical.”

For John or Jane Q. Public to decide against the police, they have to give something up. Six of the eight jurors were willing to do this. For the other two—who refused to examine clear evidence, who felt we weren’t reaching them—it was too much to handle. I have no doubt that at some moment in the future, they will realize what they’ve done, and it will echo in their imaginations.

In the meantime, we go on to pursue another trial. We go on so that a jury can deliver the consequences of corporate-directed brutality to the police. We go on because when trees were falling and pepper spray was used on us, we didn’t unlock. We go on because we continue to believe in healthy ecosystems and the right of everyone to speak their beliefs, and because these things are burning.

Noel is a writer, massage therapist and activist in Santa Cruz, California.

For more information about our case and how to contribute to it, visit www.nopepperspray.org

Source: EarthFirst Journal

Federal Corruption: Inslaw's PROMIS Software

2004-11-23T20:42:00.000-05:00

Really it's old news - that the U.S. Department of Justice stole a piece of software from Inslaw and then sold it to the CIA, the NSA, the Israelis, etc...this software uses AI to extrapolate the future actions of a terrorist (or dissident) based on fractal projections of current activity.

I include this piece here, at my blog, because from this story branched out a slew of stories of federal and international corruption over the years. Becoming familiar with this story will give you the eyeglasses necessary to interpret much regarding modern-day conspiracies. Of course, it is only a start.

.................................................................

Federal Corruption: INSLAW
By Harry V. Martin

Copyright FreeAmerica and Harry V. Martin, 1995

EDITOR'S NOTE: When discussing the widespread corruption in the federal Bankruptcy Courts, it is difficult to focus on just the Northern California jurisdiction. This new series will focus on the extent of the corruption throughout the nation and its linkage to various courts.

When the U.S. Government sent Anthony Souza to Northern California to investigate what government officials called "the dirtiest system" in the United States, it was aware that the entire bankruptcy system is unraveling. Former LendVest Trustee Charles Duck was the main focal point of Souza's investigation-even though a local bankruptcy judge called him the most "honest man" he had ever known. Duck's ties to bankruptcy judges throughout the Bay Area is providing a picture of intense corruption going deep inside the law enforcement agencies. Even Souza admits privately that his hands are tied.

There has been one known murder in Northern California that has strong possible links to the bankruptcy system. There have been several more in Texas. This series will focus on different incidents from various parts of the country.

One of the most bizarre cases of corruption in the bankruptcy system involves a small Washington-based computer software firm called INSLAW. In 1982 the firm signed a three year contract for $10 million with the U.S. Department of Justice. The software program INSLAW developed was a case-management computer program called PROMIS. The software, which was developed by Bill Hamilton, enabled the U.S. attorneys to keep track of information on cases, witnesses and defendants, and to manage their caseloads more effectively.

Though the U.S. Attorney's Office placed the PROMIS program into operation in several of its offices, it refused to pay Hamilton. Subsequently Hamilton was forced into the bankruptcy court. Former U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson, representing Hamilton, advised him to sue the Justice Department for stealing his software.

Anthony Pasciuto, who was the deputy director of the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees, which oversees bankruptcy estates on behalf of the court, had stated that the Justice Department was improperly applying pressure on his office to convert INSLAW's Chapter 11 reorganization into a Chapter 7 liquidation, which would mean that all company assets, including the rights to PROMIS would be sold at auction.

U.S. Trustee Cornelius Blackshear corroborated Pasciuto's story. Two days after he was visited by Justice Department officials, Blackshear issued a sworn affidavit recanting his earlier testimony.

The Justice Department recommended that Pasciuto be fired. The memo seeking his dismissal reads "Ébut for Mr. Pasciuto's highly irresponsible actions, the Department would be in a much better litigation posture than it presently finds itself."

Federal Bankruptcy Judge George F. Bason, Jr., ruled in 1987 that the Justice Department had acted illegally in trying to put INSLAW out of business. Bason sent Edwin Meese a letter recommending that he designate an appropriate outside official to review the dispute because of the prima facie evidence of perjury by Justice Department officials, Meese did not respond.

Later that year after nearly three weeks of trial, Bason ruled in favor of INSLAW in its suit against the Justice Department. "The department (of Justice) took, converted, stole INSLAW's software by trickery, fraud and deceit," the judge stated, adding, "the Justice Department engaged in an outrageous, deceitful, fraudulent game of cat and mouse, demonstrating contempt for both the law and any principle of fair dealing." Judge Bason ordered the Justice Department to pay INSLAW $6.8 million. Bason's verdict was upheld on appeal by U.S. District Court Judge William B. Bryant. Three months after Bason's ruling, he was denied re-appointment to the bankruptcy court.

Hamilton's trouble began when a friend of Meese attempted to buy out INSLAW, but Hamilton turned him down. In a court document, the potential buyer is quoted as saying, "We have ways of making you sell." It was after that the trouble for INSLAW began.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on investigations, chaired by Senator Sam Nunn, began an investigation into the INSLAW case. Once the inquiry got under way, the Senate Judiciary Committee's chief investigator, Ronald LeGrand, received a phone call from an unnamed senior officer at the Justice Department, a person LeGrand has known for years. The caller told LeGrand that the "INSLAW case was a lot dirtier for the Department of Justice than Watergate had been, both in its breadth and its depth."

The Nunn Committee completed its investigation and published its report. It recognized that INSLAW has been a victim of the system and stated that "the Justice Department had been uncooperative, refusing to allow witnesses to testify without representatives of the litigation division being present to advise them. The effect of their presence was to intimidate those who might otherwise have cooperated with the investigation." The report states, "The staff learned through various channels of a number of Department employees who desired to speak to the Subcommittee, but who chose not to out of fear for their jobs."

Congressman Jack Brooks of Texas has opened a new investigation into the INSLAW case. Brooks is investigating allegations that Justice Department officials, including Meese, conspired to force INSLAW into bankruptcy in order to deliver the firm's software to a rival company. The rival firm, according to court records and law enforcement officials, was headed by Earl W. Brian, a former Cabinet officer under then California Governor Ronald Reagan and a longtime friend of several high-ranking Republican officials. Meese had accepted a $15,000 interest-free loan from Brian. Meese's wife was an investor in the rival company. This is the same company that allegedly sought to buy INSLAW from Hamilton and made the alleged threat.

What happened to PROMIS?

The program is in use throughout the nation and has been used also for military intelligence information. It has the ability to track troop movements.

An official of the Israeli government claims Brian sold the PROMIS program to Iraqi military intelligence at a meeting in Santiago, Chile. The software could have been used in the recent Persian Gulf War to track U.S. and allied troop movements. Ari Ben-Menashe, a 12 year veteran of Israeli intelligence, made the statement in a sworn affidavit to the court.

The software is now operative with the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Only the Justice Department is authorized by the court to use the software.

Brian now claims he acquired the property rights to the software and consummated a sale to Israel, although he had allowed its use by the Israeli intelligence forces for as many as five years before the actual sale.

In essence, a small company in Washington developed a very sensitive computer program which the Justice Department obtained. The courts ruled in favor of the developer and the judge who made the ruling was never re-appointed. The software was acquired by a friend of Meese and the Justice Department has never paid for its use and has allowed other agencies the right of its use.

The bankruptcy court was a tool, as it appears to be with other jurisdictions, to support the economic gain of a few. Charles Duck was not alone, as the record will prove.

How the Justice Department used the bankruptcy court

By Harry V. Martin
Second of a New Series

Copyright Napa Sentinel, 1991

The corruption of the bankruptcy system is endemic of a political patronage system with its roots going back to former U.S. Attorney Edwin Meese, according to many former employees of the Department of Justice. The INSLAW case - reported last week in the Napa Sentinel - is a microcosm of the entire system.

As a result of the INSLAW cases, many heads in the Justice Department were lopped off. When Judge George Bason, a bankruptcy court judge, refused to liquidate INSLAW, ruling instead that the Department of Justice used deceit, trickery and fraud, he was only one of four who were not re-appointed to their jobs. A total of 132 were re-appointed.

But to show the collusion of the Justice Department, when it removed Judge Bason from the bench after his ruling against them and for INSLAW, they had S. Martin Teel appointed to the bench to replace Bason. Who was Teel? He was a Department of Justice attorney who unsuccessfully argued the INSLAW case before Judge Bason.

Tony Pasciuto admitted that he was ordered to pressure the bankruptcy judge to rule against INSLAW. After being subpoenaed by INSLAW's attorney, Pasciuto was offered a long-awaited transfer by the Justice Department from Washington, D.C. to Albany, New York. Pasciuto bought a home in Albany and then changed his testimony. After the testimony was completed, the Justice Department cancelled his transfer. Pasciuto had to commute from Albany to Washington.

Former Attorney General Elliott Richardson made a list of the baffling questions of why the Justice Department wanted INSLAW declared insolvent and why it wouldn't pay a $6.8 million settlement to the small company. INSLAW received an offer to sell their company and they refused. The buyer informed the company that he had powerful political influence and "We have ways of making you sell." Within 90 days of that threat, the Justice Department commenced its attack on INSLAW.

The company that made the attempt to buy INSLAW had financial connections to Meese and some of Meese's cronies. When the battle ended, INSLAW was broke, an attorney, a Justice Department whistle-blower and a judge were out to work, but INSLAW was saved by a corporate giant, IBM, who rescued the company virtually from the auction block.

The company that allegedly made the threat was Hadron. It has had brushes with the Security Exchange Commission, it has gone to the brink of being broke and one of its companies has been accused by the SEC of fraud and manipulation of stock prices, the company lost $4.3 million in one year. It soon sunk $12 million in the red.

But once Meese became Attorney General, Hadron suddenly received lucrative Pentagon contracts, along with the Agency for International Development. The company was also awarded a $40 million contract from the Justice Department, despite protests against the bidding process. One member of Hadron's board was Dr. Earl Brian, who was in Reagan's California cabinet along with Meese. Meese was chief of staff in California. The Deputy Attorney General was D. Lowell Jensen, who had competed against INSLAW years earlier. The person in charge of making Justice Department payments for INSLAW's software, and who didn't, was an employee who had been fired from INSLAW. Jensen was also in trouble when the Senate was investigating the Iran-Contra scandal. Apparently the Senate committee discovered a memo written by Jensen to the National Security Council warning that the Miami federal prosecutors where on Ollie North's trail. The memo revealed that the Justice Department, who was supposed to prosecute the Iran-Contra affair, actually was tipping off the government in advance.

One Justice Department official testified at the INSLAW hearing that INSLAW's software could be dangerous. Thomas Stanton testified 'INSLAW could besmirch the U.S. Trustee program." The program is so sophisticated that it could trace all assets, track all trustees and judges. Another Justice Department employee stated that the U.S. Trustee program was flagrantly political. "It was a way of getting cronies into office. There would be 50 or 60 positions to be filledÉ it was Meese's baby." The official also stated, "It was always puzzling to me how he got away with what he got away with. He'd do things that were blatantly wrong and no one would question himÐ it's kind of scary."

The Meese program would concentrate too much power in one government department. "It's supposed to act as a watchdog over lawyers and trustees, but the problem is it's more. It has a considerable amount of power to control the administration of cases. When a case moves from bankruptcy to liquidation, the U.S. Trustees office names the trustee, who converts the assets, oversees the auction, and retains appraisers who will put a price tag on the leavings. The U.S. Trustee's program also links Justice and the IRS. The thing that's a little frightening about it is that the U.S. Trustee department sees itself as a part of the tax-collecting function of government. The Justice Department represents the IRS, and the IRS is often the biggest creditor in liquidation." states a leading bankruptcy attorney.

Bankruptcy, Justice scandal could equal Watergate
By Harry V. Martin

Third in a NEW SERIES

Copyright Napa Sentinel

As if things weren't getting hot enough for the federal bankruptcy court system, but now the INSLAW case is becoming another Watergate. INSLAW was a Washington, D. C., based computer firm that sold a highly technical tracking software program to the U.S. Department of Justice. Federal judges have upheld INSLAW's contention that the Justice Department, under Attorney General Edwin Meese, stole INSLAW's computer program.

A bankruptcy judge that made the ruling was not re-appointed to a 14-year term. Several Justice Department officials have since been fired or quit over the case.

Now a U.S. House Subcommittee is investigating the case and putting a lot of heat on the Justice Department. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh has been placed in an awkward position because of the case. Though he was not Attorney General at the time the INSLAW scandal broke, he was the man who investigated it and cleared the Justice Department of wrong doing.

Testimony has come forward that the Justice Department, under Meese, pressured the bankruptcy courts to declare INSLAW insolvent, forcing the company to release its assets, including the critical software. INSLAW was once threatened if it didn't sell its company to a close Meese associate. After the threat, INSLAW's life was made miserable by the Justice Department. When INSLAW sued the Justice Department it was awarded $6.8 million. The judge who made the award was fired and replaced with a newly appointed judge- the man who prosecuted the case for the Justice Department. A second judge upheld the first judge's ruling.

The House subcommittee is accusing Thornburgh of stonewalling the Committee's request for hundreds of documents involved in the INSLAW case. Two years ago, the same stalling tactics by the Attorney General's office played havoc with a Senate investigation of the same problem. But Texas Congressman Jack Brooks is putting the heat on the Justice Department to turn over its records on INSLAW, Brook's committee controls the purse strings of the Justice Department and has more clout than did the Senate Committee.

The protected software has been pirated to the Canadian government. Those who were found responsible for the pirating were close associates of Meese. "No sooner had the piracy been confirmed in Canada than an Israeli intelligence officer alleged that PROMIS (INSLAW's software program) was being used illegally by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies," states James J. Kilpatrick in the March 15 edition of The Miami Herald.

After the re-appointment of the federal bankruptcy judge was halted because of his ruling on the INSLAW case, almost every bankruptcy judge that is handed the case declines to have anything to do with it. "Nobody wants to touch the case," states Chief District Judge Aubrey Robinson.

According to Brooks, the Justice Department is now ready to turn over the documents, states the Legal Times of Washington, D.C. The scandal touches many high officials in the Justice Department or formerly associated with the Department.

They include:

Edwin Meese, former Attorney General.

Attorney General Richard Thornburgh.

Justice Department Watchdog Michael Sheheen, Jr.

Gerald McDowell, chief of the Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section.

Lawrence McWhorter, head of the Executive Office of the U.S. Attorney's Criminal Division.

Bankruptcy Judge Cornelius Blackshear.

North District of California Federal District Judge D. Lowell Jensen, who was a former Deputy Attorney General and once chief competitor to INSLAW in California.
The Brooks Committee has also learned that the Justice Department's computer system is "all botched up" and has also learned that there is a lot of sensitive data within the Department of Justice computer files that is not secure. The INSLAW program was to organize everything and track cases all over the country.

The Justice Department is the prime law enforcement agency in the United States. A scandal there could rock the nation in a similar fashion as Watergate did during the Nixon Administration.

The Justice Department oversees the Federal Bankruptcy Court and the Trustee system. The Justice Department is investigating the Federal Bankruptcy Court and the Trustee System. The Justice Department has been caught using the Bankruptcy System for their own interest. In other words, the Justice Department is investigating the Justice Department's Bankruptcy System for potential wrongdoings by the Justice Department.

But is there really justice in this land?

Bankruptcy court examines software allegations against Justice Department pirating

By Harry V. Martin

Fourth in a NEW SERIES
Copyright Napa Sentinel

If you own a VCR or rent or buy movies, you will be familiar with the warning that appears on your screen that the film you are viewing is protected by a copyright and that the Federal Bureau of Investigations or Interpol can arrest you for copying the film. The warning is to prevent "pirating" of someone else's copyrighted material.

But what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander. The United States Justice Department stands accused of pirating copyrighted material - having supplied it to the Canadian government, the Israeli government and Iraqi governmentÉand to the FBI, itself.

That is how deep the INSLAW computer software case has become. The case started out when the Justice Department bought PROMIS, a copyrighted software program that helps to track criminal cases throughout the United States. When friends and associates of then Attorney General Edwin Meese attempted to buy the software company, INSLAW turned them down and then life was made miserable for INSLAW. Within 90 days the Justice Department reneged on their contract with INSLAW and refused to pay for the software program, even though it was using it. The Justice Department is accused by federal judges of attempting to bankrupt INSLAW and then hasten the bankruptcy court to declare them insolvent. Instead, the courts ruled that the Justice Department used "fraud, deceit and trickery" against INSLAW and awarded the small computer software company $6.8 million in damages.

The case became deeper when friends of Meese began to sell the program to foreign military establishments and the Justice Department began to provide the copyrighted material to other U.S. government agencies. A man who was once fired from INSLAW was put in charge of INSLAW's payments - which were never forthcoming. Another Justice Department official, who is now a Federal Judge in Northern California, was a direct competitor to INSLAW in California The Judge who made the $6.8 million ruling lost his job. The attorney for the Justice Department who fought against the Judge's ruling was promoted to the Judge's vacant position. There have been wholesale changes and firings at the Justice Department over the INSLAW case.

The Justice Department is now under investigation by a House subcommittee and this committee is receiving many documents to support the premise that the Justice Department has a skeleton in its closet that stinks greater than Watergate.

But new documents emerging in the case demonstrate a wider scandal. In an affidavit dated February 17, 1991, Ari Ben-Menashe describes his 12 year service for the Government of Israel in foreign intelligence and provides an eyewitness account of a presentation to an Israeli intelligence agency in 1987 in Tel Aviv, by Earl W. Brian of the United States.

Brian is a close associate of Meese from his California days. Brian and Meese were both in Ronald Reagan's California Cabinet when Reagan was governor.

According to Ben-Menashe's affidavit, Brian stated in his presence that he had acquired the property rights to the PROMIS computer software and that as of 1987 "all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, were using the PROMIS computer software." Ben-Menashe further states in his affidavit that Brian consummated a sale of the PROMIS computer software to the Government of Israel in 1987.

He further claimed that Brian also sold the PROMIS computer software to Iraqi Military Intelligence. According to Ben-Menashe's affidavit, the Israeli intelligence officer learned of this sale from an eyewitness who helped Brian broker the sale in his office in Santiago, Chile, Carlos Carduen of Carduen Industries. Carduen has been a major supplier to the Government of Iraq with weapons and munitions.

The Federal Government of Canada has admitted that INSLAW's PROMIS software is currently operating in at least two federal departments, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Mounties are using the program in 900 locations in Canada.

INSLAW never sold its software to Canada, Iraq, Israel, the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency. It also has not been paid by the Justice Department for its use, despite the $6.8 million ruling in INSLAW's favor.

The Justice Department insists that the FBI is not using the PROMIS program. Yet FBI Director William Sessions and Deputy Assistant Director Kier Boyd, have made it clear that the FBI now is unable or unwilling to provide assurances that pirated software is not included in the case management information system used by FBI field offices.

And in a startling development, a man named Charles Hayes has asserted that the U.S. government has pirated the PROMIS computer program. The Justice Department has sued Hayes in the U.S. District Court in Lexington, Kentucky, seeking to compel him to return copies of computer software left on equipment Hayes' salvage business purchased from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Lexington. Hayes has publicly claimed that the salvaged equipment contained pirated copies of INSLAW's PROMIS software.

One cover-up begets another cover-up? This is how Watergate spread.

Watergate, Iran, Contra, Saving & Loan Scandal, INSLAW Theft

Federal Bankruptcy Scandal, CIA Covert Operations

Did you ever wonder what the fathers of our country would think about it if they came back to visit today?

Key witness in INSLAW case arrested by Justice Department as predicted
By Harry V. Martin

Fifth in a NEW SERIES
Copyright Napa Sentinel

Within eight days of signing a damaging statement against the U.S. Justice Department in the INSLAW software case, a key witness against the government has been arrested and held without bail. Michael J. Riconoscuito was arrested Friday night and is being held without bail at Snohomish County jail in Everett, Washington.

Riconoscuito is being held without bail and no charges have been filed against him. He was arrested with two local men who had just sold him computer equipment for $1000. The two were known drug users. Riconoscuito, according to jail officials, is being held for the U.S. Marshal's Office - not on any alleged local criminal violation.

