There are 3 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Conservatives Endorse The Fuhrer Principle: Our Leader �ber alles
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
2. What lies beneath
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
3. Whistleblower Charged With Three Felonies for Exposing Diebold's Crimes
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 09:05:56 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Conservatives Endorse The Fuhrer Principle: Our Leader �ber alles
Conservatives Endorse the Fuhrer Principle
Our leader �ber alles
By Paul Craig Roberts
02/17/06 -- -- Last week's annual Conservative Political Action Conference signaled the transformation of American conservatism into brownshirtism. A former Justice Department official named Viet Dinh got a standing ovation when he told the CPAC audience that the rule of law mustn't get in the way of President Bush protecting Americans from Osama bin Laden.
Former Republican congressman Bob Barr, who led the House impeachment of President Bill Clinton, reminded the CPAC audience that our first loyalty is to the U.S. Constitution, not to a leader. The question, Barr said, is not one of disloyalty to Bush, but whether America "will remain a nation subject to, and governed by, the rule of law or the whim of men."
The CPAC audience answered that they preferred to be governed by Bush. According to Dana Milbank, a member of the CPAC audience named Richard Sorcinelli loudly booed Barr, declaring: "I can't believe I'm in a conservative hall listening to him say Bush is off course trying to defend the United States." A woman in the audience told Barr that the Constitution placed Bush above the law and above non-elected federal judges.
These statements gallop beyond the merely partisan. They express the sentiments of brownshirtism. Our leader �ber alles.
Only a few years ago this same group saw Barr as a conservative hero for obtaining Clinton's impeachment in the House. Obviously, CPAC's praise for Barr did not derive from Barr's stand on conservative principle that a president must be held accountable if he violates the law. In Clinton's case, Barr's principles did not conflict with the blind emotions of the politically partisan conservatives demanding Clinton's impeachment.
In opposing Bush's illegal behavior, Barr is simply being consistent. But this time, Barr's principles are at odds with the emotions of the politically partisan CPAC audience. Rushing to the defense of Bush, the CPAC audience endorsed Viet Dinh's Fuhrer Principle over the rule of law.
Why do the media and the public allow partisan political hacks, like Viet Dinh, to define Bush's illegal actions as a national security issue? The purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is to protect national security. FISA creates a secret court to which the president can apply for a warrant even after he has initiated spying. Complying with the law in no way handicaps spying for national security purposes. The only spying handicapped by the warrant requirement is spying for illegitimate purposes, such as spying on political opponents.
There are only two reasons for Bush to refuse to obey the law. One is that he is guilty of illegitimate spying for which no warrant would be issued by the FISA court. The other is that he is using "national security" to create unconstitutional powers for the executive.
Civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate writing in the Boston Phoenix says that Bush's grab for "sweeping, unchecked power in direct violation of a statute would open a Pandora's box of imperial possibilities." In short, it makes the president a dictator.
For years, the Republican Federalist Society has been agitating for concentrating more power in the executive. The members will say that they do not favor a dictator, just a check on the "imperial Congress" and "imperial judiciary." But they have not spelled out how the president can be higher than law and still be accountable, or, if he is only to be higher than some laws, but not other laws, and only in some circumstances, but not all circumstances, who draws the line through the law and defines the circumstances.
On Feb. 13, the American Bar Association passed a resolution belatedly asking President Bush to stop violating the law. "We cannot allow the U.S. Constitution and our rights to become a victim of terrorism," said bar association president Michael Grecco.
The siren call of "national security" is all the cover Bush needs to have the FISA law repealed, thus legally gaining the power to spy however he chooses, the protection of political opponents be damned. However, Bush and his Federalist Society Justice Department are not interested in having the law repealed. Their purpose has nothing to do with national security. The point on which the regime is insisting is that there are circumstances (undefined) in which the president does not have to obey laws. What those circumstances and laws are is for the regime to decide.
The Bush regime is asserting the Fuhrer Principle, and Americans are buying it, even as Bush declares that America is at war in order to bring democracy to the Middle East.
