Thursday, May 04, 2006

[political-researchp] Bloglines - The Importance of Cole v. Hitchens

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The Importance of Cole v. Hitchens

The online fight between Prof. Juan Cole and Christopher Hitchens draws attention to the neocon practice of pushing inexact translations of foreign leaders to gin up support for war .




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[political-researchp] Bloglines - TSA Puffery

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Discourse.net
On the fringes of the public sphere

TSA Puffery

By Michael on Civil Liberties

There is something spookily appropriate about having an airport security officer lie to you in order to try to violate your civil rights, even in a relatively small way, when you are en route to a convention about technology and freedom.

This morning, as I was going through a deserted security screening post at MIA, in terminal C, just as I was about to put my luggage through the X-ray, the TSA guy working the outside of security, who had already passed me through, decided to invite back in order that I could step through the "puffer machine," more formally known as an EDT (explosive detection portal) or ETP (Explosives Trace Portal). I wasn't marked for a security screening, and I suspect nothing more was going on than the guy was bored and wanted something to do. Knowing that I have the right to refuse (at the cost of being searched by hand), and having plenty of time until my flight, I told him that I didn't like the look of the machine, and I would rather not. This is where the trouble started.

Rather than warn me that the consequence of failing to consent would be a search, which would have been a legally correct reply, or even decide that I would have to be searched whether I wanted to be or not, which might have been legal too, the guy told me that I had no choice, that I had to go through the machine. I told him that I knew for a fact that this was not true, that I had a choice. He insisted. I asked him to get his supervisor over. He did. I explained the problem.

This supervisor's reaction was not ideal. His first reaction was to push me on why I didn't want to go in there. But when it became clear that I knew my rights, he backed down pretty fast and mumbled something about a "training failure" then instructed the line folks to give me the full wanding instead, something to which I said I had no objection. I asked the supervisor to tell the line officer in my presence what the correct rule was, but this he refused to do.

I went through the metal detector, had the full-body wanding experience from a different, and perfectly amiable and correct TSA agent. The second guy, however, refused to answer my question as to who the highest ranking TSA guy in the area was. That problem resolved itself when the local honcho turned up and asked what the problem was.

I explained. He very politely refused to admit that the mid-level supervisor had done anything wrong ("we don't correct our people in front of the public"), but ultimately agreed that the claim that passengers are required to go through the EFT was not in fact correct. In due course he produced a complaint form, which I filled out, checking the box marked "civil rights" for the nature of my complaint. Oddly, the form did not ask for any personal information about me, so I guess that no one will be calling me to get any further details, much less telling what followup actions result from my complaint.

I travel a fair amount, and until this incident I have always found the TSA people to be polite -- even in Miami where that's far from a given -- and to be following the actual regulations rather than making them up; I have some disagreement with the fundamental legality of some of those rules -- I think searching everyone is the sort of general search that the Fourth Amendment prohibits -- but that of course is not the fault of the line screeners. And in some sense, the system here worked after the initial hiccup: because I was very forceful I was not forced to go through the puffer; I wasn't wrestled to the ground or handcuffed; I wasn't even taken to the little room for the full-body search. And the most senior guy seemed pretty sincere when he said he’d make sure his guy got told what to say in the future. But how many people would happen to be as well informed as to the rules and be willing to stand their ground with a flight looming? Very few: and it's clear these guys are not used to being challenged.

Compared to other devices the TSA would like to unleash on us, the puffer arguably comes off as benign, although prone to false positives (see the comments here). Unlike some other scanners, it doesn't shoot beams through you or irradiate you. Instead it shoots air at you -- a lot of air -- and then analyzes the particles that it manages to dislodge from your clothes and body in order to see if there are residues of Bad Things like explosives (or in time if not already, drugs, I would wager) the theory being that if you have been near a Bad Thing in the past, maybe you are up to no good now. I have never been through it, but the experience has been described as unpleasant., and I had no desire to try it. And whether or not I want to try it, I don't think government agents should be telling us that being puffed is a condition precedent to being allowed to travel when it is not.

In the age of Guantanamo and Abu Grahib this all may seem like very small beer. Nevertheless, I believe in exercising my freedoms while they still exist. I'm all in favor of sensible security measures (e.g. reinforced cockpit doors on aircraft, random security checks that you can't foresee by the row of sssss's on your ticket), I am against what Bruce Schneier so rightly calls security theater -- basically useless measures implemented in order to fool the public into thinking that the government is Doing Something about terrorism. There are many things we could do to enhance our actual security -- checking more containers at our ports, hardening chemical plants against terrorism, beefing up dams and levies -- but I object to much of the airport 'security' regime which I think is just a waste of money and time. If you add up the cost of the physical infrastructure (reconfiguring airports, buying all the gear), the salaries, and the lost productivity due to extra travel time added by the fear of a long slow line at security, I suspect the US costs itself more on an annual basis than the dollar cost of rebuilding the twin towers. I cannot understand why it is considered anything other than deeply unpatriotic to shoot yourself in the foot on an annual basis.

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[political-researchp] Bloglines - THE BBC SMEARS MEDIA LENS - an email exchange with the BBC

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The Cat's Blog
"DID YOU, TOO, O FRIEND, SUPPOSE DEMOCRACY WAS ONLY FOR ELECTIONS, FOR POLITICS, AND FOR A PARTY NAME?" - WALT WHITMAN

THE BBC SMEARS MEDIA LENS - an email exchange with the BBC

By The Cat's Dream

Dear Peter [Barron, BBC's Newsnight's Editor], I hope all is well. I am writing about “Virtual war follows Iraq conflict”, By David Fuller, BBC News Kindly and politely could I invite you to read (or read again) today Media Lens’ alert: MAELSTROM OF VITRIOL - THE BBC SMEARS MEDIA LENS A few days ago you wrote: "Another organisation that tries to influence our running orders is Medialens... In




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vouli


vouli
Originally uploaded by zotosi.