Riconoscuito, and the two other persons, were arrested Friday night by more than a dozen U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

On March 21, Riconoscuito, a computer software technician, filed an affidavit in the INSLAW case. In February, Riconoscuito was called by a former Justice Department official and warned against cooperating with an investigation into the case by the House Judiciary Committee. The former Justice Department official is reported to have threatened Riconoscuito with criminal prosecution if he talked about the INSLAW case. The Justice Department has been accused by a Federal bankruptcy Judge of stealing INSLAW's PROMIS software which has the capability of tracking criminal and military movements. According to sworn affidavits, Riconoscuito was allegedly told by U.S. Justice Department officials that if he did testify in the INSLAW case he would be criminally prosecuted in an unrelated savings and loan case and would suffer an unfavorable outcome in a child custody dispute.

The threat was made by telephone and a recording was made of the conversation, according to Riconoscuito. He indicated that two copies of the recorded telephone conversation were confiscated by federal agents when he was arrested. Riconoscuito told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that at least one other copy remained in a secured location.

Riconoscuito's testimony, along with others, claims that the U.S. Justice Department illegally distributed INSLAW's software to military and intelligence agencies in Iraq, Libya, South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Canada and other nations.

A Federal Judge ruled last week in Washington, D.C., that the INSLAW case be transferred from the Bankruptcy Court to the U.S. District Court.

During the early 1980s, Riconoscuito served as the Director of Research for a joint venture between the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida and the Cabazon Band of Indians of Indio, California. The joint venture was located on the Cabazon reservation. The joint venture sought to develop and manufacture certain materials that are used in military and national security operations, and biological and chemical warfare weapons. The Cabazon Band of Indians are a sovereign nation and thus have immunity from U.S. regulations and stringent government controls.

The Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture was intended to support the needs of a number of foreign governments and forces, including forces and governments in Central America and the Middle East. The Contras in Nicaragua represented one of the most important priorities for the joint venture. The joint venture maintained close liaison with certain elements of the U.S. Government, including representatives of intelligence, military and law enforcement agencies. Among the frequent visitors to the Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture were Peter Videnicks of the U.S. Department of Justice and a close associate of Videnicks, Dr. Earl W. Brian, who served in the California cabinet of Governor Ronald Reagan and who has very close ties and business dealings with Meese.

In connection with Riconoscuito's work, he engaged in some software work in 1983 and 1984 on the PROMIS computer software product, developed by INSLAW but being used, without payment, by the U.S. Department of Justice. A federal court has awarded INSLAW $6.8 million against the U.S. Department of Justice.

According to Riconoscuito's court affidavit, Brian was spearheading the plan for the worldwide use of the PROMIS computer software, which was licensed and patented to INSLAW. "The purpose of the PROMIS software modifications that I made in 1983 and 1984 was to support a plan for the implementation of PROMIS in law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide." He said that some of the modifications that he made were specifically designed to facilitate the implementation of PROMIS within two agencies of the Government of Canada: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. "Earl W. Brian would check with me from time to time to make certain that the work would be completed in time to satisfy the schedule for the RCMP and CSIS implementations of PROMIS." Brian, without permission from INSLAW, but acting with the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, reportedly sold this version of PROMIS to the Government of Canada, according to Riconoscuito."

Riconoscuito predicted his own arrest eight days later. In his affidavit filed with the court on March 21, 1991, he states, "In February 1991, I had a telephone conversation with Peter Videnicks, then still employed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Videnicks attempted during this telephone conversation to persuade me not to cooperate with an independent investigation of the government's piracy of INSLAW's proprietary PROMIS software being conducted by the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"Videnicks stated that I would be rewarded for a decision not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation. Videnicks forecasted an immediate and favorable resolution of a protracted child custody dispute being prosecuted against my wife by her former husband, if I were to decide not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation.

"One punishment that Videnicks outlined was the future inclusion of me and my father in a criminal prosecution of certain business associates of mine in Orange County, California, in connection with the operation of a savings and loan institution in Orange County. By way of underscoring his power to influence such decisions at the U.S. Department of Justice,Videnicks informed me of the indictment of those business associates prior to the time when that indictment was unsealed and made public.

"Another punishment that Videnicks threatened should I cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee, is prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice for perjury. Videnicks warned me that credible witnesses would come forward to contradict any damaging claims that I made in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, and that I would subsequently be prosecuted for perjury by the U.S. Department of Justice for my testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

As predicted, after Riconoscuito's affidavit was filed with the court and reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Washington Post, he was arrested and is now being held without bail and with no charges.

The INSLAW case is becoming another Watergate and involves former Attorney General Edwin Meese, a federal judge, several high officials of the U.S. Department of Justice and even former White House aide Robert C. McFarlane, who transferred INSLAW software to Israel.

There are so many affidavits being filed in the case to verify wrong doing on the part of the Justice Department. Yet the Justice Department continues to refuse to supply the House Judiciary Committee with any documents in the case. The Committee is now threatening to cut U.S. Department of Justice funding if they don't cooperate in supplying these documents.

House Judiciary investigators seek new declaration

By Harry V. Martin

Sixth in a NEW SERIES
Copyright Napa Sentinel, 1991

Congressional investigators have flown to Tacoma, Washington, to interview Michael Riconoscuito - a key witness in the INSLAW case. Riconoscuito provided a damaging statement against the U.S. Justice Department in the stolen software case that potentially could become another Watergate.

Riconoscuito stated in his declaration that the U.S. Justice Department had threatened to have him arrested should he cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation into the U.S. Justice Department's role in the INSLAW case. Two federal judges have ruled that the U.S. Justice Department stole INSLAW's PROMIS software and used "trickery and deceit" in the the case. One of those judges was not re-appointed to the bench after his ruling. The House Committee has already heard testimony that accuses the U.S. Justice Department of attempting to interfere with the courts in an effort to have INSLAW declared insolvent. Instead, the courts awarded INSLAW $6.8 million in damages.

Within eight days of Riconoscuito's declaration he was arrested and held without bail. Drug Enforcement Agency agents made the arrest. On Wednesday a Federal Grand Jury indicted Riconoscuito on one count of distribution of methanphetamines. He is still being held without bail. Whether or not the U.S. Department of Justice retaliated against Riconoscuito's willingness to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, the House investigators are questioning Riconoscuito at Kitsap County Correctional Center. One member of the investigation stated that the House Committee is deeply concerned with the timing of Riconoscuito's arrest, particularly after he signed an affidavit stating he was threatened with arrest if he did testify.

The Judiciary Committee is investigating allegations that top Justice Department officials under former Attorney General Edwin Meese engaged in a criminal conspiracy to steal software developed by INSLAW and then furnished it to other countries including, Iraq, Libya, South Korea, Israel and Canada.

Congressman Jack Brooks, chairman of the Committee, has accused the Justice Department of a cover-up by withholding more than 200 documents in the INSLAW case. A U.S. Bankruptcy judge ruled in 1987 that officials of the Justice Department stole the sensitive computer software, used to track criminals and also military movements, "through fraud, trickery and deceit". The ruling was later affirmed by another federal Judge.

Riconoscuito has a previous drug conviction for manufacturing PCP aboard a Seattle houseboat 18 years ago. Riconoscuito's declaration states that he was hired to modify INSLAW's PROMIS software so that it could be sold to Canada and other customers. During the time of modification, Riconoscuito was working on a joint venture with a private security firm and the Cabazon Indians in Indio, California. The joint venture also included military equipment and biological and chemical warfare weapons for use and/or sale in Central America and the Middle East.

One Indian and two companions who were opposed to these operations and who alleged that tribal money was being filtered into foreign banks, were found slain execution style in Ranch Mirage. No one has been arrested in the case. The sister of one of the slain men reported the Indian ties with the Iran-Contra scandal and the software modification. That report was delivered to a New York television studio seven years ago. She is now preparing all of it in declaration form and supplying it to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigation.

In other related matters, another affidavit was filed in the INSLAW case which reports that a man bought U.S. Justice Department computers and court computers for salvage and found the pirated PROMIS software program in the surplus computer. The General Accounting Office has expressed grave concern over the salvaged computers, noting that the U.S. Justice Department has sold surplus computers without first erasing sensitive information from the memory banks. "The error may have put some informants, witnesses and undercover agents in a 'life-and-death' situation," the GAO states. The data could include the names of government informants, federally protected witnesses and undercover agents, grand jury proceedings, sealed indictments, confidential FBI investigations and personal data about Justice Department employees. These computers were sold by the Justice Department for as little as $45. The man in Lexington, Kentucky, who found the pirated PROMIS software in the U.S. Justice Department surplus computer also found sealed grand jury indictments.

Charles Hayes was the man who bought the equipment in July 1990 for $45. He has now been sued by the U.S. Justice Department for the return of the computers, stating that the memory bank had not been erased. The U.S. Justice Department did not go after Hayes until after he signed an affidavit about the protected PROMIS software. It is not certain whether the U.S. Justice Department wants the sensitive material back or they want the computers to block them from being used as evidence against them in the INSLAW case. Hayes did return the equipment. This was not an isolated case. Another U.S. Attorney Office notified federal agents that again sensitive data that could potentially identify agents and witnesses may have been lost.

Canadians begin probe on pirated software from Justice Department

By Harry V. Martin

Seventh in a NEW SERIES
Copyright Napa Sentinel, 1991

The growing INSLAW software theft is now reaching foreign proportions. While the U.S. House Judiciary Committee is investigating the theft of INSLAW's PROMIS software by the U.S. Justice Department, the Canadian Parliament will commence its own investigation.

Two agencies of the Canadian Government, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) - equivalent to the CIA - are using the pirated PROMIS software, allegedly supplied to them by Dr. Earl Brian, a close associate and financial partner of former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese and a former California cabinet officer under then Governor Ronald Reagan.

A Federal Bankruptcy judge - who was not re-appointed to the bench after his ruling - said the U.S. Justice Department used trickery, fraud and deception in "stealing" the PROMIS software. The sophisticated software is used for tracking criminal and military activities. It was illegally sold to South Korea, Iraq, Israel, Canada and Libya by the United States.

According to an affidavit, the software was converted in a joint venture between Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, and the Cabazon Band of Indians of Indio - an independent nation. The declaration by Michael J. Riconoscuito alleges that Dr. Brian was deeply involved in the joint venture. One Indian and two of his companions who objected to the joint venture - which also dealt with military weapons, biological and chemical warfare - were found murdered in execution style. That execution was reported on 20/20 by Barbara Walters and the CIA was named as the prime suspect in the case. The software was specifically modified for the Canadian government.

Riconoscuito stated in an affidavit he was warned by officials of the U.S. Justice Department that if he cooperated with the U.S.House Judiciary Committee he would be arrested. Eight days after he signed the affidavit he was arrested by more than a dozen Drug Enforcement Agency officers near Tacoma, Washington. He was held without bail for several days and then charged with a single drug count. Though arrested in the State of Washington, he was held without bail awaiting a federal marshal to pick him up.

He, along with several others, have stated in an affidavit to the court and to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, that the PROMIS software was modified and sold to several countries, including Canada.

Late last week, Members of Parliament demanded that the Solicitor General of Canada, Pierre Cadieux, appear before a parliamentary committee to answer charges the RCMP and CSIS are using stolen computer software. Cadieux's ministry is responsible for the RCMP and CSIS.

Though both the RCMP and the CSIS originally denied they are using PROMIS, court documents show a Canadian communications department official admitted last year that the RCMP was using PROMIS, although INSLAW never authorized its Canadian sale.

"Did CSIS and the RCMP use PROMIS software or modifications of it? If so, what were the circumstances of the acquisition? Was the software stolen, and if so, was the Canadian Government aware of it?" These are the questions Parliament wants to ask Cadieux. The Canadian Solicitor has indicated that the Government is already launching its own investigation into the pirated software scandal. Canadian officials are indicating that the pirated software sales may have helped to illegally fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Contra funding and supplies was one of the most important aspects of the Cabazon-Wackenhut joint venture. Riconoscuito has had inside connections with the CIA and U.S. Justice Department and some testimony put forward states that he helped to launder $40 million for the Bush-Quayle campaign, that report has not been substantiated by any more than one government source.

Brian is the owner of a holding company which has interests in the Financial News Network, United Press International and Hadron, Inc. Hadron was the company that was unsuccessful in buying out INSLAW, Affidavits on file with the court allege that Hadron, through Reagan cronies, attempted to force INSLAW out of business after it was awarded a $10 million contract by the U.S. Justice Department.

The scandal involves Meese, Brian, former National Security Advisor Robert McFarland, several senior staff members at the U.S. Justice Department, and even federal judges. The Vancouver Sun, the leading newspaper in Western Canada, states, "The pirated software battle already has been compared to Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal."

Murder of three Indians may be part of House probe on INSLAW case

By Harry V. Martin

Eighth in a NEW SERIES
Copyright Napa Sentinel, 1991

A security guard, who linked the CIA with the execution style murder of one Indian and two other men who objected to the tribe's manufacturing of weapons, chemical and biological warfare devices and the conversion of INSLAW''s sensitive software, fled to Sonoma and Lake counties right after the murders. The security guard's secret hiding places were sanctioned by the Riverside County District Attorney's Office and the state Department of Justice.

The security guard testified in a video-taped interview about the murders and named names. The video-taping was taken by the Riverside County District Attorney's Office after a Cabazon Indian and his two companions were found slain. The security guard's testimony to the DA's Office revealed that he was the bag man who carried $10,000 from the Indian Reservation in Indio to the top of an aerial tram in Palm Springs. The $10,000 was "hit" money. According to the testimony, several ex-Green Berets, then employed as firemen in the City of Chicago, executed the three Indians.

Who paid for the executions? According to the testimony, a man who was once closely associated with Jimmy Hoffa and who then operated the Bingo Parlor on the Indian Reservation, provided the $10,000 for the killing. The three slain men had raised serious objections to the Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture. Wackenhut was involved as agents for the CIA to provide arms to the Contras and also to convert INSLAW's stolen PROMIS software for use by the Canadian Government. The Canadian Government has ordered an investigation into the pirated software scandal and the U.S. House Judiciary Committee is conducting its own investigation in what has been described as the U.S. Department of Justice's "trickery, deceit and theft" of the software. The U.S. Government has been connected with the illegal sale of the sensitive software to South Korea, Libya, Iraq, Israel and Canada, as well as being pirated by a number of U.S. agencies, including the CIA, National Security Agency and other military units. The software is also in use by the FBI. Only the U.S. Justice Department was licensed to use the software, which tracks criminals and can be used for military tracking, as well. INSLAW was awarded $6.8 million by two federal courts against the U.S. Justice Department.

The scandal has deepened considerably, especially since the testimony of Michael J. Riconoscuito, who worked closely with the Wackenhut company, and Dr. Earl Brian, a close aid and financial business associate of former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese and former California Cabinet official in the Ronald Reagan governorship. The scandal has caught several members of the U.S. Justice Department, the National Security Council, the federal bankruptcy court, and other government officials in a vice. Newspapers from Canada and the United States rate the INSLAW case equal to the Iran-Contra scandal and Watergate.

Riconoscuito provided an affidavit which compromised the U.S. Justice Department and covert CIA operations. The affidavit stated that Riconoscuito was warned by U.S. Justice Department officials that if he cooperated with the House Judiciary investigation of the INSLAW case, that he would be arrested. Within eight days of signing the affidavit, Riconoscuito was arrested in the State of Washington and held without bail. He was later charged with one count of distribution of methanphetamines, a crime that usually has a low bail. Riconoscuito was being held for U.S. Marshals. Investigators from the House Judiciary Committee interviewed Riconoscuito in a Tacoma jail last week.

Riconoscuito's mention of the Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture, sparked more controversy. The House Judiciary Committee is now also reviewing information on the Indian murders.

The Sentinel was able to obtain an exclusive interview with people closely associated with the Cabazon nation and the murders. The security guard, who was the bag man, had just left the military service as an airborne ranger working on covert assignments. He was hired as a security guard for the Cabazon nation. Another man, a licensed investigator, was hired to question the security guard about what he knew. It was learned that a key Indian of the tribe was making strong objections to the laundering of money from the Bingo Parlor. The main antagonist was Fred Alvarez.

The security guard was given $10,000 to give to a hit man in Palm Springs. He has subsequently video-taped his confession to the Riverside County District Attorney's office. Alvarez, in an exclusive interview with the Desert Sun, complained about the U.S. Government's abuses of the Indian nation. He told the Sun that people were going to kill him. Alvarez was murdered in execution style after the interview.

The Riverside District Attorney's Office and the California Department of Justice commenced their separate investigation of the murders. A report was issued by the state linking the people behind the Cabazons with direct links to organized crime , a chief Mafia Family, the Gambino Family, and the CIA. The Cabazon reservation, however, is an independent nation. In video interviews, the security guard told how Wackenhut demonstrated new weapons with both the FBI and the CIA present. He also testified to the presence at these demonstrations of Dr. Earl Brian.

The man who paid the security guard $10,000 was later convicted of attempted murder after five more Indians were shot to death. He was linked by law enforcement officials to organized crime and CIA covert operations.

The security guard testified that the Indio reservation was convenient for the U.S. Government because it was an independent nation and because it was close to the Mexican border, where arms were shipped enroute to the Contras. The security guards' testimony was so sensitive, that late one night the Riverside County District Attorney's Office arranged for an armed escort to get him off the reservation. He went to Sonoma and Lake counties, and then back to Southern California to work with the Department of Justice. He fled to New Mexico and now has left the country. He may return to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, though he is in fear of his life right now.

Like in the INSLAW case, those principles involved have fallen like flies. The first federal judge to rule in INSLAW's favor against the U.S. Justice Department was not re-appointed to another 14-year term. Many members of the U.S. Justice Department quit or were fired in direct relationship to this case. The chief investigator for the Riverside County District Attorney's Office was later taken off the case and transferred to the Juvenile Division and then given early retirement. Shortly after his retirement, the DA investigator states that he was pulled off the road one day by a CIA agent and told to forget all about the "desert" if he wanted to enjoy his retirement.

The man who gave the money to the security guard for the murder, was also the same man who is reported to have been the trigger man in Chile in 1971, the target: President Salvador AllendŽ.

INSLAW case gets deeper and uncovers more 'bodies'

By Harry V. Martin

Ninth in a NEW SERIES
Copyright Napa Sentinel, 1991

When Michael J. Riconoscuito signed his affidavit implicating the U.S. Justice Department in the theft and pirating of INSLAW's PROMIS software, he opened a can of worms that may never go away. Riconoscuito revealed in his affidavit that the CIA, U.S. Justice Department and the FBI all had links to the Cabazon Indians and to John Phillip Nichols and that the Indian reservation in Indio, California, was linked directly to the Contras. Those links resulted in the death of many people.

Riconoscuito also warned in his affidavit that he was going to be arrested if he cooperated with a U.S. Congressional probe of the Justice Department involving the pirated software. Within eight days of signing the affidavit, like clock work, Riconoscuito was arrested and held without bail for the U.S. Marshal. But not to be thwarted, investigators from the Congressional Judiciary Committee met and interviewed Riconoscuito.

Riconoscuito's statements, however, have sparked a new inquiry into the entire Wackenhut-Cabazon Indian joint venture and additional coverups by the U.S. Government over the stolen software, money laundering, Mafia ties and illegal shipments to the Contras. It was the U.S. Justice Department that warned Riconocuito not to speak out. His statements have also launched an investigation into the pirated software by the Canadian Government, as well.

One Indian and two companions who protested against the manufacturing of military equipment, including chemical and biological warfare, the alteration of the PROMIS software, and shipments to the Contras, were murdered execution style. The man who was used to transport the blood money from CIA operatives and the killers, has fled the country, but not before providing video taped testimony on the murders.

Implicated in the entire Wackenhut-Cabazon Justice Department affair, was a man called John Phillip Nichols. Nichols took over the Bingo Hall and later the reservation. The Cabazon Indians are an independent nation.

Nichols, who has been linked to Jimmy Hoffa and assassination attempts of Fidel Castro and Salvador AllendŽ, has strong Mafia ties. He has been convicted of soliciting murder.

Linda Streeter, the sister of Alfred Alvarez, the slain Indian, has asked the California Department of Justice to assign a special prosecution unit to investigate the case. The information on the murders has been forwarded to the Congressional Judiciary Committee now probing the U.S. Justice Department.

The Riverside County Grand Jury and the Riverside County District Attorney's Office have extensive testimony on the murders.