Dr. Roberts <paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com> is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article11968.htm
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/roberts.cgi/American%20Empire/2006/02/20/Conservatives_Endor
~~~
How Conservatives Went Crazy
What happened to a formerly conservative press to reduce it to political partisanship and warmongering? Specifically, I have in mind National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
When I was associated with National Review, the magazine understood that the U.S. Constitution and civil liberty had to be protected from government. It was not considered unpatriotic to take the side of the Constitution and civil liberty against a sitting government, even if the government were Republican. Some things were still more important than party loyalty.
No more. Consider, for example, Byron York writing in the Feb. 13 issue. York doesn�t understand why former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr lent his Republican conservative credentials to former Vice President Al Gore�s speech against President Bush�s transgressions against law and civil liberty, or why Barr is associating with liberals opposing the �Patriot� Act.
Barr is the former Republican member of the House of Representatives who led the impeachment against President Bill Clinton. Barr did so not out of political partisanship. As a former prosecutor, Barr regards lying under oath to be a serious offense. A president who commits that offense must be held accountable. Otherwise, presidents will go on to lie about greater things�such as war.
In opposing Bush�s transgressions, Barr is simply being consistent. For Barr, party loyalty takes a backseat to defense of the Constitution, the rule of law and civil liberty. If the United States had more leaders of Barr�s caliber, Bush and Cheney would already have been impeached.
York cannot understand this, because he thinks party loyalty and defense against terrorists are the controlling virtues. York scolds Barr for letting himself be used by partisan liberal organizations, but York takes his own partisanship for granted. It is only the other side that is partisan.
more...
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/roberts.cgi/2006/02/09#How_Conservatives_W
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 09:16:40 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: What lies beneath
Monday, February 27, 2006
What lies beneath
Told about Jesus, told about the rain,
Told me about the jungle where her brothers were slain
By a man who danced on the roof of the embassy. - Bob Dylan
I've just time today to briefly note a story from Mexico that may remind readers of many other stories (with thanks to starroute for the thread on the RI discussion board):
Writer Who Exposed Child Sex Ring Fears Worst Is Yet to Come
MEXICO CITY, Feb 24 (IPS) - When Mexican freelance journalist and human rights activist Lydia Cacho published a book last year exposing a paedophile ring ["Los demonios del Ed�n" (The Demons of Eden)], she was warned by friends and colleagues that she would run into trouble.
It did not take long for their warnings to come true. She was arrested by the police, driven 900 kms to the state of Puebla, held for 30 hours, mistreated and threatened. Now that she is the target of the wrath of powerful Mexican businessmen and politicians, she is worried that the worst is yet to come.
..
More recently, she was dragged into a scandal after a dozen taped telephone conversations were leaked to the press and broadcast on Feb. 14. In the obscenity-laced conversations, a voice identified as that of Mario Mar�n, the governor of the state of Puebla, can be heard telling a man who is allegedly textile mogul Kamel Nacif that "I just gave a bump on the head to that old witch."
In her book, Cacho described Nacif as a friend of Jean Succar, a Lebanese-born businessman who is facing charges of arranging paedophile parties.
The illegally taped phone conversations attributed to the governor and various individuals, including a reporter, apparently took place in December, after Cacho was taken into custody by the police in the southeastern resort town of Canc�n and driven to Puebla.
In the conversations, the voices identified as those of Nacif and Mar�n discuss how they had the activist arrested and thrown into a cell with "nutcases and dykes (lesbians)," so that she would be raped. That did not happen, however, because in the prison in Puebla, "the prisoners themselves and the guards protected me," said the writer. But she was mistreated. Cacho described how she was threatened during the nearly 20-hour trip to Puebla and was only allowed to eat once.
..
Cacho, who is also the co-founder of the Centro Integral de Apoyo a la Mujer (CIAM), a shelter for victims of domestic violence and rape in her home base of Canc�n, interviewed many of Succar's victims for her book. The youngsters described how the hotel owner sexually abused them himself, set up a prostitution ring to allow others to abuse them, and photographed them in order to sell the pornographic images on the Internet.
This case is just one thread in a vast web of similar rings throughout Mexico.
Nacif, as his friend Succar, is a Lebanese emigre with a nasty reputation that long precedes the publication of Cacho's book. Mexico's "King of Denim" has "the unsavory habit of frequently changing the name of his many companies, in order to avoid paying debts, taxes and accumulated worker benefits to those laid off." And six years ago the Sun Herald wrote that "Mexican textile magnate Kamel Nacif has been a familiar face at Las Vegas gambling tables for some 30 years, using phony identification to wager at Caesars Palace when he was still in his late teens. He remains, however, a bit of a multimillionaire mystery man, long suspected by Nevada Gaming Control Board agents of money laundering and arms and narcotics dealing."