Even 20/20 has done a segment on the Indian involvement and the murders. Nichols is the one who persuaded the U.S. Government to provide the Cabazon Indians with military and security equipment.

Nichols' ties are oulined on page 304 of Inside Job, the Looting of America's Savings and Loans by Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker and Paul Muolo.

"At San Marino Savings in Southern California we heard about a major borrower, G. Wayne Reeder (who also attempted a couple of failed ventures with Herman Beebee), meeting in late 1981 at an arms demonstration with Raul Arana and Eden Pastora, Contra leaders who were considering buying military equipment from Reeder's Indian bingo-parlor partner, Dr. John Nichols. Among the equipment were night-vision goggles manufactured by Litton Industries and a light machine gun. Nichols, according to former Reeder employees and published accounts, had a plan in the early 1980's to build a munitions plant on the Cabazon Indian reservation near Palm Springs in partnership with Wackenhut, a Florida security firm. The plan fell through. Nichols was a self-described CIA veteran of assassination attempts against Castro in Cuba and AllendŽ in Chile. Authorities said he was a business associate of members of the Los Angeles Mafia. He was later convicted in an abortive murder-for-hire scheme and sentenced."

The intertwining mess of the U.S. Justice Department, FBI, CIA, former Attorney General Edwin Meese, Dr. Earl Brian, a former Reagan California Cabinet member, the Federal Bankruptcy Courts demonstrates a broad stroke of corruption throughout the higher echelons of government. Today, a Congressional Committee is attempting to sort everything out, but a Senate Committee once tried the same thing and was totally thwarted when the U.S. Justice Department refused to cooperate.

We have, in the past year, examined the CIA-Contras-Nazi-Banking connections, the CIA-Justice Department-Bankruptcy Court connections, and the CIA-Mafia-Drug connections. It is a never ending story.

Conclusion of the INSLAW series

By Harry V. Martin

Conclusion of a NEW SERIES
Copyright Napa Sentinel, 1991

An Indian "uprising", government investigations by the U.S. Congress, Canadian and Australian Parliaments, international spying, software piracy, threats to witnesses, wholesale resignations at the U.S. Department of Justice, several murders, the arrest of a key witness, and the end of a long judicial career for one judge, this is the complex web of the INSLAW case that many governments are now indicating could become another Watergate.

It all began when associates of then Attorney General Edwin Meese and Dr. Earl Brian, a business associate of Meese and also a cabinet officer under Governor Ronald Reagan, attempted to buy a small computer software company called INSLAW. INSLAW had developed a highly sensitive program for tracking criminals - the software was called PROMIS. INSLAW had signed a $10 million contract with the U.S. Justice Department to develop the software under contract to them. INSLAW was not paid for the program and it was told that if it didn't sell the company it would have problems - it did. When insiders at the Justice Department blocked payments to INSLAW, those insiders included one fired employee of INSLAW and one former competitor of the firm - INSLAW was pushed into the bankruptcy courts. The Justice Department, according to evidence on file, pushed the bankruptcy court to declare INSLAW insolvent. Instead the Bankruptcy Court ruled that the Justice Department owed INSLAW $6.8 million. The judge who made the ruling was removed from the bench.

Meanwhile, Dr. Brian, according to many affidavits from intelligence officials and former CIA and Justice Department operatives, sold the PROMIS software with modifications. Brian received the assistance of the Justice Department and later the CIA in the sale of the pirated software. The conversion of the PROMIS software was done on the Indian reservation of the Cabazon Nation. John Phillip Nichols - who is an old time CIA operative linked with assassination attempts on both Fidel Castro of Cuba and Salvador AllendŽ of Chile, held control of the Cabazon Nation through a bingo casino. He also obtained contracts with Wackenhut to manufacture night vision goggles along with chemical and biological weapons.

Materials manufactured on the Cabazon Nation reservation were shipped to the Contras. Nichols was also closely associated with Mafia connections and Jimmy Hoffa, as well. Wackenhut has close ties with the CIA and Justice Department with such illuminaries as Former CIA Director Stanfield Turner in their employ. Wackenhut has approximately 80,000 employees and runs several jails and federal prisons. They have a "small army" of their own.

When one Indian and two of his companions protested against the use of the Nation, including the illegal pirating of INSLAW's software they were murdered in execution style. According to testimony on file with the Riverside County District Attorney's Office and the state Department of Justice, three ex-Green Berets who were then Chicago firemen, were hired to do the killing. Nichols was accused of the murders. After several other murders, Nichols was convicted of attempted murder for hire. On Saturday, April 20, the Indians staged their own "uprising", and "took" back their reservation from Nichols. The Tribal Council voted him out and placed the sister of the slain Indian in charge. However, after the vote was official, the reservation was swarming with uniformed and armed Wackenhut guards.

Michael Riconoscuito, a covert CIA operative, provided an affidavit to the U.S. Congressional Judiciary Committee investigating the Justice Department's role in the pirated software. He revealed the role Nichols was playing with Cabazon Indians and how Dr. Brian was involved in the conversion of the PROMIS software. Riconoscuito stated in the affidavit that he was warned by Justice Department officials that if he testified before the Judiciary Committee or provided evidence, he would be arrested. Within eight days of his affidavit, Riconoscuito was arrested and held without bail in a Tacoma, Washington jail. Riconoscuito told the Sentinel on Friday in an exclusive interview from the Tacoma jail, that his 4-year-old son's life had been threatened and that he was facing two life sentences if he cooperated with the Congressional investigation.

Riconoscuito told the Sentinel that he would probably not testify in the INSLAW case in order to be freed from jail and protect his son's life. He did indicate, however, that he has supplied enough information to the Judicial Committee investigators to provide a host of new key witnesses to the pirating of the INSLAW software by the Justice Department. Riconoscuito is a typical example of a CIA covert operator who is not being allowed to "leave" and who has too much inside "dirt" on the illegal operations of the CIA.

Riconoscuito's affidavit, however, sparked an uproar in Canada. Riconoscuito stated in the affidavit that the Indian reservation was used to alter the PROMIS software for use by the Canadian government. A Parliamentary inquiry is being launched into why and how Canada became involved in the purchase of pirated software from the U.S. Government. The software is being used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Intelligence Service.

In Australia, another uproar has been created over the pirated PROMIS software. There, the Government is claiming that the CIA is tapping into the computers of the Australian government. It may be possible that the "alteration" done on the software at the Indian Reservation was to install an override password, so that the CIA could tap in to foreign government's intelligence system. The pirated software has been sold to Israel, Libya, Iraq, South Korea, Canada and Australia, there may be even more nations involved in the program.

Many members of the Justice Department have left since the INSLAW matter was exposed. A U.S. Senate Committee investigated the Justice Department but gave up its investigation when the Justice Department refused to surrender any documents. The Congressional Committee has threatened the funding of the Justice Department and the records have been promised, but not yet delivered. The Justice Department sent investigators to Tacoma immediately after Riconoscuito's arrest. The Committee expressed alarm over the arrest because it was predicted right in Riconoscuito's affidavit.

The INSLAW case is only being covered by a few newspapers throughout the United States, including the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Miami Herald, Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle (on occasion) and the Vancouver Sun. It has not made the wire services. Dr. Brian's company owns United Press International.

How will it go? Stay tuned!

Addendum 1

By Harry V. Martin

Copyright Napa Sentinel, 1991

June 18, 1991

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Napa Sentinel produced a lengthy series about the INSLAW case and alleged wrongdoings by the U.S. Department of Justice. This article and subsequent others will publish the details of a Congressional hearing into the matter.
The U.S. Department of Justice has refused to allow Congress access to INSLAW documents. INSLAW is a small computer software company that developed a sophisticated program to track criminals. The Justice Department was accused by a federal court judge of "deceit, trickery and theft" of the software, which has now found its way into the illegal possession of foreign governments and U.S. intelligence networks.

Congress has decided to investigate the INSLAW case and the Justice Department. The Justice Department, in turn, has arrogantly refused to supply Congress with the documents. Since this refusal, the Justice Department has agreed to allow Congressional investigators to review screened documents. The investigators are not allowed to copy the material, but to make note of them and the Congress would then have to subpoena them. At which time, the Justice Department will decide whether or not to release them to Congress. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, who refused to budge on the issue, has now resigned. The heighth of arrogance.

A Congressional Subcommittee on Economic and Commercial Law of the Committee on the Judiciary held hearings concerning the refusal of the Justice Department to cooperate. Congressman Jack Brooks of Texas, head of the committee investigating the Justice Department, stated that the Justice Department has denied the committee access to critical documents involving the Justice Department's dispute with the INSLAW Corp. "The documents were requested as part of an ongoing investigation of allegations that high-level Department officials conspired to force INSLAW into bankruptcy and liquidate its assets. Further, it has been alleged that these officials also attempted to arrange to have the company's primary software product, called PROMIS, transferred or bought by a rival company." Brooks stated in his opening remarks, "As incredible as this sounds, Federal Bankruptcy Judge George Bason, who will be testifying later, has already found much of the first part of the allegation to be true. In his decision on the INSLAW bankruptcy, Judge Bason ruled that the Department 'took, converted and stole' INSLAW's proprietary software using 'trickery, fraud and deceit'. The judge also severely criticized the decisions by high-level Department officials to 'ignore the ethical improprieties' on the part of the Justice Department officials involved in the case."

Brooks backed up Bason's findings, in stating, "In November 1989, Senior District Court Judge William B. Bryant unequivocally supported Judge Bason's findings and criticized the Department for attempting to escape accountability by asserting, among other things, 'sovereign immunity', whatever that is. I didn't think we had kings in this country." Brooks continued, "Despite the dramatic findings by the two courts, the Department has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing by its officials, claiming that its conflict with INSLAW is nothing more than a simple contract dispute. I find this position a little hard to swallow."

Brooks, who says the major controversy involves the highest levels of the Justice Department, including at least two assistant attorneys general, a deputy attorney general, and Attorney General Meese, himself, states, "Unfortunately, the Department has thwarted attempts by Congress to learn the complete truth concerning the INSLAW case. Justice has repeatedly denied both the House and Senate investigating committees access to critical documents that may prove the Department's innocence or guilt. As a result, I am even more convinced that the allegations concerning INSLAW must be fully and independently investigated by the committee."

Former Attorney General Elliot Richardson has outlined the government's devious role, indicating that friends of Ronald Reagan and Edward Meese made every attempt possible to take over INSLAW and gain full proprietary rights to the PROMIS software. The man behind the move, according to Richardson, was Dr. Earl Brian, who also owns United Press International. Richardson was the Attorney General under Richard Nixon and refused to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor on Nixon's orders, Richardson was also fired.

Richardson revealed that Meese's Justice Department needed to create a case management system designed along the concept of the PROMIS software. Meese's friends wanted the $200 million contract and thus the need to buy out or force INSLAW into bankruptcy. "We believe that these attempts to acquire control of PROMIS were linked by a conspiracy among friends of Attorney General Edwin Meese to take advantage of their relationship with him for the purpose of obtaining a lucrative contract for the automation of the Department's litigating division. Among the facts pointing to the existence of this conspiracy are the following:

Between 1958 and 1966, Edwin Meese and D. Lowell Jensen (then deputy attorney general) served together in Alameda County, California, District Attorney's Office. From 1966 to 1974, Meese was a key aide to Governor Ronald Reagan. From 1970 to 1975, Dr. Earl Brian served in Governor Reagan's Cabinet. In January 1981, Meese became Counsellor to President Reagan. In 1981 to 1982, Brian served in the White House as the chairman of a task force which reported to Meese.

When Meese joined the Reagan Administration, Brian was the controlling shareholder in Biotech Capital Corporation. Biotech controlled Hadron, Inc., a company which specialized in integrating computer-based information management systems. This was the company which tried to buy INSLAW.

Mrs. Meese bought stock in Biotech's first public offering with money borrowed from Edwin Thomas, soon to be an aide to her husband. Brian lent Thomas $100,000 for the purchase of a house in Washington. Mrs. Meese later bought stock in American Cytogentics, another Brian company.

In June, 1983, a DOJ "whistleblower" warned the staff of Senator Max Baucus that, as soon as Meese became Attorney General, unidentified friends of Meese would be awarded a "massive sweetheart contract" to install PROMIS in every litigation office of DOJ. According to a statement made to Judge Jane Solomon of the Civil Court of the City of New York, Stanton's attempt to force INSLAW into liquidation was part of a 'conspiracy to get the INSLAW software'. Several high-level DOJ officials spoke of DOJ's determination to "get" or "bury" INSLAW. One DOJ employee said that Jensen was behind this effort. A second attributed the award to Hadron of a $40 million computer services contract for litigation support in the Lands Division to the influence of a Deputy Assistant Attorney General with close ties to Meese. Other DOJ employees connected Meese, Brian, and Hadron with the harassment of INSLAW and the attempt to acquire PROMIS."
Richardson also testified, "In late April 1988, Richard LeGrand, chief investigator of the Senate Judiciary Committee, telephoned (William) Hamilton (owner of INSLAW). LeGrand said that he was calling at the request of an unnamed senior official in DOJ whom he had known for 15 years and regarded as completely trustworthy. According to this official, the INSLAW case was 'a lot dirtier for the Department of Justice than Watergate had been, both in its breadth and depth'. The official asked LeGrand to inform the Hamiltons that the Justice Department had been compromised on the INSLAW case at every level, and that Jensen had engineered INSLAW's problems right from the start. The official also said that senior career officials in the Criminal Division knew all about this malfeasance, but would not disclose what they knew except in response to subpoena and under oath. LeGrand has since told the Hamiltons and others that his informant would come forward only if assured of protection against reprisal."

The Justice Department, according to Richardson, refused to undertake any type of criminal investigation. Richardson told Congress, "It was foreseeable that such an investigation would not only expose widely ramified criminal conduct on the part of the Departmental employees, but also make the Department liable for punitive and consequential damages much larger than the $6.8 million already awarded."

Judge Bason told Congress, "The judicial opinions that I rendered reflected my sense of moral outrage that, as the evidence showed and as I held, the Justice Department stole INSLAW's valuable property and tried to drive INSLAW out of business." He added, "Those opinions were upheld on appeal by Senior U.S. District Judge William Bryant. Very soon after I rendered those opinions my application for reappointment as bankruptcy judge was turned down. One of the Justice Department attorneys who had argued the INSLAW case before me was appointed in my stead." Over 90 percent of all bankruptcy judges seeking reappointment are usually returned to the bench.

There is a good deal more here: Federal Corruption: INSLAW

Untangling the Octopus

2004-11-23T20:32:00.000-05:00

"One link between Bush, Saddam, and Iran-Contra was the corrupt Middle Eastern bank, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). BCCI, it turns out, laundered drug money, financed CIA and Mossad covert operations, and helped Bush, Saddam, and others split over $250 billion in extortion from the sale of Persian Gulf oil. (BCCI also might have had links to the corrupt drug-money-laundering-and-CIA scandals involving Australia's Nugan Hand Bank.)"

UNTANGLING THE OCTOPUS
by Steve Mizrach

October Surprise, Iran-Contra, Noriega, Iraq-gate, and BCCI

Before he died in an ineptly performed 'suicide,' the young journalist Danny Casolaro was working on a book that he claimed tied together many of the 'gates' and 'miniscandals' surrounding the Bush presidency. The book identified the web which tied all the scandals together as the "Octopus," a mythical creature with tentacles stretching everywhere. Perhaps the birth of the Octopus lies in the 1980 Presidential election; and its growth occurred under the eight years of the Reagan presidency. Casolaro soon found that the Octopus may have consisted of a 'shadow government' apparatus that went back even further than Bush and Reagan. But what's left of his notes seem primarily to focus on events in the 80s and 90s.

It is very possible that in 1980, Bill Casey and other members of the Reagan team may have conspired with the Iranians to delay the release of the American hostages: they were afraid of an "October Surprise" which might damage Reagan's chances of defeating Carter. Sure enough, the hostages were released right as Reagan was being inaugurated, and in 1981, the first shipment of arms to Iran began. Gunther Rossbacher, an ex-Navy pilot, and two other foreign sources, insist that on October 21st and 22nd, Bush met with Iranian delegates in Paris. The "October Surprise" may have been how Bush and other Reagan team members located the Iranian 'moderates' that played a role in the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1984, the Boland amendment forbade any more military assistance to the Contras. So, in 1985, the underground "Enterprise" - Operation Yellowfruit - began selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to furnish weapons to the Contras. George Bush claims Iran-Contra has nothing to do with him, but other administration figures' records show he was at the secret meetings - Poindexter, in particular. Amiram Nir, an Israeli terrorism expert, insists he discussed Iranian arms deals with Bush, but that can't be confirmed... he died in a mysterious plane crash in Mexico in 1988.

It turns out the Iran-Contra scandal may have been part of a larger arms-for-hostages deal. The Iranians needed weapons in their war against Iraq, and the Reagan administration felt that the Iranians might have been able to convince the Shiite terrorists in Lebanon to release the American hostages held there. Reagan claimed no "quid pro quo," but then he also claimed he really didn't remember much, either. In any case, additional hostages were seized after the 'non-deal', and many may remain in captivity today, including the Lebanon CIA station head. One man who may have known a great deal about the Iran-Contra business was Manuel Noriega, whose name came up in the 1988 Dukakis-Bush debates. Noriega knew about the Contra drug pipeline, because he was a pusher, himself, while on the CIA payroll throughout the 1980s, and during his trial in Miami in 1989, some testimony emerged which suggested he knew something about the Central American end of the Iran-Contra affair and where some on the missing money may have 'disappeared' into.

On the Middle Eastern end, another man who was a delighted beneficiary of American generosity throughout the 1980s was Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The Agriculture Department and other agencies gave Saddam agricultural credits worth millions of dollars which he used to purchase American attack helicopters, chemical weapons for using on the Kurds, and the components of a nuclear weapons program. It is suspected that the CIA and Justice Department overlooked, or aided, the Banco Nazionale Lavoro (BNL) of Italy while it funneled billions in military aid to Iraq. This recently burgeoning scandal, "Iraqgate," suggests we were playing both sides against the middle during the Iran-Iraq war. We were selling arms to both the Iranians and the Iraqis, and the CIA at various points double-crossed both sides. It is no wonder that America is so distrusted in that part of the world. In any case, there were two men that knew too much, and when Bush became president, he had to clean them up, and he would wage two "cleanup wars" to do it.

One link between Bush, Saddam, and Iran-Contra was the corrupt Middle Eastern bank, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). BCCI, it turns out, laundered drug money, financed CIA and Mossad covert operations, and helped Bush, Saddam, and others split over $250 billion in extortion from the sale of Persian Gulf oil. (BCCI also might have had links to the corrupt drug-money-laundering-and-CIA scandals involving Australia's Nugan Hand Bank.) Attorney General Richard Thornburgh squashed an investigation into First American Bankshares, secretly controlled by BCCI, in October 1990; and William von Raab, former U.S. customs official, was fired by Treasury Secretary James Brady for delving too deeply into BCCI. This may have a lot to do with the links between Prescott Bush, First American director Stephens, Bahrain, and Iraq. Bush's family were oilmen, and if there is anything he stood for, it was Big Oil and its interests in the Middle East. (It might be pointed out, incidentally, that it was Norman Schwarzkopf's father who helped boot out Mossadegh in Iran when he threatened to nationalize holdings of British Petroleum.) The mess was in place, and President Bush had a lot of cleaning up to do.

The "Cleanup Wars"

The first "cleanup war" was so-called Operation Just Cause in Panama. We invaded with the ostensibly 'just' cause of arresting a drug dealer and bringing him to justice here in the U.S.. The fact that he was the leader of another country, and that this is a violation of international law, didn't raise a naysayer, although insiders knew that Noriega was working for us before Bush started to see him as a threat. He may have wanted to jail Noriega because of the Iran-Contra secrets he knew. The other ostensible reason was because of Bush family holdings in Panama. It seems that Prescott's friends in the Aoki Corporation of Japan have invested more than $350 million in Panama; their holdings include the luxury resort Caesar Park and the Mariott Hotel. Bush may have been afraid of Noriega nationalizing that property. While Bush claimed to be nailing a dealer, he replaced him with two other dope pushers. Panamanian president Guillermo Endara is a director of the bank used exclusively by the Medellin cartel, and vice president Guillermo Ford is part owner of Dadeland Bank of Florida, which stands accused of laundering South American drug money. This Bush cleanup cost 26 American and 2000 Panamanian (civilian) lives, and several million dollars. It's worth seeing the film The Panama Deception to see some of the chilling secrets of this operation, including hidden mass graves of murdered civilians.

The second 'cleanup war' was Operation Desert Storm, with the purposes of ostensibly 'liberating' Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. It is clear that, in fact, administration official April Glaspie succeeded in goading Hussein into invading Kuwait by saying that the U.S. would not interfere. And that the CIA and NSC provided doctored sattelite photographs making it look like Iraq was preparing to invade Saudi Arabia, when in fact Iraqi troops were nowhere near the Saudi border; further, that the CIA deliberately payed no attention to Iraqi troop buildup prior to the invasion of Kuwait. And that the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, appearing under a pseudonym, told a false story about how Iraqi soldiers were ripping Kuwaiti babies out of incubators. Saddam Hussein had been set up, and now so were the American people, who Bush promised this was about "jobs" and dealing with America's "VietNam syndrome."

The Desert Storm war never accomplished any of its supposed goals. Kuwait does not have 'democracy,' only a returned monarchy hell-bent on seeking blood vengeance on Palestinian citizens. Saddam Hussein was not toppled from power; and the Kurds who were incited to rise up against him received no U.S. help when Republican Guard American-made attack helicopters mowed them down. Saddam's chemical and nuclear arsenal were never eliminated. Instead, what was destroyed was the Iraqi infrastructure, causing thousands to suffer disease, hunger, and deprivation, in addition to the thousands who died in the 'smart' bombings which nonetheless hit plenty of civilian targets; and the environment of the Persian Gulf, when eco-terrorist Saddam Hussein dumped millions of gallons of oil out of his wells and set ablaze thousands of Kuwaiti oil wells. It was a pyrrhic victory, but not for American oil companies, who profited mightily from increased oil prices... and for George Bush, who used his "VietNam syndrome therapy" as an excuse to hold hundreds of parades celebrating his 'victory' nationwide with yellow ribbons and marching soldiers.

The Wackenhut Connection

The Wackenhut Security Corporation of Miami, Florida, has long been suspected of being a CIA front. The right-wing politics of George Wackenhut, who had ties to Belgian fascists and South American death squads, are well known. But few people realize that Wackenhut, a small company with "only a few" employees, gets some choice assignments, including guarding nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons facilities, the Alaskan Oil pipeline, and several American embassies; or that its board of directors contains several luminaries from the FBI, CIA, and Army Intelligence, including Bobby Ray Inman. Wackenhut has led a covert crusade against whistleblowers at many nuclear power plants, using wiretaps to eavesdrop on them and various 'subtle' techniques to convince them not to talk; it also spied on Chuck Hamel, a critic of the Aleyska Oil Consortium's drilling policies, by setting up a fake environmental-law firm which sought to "pump" him for his sources. Wackenhut may have even used some operatives to try and help topple President Perez of Venezuela through a (failed) military coup, largely for money (rather than politics) it was given by Blanca Ibanez, the mistress of Jaime Luinschi, the former president.

Also, a Wackenhut employee named Ernesto Bermudez was using 1500 'employees' in El Salvador for things he admitted "you wouldn't want your mother to know about" to a reporter from Spy magazine. Candian PM Pierre Trudeau refused to allow Wackenhut to purchase a weapons-propellant plant in Quebec, and it was refused a permit to open a security facility in France because President Francois Mitterand said "we had just gotten rid of the CIA." Wackenhut maintained files on over 4 million suspected 'subversives' of all types, including civil rights activists and antiwar protesters, well into the 1960s, making it the largest private holder of such information. In 1975, after a Congressional investigation into domestic intelligence operations and connections to private firms, Wackenhut turned its files over to the Anti-Communist Church League of America based in Wheaton, Illinois, which is now defunct. Florida Governor Claude Kirk claims to have worked closely with Wackenhut to "fight organized crime," although insiders maintain they were doing anything but fighting the Mob.

But there are direct links between Wackenhut and the 'Octopus'. It appears that Michael Riconsciuto, a convicted drug dealer, claims to have met with George Wackenhut, John Amarell (of Wackenhut's Executive Board), and Dr. John Philip Nichols (a CIA operative conducting shady activities on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in the California desert) in Las Vegas in the early 80s to discuss the theft of Inslaw's PROMIS software; he says Wackenhut asked him "how his software work was coming along." (Supposedly, Nichols was using the Cabazon reservation as his own private munitions proving ground, testing things ranging from super-lethal Fuel-Air Explosives and chemical-biological weapons to Electromagnetic Pulse [EMP] generators.) Ammarell confirms the meeting, but claims it was merely about the sale of a boat! Retired general Richard Secord arranged for the Wackenhut Corp. to work with Iraqi arms dealer Ihsan Barbouti; Wackenhut operative David Ramirez claims that he and Barbouti rode in a truck carrying chemical-weapons technology from Texas to Chicago, and then rode on a plane to Iraq. Ramirez indicates that he thinks Wackenhut may have been part of a "food stamp" scheme to get agricultural credits for Iraq which were in turn used to purchase nuclear-weapons technology, making Wackenhut part of the Iraqgate affair as well.

Assisting with Barbouti's arms schemes were two partners, James Tully (who sent Bill Clinton's 'draft-dodge' letter to ABC) and Jack Brennan, who currently works as director of administrative operations in President Bush's office. Brennan and Tully had been involved in a $181 million deal to supply uniforms for the Iraqi army, arranging them to be manufactured in Ceausescu's Romania, of all places. Other partners in that deal were Watergate felon John Mitchell and Sarkis Soghnalian, a Lebanese citizen who was credited with introducing Saddam Hussein to Gerald Bull, the inventor of the so-called "supergun." Soghnalian is currently in prison for selling 103 military helicopters to Iraq; and David Ramirez says that Wackenhut considered the Turkish man to be a "valuable client." Two thousand gallons of ferrocyanide - an important chemical-warfare binary ingredient - vanished from a Boca Raton cherry flavoring factory in 1990. That plant was guarded by - guess who - Wackenhut.

Barbouti owned shares in that company, and two others: TK-7, which makes a fuel additive that could extend the range of liquid-fueled missiles such as the SCUD, and Pipeline Recovery Systems, which coats pipes to make them useable in nuclear power plants. He admits having faked his own death several times, and having helped Moammar Khadafi build his infamous chemical-weapons plant at Rabta, Libya. Further, he owns about $100 million worth of real estate and oil-drilling equipment in Texas and Oklahoma. It is widely believed that the Middle Eastern architect is either currently dead (surprise), living in Jordan, or being kept in a CIA safe house in Florida. An engineering company owned by him in Frankfurt had a $552 million contract to build airfields in Iraq. And - no surprise here - Barbouti used the corrupt BCCI bank as his middleman in many deals.

The CenTrust Connection: the S & Ls, the Mob, and BCCI

The S & L failures of '89 were a massive blow to the banking system. Over 200 small savings and loan banks went under - just under half of those in existence - and had their assets seized by the federal 'dummy' company, the Resolution Trust Corp. Largely, this was a problem created by deregulation legislation passed by the congressional banking committees - the legislation allowed the S & Ls to make investments that were extremely risky and fiscally unsound. In fact, the failure can also be seen as the result of several years of deregulation of many industries under the Reagan administration - deregulation that was "bought" by the very industries which were supposed to be policed. But where were the regulators who were supposed to be the 'watchdogs' of the industry? Almost across the board they were 'bought off' by S & L moguls like Charles Keating, paid to look the other way while the S & Ls invested in fraudulent real estate schemes and sham projects which collapsed after a few years. But to maintain a veneer of solubility for their creditors, many S & Ls actually turned to "junk bond" king Michael Milliken, managing to "puff up" their investment profiles with airy money. There may have been even more crooked things going on, as some recent articles suggest that some of the S & L swindle may have gotten into the hands of the CIA and used to fund the Contras- most funds coming from the failed Palmer National Bank and Vision Savings Bank in Houston.

Even more daring reports, such as a recent book by investigative reporter Peter Brewton, suggest the Mafia may have been involved with some of the bank fraud - as they most certainly were with the Vatican Bank scandal in Italy. Author Dan Moldea notes extensive connections between the Hollywood motion picture company MCA, the defense/nuclear contractor General Electric, the corrupt Teamsters' Union, and the Mob. Strangely, former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan had connections to all of the above. The fact that there are close Republican ties to the Teamsters, despite the party's overt anti-labor stance, is very curious; but it must be examined in the light of the Teamsters' "patriotic" support of "guns and butter" and other right-wing stances, and their links to the Mafia. (It is widely suspected that Richard Nixon may have pardoned Jimmy Hoffa after making a deal with the Teamsters to give money to his 1972 presidential campaign - yet another unwritten chapter in the Watergate saga, along with the revelations that he may have tried to frame the Democrats for the assassination attempt on George Wallace.) Anthony Summers believes that J. Edgar Hoover was blackmailed by the Mob for his homosexuality, and that is why the former FBI director continued to deny the pervasiveness of "organized crime." One of Brewton's most amazing revelations is that Bush may have actively attempted to conceal the Texas oil - organized crime - S & L - CIA links during the 1988 campaign: but so did Lloyd Bentsen, who told Dukakis it would be "a losing issue for our ticket!"

The cost for fixing the S & L mess - for returning the depositors in the banks all their savings - will be quite high. Another cost involved in the process will be the liquidation of nearly valueless assets owned by the S & Ls - such as acres and acres of undeveloped land out in the Southwest. The properties of the failed S & Ls are being sold by RTC for businessmen for a steal; and taxpayers are being asked to pick up a large part of the tab. Some estimate that the S & L cleanup may cost each and every taxpayer as much as $1000. Each and every taxpayer, of the 200 million who pay taxes! There are economists who feel the beginning wave of the S & L collapse may have contributed to the massive stock market crash of 1987, and that its impact led to other bank failures and a real estate 'bust' contributing to the 1990 recession. Crooked S & L operators received, on the average, 2.4 years in prison for ripping off America with their white-collar crimes. But a robber who steals $200 from a convenience store gets, on average, 7.8 years. One need not be a math wizard to see something glaringly wrong with that. Why have the federal prosecutors under the Bush administration been so slow to prosecute, and so lenient with their sentences? Could it be connected to the extensive amounts of money that Bush himself got from the S & Ls during his 1988 campaign?

Was there also a link between the failed Savings & Loans and BCCI? It turns out, yes, and the (now defunct) Miami CenTrust bank chairman David Paul is the key. According to a NBC special on the S & L scandal, Dexter Lehtinen, the temporary appointee to the position of federal prosecutor for south Florida, claims he was obstructed by the government from serving subpoenas on many of the big figures connected to Paul. Lehtinen was never confirmed officially for the position after serving in it for several years - some say this was because of things in his background that might lead to a confirmation fight, but others feel it was because he was digging too deeply into CenTrust's failures. Lehtinen now claims that Paul may have bribed many local and federal officials to cover up for money laundering and secret Carribean accounts to sequester 'narcodollars.' Investigators found that Paul lived a lavish lifestyle, buying gold fixtures and priceless art treasures for his office in the CenTrust building. When CenTrust was starting to face insolvency, Paul found a cash influx from an unsuspected source - BCCI financier Farouk, who tried to use CenTrust to launder money from the Banco Nazionale Lavore (BNL) in Italy. The S & L scandal is, it seems, yet another arm within the Octopus.

Bush's Teapot Dome?: the INSLAW Affair

George Bush's predecessor, Ronald Reagan, had a terribly corrupt administration. There were huge numbers of indictments, resignations, scandals, and accusations of corruption and coverrup. Housing and Urban Development, under Sam "the Invisible Man" Pierce, turned a blind eye as shifty Republican financiers raked in profits off of shady deals involving public housing. Savings and Loan regulators allowed S & L's all over the country to make ridiculously unsound investments and disappear into bankruptcy. But the corruption in the Reagan administration may have been nowhere more shocking than in the Department of Justice, whose anti-pornography crusader, Edwin Meese III, was accused of improprieties regarding the transfer of a company called Wedtech.

Bush's new Attorney General, Richard Thornburgh, may have done Meese one better, bringing the Department of Injustice one step further. For it now stands accused of being a software pirate - of having stole the Inslaw PROMIS database program from its creators without recompensating them. That PROMIS is a program that can be used to track political dissidents, among other things, has been noted by many commentators. Because William Sessions of the FBI was investigating Justice's possible role in the Inslaw/BNL affair, Attorney General William Barr suddenly launched an investigation of Session's misuse of his phone for making personal calls and allowing his wife to be at meetings - hardly the most major of offenses among government bureaucrats! Curious infighting as the ship went down, it seems.

According to Riconsciouto, the INSLAW affair might have been, among other things, a political payoff for the role a former political operative and Justice Department official, Earl Brian, played in the October Surprise. INSLAW was originally a nonprofit organization basically of quasi-governmental nature, which went private in the 1980s in an effort to market its software commercially. PROMIS was marketed to law enforcement agencies as an efficient tool for tracking criminal cases. However, its versatility for use in such wide-ranging areas as political intelligence and monitoring caught the eye of the Justice Department - which would require modifying the program's original design. So Brian first tried to seize INSLAW Corp. in an illegally authorized "hostile takeover," and when that failed, basically stole the PROMIS software outright. Copies of the program were thought to be distributed or sold to, among others, Israel, South Africa, some Central American regimes, and perhaps Saddam Hussein - by the Bush administration - all without consent or compensation for the program's original authors. It is believed that some regimes even today still use chilling, modified versions of the program for tracking political dissidents.

Is the Octopus Still Alive?: Mena, Arkansas and a Clinton Compromise

Riconsciouto claims that Clinton, like Bush, has been "compromised" by the CIA. He says that he personally flew planes carrying illegal shipments of arms to and drugs from the Contra rebels which took off from a secret airstrip near Mena, Arkansas - one which apparently existed with the full knowledge and consent of then-governor Bill Clinton. He and others think that Clinton made a basic "deal" with Bush after he won -- Bush would not criticize Clinton or bring up too much about Whitewater or Mena airstrip, and in return Clinton would not pursue indictments against Bush Administration officials. Today, as the Clinton administration battles off a series of its own political scandals, writers for the alternative media still puzzle over the "mainstream" media's total refusal to look at whatever was going at Mena, in 1992 or now. Because then-governor Clinton may have been permitting the CIA to run a small scale "black operation" right in his own state. So it's obvious that Clinton has no interest in pursuing the Octopus, the question then becomes - even if his administration isn't involved, does it still thrive in its own shadowy centres?

Danny Casolaro may have been killed because he got too close to the truth. The Christic Institute may have been SLAPPed out of existence because of it. Even if the Octopus isn't still operating, there are likely to be various "tentacles" of it who want to cover up the roles that they played in it. It may have branched into things that Casolaro hadn't gotten around to investigating yet. Certainly it tied together a series of sinister forces and operations. George Bush was undoubtedly a key figure, but he isn't going to be running for President again. What's more tragic is the way that he and other co-conspirators may have basically gotten off scot-free. And at this point, it's too early to tell what role Clinton and his administration may or may not be playing in keeping the creature going. Which to me is more important than any unwise land investments he and his wife may have made during the 1980s.

Source: Dr. Steven Mizrach (Adjunct Lecturer, Florida International University, Department of Sociology/Anthropology)

Also:

The Samizdat Page is dedicated to providing political information that you won't necessarily get anywhere else. It provides information on media activism, pirate media, cyber-activism, and research on parapolitics. This site is not really left or right wing - politics is not one-dimensional anymore.

CIA Admits Nazi Connection

2004-11-23T20:23:00.000-05:00

CIA Admits Nazi Connection Introduction by Robert Lederman (9-26-2000)

Followed by article from UPI

http://www.tenc.net/ [Emperor's Clothes]

Conspicuous by its silence the CIA owned and influenced media did virtually no coverage of what may be one of the decades biggest stories. Only UPI issued any statement on the CIA's admission that following WWII Hitler's top general in charge of espionage transferred his entire network of thousands of spies and double agents to what became the newly-formed CIA.

What makes this much more than an interesting footnote to history is that the entire domestic and foreign history of the CIA has been molded by these former Nazis whose ideas on Eugenics, race, social control, biowarfare and propaganda dominate the policies of countless "think tanks" like the Rockefeller-funded Manhattan Institute and have influenced the U.S. government at its highest levels.

During the past five decades numerous isolated revelations about Nazis imported to America by the Dulles brothers, William Casey and others have broken through the media blackout. These stories usually revolve around former concentration camp guards who hid their identity when emigrating. What makes this different is that General Ghelen was the #1 Nazi in this program. By acknowledging a CIA connection to Ghelen the entire can of worms can now be pried open.

For excellent published works on the CIA/Nazi connection read: "Trading With The Enemy" by Charles Higham and "The Secret War Against the Jews" by Loftus and Arrons Blowback by Christopher Simpson

For my articles on the connection to Mayor Giuliani and the Bush family see: http://Baltech.org/lederman/spray/

***

CIA says Nazi general was intelligence sourceFrom UPI 9/20/2000 20:28 (ET)

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Sept. 20 (UPI) -- The Central Intelligence Agency has for the first time confirmed that a high-ranking Nazi general placed his anti-Soviet spy ring at the disposal of the United States during the early days of the Cold War.

The National Archives said in a release Wednesday that the CIA had filed an affidavit in U.S. District Court "acknowledging an intelligence relationship with German General Reinhard Gehlen that it has kept secret for 50 years."

"The CIA's announcement marks the first acknowledgement by that agency that it had any relationship with Gehlen and opens the way for declassification of records about the relationship," the National Archives said.

Gehlen was Hitler's senior intelligence officer on the Eastern Front during the war and transferred his expertise and contacts to the U.S. as World War II reached its climax. While Gehlen's relationship with U.S. intelligence during the 1940s and 1950s has been the topic of some five books over the years, the eventual release of CIA documents pertaining to the development of his European spy ring could shed new light on the origins of the Cold War and early U.S. espionage efforts against Moscow.

Gehlen's network of agents in Europe - including many with Nazi backgrounds who were bailed out of prisoner of war camps by U.S. intelligence officers - was known as the Gehlen Organization and received millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. until 1956.

The CIA's acknowledgement of its dealings with Gehlen came in a response to an appeal of a Freedom of Information Act request by researcher Carl Oglesby, the National Archives said. The agency pledged to release its records on the general in accordance with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.

The Act established the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), which or more than two years has been declassifying documents related to World War II war crimes and releasing them through the National Archives.

"This shows that the law is working," said former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the IWG. "We now must work closely with the Agency to follow through with the release of these records."

Source: Emperor's Clothes

The Words of Cele Castillo, Former DEA Agent

2004-11-23T20:19:00.000-05:00

"I mean how can you have a war on drugs when you have two agents covering four countries - which were Belize, Salvador, Hondurans and Guatemala. How can you do that? It’s impossible to do that. And when we came face to face with the contradictions of my assignment - when we had these governments, they were all documented in DEA files as drug traffickers. I'm talking about the President’s brother and so forth - all documented in the DEA files as drug traffickers."

See The Words of Cele Castillo, Former DEA Agent

New in the News

2004-11-22T13:22:00.000-05:00

Harvard's stance on Nazis questioned

Recruiting the Next Generation of Spies

House GOP Changes Rules to Protect DeLay

Why Kerry is afraid to speak on vote fraud

Arnold Exposed

Violence Breaks Out All Over Baghdad

Did Fallujah Sink the Elections?

Venezuela: An Assassination & Reuters' Cliches

Another Fallujah Eyewitness Account

Microsoft Warns Asian Governments of Linux Suits

46 Groups Will Boycott Iraq Vote

Breaking the Media-Induced Trance

2004-11-22T13:18:00.000-05:00

By Vincent L Guarisco

As the Bush administration lurches on, scarcely questioned, it will be all but impossible to inform our fellow citizens of the many horrific injustices that plague our society. Our corporate knife-in-the-back media quickly and blatantly censors anything negative about George Bush by either covering up or deleting all relevant evidence. The roll-over of US mainstream media is one of the most devastating scandals in our history -- there is scarcely a hint of honest, diversified journalism. Yet the information floodgates remain wide open and we are literally drowning in state-sponsored propaganda. It's like we're swimming at night in shark-infested waters with no life raft in sight.