(Coincidentally, it was an expat Lebanese crime family operating in the Caribbean Basin that FBI undercover operative Darlene Novinger was investigating in 1982, when she reportedly, and unfortunately, discovered the Bush family implicated in its narcotics trade.)
Nacif filed his suit in the south central province of Puebla, where most of his textile sweatshops are located, and where he could call on his friend the governor to protect his good name, though the crimes in which he is implicated occured in Canc�n. (Where last week, a Canadian couple had their throats slit in their hotel room on the eve of their daughter's wedding. Nothing was stolen and the wife was not raped, and Mexican authorities are being markedly uncooperative.) The scandal "of personal power and cronyism" is likely to cost Marin his governorship, but as El Universal editorialized yesterday, that's just the public scandal of "the powerful protecting the powerful." Behind it "is something much more hideous."
There certainly seems to be something about Mexico, and at least some of that has to do with its proximity to hidden American hands. It was allegedly the destination of the children and their minders in the troubling Finders case. ("Once in custody the men were somewhat evasive in their answers to the police regarding the children and stated only that they both were the children's teachers and that all were enroute to Mexico to establish a school for brilliant children.") In little more than a decade, thousands of young women, mostly factory workers, have been raped, tortured and murdered in the borderland maquiladoras without justice being served. ("We believe this is a binational crime," says Emma Perez of the Coalition Against Violence Toward Women and Families on the Border. "And because it's happening on an international border, it requires international involvement," she says. "How many more women have to be murdered for this to be taken seriously?") In November 2004, a crowd "angry about recent child kidnappings cornered plainclothes federal agents taking photos of students at a school on Mexico City's outskirts and burned the officers alive." And as David McGowan writes in Programmed to Kill, one of Henry Lee Lucas's more extravagent claims was that he laboured for a cult as an "abductor of children, whom he delivered to a ranch in Mexico near Juarez. Once there, they were used in the production of child pornography and for ritual sacrifices. Henry has said that this cult's operations were based in Texas, and included trafficking in children and drugs."
Ugly things lie buried everywhere, though in the United States you might not know it if all you know is broadcast journalism. And that's most Americans. Until they regenerate a legitimate media, it may take looking elsewhere, where the graves are more shallow, to see what lies beneath.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/02/what-lies-beneath.html
~~~
SMiles said...
My friend and the new on-site volunteer assistant curator at my Anomaly Archives lending library in Austin, Texas, wrote and produced a play that recently premiered here for the Frontera Fest 2006.
"Among the Sand and Smog is based on real occurances happening on the Texas-Mexico border.
One of the world's darkest secrets is hiding right next door. Since the early 1990's, factory workers and other young women of the city of Juarez have been disappearing off the streets, to be discovered later lifeless in the desert, or sometimes not at all. Now, more than 13 years later, over 300 women have been brutally raped and murdered, the culprits remain at large and unknown, and a city mourns while a nation and the world ignores it. Told in three acts, and starring some of the finest talent in Austin, Among the Sand and Smog is sure to move and shock you as it explores one of this hemisphere's most forgotten tragedies."
http://www.mujeresdejuarez.org/amongtsas.htm
Jeff said...
Crucial evidence may be lost in Mexican resort murder
starroute said...
I don't know if it would lead anywhere, but a couple of years ago I did some googling for Bush family friends, and though I never pursued it, I've still got the lists of names and links.
A number of the Bush family's dubious Mexican connections are detailed here and here. President Carlos Salinas and his clique, drug connections, a few murders, dubious Lebanese businessmen . . .
I haven't ever looked into this stuff deeply, but there might be something there. The fact that Lebanese businessmen come into both stories seems particularly strange. I think I'll try checking out Anuar Name and Joseph Audi and see what comes up.
Jeff said...
Here's something I posted quite a while ago about the Salinas and Bush families.
mondo322 said...
By the way, Greg Syzmanski's Arctic Beacon has posted an article today that might interest you. It's tied in to this subject....