George Bernard Shaw (Irish playwright and critic, 1856-1950) had a valid point to make when he wrote, "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization."

Or perhaps historian and author Howard Zinn has the bigger reality picture. Zinn said, "If those in charge of our society -- politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television -- can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves."

I think the combination of the two say it perfectly!

More times than not it will be an ever-worsening struggle attempting to inform others around us who are blissfully carrying on, seemingly without a worry in the world. However, understanding the matrix of madness will be a rare quality worth memorizing before the hypocrisy is totally cloaked in secrecy. As corporate morality becomes non-existent, and deregulation accelerates, accountability will be a hard case to prove.

Perhaps some will think I am over-reacting, but if you stop and think, the day we were warned about is here -- most of us no longer have a substantial voice in our society, and very soon, word of mouth could quite possibly be the only tool left for us to counter the megaphoned liars. Regardless, we must not give up the struggle for spreading truth and freedom to those confused; our children's birthright is depending on our success!

Although, it may seem like the "Nodwells" among us will never get curious, excited or upset with anything that is happening in their media-induced make-believe world, it is not as it appears; sooner or later, they will ultimately wish to be saved from an increasingly volatile world that is only now beginning to crumble and collapse around them.

Those of us who feel we're the lonely voices of logic are more important than we may ever realize, those not in-the-know will desperately need our knowledge and guidance to calm the obstinate cries of betrayal. We must be ready, and be there, for them in order to manifest and embolden a unified force that will eventually stop this tyranny.

The wise will continue to cultivate and develop the fellowship needed to further our right to live free. Regardless if we are met with rolling eyes, daunting glares and feeble arguments from those who cling to the hubris, deep down most of them will subconsciously listen to the lonely voice of reason. Even as they scurry away in confusion and/or denial we will have left a subliminal imprint on their whimpering servitude. Eventually -- as life gets worse in their inner circle -- they will ultimately flock back to reason and sanity -- to truth. And, when enough of them have returned, only then will the gilded age of brainwashing be broken.

Funny how life's little ironies always seem to make the full circle. Truly, what goes around -- comes around.

It's like a hovering analogy-cloud that lingers above the mist that haunts those who fraudulently repress large populations of people in the name of "National Security." At first, the peasants embrace repression in order to remain safe, then they tolerate it to feel protected and, eventually they hate it. They become resentful of the protectors who enslave them and, in due time, will almost always revolt in disobedience. Freedom is a glorious boomerang -- it's a wondrous hive full of spiritual honey called "human nature" that beckons the soul to be free -- a natural elixir that will forever replenish itself regardless of fake promises of "security." Even more so for those who have experienced it and then lost it, it will not be denied!

History is full of past examples of those who have controlled populations of the many to serve the selfish goals of the few through deceit and manipulation. And although many historians have a conflicting view of how they repeatedly accomplished this feat, they all agree that each and every tyrant of power has met the same fate. I'm sure you'll appreciate the following as one of those well-deserved lessons of history:

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." -- Julius Caesar

Did any of us really believe that simply understanding the matrix was enough? I certainly hope not! In fact -- because we do understand the grand canard, it puts us in the point position of our pivotal platoon to act as a guiding compass to help our lost countrymen and women find their way. We must lead them off the media-induced, war-beaten, fear-mongering path propagated by the Bush regime, and steer them into safer territory, smoother waters -- a "higher ground," where trickery by fear has no magical behavior-modification power.

Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher warned us in 121 A.D., "The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."

Marcus is correct; therefore, I consider all of us drafted modern-day minutemen whose sole purpose is to inform. We are on a quest to bring our nation up to speed. This assignment is the most patriotic gift one could give -- the gift of knowledge and truth that will preserve and save our precious way of life for generations to come. I am truly honored to march by your side!

We share a common goal -- a desire for fulfillment of sacred trust in those who govern, a trust that will take generations to repair and will never be devoid of difficulties. But perhaps together we can birth a higher sphere of self-realization for ourselves, and those around us -- a unity that creates new philosophical concepts for a higher realm of universal moral purity, one which makes possible intuitions that transcends vulnerability into prevention.

As a nation, we deserve no less. Together, we can break the trance.

Source: Op Ed News

Sinclair is the latest to feel the power of blogs

2004-11-22T13:10:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, television stations that were members of the Sinclair Media Group were scheduled to air an anti-John Kerry special called Stolen Honor. They were ordered to by executives of the company — the same execs who forbid the 62 TV stations the company controls from airing Ted Koppel's reading of the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq this spring.

The fact that Sinclair was doing this two weeks before the election was viewed, obviously, as a move based on politics, not news. It didn't help that the producer of Stolen Honor was Carlton Sherwood, who has ties to the Bush administration. Nor that Sinclair's Washington bureau chief, Jon Leiberman, was fired for criticizing the company's plans; he told the Baltimore Sun it was "biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election."

Those stations were scheduled to air "Stolen Honor." That is, till the Internet kicked in. Thanks to the advance warning, bloggers spread the word (and e-mail spread it further). A well-orchestrated boycott and writing campaign began, aimed not at the stations, but at the advertisers. Spurred on by sites that appeared literally overnight such as Boycott Sinclair Broadcast Group and Badvertisers, people in Sinclair's 39 markets, armed with phone numbers and e-mail addresses, started contacting the local businesses that are the lifeblood of the company.

Sinclair's stock took a nosedive. Stockholders threatened a lawsuit, saying that the company's execs were making bad business decisions for political reasons. Allegations of insider trading surfaced.

And Sinclair blinked.

What aired instead was A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media, which was described by Sinclair as a news show that "focus[ed] in part on the use of documentaries and other media to influence voting, which emerged during the 2004 political campaigns."

People who saw it said it was pretty darned pro-Kerry. Right-wing blogs and Web sites were upset. But the folks who called for and organized the boycott were thrilled; Boycott Sinclair Broadcast Group called it "a poorly produced, last-minute effort aimed at placating shareholders and placing Sinclair in the best light."

(Naturally, Sinclair didn't want to admit that it had, as one site put it, "caved." A company press release said, "Contrary to numerous inaccurate political and press accounts, the Sinclair stations will not be airing the documentary Stolen Honor in its entirety. At no time did Sinclair ever publicly announce that it intended to do so." Bloggers were quick to point out that wasn't true — various TV guides had already published listings for that week that included Stolen Honor.)
With Part One complete, the anti-Sinclair sites are focusing on fighting the company's FCC license renewals. That, it seems, what Sinclair gets for poking the wasps' nest. It takes a while for them to settle down.

Blogger power

Bloggers and their fans are quick to pat themselves on the back for what happened to Sinclair. And they should. Weblogs — left, right, center, and nonpolitical — are having an incredible effect on business, politics, and life.

Blogs have this power for some simple reasons. (It has little to do with the quality of the writing or the research. The Net is pretty much self-correcting when it comes to the latter; bad sites lose viewers.) First, they're connected into what people call the "blogosphere." Second, they're doing what journalists used to do, and should still be doing: holding people accountable.

Bloggers write short pieces and long pieces. Sometimes an entry is just a link and a quip. Other times it's a lengthy and well-researched essay (with lots of links). But bloggers read one another and link to one another, creating that blogosphere — a giant spider web of connected sites. If a news item tickles any part of the web it's not long before it's felt far away.

The blogs are where you find the answer to "What are people on the Net saying?"

More importantly is that blogs have succeeded because we the people need them. We didn't know it, but we sense it. Bloggers are filling in where journalists miss.

Traditional news is based on what editors and producers think is important, and most of the time they get it right. But the blogs, as a whole, draw attention to what the people think is important. If a blogger reads a story about fender-bender, chances are he won't write about it. But if he reads one about a politician's disingenuous comments — maybe in a local paper, on page 6, towards the bottom — he might just say something. And if other blogs find it interesting, they'll also do that. Word spreads.

Thus a story that the bloggers — that is, the people — find interesting gets a lot of play, regardless of what editors and producers think. And that's what happened in what many bloggers consider the coming of age of the blogging world: Trent Lott's resignation.

It was at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party that Lott said "When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

ABCNews.com made brief mention of it, and the fact that Thurmond had run as a segregationist. But the bloggers — specifically Glenn Reynolds's Instapundit and Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo took notice. They posted his remarks as well as details of his historical support of segregation. Others took notice. It spread.

A few days later the mainstream media noticed the brouhaha and picked it up.

A lot of people fault the media for this — "You only picked it up after the bloggers did." That's not a fault. That's good reporting. That's recognizing that people cared about this stuff. Bad journalism would have been to ignore the blogs and ignore the story.

Lott, who was to become majority leader in the Senate in 2003, instead resigned from the position on Dec. 20, 2002.

Bloggers and traditional journalists feed off each other — it can be a terrific synergy. Newspapers and TV or radio reporters often provide the blogosphere with the initial information. Bloggers then either simply link to stories of interest, or comment on them at length, or use them as the basis for their own reporting — digging up records, memos, other stories, etc. Then it's back to the traditional media. Thanks to the blogs, a smart editor or producer can see what people are interested in.

Some people are quick to say that bloggers are journalists. Others are just as quick to say they aren't. The fact is, some are and some aren't. Some are simply linkers, others are so biased or uninformed that they're useless. Others are more like columnists. And others are excellent investigative reporters (or have readers who are).

Sounds a lot like newspapers in the early days, don't it?

Not that anyone should get all their news from blogs. But they'd be just as foolish, these days, to simply rely on traditional media.

Blogs are filling a role that used to be filled by that mass media: Digging deeper into the news and offering fact-checking, perspective, and doing more than simply reporting "he said, she said."

In what's become a famous appearance on Crossfire, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart took Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to task for "hurting America." His point (and Mr. Stewart, correct me if I'm wrong here) is that the last thing journalists should subscribe to is the "we report, you decide" philosophy.

Simply reporting that so-and-so said X, but such-and-such said Y — well, that's not journalism. That's not much better than offering a transcript of what the various spinners said. It doesn't tell us what's real, just what's said.

As he and The Daily Show team put it in American: The Book: "[The press] have violated a trust. 'Was the president successful in convincing the country?' Who gives a s**t? Why not tell us if what he said was true?

The journalism today that simply repeats what one side or the other says doesn't help. It hurts. Journalists need to do more than say "Smith said this. Jones said that." They need to say, "Smith said this, but a review of the documents indicates that it isn't the case."

Maybe today's mainstream news is afraid of taking a stand. But bloggers aren't.

Are the bloggers always right? Nope. Can they all be trusted? Nope. But the Internet has always been self-correcting. The popular political blogs — sites such as Talking Points Memo, Instapundit, Daily Kos and Wonkette for example — have gotten that way because people recognize the difference between a rumor-filled hack job and a well-reasoned investigation.

Sure, Matt Drudge and the National Enquirer occasionally get a 'hit' — Monica Lewinsky comes to mind. But by and large are these the places reasonable people get news? Nope; they're entertainment — a step or two above UFO abductions.

Many blogs are partisan and openly so. That's an anathema to most mainstream journalists. For blogs, though, it's sometimes part of their identity. Talking Points Memo does a terrific job of exposing the lies and misdirections of the Bush administration. He's blatantly pro-Kerry, and has made it his task to dig deeper and to question sources if he senses something from the White House isn't kosher. And there are pro-Bush blogs that do the same for the Kerry camp.

Together, they fulfill the all-but-abandoned role of the press: Report, question, and present the truth, not just the facts.

Source: USA Today

Welcome Buzzflash Readers!

2004-11-21T23:29:00.000-05:00

Items of potential interest:

The Black Mesa Syndrome: Indian Lands, Black Gold

Returning Amputees to Battlefield

The Billboard Liberation Front

(Feb 21, 2002) PR firm hired by Pentagon to lie to the media

THE ROCKEFELLER/HERITAGE CONNECTION

THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY

Living in a Fantasy World

Rejoice Not...

My OTHER Project

What Is Permaculture?

2004-11-21T23:21:00.000-05:00

Bill Mollison (Australia)
[Conference Day 1 @ 09:00 - Presentation Transcription]

I'm replacing Lea Harrison, who has a perforated ear drum and can't fly. So I don't have any lecture notes, I'm sorry to say. Her lecture was "What is Permaculture?" The more you know about it, the harder it is to say what it is. And I know a lot about it, so you won't get much satisfaction out of me.

Let's look at the etymology: 'permanent' is a Latin word meaning to endure or to persist throughout, and 'culture' is any of those activities that support and distinguish human communities. Probably the easiest way to understand it is through subsets of words like 'agriculture.' When I say the word 'agriculture,' you think, oh, that is the activity which produces food for the community - and you would be wrong. Agriculture is that activity that produces commodities for the international market.

It was originally an activity that produced food for our communities, but it drifted away from that after about 1940, and the death knell was sounded when Mr. Kissinger, who arranged the bombing of Cambodia, the butchery of Cambodia - somebody once said, "Irony died the day that Kissinger received the Peace Prize." Mr. Kissinger had a scheme which he sold to American capital, called the ZAP policy, in which he suggested they take over the food resources of the world. How they would do that was to move food onto the stock exchange, onto the commodity market. So you can trade in food and buy futures in food.

Secondly, he suggested you could patent the seed, so those who owned the patents effectively owned the food. So, at that point plant patenting was introduced, and today, as I stand before you, you're lost. You can elect who you like, you don't control anything any more. A hundred percent of the patents on soy beans are owned by three companies, and so it goes. All the food you eat is patented and can be forbidden to you by those patent holders at any minute. Now, all hybrid seed is patented; open-pollinated seed can't be patented, to my knowledge. Traditional seeds may be patented, although there is a good defence against that.

All that happened without your approval or knowledge. Operating through financial systems, agriculture has been sold out, its seed, its farmers, its consumers, to the international market forces. It was quite funny: two Lebanese, who are very good in the market, bought all the futures in soy beans in the year they came on the commodity market. They were not intended to do that, and a law has been passed to prevent them doing that, because other people wanted to buy it. So for one year, two Lebanese got extraordinarily rich by owning the world's soy beans.

Soy beans are used in tofu, soy sauce, and are sold as 'health food.' Well, it's not. It's probably the most unhealthy food grown in what is called agriculture. It was grown only to paint cars - all duco, all paint for cars, has to have a soy bean oil base. It grows as the number of cars grows. You can have unpainted cars and we can stop growing soy beans. But if you demand a colour on your car, you have to have a few acres of soy beans. The whole soy bean kick was started by Henry Ford. He pushed the soy bean because it was so valuable to him. He used to say you could have a car any colour you want, so long as it was black, because he didn't have many other colours.

Soy beans, too, have a powerful anti-nutritional factor which prevents the uptake of protein. So they have to be cooked for six or seven hours. There's hardly any other food which is that poisonous. So they are a nasty little poisonous commercial seed. A little bit is left over, a tiny fraction, 0.005%, is used in health food shops for what is rather a risky food; if they haven't rinsed it enough, you will get a protein deficiency out of that. People who make tofu cook it the minimal time. There are plenty of beans without these factors, but they are not much used. But soy beans have to be grown to paint your cars, and that leaves an awful lot of soy residue, and they make up a large part of the feed industry for chickens and pigs, poor things. I always said that I don't trust anybody who voluntarily eats beans. One of my more famous statements.

So, agriculture, although it may originally have been intended to feed us, no longer does. It basically operates in response to a remote commodity market. That's what sets the prices, and what sets the demand. Very few people plant the seeds they plan. If they are hybrid seeds, there is no point in trying to keep them for tomorrow.

Kissinger's plan is working extremely well. If he controls the think-tanks and those seeds, he is, in fact, in charge of the world. He just wanted to be a dictator of the whole world, that's all. I did, too. He thought of it first. I just want to be emperor, just for a week.

Agriculture, then, was intended to feed us, but it no longer is so intended. Very little human food is grown in agriculture. Ninety percent of some of our crops go to animal feeds. I travelled through Europe on the train a few years ago and took note of food growing on farms - I saw five acres of potatoes between Copenhagen and Switzerland. Very little food is grown on farms today. Mainly it is forage for animals, and fortunately that is backfiring; you can get mad cow disease from cows and you can get vancomycin-resistant enterococci from chickens and pork. Food produced by agriculture is becoming truly unsafe for you. There is a great word, 'agricolagenic' disease. That is, diseases that you have, caused by operations of agriculture.

The other disease rapidly spreading as a result of modern agriculture is the fact that you are all turning into women. When you look at the alligators down in Florida - they've got tiny little penises no good to anybody, no bigger than a wart, really. They don't have any testes. The number of males being born with penile deformities is large, and testicular cancer, and they don't have any sperm, to speak of, or at least none of the right shape to kick around. 85% of the sperm in some areas are deformed. This is due to agriculture, also, because they're pouring hormones and hormone analogs onto the soil and it ends up in the food of the chickens, pigs and cattle. Feminising chickens is a good thing...in the old days they used to cut open the males' backs and removed the testes. These days they just feminise them. When you go to Kentucky Fried Chicken, by all means, lick your fingers, but don't eat the chicken.

Vancomycin resistant enterococci - a great word - VRE, that's there because farmers used every antibiotic in their feed, and the only antibiotic we had left medicinally was vancomycin. But then the farmers used vancomycin. So now you are in the same position I was in when I was young: you don't have any antibiotics. You are in for an interesting time. When I was young, we all died of whooping cough, measles, diphtheria - I had that. Then all my friends died of TB. You are going to have to die of all of those, now. You will get accustomed to friends falling over in the playgrounds and being carried to the cemetery, which was the normality of life in Australia before antibiotics. So it is an interesting new game. We have forgotten how to die. You will have to swot up on that. To do it well is quite an art. Expectations of death - you are going to get it, anyhow - none of us is going to get out of this alive.

Agriculture went through a sad decline from 1940 on. What the agricultural scientists called traditional agriculture was never traditional. Traditional agriculture produced a high quality of food for people at the best level it could. What is practiced today is a very, very destructive activity for the commodity market, and farmers know that. Many farmers have left the land because of that. A lot of farmers in the States have pulled out of agriculture because the subsidies were so high. You could grow the rice, but you didn't have to harvest it. You could bale it up as hay and sell it, or give it away. That is always a sign of bad government when there are subsidies, because you try to give the people cheap food. In America, food is incredibly cheap. It keeps them quiet, keeps their minds off other things.

So we are not in a very good position today in regard to food. I saw it all happen, too. Unlike many of us, I was aware of it. I started up an open-pollinated seed company many years ago, 20 years ago, to save our seed. Jude Fanton and her husband Michel started up a seed library, where you could put seed in and take seed out, because libraries were immune from seed laws. I got attacked by 39 lawyers in my seed company, and you can't defend against that many lawyers based in New York and Sydney. We collapsed it; next day we gave its goods to a new seed company, had to change the letterhead, and it continues today. Interestingly, it was called the Phoenix Seed Company, because when the phoenix dies, from its ashes arises a successor, and as it flies up to heaven, followed by all the birds, it tells the story of the death of its predecessor. Our first catalogue told the story of how we were wiped out. It doesn't matter how small or inconspicuous you are, you are under heavy legal attack if you try to sell open-pollinated seeds that people can pinch without profit. So there is a witch hunt to eliminate all those seed companies, and mostly they are gone. They have been absorbed into large and multinational companies. Multinationals have also taken over the retail of seed by buying most of the gardening business and shops. So it is pretty well sewn up. You sit there, a prisoner of Mr. Kissenger. Not a nice position to be in, I can tell you.

He experimentally switched off the bread in Chile when it looked like the socialists were getting in. Americans equate socialism to communism, and communism is bad, so as soon as the socialist government came in under Allende, they switched off the wheat. Had a little trial in food control, and it worked; Allende was brought down by bread riots. And they got Pinochet and repression, 40,000 people tortured and shot. Some of you may know about it and some may have experienced it. They tried it in Australia, but our army refused to fire on us. That's what saved us. But they did get rid of our government. Interesting, isn't it?

Permaculture was born in reaction to this mess. It subsumes organic agriculture. We just assume that we will grow food cleanly. It doesn't use sprays or hormones, or all these things. It's an eerie thing that all the books on permaculture up to 1970 were on gardening tips - plant your beans six inches apart, etc. Every book on permaculture was on gardening tips. There was no design. When I realised that in the late 60s, the hair went up on the back of my head. Nobody told farmers how to design for eliminating bad effects of climate and wind. You can take out wind, you can take out frost, by correct planting. And nothing was related to anything else. We didn't have any books on the design of agricultural systems. I wrote the first one in 1978. There were no precursors. There was a little book on design in landscape by PA Yeomans in Australia, on water design in landscape. There were no other books on design.

Dimension was recently added to design by Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan. He collapsed time. He planted his crop into the remains of the preceding crop, so he didn't have to crop, plough, reseed, start another crop. So he was able to get many crops more. That's the last word issued on design. There may be other dimensions to design yet to come. Now that we have started the process of issuing books on design, there will be smarter people among our students than we are, and if there are not, they are pretty, damn silly. So permaculture is a book on design. I think most people in the media think it is a book on gardening. It is a very sad, backward step, indeed. If I get on talkback radio, nobody asks me serious questions, they ask me why their lemon tree's leaves are going yellow. We know why that is; they planted it in a boggy place or they don't give it enough urine. So there's a way out: lift it up and piss on it.

That's what permaculture is about: very common sense. It is in response to changes in the rational economic control system which has been imposed, more and more upon us. It is an attempt to return to systems of small gardens. In some countries gardens produce 90% of the food. It is true in Russia. Agriculture produces very little food. It does the most destruction, it has the most land, it doesn't produce much food that people actually eat. Gardens do. So if you can increase your gardens, you can get rid of agriculture. I think, in the near future, it should be a banned activity.

Agriculture is the most destructive activity on the face of the earth. It is responsible for poisoning sixty percent of our water supplies, and ruining most of our landscape. Mining is a minor activity compared to agriculture, when it comes to soil destruction. We can't lose much more soil in Australia. If you look at the number of acres of land available per head, plotted over the last century, it's in steep decline. We hardly have any land left on which to grow food. In the coming year, we are 45 days short of food. So you are running into real problems. The more soil scientists we have trained, the more land we have lost. I had a soil scientist the other day say she couldn't get a job. I said, "You've saved hundreds of acres from erosion."

If you don't know what permaculture is now, you will have to ask somebody. It's a design of systems with which we can live.

Source: Rosneath Farm

Rx For A Better Life? Get A Pet, And Do It Now

2004-11-21T23:16:00.000-05:00

COLLEGE STATION, - It might be the prescription of the future: Take two aspirin and get a pet immediately.

Numerous studies have shown that pets - or at least the presence of animals - can have medical benefits that are beyond dispute. These range from lowering blood pressure to lessening anxiety and depression and even to faster healing times after surgery.

Fido is no placebo - he can literally be man's best friend when people are ailing.

"We have known for many years that the company of a pet can be of benefit in a variety of ways, but exactly why this is, no one seems to have the answer," says Dr. Bonnie Beaver, who specializes in animal behavior and human-animal relationships at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

"For example, the long-term survival rates of heart attack victims who had a pet have been shown to be significantly longer than for those who did not. There is also data showing that widows who have cats are better off medically during the first year, which is a critical stress time, than widows who do not."

Other studies have shown that:

* Senior adults who own dogs go to the doctor less than those who do not. In a study of 100 Medicare patients, those who owned dogs made 21 percent fewer visits to a physician than non-dog owners;

* Pet owners have lower blood pressure, and one study showed that just 10 minutes in the company of an animal significantly reduced blood pressure rates;

* Pet owners have lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels than non-owners;

* Pet owners have overall better physical health due to exercise with their pets;

* 70 percent of families surveyed reported an increase in family happiness and fun after acquiring a pet;

* Children exposed to pets during their first year of life have a lower frequency of some allergies and asthma;

* Children who suffer from autism have more prosocial behaviors if they own a pet;

* Owning a pet - especially a dog - helps children in families better adjust to the serious illness or death of a parent;

* Pets decrease feelings of loneliness and isolation in their owners;

* Having a pet may decrease heart attack mortality rates by 3 percent, which translates into 30,000 lives saved annually;

* Positive self-esteem in children is enhanced if the child owns a pet;

* Children owning pets are more likely to be involved in sports, hobbies, clubs or even chores;

* Victims of AIDS who own a pet report less depression and reduced stress levels.

Many groups take pets to visit residents of nursing homes, and usually the experience is a very positive one for both the pet and the individual.

"Many people in nursing homes had pets all of their lives, but for several reasons, are not allowed to in an extended-care facility," says Beaver.

"The tendency is to make those places 'sterile,' with minimal plants or animals. Those who bring in nature of all kinds generally bring in a better quality of life to their residents."

The reverse is also true - the life of a pet is usually enhanced if its owner cares for it properly.

"Geriatric animals in most veterinary settings are those that have had loving and caring owners who followed good husbandry practices," she adds.

"We don't really understand why pets make us feel better and in some cases, add years to our own lives," Beaver explains.

"There are many forms of the animal-person relationship. Some are not good, some are neutral, some are not realistic at all and some are very nurturing. Different people get different benefits from the animal, and even different benefits at different stages in the person's life."

Source: Science Daily

GW Bush, Jesus and the Manhattan Institute

2004-11-21T23:02:00.000-05:00

You have to admire the nerve of G.W. Bush. It takes a kind of goofy audacity to claim that Jesus' teachings and the CIA-derived ideas of the right-wing Manhattan Institute are your twin sources of inspiration. Bush publicly credits the Manhattan Institute with inventing his entire "compassionate conservative" platform and persona.

GW Bush, Jesus and the Manhattan Institute
by Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net

NY Times June 12, 2000
Bush Culls Campaign Theme From Conservative Thinkers

"Gov. George W. Bush has said his political views have been shaped by the work of Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute."

The Dallas Morning Star 4/16/2000
The Godfathers of 'Compassionate Conservatism

"In Austin that day in 1997, Mr. Bush told Mr. Magnet that his 1993 book The Dream and The Nightmare, had changed his life..."

This past April, G.W. declared a new public holiday will be celebrated in Texas each June 10th-Jesus Day. [See: http://www.governor.state.tx.us/] Even many Christians found this unprecedented crossing of the line between church and state to be troubling. It is however entirely in line with the teachings of the MI (Manhattan Institute), which advocates having religious institutions take over many of the present tasks of government.

The Weekly Standard 8/23/2000
The Political Theory of Compassionate Conservatism
by John J. Dilulio Jr. [A theorist for the Manhattan Institute]

"In every instance where my administration sees a responsibility to help people,"[G.W. Bush] promised, "we will look first to faith-based organizations, charities and community groups."

While Jesus' teachings are well-known even to most non-Christians the ideas of the MI are much less familiar to the public. MI was started in 1978 by Ronald Reagan's CIA director, William Casey, and has become the nation's most influential, though not best known-as befits a CIA operation-right wing think tank. While I personally have great respect for the traditions of the world's religions, including Christianity, the CIA promoting religion may not exactly be what Jesus had in mind.

NY Times Monday May 12, 1997

Turning Intellect Into Influence Promoting Its Ideas,the Manhattan Institute Has Nudged New York Rightward"Currently housed in an unprepossessing warren on the second floor of a building near Grand Central Terminal, the institute was founded as a free-market education and research organization by William Casey, who then went off to head the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan Administration."

Casey was a top American intelligence operative who, among other endeavors, helped the CIA bring thousands of Nazi SS officials into the U.S. after WWII as part of Operation Paper Clip. These Nazi SS doctors, scientists and intelligence experts who were directly involved in the death camps, in propaganda work and in creating the prototypes for new and better ways to kill masses of people, were installed in private industry, in the CIA, in medical and psychological research programs in universities and in the media, supposedly to fight Communism.

Many of these SS officials professed strong religious convictions, as did Adolf Hitler himself and as do many of the top scholars associated with the MI."Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it."[Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

While school vouchers and the turning over of public education to religious institutions is being sold by many on the right as a new and very progressive idea, the promotion of religious teachings in public schools was actually a key aspect of the Third Reich.

From: http://atheism.about.com/religion/atheism/library/quotes/bl_q_A%20Hitler.htm

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." [Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]

More than simply a violation of the separation of church and state which is an essential part of the Constitution, my concern with Bush's "religious convictions" is that they, like those of the Manhattan Institute, are actually a cover for fascism.

Previous to adopting G.W. as their poster-boy, NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was their most prominent operative in elected office. Like G.W. Bush, the infamously repressive and Constitution-violating Mayor of New York has also publicly acknowledged on numerous occasions that the Manhattan Institute is the source of his policy ideas.

"The mayor has a very close working relationship with the Manhattan Institute," Giuliani's communications director, Crystine Lategano, said."-Boston Sunday Globe 2/22/98

The MI's twin obsessions as evidenced by even a brief visit to their webpage, are race and privatization. Among the ideas they are particularly keen on is getting everyone's DNA in a national database. The best known of their many celebrity scholars is Charles Murray, who wrote his controversial book, The Bell Curve-proposing the genetic inferiority of Blacks as a justification for eliminating affirmative action-while a research fellow of the MI. He continues, despite their claims to the contrary, to publicly speak there about eliminating welfare and on racial issues.

From an announcement on the MI website http://www.manhattan-institute.org/ April 14, 1999 New York, New YorkCenter for Civic Innovation Welfare ConferenceHeld at the Manhattan InstituteTopic: "Next Steps in Welfare Reform."Participants: [a partial list] Charles Murray (Author of Losing Ground; American Enterprise Institute), Jason Turner (Commissioner, NYC Human Resources Administration)

While the public expression of the ideas of the MI are couched in politically-correct terminology, the ideas themselves are closer to those of late 19th and early 20th century Eugenics than any other source. Eugenics is the application of science to the task of improving the human race by selective breeding (positive Eugenics) and sterilization or elimination of undesirable members of society (negative Eugenics).

More here.

Deep Ecology

2004-11-21T22:56:00.000-05:00

Nature is the first ethical teacher of man. -- Peter Kropotkin

Unless ye believe ye shall not understand. -- St Augustine

I was born a thousand years ago, born in the culture of bows and arrows ... born in an age when people loved the things of nature and spoke to it as though it had a soul. -- Chief Dan George

The woods were formerly temples of the deities, and even now simple country folk dedicate a tall tree to a God with the ritual of olden times; and we adore sacred groves and the very silence that reigns in them no less devoutly than images that gleam in gold and ivory. -- Pliny

In the stillness of the mighty woods, man is made aware of the divine. -- Richard St Barbe Baker

There is no better way to please the Buddha than to please all sentient beings. -- Ladakhi saying

Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness. -- Fritjof Capra

Every social transformation ... has rested on a new metaphysical and ideological base; or rather, upon deeper stirrings and intuitions whose rationalised expression takes the form of a new picture of the cosmos and the nature of man. -- Lewis Mumford

... there is reason to hope that the ecology-based revitalist movements of the future will seek to achieve their ends in the true Gandhian tradition. It could be that Deep Ecology, with its ethical and metaphysical preoccupations, might well develop into such a movement. -- Edward Goldsmith

The main hope for changing humanity's present course may lie ... in the development of a world view drawn partly from ecological principles - in the so-called deep ecology movement. -- Paul Ehrlich

The religious behaviour of man contributes to maintaining the sanctity of the world. -- Mircea Eliade

The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess coined the phrase deep ecology to describe deep ecological awareness. Deep ecology is the foundation of a branch of philosophy known as ecophilosophy, Arne Naess prefers the term ecosophy, that deals with the ethics of Gaia.

Fritjof Capra defined deep ecology by contrasting it with shallow ecology and showing that it is a network concept:

Shallow ecology in anthropocentric, or human-centred. It views humans as above or outside of nature, as the source of all value, and ascribes only instrumental, or 'use', value to nature. Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else - from the natural environment. It does see the world not as a collection of isolated objects but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views human beings as just one particular strand in the web of life.

More here.

The Suppressed Ideas of Kropotkin on Evolution

2004-11-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

In his book, Bully for Brontosaurus, scientific historian Stephen Jay Gould devotes a chapter to presenting Peter Kropotkin's views on biological evolution. Kropotkin is best known as a Russian revolutionary anarchist who believed in cooperative, rather than hierarchical and competitive, human relationships, and in devolving the power of the central state to local communities. It is less well known that his political views were based on a sophisticated view of evolution.

Kropotkin
Basis for a Cooperative Economy in Russia

By Ronald Logan

Kropotkin's ideas on evolution contrasted sharply with those of Victorian English intellectuals such as Thomas Huxley, who stated: ". . . the animal world is about on a level of a gladiator's show . . . whereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day." To the Victorian Darwinists, this view of nature gave substance to Thomas Malthus' belief in survival of the fittest, and bolstered the social Darwinist ethos of competition and unbridled private property rights.

Kropotkin could not accept Huxley's "gladiatorial" Darwinism as a valid account of evolutionary biology, believing instead that the predominant way in which species achieve success is through cooperation, not competition. (Kropotkin acknowledged the prevalence of inter-species conflict; it was intra-species conflict with which he took exception.) He also believed that nature provides guidance for human morality through its emphasis on sociability and cooperation, not unrestrained competitiveness.

Rather than adopt a view of nature which supported his political thesis, as do most social philosophers, Kropotkin's political views evolved from his scientific experience. As a young man, he spent five years as a naturalist studying the geology and zoology of eastern Russia. During this period, he observed that living things coped with the harsh Siberian environment primarily through cooperative behavior. In his book, Mutual Aid, written as a rebuttal to Huxley's essay, "The Struggle for Existence in Human Society," Kropotkin stated: "During the journeys which I made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria . . . I failed to find--although I was eagerly looking for it--that bitter struggle for the means of existence among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution."

Kropotkin abhorred the social vision of the gladiatorial evolutionists: "They conceive of the animal world as a world of perpetual struggle among half-starved individuals, thirsting for one another's blood . . . They raise the 'pitiless' struggle for personal advantages to the height of a biological principle which man must submit to as well." Countering the social Darwinists, Kropotkin asserted, "If we . . . ask Nature: 'who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization." From his observation that mutual aid gives evolutionary advantage to living beings, he derived his political philosophy--a philosophy which stressed community and cooperative endeavor.

Kropotkin was not alone among Russian intellectuals in questioning British Darwinism. Rather, as Gould points out, "he represented a standard, well-developed Russian critique of Darwin, based on interesting reasons and coherent national traditions." The Russian school of evolution based its criticism of Darwin not only on their observations of natural history, but also out of political antipathy to social Darwinism. Daniel Todes, in his article "Darwin's Malthusian Metaphor and Russian Evolutionary Thought" (published in Isis, the leading history of science journal), observed that objections to the Western competitive world view were shared by Russian radicals and conservatives: "Radicals, who hoped to build a socialist society, saw Malthusianism as a reactionary current in bourgeois political economy. Conservatives, who hoped to preserve the communal virtues of tsarist Russia, saw it as an expression of the 'British national type.'"

Nineteenth-century Russian evolutionary theory had little impact on the development of biology or political theory in the Western industrial world, but the issues Kropotkin and his colleagues raised remain relevant. Now that Russia is in the process of choosing a new political and economic future, the substance of Kropotkin's vision of nature and society warrant reconsideration.

The Modern View

A century has passed since Kropotkin challenged the British evolutionists. How has a hundred years of accumulated scientific knowledge influenced the debate over fierce competition versus mutual cooperation as the primary mechanism of species survival? Relevant evidence comes mainly from two sources: biology (particularly ecology) and social psychology.

A good analysis of the biological evidence is presented in the book, The New Biology, by Robert Augros and George Stanciu, summarized in their paper, "The Biology of Aggression and Cooperation" (Noetic Sciences Review, Winter 1989). Augros and Stanciu begin their analysis by observing that Darwin relied on eighteenth-century reductionist methodology, which tries to understand the whole through analysis of its parts. "He split nature into all its separate parts, individual plants and animals, and saw that everything was trying to reproduce itself as much as it could . . . Then when he put all those isolated organisms back together, he thought it was clear that such reproduction would lead to a shortage of space, of food, and other necessities of life. There was going to be severe competition, and therefore all of nature was going to be at war." The inevitable conclusion of reductionist methodology is that nature must be ruled by conflict.

The reductionist premise is a core assumption of the Western intellectual paradigm. But this premise has come under sustained attack by a diversity of scientific disciplines, including biology (increasingly influenced by ecology, which focuses on the interactive processes in living systems). Biologists dissatisfied with reductionism are attempting to articulate a new biology, one which looks at wholes, at systems, and at synergisms (as well as at the functioning of parts). From this new biology we find, as Augros and Stanciu report, that "nature uses extraordinarily ingenious techniques to avoid conflict and competition, and that cooperation is extraordinarily widespread throughout all of nature."

Nature avoids competition in various ways: by separating species geographically into differing habitats; by sorting species into unique niches within habits; by spatial division according to gradations of environmental factors, such as oxygen content at different levels of a body of water; by territorial demarcations, as when cats mark out with their scent the space which is theirs; and by establishing dominance hierarchies within social groupings of animals.

Cooperation is fostered through a wide array of symbiotic arrangements. Many plants produce tasty fruits, which animals eat, later depositing the undigested seeds. The intestinal bacteria of grazing animals makes possible the breakdown of cellulose fibers into digestible fatty acids. Egyptian plovers get their food by cleaning parasites off the bodies of rhinoceroses. And clown fish are given protection by anemone, while serving as bait for the fish that the anemone eat. These are only examples of inter- species cooperation--intra-species cooperation is even more commonplace.

At the time Kropotkin challenged British Darwinism, the scientific study of human behavior was in its infancy: Wilhelm Wundt had just begun the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig. In the debate as to whether competition or cooperation is more characteristic of human nature, the young field of psychology was mute. Today, however, there is a vast body of social psychology literature on this question.

Alfie Kohn, author of No Contest: The Case Against Competition, spent seven years reviewing more than 400 research studies dealing with competition and cooperation. Prior to his investigation, he believed that "competition can be natural and appropriate and healthy." After reviewing research findings, he radically revised this opinion, concluding that, "The ideal amount of competition . . . in any environment, the classroom, the workplace, the family, the playing field, is none . . . . [Competition] is always destructive" (Noetic Sciences Review, Spring 1990).

According to Kohn, there are three principle consequences of competition. First, it has a negative effect on productivity and excellence. This is due to increased anxiety, inefficiency (as compared to cooperative sharing of resources and knowledge), and the undermining of inner motivation. Competition shifts the focus to victory over others, and away from intrinsic motivators such as curiosity, interest, excellence, and social interaction. Studies show that cooperative behaviour, by contrast, consistantly predicts good performance--a finding which holds true under a wide range of subject variables. Interestingly, the positive benefits of cooperation become more significant as tasks become more complex, or where greater creativity and problem-solving ability is required.

The second effect of competition is that it lowers self-esteem and hampers the development of sound, self-directed individuals. A strong sense of self is difficult to attain when self-evaluation is dependent on seeing how we measure up to others. On the other hand, those whose identity is formed in relation to how they contribute to group efforts generally possess greater self- confidence and higher self-esteem.

Finally, competition undermines human relationships. Humans are social beings; we best express our humanness in interaction with others. By creating winners and losers, competition is destructive to human unity and prevents close social feeling. In the competitive mode, people work at cross purposes, or for personal gain. Some come out ahead, some behind; some win, some lose. It becomes impossible for people to move together, as is necessary for a harmonious human society.

Biology and social psychology are not the only disciplines which support cooperation as the natural basis for human interaction. Ethnological studies indicate that virtually all indigenous cultures operate on the basis of highly cooperative relationships. Anthropologist Nancy Tanner has presented evidence to show that the predominant force driving early human evolution was cooperative social interaction, leading to the capacity of hominids to develop culture. And industrial psychology now promotes "worker participation" and team functioning because it is decisively more productive than hierarchical management.

Beyond Science

In 1910, while lying in his death bed, Leo Tolstoy dictated his last letter, a letter of advice to his son and daughter. He told them: "The views you have acquired about Darwinism, evolution, and the struggle for existence won't explain to you the meaning of your life and won't give you guidance in your actions, and a life without an explanation of its meaning and importance, and without the unfailing guidance that stems from it is a pitiful existence. Think about it. I say it, probably on the eve of my death, because I love you."