More Than 50,000 Children Used In CIA-Connected Experimentation Programs; Investigative Journalist Has Story Suppressed And Experiences Threats Before Its Eventual Release In Alternative Publication
Christine Hahn won't back down from threats and suppression, as she vows to get out the truth about the Duplessis Orphans.
By Greg Szymanski
"Stories have surfaced about illegal government experimentation on adults through programs like MKULTRA, but I have meticulously documented the abuse going on with innocent children," said Hahn, a Canadian now residing in the U.S., who also has been threatened numerous times during her two years of researching the story.
Further, Hahn's well-documented story pinning government involvement and influential doctors having Nazi ties, finally appeared in an alternative publication called Freedom Magazine after being suppressed by numerous mainstream outlets in the U.S. and Canada.
"Nobody wanted to touch this story because of the high-level names," said Hahn who recently appeared on Greg Szymanski's radio show, The Investigative Journal. "I also was working for a W-FIVE, a well-known Canadian film documentary outlet when I had my grant pulled as well as the project.
"I found out the head of the Investigative Journalist Grant Program also had CIA connections. The cover-up and media sell-out is keeping vital information from the public and is a big part of the problem facing the public."
Although Hahn's story was suppressed in both Canada and the U.S. she didn't give up, finally finding Freedom Magazine in Los Angeles as an outlet. Explaining some of her frustrations behind the Duplessis Orphan story, she said:
"Like I said I once worked for W-FIVE, a well known Canadian current affairs program. Even though two of the five documentaries I helped produce were among the highest rated shows of the season, my contract was not renewed. I suspect it is because of other stories I was exposing--a eugenics program involvingthe Duplessis Orphans.
"I could not get any mainstream media publication to run my stories and so Freedom Magazine ran the pieces. Through doing the story, I also have experienced first hand, how despite having documented unbelievable crimes including the fact that Canada's former Prime Minister Paul Martin's father was responsible for what happened to these orphans, you cannot get your work published anywhere.
More here...
http://www.arcticbeacon.com/26-Feb-2006.html
Anonymous said...
Anonymous One,Buried Secrets,by Edward Humes is a great look inside the Octopus that is the occult,drug network.Adolfo dejesus Constanzo the leader of the gang had one wild life,and knowing the drug trade and how many strange people you get to meet,I find it hard to belive GW didn't cross paths with these little fucks.If the Texas drug boys in the 80's were anything like the guys I met and delt with in Fla. at that same time,Black Magick was used to protect the shipments.Now I can't say if it worked or not,but these folks were serious about this shit,oh there where also your nice CIA guys around to.These dark actors that control so much of our reality are untouchable,they stand in shadows just beyond our reach,later.
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 10:50:44 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Whistleblower Charged With Three Felonies for Exposing Diebold's Crimes
Whistleblower Charged With Three Felonies for Exposing Diebold's Crimes
Peter Soby, Jr.
READ MORE: New York Times, George W. Bush
A whistleblower in Los Angeles is in legal trouble and needs our help. Stephen Heller is alleged to have exposed documents in Jan. & Feb. 2004 which provided smoking gun evidence that Diebold was using illegal, uncertified software in California voting machines. The docs also showed that Diebold's California attorneys (the powerful international law firm Jones Day) had told them they were in breach of the law for using uncertified software, but Diebold continued to use the uncertified software anyway.
Heller is alleged to have come across these docs while temping as a word processor at Jones Day, and he is further alleged to have taken the docs and exposed them to the bright light of day. Now, after sitting on this for 2 years, the Los Angeles District Attorney, under pressure from Jones Day, is going after this whistleblower with 3 felony charges, each of which carries the potential of time in state prison. Here is a story in the LA Times. Heller's lawyer believes the 2 year wait to file charges was due to the then-impending 2004 election, and that Diebold and their attorneys didn't want the information to be made public in the lead up to the election.
The documents also look bad for Diebold's California lawyers, Jones Day. According to Bev Harris, author of the book Black Box Voting, the docs "provided evidence that the Jones Day law firm was helping Diebold to cover up the fact that they were installing uncertified software which, as it turns out, caused thousands of voters to be unable to vote just weeks later."