Tolstoy's concerns about the Darwinism of his time were vindicated by history. In America, social Darwinism justified the unbridled economic exploitation of the robber barons. America's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, ruthlessly built up his Standard Oil monopoly believing that his efforts were sanctioned by the natural order. He said: "The growth of large business is merely a survival of the fittest."

In Germany, social Darwinism supplied justification for German militarism during World War I. Vernon Kellogg, an American biologist stationed during the war at the headquarters of the German Great General Staff, later described the Darwinian views of the German military officers in his book Headquarters Nights: "The creed of the Allmact ["all might" or omnipotence] of a natural selection based on violent and competitive struggle is the gospel of the German intellectuals; all else is illusion and anathema.... That human group which is in the most advanced evolutionary stage . . . should win in the struggle for existence, and this struggle should occur precisely that the various types may be tested, and the best not only preserved, but put in position to impose its kind of social organization on the others, or, alternatively, to destroy and replace them."

We now know that the dominant evolutionary thinking of Tolstoy's day was flawed, and that the minority view of Peter Kropotkin lies closer to the truth. But does this mean that "the new biology" should now become the basis for our moral truths and our social institutions?

It would certainly be unwise to ignore or dismiss the compelling findings of biology and social psychology. The post-reductionist, holistic science of our time can supply us with deep insights into the general laws of nature--our own included. But can materialistic science, even formulated with an enlightened holistic paradigm, provide what Tolstoy wished for his children: a foundation for meaning and guidance for our lives?

The problems with materialism as a foundation for human values are twofold. First, science studies the phenomena of a dynamically changing world, and its theories and paradigms about the world are also constantly evolving. As Paul Samuelson once expressed: "funeral by funeral, theory advances." The truths of science, while often robust, are not permanent, but subject to change. Human society is also part of the changing world, and must progressively adapt to new ideas and institutions. But finding purpose in human life is a different matter. We have innate need, many believe, to find purpose in that which is eternal and infinite.

The second problem with materialism is that mind is subtler than matter. The use of knowledge about the physical universe to define value structures for directed by the mind is inherently limited, as there are realms of human experience that transcend physicality. To limit our understanding of ourselves to that which can be explained materially is to restrict the comprehensive, integrated development of the human personality.

There is a growing consensus that the post-modernist episteme will not have materialist foundations. But neither is there much sentiment for a retreat to idealism. Idealism has been expressed in Socrates' fascistic vision of society lorded over by philosopher kings, in Shankaracharya's philosophy that the world is illusion, in medieval religion's obsession with heaven and obliviousness to suffering, and in Hegel's glorification of individual sublimation to the state. Its long history of defective and detrimental philosophies has discredited idealism as a basis for human welfare. If both scientific empiricism and idealistic philosophy are inadequate, then what alternative faculty of knowing can provide us with meaning and proper moral guidance?

Tolstoy's answer was that truth can only be achieved by looking within oneself, that a transcendent reason and power flows from within us, and that our highest purpose is to do its will. Tolstoy formulated a philosophy of Christian mysticism, but his core ideas are generally consistent with what Aldous Huxley (grandson of Thomas) termed the "perennial philosophies." Huxley perceived that certain common themes have been expressed by humanity's great seers--those who derived their teachings from personal illumination, revelation or mystical experience. Though living in different times and cultures, their teachings share fundamental beliefs and values.

The American humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow studied "peak experiences"--the kinds of experience out of which the perennial philosophies originated. He termed the cognitive state that arises during peak experiences "B-cognition," or cognition of being. He detailed his research in his book, Religions, Values and Peak Experiences, where he wrote that his "most important finding was the discovery of . . . B-values or the intrinsic values of Being." He went on to observe that "this list of the described characteristics of the world as it is perceived in our most perspicuous moments is about the same as what people through the ages have called eternal verities, or the spiritual values, or the highest values."

What do those whose values are derived from B-cognition have to say about the issue of contention between Huxley (the Darwinist) and Kropotkin? The consensus is definite: love and cooperation, not conflict and competition, are the eternal verities which should guide human relations.

Beyond Capitalism

P.R. Sarkar was a twentieth-century philosopher and spiritual teacher who was as concerned with social justice as he was with spiritual liberation. Sarkar, like others who espouse the perennial philosophy, believed that the B-cognition, or intuitional mode of knowing, is inherently synthetic. In contrast to reductionism and the rationalist approach to knowledge, which is analytical in nature, intuitional faculty of mind tends toward wholeness--its ultimate reach being a state of unitary consciousness in which individuals directly identify with the cosmic whole, rather than with a limited ego state.

Those who acquire synthetic knowledge inevitably develop a growing sense of the unity and interconnectedness of life. Based on this universal spiritual perception, Sarkar believed it possible for humanity to recognize its integrated, interdependent existence, and move collectively to achieve its material, psychic and spiritual aspirations. He termed this ideal "universalism."

Sarkar rejected competition and upheld cooperation: "In every field of collective life there should be cooperation amongst the members of society." In this respect, his thinking is not novel; it has been espoused by many people of wisdom. But he went beyond other spiritual philosophers in his use of perennial philosophy values to formulate socio-economic theory.

Sarkar insisted that collective efforts should take the form of "coordinated cooperation," not subordinated cooperation. Subordinated cooperation occurs "where people do something individually or collectively, but keep themselves under other peoples' supervision." Coordinated cooperation occurs "between free human beings, each with equal rights and mutual respect for each other, and each working for the welfare of the other." In relation to this ideal form of social relationships, he observed that none of the present socio-economic systems are based on coordinated cooperation, but on subordinated cooperation, and that this "results in the degeneration of society's moral fabric."

Sarkar formulated a spiritual perspective on wealth: "This universe is created in the imagination of the Supreme Entity, so the ownership of this universe . . . does not belong to any particular individual; everything is the patrimony of us all. Every living being can utilize their rightful share of this property. . . . [T]his whole animate world is a large joint family in which nature has not assigned any property to any particular individual."

Sarkar termed this conception of wealth "cosmic inheritance," and made clear its implications for economic theory: "According to genuine spiritual ideology, the system of individual ownership cannot be accepted as absolute and final, hence capitalism, too, cannot be supported." Cosmic ownership also undermines "state capitalism"--communism's command economy system in which there is state ownership of wealth.

Based on his premises of universalism, coordinated cooperation, and cosmic inheritence, Sarkar formulated an alternative economics which he called "cooperative economics." Cooperative economics is an aspect of his comprehensive socio-economic philosophy, called PROUT.

While Sarkar rejected the rigidities of rationalism and reductionism, he did not reject rationality and empiricism. Though he relied on spiritually derived truth to provide the premises and basic value structure of PROUT, he emphasized that fleshing out this economic theory requires close observation of human nature, and of social and economic dynamics. By insisting that social theory follow from social experience, Sarkar avoided many utopian errors.

For example, while Sarkar agreed with Kropotkin in rejecting capitalism, his economic theory takes a much different position on production incentives. Kropotkin, like Marx, advocated "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." In Sarkar's view, this high sounding ideal "will reap no harvest in the hard soil of the world." Without suitable motivation, productivity declines, and society as a whole suffers. In PROUT, therefore, "Meritorious people should certainly receive greater amenities"--though PROUT does not sanction material incentives beyond what is needed to promote the common welfare.

New Foundations for Russia

Cartesian reductionism formed the epistemological basis for Malthusianism and social Darwinism, which in turn provided intellectual rationale for the greed of capitalism. Dialectical materialism attempted to create an antithesis to reductionist thinking, but its materialism brought spiritual poverty. And, by promoting such utopian notions as the classless society and production without material incentive, its materialism capitulated to idealism and floundered on its inner contradictions. Both capitalism and communism have failed to adequately serve human welfare, and have eroded the moral, cultural and ecological fabric of the world. The future of humanity must lie with a new economics, erected on sounder foundations.

Economist Jaroslav Vanek, in his paper "Towards a Strategy of Democracy, Political and Economic, in Russia," points out that communal economic activity had deep roots in Russia's pre- Revolution village economies. This tradition of cooperation apparently came to the fore in 1917. According to Professor George Gurvitich, a participating witness to the October revolution, there was a brief nine month period immediately following the Russian Revolution when an embryonic economic system based on democratic cooperation prevailed. This system was supported in early Bolshevik Party congresses--until party leaders imposed political and economic centralism.

As in 1917, Russia finds itself poised at a momentous juncture, with a choice of futures spread before it. Were Russia to choose a cooperative economy to replace communism, there would be much supporting logic: consistency with the traditional values of village life; revival of the initial economic ideal chosen by the people following the downfall of Tsarist tyranny; the vindicated evolutionary views of Kropotkin; contemporary scientific understandings of human nature; and compatibility with the sentiment for social equity which socialism imbued in the Russian psyche.

But beyond the compelling logic of tradition, science, and economics, there is a more profound reason for Russia to adopt economic cooperation: cooperation is supported by spiritual truth. For those, like Tolstoy, who insist that humans need an enduring source of meaning in their lives and the guidance of proper values, cooperative economics is congruent with the eternal verities. It is the economic system Tolstoy would have wanted for his children, and for all of the children of mother Russia.

Source: Memes.org

Mark Thatcher charged in alleged coup plot

2004-11-20T13:34:00.000-05:00

Thursday November 18, 2004

Prosecutors in Equatorial Guinea today confirmed that they are charging Sir Mark Thatcher in connection with an alleged coup plot in the oil-rich west African nation.

Sir Mark, son of the former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is accused of helping to finance the coup attempt, Attorney General Jose Olo Obono said today.

His name has been added to a list of 19 other defendants, all suspected mercenaries, who are being prosecuted by Equatorial Guinea.

Sir Mark and other British allegedly worked with opposition figures, scores of South African alleged mercenaries, and six Armenian pilots in an attempt to change the regime.

It is claimed that the alleged plotters intended to force out the 25-year regime of President Teodoro Obiang, installing an exiled opposition figure to lead the government of Equatorial Guinea - Africa's third largest oil producer.

The alleged coup was uncovered in March by South African intelligence services. Scores of accused mercenaries were arrested in Equatorial Guinea and in Zimbabwe.

A separate legal action against Sir Mark is under way in South Africa, where he has been under arrest since August. Sir Mark's trial for allegedly violating South Africa's foreign military assistance act is due to open in Cape Town on November 25.

Three South Africans convicted in Pretoria yesterday of involvement in the coup are expected to give evidence to the Cape Town court. The men agreed a plea bargain deal to provide testimony against others charged with financing the coup.

The authorities in Equatorial Guinea have reportedly stated that they would wait until after the South African courts have finished their trial before trying to extradite Sir Mark.

Source: UK's Guardian

Why Isn't Kerry Using $50M Unspent Campaign Money to Fund Recounts?

2004-11-19T11:24:00.000-05:00

Third-party candidates are requesting recounts in swing states as reports of widespread voting problems and malfunctions in electronic voting machines continue to emerge. Meanwhile, Democratic candidate John Kerry is sitting on over $50 million in unspent campaign funds, which could be used to fund recount efforts. We speak with Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb.

President Bush nominated Condoleeza Rice yesterday as he continues to reshape his Cabinet for his second four-year term.

But, controversy continues to rage over the fairness of the November 2 presidential election. Stories are still emerging from states like Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and New Mexico of widespread problems with vote counting, voter suppression and malfunctions of electronic voting machines.

Now three candidates in the 2004 presidential race are demanding recounts. And not one of them is John Kerry.

In New Hampshire, independent candidate Ralph Nader is asking for a recount to test the accuracy of optical scan vote-counting machines. The request covers 11 of the state's 126 precincts that use Diebold's Accuvote optical scanning machines to count paper ballots. Backers urged Nader to request a recount after a statistical analysis posted on the Internet appeared to show that some New Hampshire precincts using the machines gave President Bush up to 15 percent more votes than had been expected on the basis of exit polls and the 2000 presidential vote.

Meanwhile, the Green and Libertarian Parties announced they raised $150,000 over the past week, enough to file the required fee for a statewide recount of the vote in Ohio.

While they scrambled to raise the required $150,000 in time to file the recount request, Democratic candidate John Kerry has been sitting on over $50 million in unspent campaign funds. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Kerry could use that money to fund recount efforts.

David Cobb, a lawyer from Texas. He now lives in California. He is seeking the Green Party nomination for president.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined right now by David Cobb, lawyer from Texas, now lives in California, Green Party presidential candidate in this election. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, David Cobb.

DAVID COBB: Thank you, Amy, it’s a pleasure to be back.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you talk about what you're calling for in Ohio?

DAVID COBB: Well, Amy, we are demanding -- we will be demanding a full statewide recount of every ballot cast that we can get our hands on in the state of Ohio. I want to stop for a moment, back up and really give some context to this story, because corporate media is attempting to manufacture consent around the lie that this was a clean and fair election. The reality is that this was not a clean and fair election. Far from it. There is a litany of problems, not only the problems that you mentioned in terms of the voting equipment themselves, but the clear and obvious civil rights and voting rights violations that occurred in this election. I just want to observe that it was only thanks to Pacifica and community radio across this country that this story was really getting out, and the internet and ordinary citizens telling each other the stories that they were hearing. Corporate media manufacturing consent around a lie, the people's radio, Pacifica community radio stations, telling the truth. I think that's a profound background and backdrop that we should remember as we go through with this story.

AMY GOODMAN: So what exactly will happen? You have got the $150,000. What will happen now?

DAVID COBB: Well, we're not allowed under law to actually demand the recount until the republican Secretary of State, Blackwell, actually officially certifies the results. He has not done so. They're still counting, that we know of, over 153,000 provisional ballots. That high number of provisional ballots is actually part of the problem, by the way, where only he and his office has the final say on how and where and under what circumstances those ballots will be counted. But as soon as that certification takes place, we will be demanding and filing in every single count in the state of Ohio for a full recount. Under Ohio state law, they must certify the results by December 3, but they might do it earlier, so we're prepared immediately to file that recount.

AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times moved very quickly and did a whole piece basically debunking any questions about the vote and said there's a lot of blogs and internet swirls that are alleging some kind of fraud or miscount, but that, you know, it's got to be put to rest pretty fast.

DAVID COBB: Well, again, the corporate media doing its job to try to manufacture consent, but the reality -- what we know on the ground from citizens on the ground, and in fact providing testimony at citizen-conducted hearings, public hearings, we know for a fact there were screens which had a, quote, jumping screen problem. That is where folks attempted to cast a ballot for one presidential candidate and the screen literally jumped in an attempt to default the vote for Bush. We know, of course, the infamous precinct where less than 700 people voted yet the machines attempted to record 4,000 extra votes for Bush. Of course, the intolerably long lines in low-income communities, especially communities of color, African American communities, which is a function of the allocation of voting machines, decisions made by a republican Secretary of State where too few machines went into African American communities. We know that there are over 92,000 ballots that are literally being discarded, or the so-called spoiled ballots where there was an alleged overvote or undervote. It's the hanging chad problem all over again. We're demanding that the votes need to be looked at to determine whether there was an intent to actually cast a ballot or not. These provisional ballots, and the high number of them are really problematic, because so many were cast because long-time voters simply disappeared from the voter roles. We don't know why. There was an illegal use of I.D. requirements for voters that were illegal under Ohio law. This is just the tip of the iceberg, Amy. We haven't even touched upon the inherent problems with black box voting. I'm talking about reports on the ground flooding in by the thousands of people in Ohio who experienced voting rights violations as they attempted to exercise their right to vote. So, I don't know if this recount is going to result in changing the election results. Frankly, that's not my intent. My intent is to attempt to do two things, really. To raise a cloud over the legitimacy of this election and George Bush. We know that Bush stole the election in 2000. So, I want to just at least raise this point, and the second thing I want to do is to have a healthy discussion and create the political space necessary for that discussion to describe the systemic changes that are necessary so that we, the people, can have confidence in the legitimacy of our elections.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to David Cobb, Green Party presidential candidate for 2004. I want to know if you have talked to the Democratic Party about what they're doing with their money, looking at the report from the Center for Public Integrity they did a day before the election. John Kerry has $51 million left. That is more than any presidential candidate ever had. He has, I think, George Bush had something around $25 million. So, he has about, oh, or $27 million. He has about $17 million more than George Bush. Compare $51 million to what Gore had after 2000. He had something like $3-something million. Center for Public Integrity asked the Kerry campaign what they were going to do with this money. They refused to say. But have you been in communication with them? Have they talked about putting some of this money into recount efforts?

DAVID COBB: No, we haven't had a formal conversation with the Kerry campaign. Frankly, Amy, we have been too busy putting our grassroots effort together on the fly. We did not expect, frankly, in the Green Party, to be the only party – well, with our friends in the Libertarian Party, we didn't expect to be in the process of having to demand the recount, if these allegations had come through. So we're putting together our team on the fly to stand up for the rights of Americans to demand the recount. So, we do know that the $50 million is available. We do know that it would be available for recounts, but so far there's been a deafening silence on the part of the Kerry campaign. I do want to make a distinction here between the leadership of the Democratic Party and the rank and file members of the Democratic Party, the rank and file members of the Democratic Party on this issue seem to be howling with indignation and are -- we're getting words of support and emails and letters of encouragement. I'm not surprised, because the rank and file members of the Democratic Party are infinitely more progressive than the leadership of the Democratic Party or of John Kerry.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that John Kerry simply doesn't want to look like a sore loser and is looking to 2008 and could possibly use these funds towards that?

DAVID COBB: You know, Amy, that conclusion certainly does not escape me, and -- but I don't know why John Kerry is so silent but he is complicit in his silence. And he is certainly complicit in a concession speech which was a downright capitulation. Especially in light of all of the evidence that was already available about voting rights violations that occurred in Ohio. Many people, in fact everybody who was associated with the campaign in Ohio, on the night of the election, was absolutely convinced that there would be at least a recount, and probable litigation. So, we were stunned the next day when Kerry conceded. Why he did so, you know, is speculation that we can all do. If it's true that he conceded and then tried to basically brush aside all of the voting rights violations in some effort to position himself for 2008, I think that that is a profound mistake, and even more than simply a strategic mistake, I think it's shameful. About as shameful as what's happening in Fallujah, by the way.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cobb, are you calling for John Kerry to un-concede?

DAVID COBB: Listen, I think that it's -- I don't want John Kerry to be in the White House. I'd like to be in the White House. I think that the people deserve a peace candidate in the White House. The people of the United States deserve a candidate calling for universal health care and a living wage and end to the prison industrial complex, but the reality is, Amy, it's obvious that I did not win the White House. I'm calling for whoever won the presidential election to be in the White House. We don't know who that is at this point. It stuns me that John Kerry is silent, but it -- I'm proud that the Green Party is standing up.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cobb, I want to thank you for being with us. Again, the Green Party presidential candidate, together with the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Michael Badnarik, are calling for a recount of the votes in Ohio, Ralph Nader for a recount of the votes in Ohio.

DAVID COBB: Thank you, Amy. If I could, for listeners, if you want to get involved either as a donor or as a volunteer on the recount effort, please go to our website, www.votecobb.org.

AMY GOODMAN: Thanks very much for being with us.

DAVID COBB: My pleasure.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, David Cobb calling for that recount in Ohio, Nader calling for it in New Hampshire.

Source: Democracy Now

Jack Straw Admits Brits Knew of Eq.Guinea Coup Plot

2004-11-19T11:09:00.000-05:00

Straw: We did know of Africa coup (scroll down for background information)

Antony Barnett and Martin Bright
Sunday November 14, 2004
The Observer

The British government knew about the alleged plot to overthrow the President of Equatorial Guinea at least five weeks before a group of mercenaries was arrested in March for planning the coup.

In a dramatic admission, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, confirmed that the government had been 'informed' of the alleged coup plot 'in late January 2004'. On 7 March a group of mercenaries, led by an Old Etonian and former SAS officer, Simon Mann, was arrested in Zimbabwe. They were charged with plotting a putsch.

Straw's disclosure is the latest twist in a remarkable tale that has dragged in several high-profile figures. In August, Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of the former British Prime Minister, was arrested in South Africa after being accused of helping to finance the coup to remove President Obiang. He faces criminal charges that he broke the country's anti-mercenary laws. Thatcher denies any knowledge or involvement in the plot.

Straw's admission came in a parliamentary answer last week in the Commons to a question tabled by the Tories' shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram.

Until now, cabinet ministers have denied any prior knowledge of the attempted African coup which would be illegal under international law.

In August, The Observer reported accusations that an individual who was intimately involved in the alleged plot against Obiang was claiming British officials had advanced knowledge of the plot. Foreign Office officials dismissed the claims, issuing a categorical denial that Britain had 'prior knowledge of the alleged plot'.

At the time of the March arrests, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe accused Britain, the US and Spain of plotting a coup in the oil-rich West African state. The suggestion was that the coup was an attempt to gain control over Equatorial Guinea's new-found oil wealth that has turned the small country into Africa's third-biggest oil producer. These allegations have been strongly denied by foreign governments.

Yet the admission by Straw that the government had been informed of the coup plot several weeks in advance has raised questions about the role played by Britain. Senior opposition politicians are demanding to know who informed ministers and what they then did with the information received.

A source close to the government of Equatorial Guinea described Straw's admission as being 'very surprising'.

He said that President Obiang would be seeking an immediate explanation from Straw as to why no warning was passed to the government of Equatorial Guinea, a country with which Britain has full diplomatic relations.

He added: 'This is particularly surprising in view of the fact that a number of British citizens and residents of the UK appear to be central to the conspiracy to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea.'

As well as Mann and Mark Thatcher, other British-based individuals linked to the plot include Ely Calil, a Lebanese millionaire oil trader who lived in Chelsea. Calil, who has temporarily moved to Lebanon, denies any involvement in bankrolling the coup, which allegedly aimed to replace Obiang with an exiled politician, Severo Moto.

Senior detectives at Scotland Yard are investigating claims by ministers from Equatorial Guinea that the plot was largely planned and financed in Britain.

Ancram said: 'Jack Straw's reply raises very significant questions which require answers. Who informed the government, exactly when and what did ministers do with this information?'
Ancram has tabled several further parliamentary questions to get to the bottom of this. His concerns were echoed by Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman.

He said: 'This reply characteristically raises more questions than it answers. Not only do we need to know what steps did the government take to warn the government of Equatorial Guinea, but what steps they took to ensure that British citizens did not become involved.'

This weekend the Foreign Office refused to explain the background to Straw's answer arguing that it was 'sub judice'. On Tuesday, the trial begins in the Equatorial Guinean capital Malabo of one of the alleged coup leaders, Nick du Toit.

The prospect of a diplomatic row between Britain and Equatorial Guinea could put in jeopardy more than £1 billion of British contracts.

Related articles

27.08.2004: Thatcher family had bags packed ready to flee to US, police say

27.08.2004: Exiled leader in Spain denies any link to coup attempt

26.08.2004: Thatcher and a very African coup

27.08.2004: Press review: Thatcher arrest

26.08.2004: Equatorial Guinea: Oil rich, dirt poor

29.07.2004: Ex-SAS officer in 'coup plot' admits arms charges

21.07.2004: 70 go on trial in Zimbabwe over alleged coup plot

19.03.2004: Suspect in coup plot dies

Explained

25.08.2004: Q&A: the Equatorial Guinea 'coup'

Profiles

26.08.2004: Key players: mercenaries, money and political connections

26.08.2004: Sir Mark Thatcher: Scratcher, the millionaire fixer

Special report

Equatorial Guinea

Source: UK's Guardian

New Items from Memes.org

2004-11-18T14:34:00.000-05:00

Origins of the G.W. Bush-Carlyle-Nazi Axis - Saturday, November 13, 2004

(February 16, 1997) Oklahoma City, Government-Paid Neo-Nazis, and the FCC - Saturday, November 13, 2004

Operation Paperclip Casefile - Saturday, November 13, 2004

Who Won WWII? - Saturday, November 13, 2004

Neo-Nazi Al Qaeda - Friday, November 12, 2004

Millions of Americans Support War on Terror: Are they Nazi-Qaeda too? - Saturday, November 13, 2004

(February 5, 2002) Enron's Vince Foster? - Friday, November 12, 2004

Fallujah Eyewitness Account - Thursday, November 11, 2004

Early Reports on Fallujah Slaughter - Wednesday, November 10, 2004

CIA role inside the USA greater - Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Arma-geddon Sick of You - Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Living in a Fantasy World - Thursday, November 18, 2004

Rejoice Not... - Thursday, November 18, 2004

Free Market Anarchism - Thursday, November 18, 2004

High Intelligence Productions

2004-11-15T22:06:00.000-05:00

"Two specters haunt the next (21st) century. One is the secularism, nationalism, and ethnocentricity, the psychological apartheid that is paradoxically erupting as the world moves toward a single consumer culture. The other is the very real possibility of extinction of the human race .... Overpopulation, deforestation, the nuclear weapons that are still very much with us, the rotting canisters of plutonium on the ocean floor - I hardly need recite the list....

A revolution against these demons would require the kind of Internationale that Marx dreamed of, and Communism never saw -- a rising of the humans of the world. It would depend on a transition to a global economy that is simultaneous to a dismantling of the multinational corporations. And it must begin with us talking to each other -- more important, listening to each other -- in ways that have never occurred before. Significantly, with the new information technology, the means are there -- as long as we are able to keep those means democratic, and out of monopolistic control, which won't be easy. The new generation of revolutionaries will not begin as a ragged band in the Sierras -- it will be individuals and small groups thousands of miles from each other and neighbors in cyberspace."

Elliot Weinberger, Poet

"The solution lies within the problem, the answer is in every question, dig it?"

George Clinton, Parliment/Funkadelic

ENTER SITE (at your own discretion)

Just Another Blowback?

2004-11-15T21:39:00.000-05:00

Shaking Hands: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.

Source: The National Security Archives at George Washington University (an online compendium of declassified documents).

Survival of the Fittest Ideas: The New Style of War -- a Struggle Among Memes

2004-11-11T22:12:00.000-05:00

an excerpt from a speech by David Brin, Ph.D.

The following is excerpted from a speech that I gave at Brigham Young University in 1989, and later transcribed and lightly revised for publication in a small zine. Of special note is my prediction, even before the Berlin Wall fell, that our Cold War with the Soviet Union would give way to an era of dire strife with some version of frenetic, male-centered fundamentalism... such as we now see manifesting in a new century. While this early forecast may read a little rough (it was a speech, recall), it is an unusual view of our world's troubles, one that may bear further discussion. Since then I have further developed most of these themes, including the notion of criticism as an antidote to error and the idea that tolerance depends on openness.

Naturally, we needn't look at this struggle over human hearts and minds as a 'war.' I wrote it that way to be intentionally a bit provocative. Ideally, it can be 'won' by changing many of the myths that children are brought up with... that is, over the long run.

And yet... given the dramatic events we all saw in late 2001, doesn't the 'war' metaphor seem even more apt than it did over a decade ago?

For more on these topics, see my 1998 nonfiction book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? Note especially where I talk about the coming century becoming an "Age of Amateurs."

What we are fighting for is a world in which people don't have to fight anymore. One in which we appreciate our differences. That seems worthwhile enough.

IN THE BEGINNING

Can we take a momentary break from exploring the future, and take a dip into the world of biology?

A well-known scientist-author, Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, described how everything from our bodies to civilization may have arisen out of a billion-year-old contest among nearly invisible clusters of DNA, competing against both nature and each other.

Most of us are used to envisioning evolution as having to do with macro creatures -- like plants, microbes or animals -- whose bodies and behaviors prove their 'fitness' value by surviving and reproducing across countless generations. By this reckoning, DNA is no more than a tool, like the creature's eyes or limbs -- a repository of codes, a passive library of biochemical and cellular tricks -- serving the needs of an individual or species. But in a classic chicken-and-egg conundrum, things can be viewed the other way around. Our complex bodies and behaviors may only serve as the pragmatic implements used by genes to facilitate their own replication.

Yes, this bizarre-sounding idea is taken seriously, in fact, by a majority of the world's experts in Darwinian selection. While many of them won't take it quite as far as Dawkins does, it certainly is a widely-accepted viewpoint to see evolution as a competition between bundles of coded genetic information, written along the chromosomes of living beings.

Of course, molecules don't contemplate "goals." Still, even prim biologists are known to anthropomorphize, now and then, because the effects of natural selection often do look eerily as if different genetic heritages have been striving against one another for niches in the ecosystem, instead of just stumbling into them by happenstance.

Let's put it this way -- if, by fortuitous chance, a bundle of genes happens to produce an organism with the right attributes, enabling it to live and pass on more copies of the genes, then naturally many those copies will also share the original successful trait and have an improved chance of making copies... and so on.

For our present purposes, let's use biology as a launching point, skipping on to a strange and delightful concept that Dawkins extracted from this notion of natural selection among genes. In a side musing that has since been widely discussed, he suggested similarities to other kinds of self-replicating systems -- like computer viruses -- that use information to be both infectious and prolific.

Extending the notion still farther, Dawkins hypothesized living bundles of ideas that he called memes.

Just like genes and computer viruses, memes are packets of coded information, but no longer contained in strings of molecules or software code. Rather than operating inside computers or living cells, memes take action inside human minds. Furthermore, these aren't just ordinary ideas. Like successful genetic codes, they must have the trait of making copies of themselves.

Again, it's already been shown that information can do this -- the code itself, if played back in a receptive environment, can force that environment to offer up resources for self-reproduction. If it happens in a cell or a computer, why not the rich environment offered by our brains?

IDEAS THAT LIVE / IDEAS THAT SPREAD

Suppose I read, or heard, or somehow picked up a new concept -- say the very one we're discussing at this moment, the notion of memes. Now I guess you could say this idea was successful at "infecting" me, because I've continued thinking about it, giving it continued existence, or life.

In thinking an idea, you in a sense cause the idea to live.

But a virus or bacterium that just sits inside its host organism doesn't accomplish much. Flu viruses make us sneeze because those viruses which stumbled into that trait spread their progeny far and wide, giving them, in turn, further chances to proliferate.

How would a living idea proliferate? By somehow getting its host not only to think about it, but also to spread copies... by telling other people!

And now, if you've been paying attention, you'll realize that's just what I've been doing the last few minutes for one particular meme... the meme of memes! By telling you all about it, I am doing the memic equivalent of coughing on you. Infecting you with the infectious, self-replicating organism of an idea... the very notion of these infectious ideas. And if it's a successful self-replicating notion, some of you will go tell others. And so on.

Of course this is not the first time this has happened on the planet. We do it all the time. In fact, life would be dull, if not impossible, if we didn't share ideas we had heard -- mutating and adapting them to our purposes along the way.

MEMES -- SHEDDING LIGHT ON HISTORY

Intriguing. Now imagine that some of these self-reproducing ideas pick up a few other attributes. Say a notion becomes helpful to its hosts in some way -- for example a belief in washing hands before eating -- resulting in better health and survival of more children. The meme of bathing could also facilitate its own spread by causing more people to enjoy being around its human host, helping the good-smelling host to become more successful and influential in his or her community. This, in turn, helps the meme to spread. (If more people listen to your host, then the host's store of devoutly-believed memes will spread!)

Imagine now that some memes acquire yet another trait. Some might cause their host organisms, or host tribes, to try to keep other memes out! To expose their children to only those ideas the parents already have within their heads.

If a meme fell upon the trick of making its hosts behave in such a way, it would thus secure the territory of many human minds for itself and its progeny and keep away competitors for all time.

Sound like a bizarre science fiction scenario?

Or is it, rather, a pretty good model of what we've seen going on around us, in nearly every human society where citizens have been taught to believe certain things and to hold alien ideas in suspicion?

Examples abound. Take the dogmatic exclusion rules of most religions. Can we look again at the Inquisition, or the Tokugawa extirpation of Japanese Christians, or the Holocaust, in new light? One of the Iranian Ayatollahs once said of America -- "We don't fear your bombs, we fear your pagan ideas."

Or take the Soviet Union. What's going on in Russia today (ed. note: this was early 1989) may be considered the meme-equivalent of AIDS! After all, consider which people over there seem most infected with our western worldview. Certainly not vast portions of the population as a whole, who often seem sullen, resentful of change, and xenophobic. No, it appears to be the aristocracy, a lot of guys at the top, Gorbachev and even some large elements of the KGB, who are now turning off the jamming devices. The 'immune system' of former Leninist Russia -- the memic equivalent of white blood cells -- who used to keep out anything that contradicted Communist purity, has changed sides! Border guards who once confiscated videotapes were the equivalent of antibodies. But now their orders are to "let anything in. Come on! Infect us!"

Under such circumstances, how much longer will their outer barriers last?

MEMES CAN WAGE WAR ON ONE ANOTHER

Some of you have heard me talk before about how, in my opinion, there are presently four major worldviews battling over the future of this planet. Now, so long as you're willing to take all this with a grain or two of salt -- and remember, this is only a model, a metaphor -- I'd like to give you an updated version.

These four combating worldviews have little to do with all those superficial slogans that people have let themselves get lathered about in this century. Things like communism, capitalism, Islam. We have seen wars and death aplenty, but they weren't fought over such simpleminded ideologies. Not really.

Rather, I am talking about deeper themes that pervaded human psychology since the dawn of time. All four of the antagonistic memes that I'm about to describe can be shown to have appeared in all historic cultures, sometimes coexisting under conditions of high tension. Or else they have taken turns, dominating or setting the tone for entire civilizations.

There is, first off, a worldview best called Paranoia.

Take the best recent example: one can understand Russian traditional xenophobia and dread of enemies lurking on the horizon, given their history of repeated invasion at least once per generation, for a thousand years. Under these conditions, a people might school themselves, through every myth and fairy tale, to support even a monstrous leadership if it promises to keep the Enemy at bay. Still, this meme made for an uncomfortably brittle and capricious superpower. If Paranoia had won, or even lasted much longer, the world would probably become a cinder, sooner or later.

The great enemy of Paranoia is peace. Without constant threat and suffering, human beings eventually start thinking in terms of comfort and personal ambition. And yet the fearful meme is still carried in the mythology that Russian parents pass on to their children. That part of it may take a long time to go away.

Second on our list of competing themes is Machismo.

Machismo is the most powerful worldview -- the leading meme -- in many parts of the world.

Wherever you see women oppressed and the environment ignored, wherever professionalism and skill are downgraded in favor of strutting and male-bonded loyalty groups, it's a good bet that Machismo sets a culture's major chord. And don't underrate it! Macho-chiefdom was an effective social pattern, especially in countless natural hunter-gatherer tribes. Much that is noble and heroic came out of such clans, including probably most of our ancient legends. A later version -- feudalism -- appeared wherever and whenever humanity came up with both agriculture and metallurgy, with such reliable consistency that it has to be something basic. In other words, it may be the most 'natural' human self organizing system. Nevertheless, if this meme prevails, we and our planet will die.

Today, different versions of Machismo are dominant in wide areas of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and several other zones as well. For example, in the Iranian language, Farsi, most of the traditional fairy tales that are recited to children apparently focus on one dramatic theme, above all others, that of revenge, a motif you can also see repeated in 1001 Arabian Nights. Nor is this trait limited to any one subculture. Almost every social lineage on the planet passed through a macho phase, e.g., the feudal era in Europe, which gave us the occidental myths collected in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Consider how many of them centered either on revenge or on premises of prickly male honor, or else on rescue themes with strictly defined sexual roles. Or take Latin America where, I am told, mothers in some places are still known to sit their little sons on their knees and tell them -- "Someday you'll be a macho guy. You'll deflower virgins and seduce other men's wives. But if this happens to your wife or sister, you must cut her throat." This may sound bizarre to many of you, but I have double checked. Moreover, it would be a mistake to dismiss it as an aberration.

Again, as worldviews go, Machismo has a long tradition, a lot longer than ours. It is also hot-tempered and deeply threatened by modernity. Watch, as time passes and the elevation of women progresses. We shall see how this meme reacts to the insistent pressure of western values, perhaps erupting in harsh reaction. It may burst from Machismo's Latin or middle-eastern or south Asian variants -- too soon to tell which. Let's hope not all of them.

When this happens, the underlying fever will probably go undiagnosed and unnamed. Western pundits and leaders will probably focus unduly on superficial details like religion or nationality. Wherever it manifests, the real cause, lying much deeper down, will probably be ignored.

How about a side bet? Here's a prediction regarding the first meme we mentioned -- Paranoia (specifically the Russian/Soviet variant). We'll see, in the course of the next decade, if it really is on the way out, or if its lasting power has been underrated, giving rise to powerful new surface forms. There are plenty of fresh symbols that might suffice, replacing both czars and communist stars.

Assuming it does continue to fade: keep an eye on how the other three culture families devour what remains of the old Soviet Empire, as some of its parts hurry to join the domain of the West, some tumble into the Machismo orbit, while still others become Eastern with stunning rapidity.

Next... the battle of the four worldviews. Which will conquer our minds and hearts?

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Source: David Brin's Official Website (Brin is a science fiction author of considerable renown)

GOP Wants to End Exit Polls

2004-11-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

GOP Wants to End Exit Polls
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

As a BuzzFlash Reader said: "Gee, let's make it REALLY easy to cheat..."

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie wants to eliminate exit polls because he says they're not accurate, implying that the final vote was unquestionably correct.

GOP Wants News Organizations to Abandon Exit Polls (subscription req'd)By Doug Halonen, TVWeek.com

After early exit polls in Tuesday's election inaccurately suggested that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry would trounce President Bush, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie is recommending that major news organizations pull the plug on the prognostications.

In remarks Thursday at the National Press Club, Mr. Gillespie said he is among those who were stunned by exit poll reports, which leaked widely on the Internet. "I would encourage the media to abandon exit surveys on Election Day and do what we do in the political profession -- look at the precincts and the turnout, see who's turning out to vote," Mr. Gillespie said. "Don't build a model that you try to, you know, build your own thoughts into of what you expect it to be."

Mr. Gillespie conceded that the exit polls weren't reported directly by major news organizations themselves. "But with the Internet today, we're kidding ourselves, aren't we, to think that everybody in America doesn't know what the exit data is showing?" he said.

He also said he was personally affected by the early reports, discouraged by what he was seeing. "But I've been through this before," he said. "In 2000 the exit data was wrong on Election Day. In 2002, the exit returns were wrong on Election Day. And in 2004, the exit data were wrong on Election Day -- all three times, by the way, in a way that skewed against Republicans and had a dispiriting effect on Republican voters across the country."

Gillespie's implication that the final tally was correct, but the exit polls were wrong implies that our voting process is flawless and the people building our voting machines are nonpartisan and only interested in seeing a fair election.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the seriousness of the widespread problems we have with our voting systems or the highly compromised partisans running our voting machine companies knows a truly fair election is not possible.

Why would the GOP want to eliminate exit polls? Because it's the last semi-independent check of an election's accuracy and the only way to quickly determine if the votes cast for a candidate match those counted by the machines.

Sheldon Drobny: "There's a huge difference between polling what WILL happen and polling something that has already happened. The reliability of polling something that has already happened is highly reliable vs. predictive polls, like Gallup or Zogby, which is very risky. The reliability can be, not plus or minus 4 percent as we see with predictive polls, but rather a much more reliable plus or minus one half or one tenth of one percent with exit polls, because those are based on asking people who already voted. I would even say that if the exit polling were done in the key precincts of Florida and Ohio, which it was, then these results should be practically "bullet proof.'"

If the GOP eliminates exit polls before true verifiable voting is in place, there will be nothing left to warn us when our vote is stolen.

Lastly, note that Gillespie only refers to the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections -- all the major elections since George W. Bush dropped onto the national political scene -- as "being skewed against Republicans." There is a very good reason the exit polls showed more people voted for Democrats -- they did.

As Greg Palast said, "...the exit polls are accurate."

Source: Buzzflash

Voters Anonymous

2004-11-10T11:28:00.000-05:00

by Robert Kaercher

Snip:

Now that I’ve had one final fling with that false god known as “Democracy,” I am now giving up voting for good. Never again will I follow the ridiculous “Choose Your Master” philosophy so mindlessly propagated by the all-too-subservient MTV generation. Never again will I allow myself to be so arrogant as to think that I have any right at all to petition for any candidate or political party to rule and lord over my friends, family and countrymen.

See Voters Anonymous at Strike the Root