Bev Harris continues, "Jim March, another investigator for Black Box Voting, and I immediately took the documents to both the California Attorney General's office and to Kevin Shelley, who was then the California Secretary of State. Just days later, the secretary of state decertified Diebold." At the time, Shelley called the company's conduct "reprehensible" and said "their performance, their behavior, is despicable," and that "if that's the kind of deceitful behavior they're going to engage in, they can't do business in California." In an interview, Shelly said "We will not tolerate the deceitful conduct of Diebold, and we must send a clear message to the rest of the industry: Don't try to pull a fast one on the voters of California." Shelley then requested Cal. Attorney General Bill Lockyer to investigate taking criminal and civil actions against the company based on what he called "fraudulent actions by Diebold." Lockyer eventually dropped the criminal probe of Diebold but he sued the company on behalf of California, and Diebold settled out of court for $2.6 million.
Let's make this clear, folks. The docs Heller is accused of exposing were important evidence. First, they show that Diebold and their attorneys, Jones Day, conspired to mislead the California secretary of state, and that the lie they told was material, and resulted directly in the disenfranchisement of voters. Second, another document demonstrates that Diebold lied to the secretary of state when it represented that certain problems with its software were "fixed." This document, the release notes for the new software, showed that the problems were not fixed. Third, the documents showed that Diebold had been advised by Jones Day that what it had been doing with its uncertified software was illegal. Fourth, the documents show that Jones Day advised Diebold that it was subject to criminal prosecution. So in a nutshell, Diebold was defrauding the state government and taxpayers of California, and disenfranchising the voters of California. And the documents PROVE it.
And for allegedly exposing Diebold's felonious behavior (which led directly to Diebold being de-certified in California), for allegedly helping protect the taxpayers and voters of California, for allegedly helping to keep elections clean and fair, what happens? Diebold, the true criminal in this case, and their powerful international law firm Jones Day, press the L.A. District Attorney's office to hammer Heller, a whistleblower. Three felonies! Diebold was (and probably still is) screwing California voters, Heller is alleged to have seen the smoking gun evidence of Diebold's crimes, and, like a true patriot and whistleblower, allegedly exposed that smoking gun evidence, and now HE'S the one facing jail time. Only in Bush's America!
And the irony is, if Heller is convicted of a felony for exposing Diebold's crimes against the California voters, he'll lose his right to vote. Diebold will win. We can't let that happen!
But we can help. Let's flood the Los Angeles DA's office with phone calls, letters and emails asking them not to crucify this whistleblower.
Now of course, BE POLITE. Remember you are writing, calling and emailing the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney, which is a branch of law enforcement. Being harassing, rude, or threatening will only get you in legal trouble of your own, and it won't help Steve Heller, the whistleblower.
Talking points:
Don't prosecute Stephen Heller. He's a whistleblower, not a criminal, and he should not be prosecuted.
Diebold is the criminal here. Stephen Heller is alleged to have exposed Diebold's criminal activity, and that makes him a whistleblower. He should not be prosecuted.
Diebold's election malfeasance strikes at the very heart of our democratic republic. Without clean elections, we don't have democracy anymore. Those who expose such crimes are whistleblowers and should not be prosecuted.
America has a long history of whistleblowers exposing criminal activity, and prosecuting them is wrong; it puts a chilling effect on others who might see criminal activity and want to expose it.
Heller is getting pounded. He's the victim of bullies; a huge, powerful, wealthy, politically connected corporation and their equally huge and powerful international law firm are slamming him, grinding him up in legal machinery for allegedly lifting up the pretty skirt Diebold shows to the world, exposing the dirty, stinking criminal secrets that lie beneath. For what he's alleged to have done, there was nothing in it for him. No financial gain (in fact a serious financial loss, because he got fired from his job, and he's had to pay 10s of thousands of dollars to his lawyers, and owes them 10s of thousands more). And he's now at risk of over 3 years in state prison. It's insane. His cause is a worthy one, and he needs our help. Please call, write and email today.
Email the Los Angeles District Attorney's office at lada@co.la.ca.us.
A good old fashioned snail mail letter is very powerful tool:
District Attorney's Office
County of Los Angeles
210 West Temple Street, Suite 18000
Los Angeles, CA 90012-3210
And of course, phone calls:
Telephone (213) 974-3512
Fax (213) 974-1484
TTY (800) 457-7778 (8:30am - 5:00pm M-F)
Let's help defend a whistleblower from Diebold and their attorneys!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-soby-jr/whistleblower-charged-wit_b_16411.html
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