[political-researchp] Bloglines - Breitweiser Bitter, But Pro-Death Penalty 9-11 Family Member "Proud to Be American"

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NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias

Breitweiser Bitter, But Pro-Death Penalty 9-11 Family Member "Proud to Be American"

In War on Terrorism

'Today' had two 9/11 family members on as guests this morning to react to yesterday's jury determination of life in prison rather than the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui. That the family member who expressed general support for the process was relatively unknown, whereas the bitter Bush-administration critic, Kristin Breitweiser, is a household commodity, is indicative of MSM coverage in the years since 9/11.

Ironically, it was the family member that was disappointed in the verdict who expressed pride in America and the process, whereas Breitweiser, who got the verdict she preferred, remained bitter.

First to speak was Hamilton Peterson, who lost his father and step-mother on United 93. Katie Couric opened by asking him why he believes Moussaoui should have received the death penalty. Consider Peterson's response:




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[political-researchp] Kung Fu Monkey: Why Tell the Jokes?

Blog: Kung Fu Monkey
Post: Why Tell the Jokes?
Link: http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-tell-jokes.html

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[political-researchp] AlterNet: Colbert Shocks the Media Silent

-------------------------------------
Colbert Shocks the Media Silent
http://www.alternet.org/story/35804

The same media that's trashing Stephen Colbert gave a pass to Bush's jokes about missing WMDs in Iraq two years earlier.
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[political-researchp] Bloglines - Moussaoui

Bloglines user bill.giltner@gmail.com has sent this item to you.


Lawyers, Guns and Money
Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.

Moussaoui

By Scott Lemieux

While I certainly don't see this as a reason for celebration, and while as longtime readers know (and I will return to sometime in the near future) I'm a tepid opponent of the death penalty, I'm inclined to agree with the Talking Dog: "As a result of this legally correct verdict, following a government prosecution rife with misconduct and a virtually impossible burden given FBI agent testimony that no matter what Moussaoui said, Bureau chieftains could not be convinced of the merits of a 9-11 plot, Moussaoui will be automatically sentenced to life in prison...Let's just say it's gratifying to see a judge and jury do their job the way the law actually intended." For the reasons that Talk Left has collected in voluminous detail--see here in particular--a death penalty verdict in this case would have been pretty appalling. A death penalty case requires a level of professionalism that the state manifestly failed to meet here, and given Moussaoui's exceptionally tangential-at-best connections to 9/11 I can't say it's a tragedy.

...Lithwick:


This case was about a conspiracy, about some factual connection, however attenuated, between Zacarias Moussaoui's jihadi heart and the events of 9/11. And although the government has steadfastly stood by its legal claim that it was enough for Moussaoui to have wanted to be on those planes on 9/11, enough for him to have delighted as those planes went down, the jurors recognized this afternoon that a conspiracy to aid in a terror plot requires more than just a bad heart, and more than mere willingness to participate in the next one.

This decision, which will doubtless bring with it some serious national fallout, is more subtle, and more courageous, than the prosecution itself. Acting as a check on a runaway state, these jurors refused to allow a government needing a scapegoat and a man wishing for martyrdom to stand in the way of the facts. These jurors understood that for this country to kill a terrorist for his ideas, hopes, and dreams is not much different than the terrorist's desire to come here and kill us for ours.




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[political-researchp] Bloglines - Universal Admits Defeat, Removes Flight 93 Forum

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infowarsnews at Yahoo! Groups
Alex Jones' Infowars News

Universal Admits Defeat, Removes Flight 93 Forum

By Paul Joseph Watson

Universal Admits Defeat, Removes Flight 93 Forum Crescendo of dissent on official fairy tail leads to wiping of website Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com |




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[political-researchp] Bloglines - In New Problem for Palestinians, Banks Reject Transfers

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CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS - LiveJournal.com

In New Problem for Palestinians, Banks Reject Transfers

May 4, 2006

RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 3 — As the Hamas-led government struggles to raise cash after the suspension of Western aid to the Palestinian Authority, it faces a new and unexpected obstacle: banks here are refusing to accept its money transfers from abroad.

The United States Treasury last month barred almost all financial dealings with the Palestinian Authority in response to Hamas's rise to power, under a federal law that makes it a crime to provide funds to terrorist groups.

That has rattled local banks, which are tied to the American banking system. The banks abruptly stopped handling even basic wire transfers needed for the authority to receive money donated by foreign countries.

In recent weeks Arab countries, coordinated by the Arab League in Cairo, have raised more than $70 million. But so far, Palestinian officials say, no bank has been willing to move the money to the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, wary of legal entanglements with the United States.

Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister and a leader of Hamas, said Wednesday that the government could begin paying overdue salaries, which are now two months late, if the money reached the Palestinian Authority's bank accounts.

"The problem is not with raising money," Mr. Haniya said at a news conference in Gaza City. "The problem is how to transfer this money to the Palestinians."

Mr. Haniya accused the United States of putting pressure on the banks "so that the money we have collected does not reach citizens or civil servants." Hamas says it will not bow to political pressure from Israel or the West. But without money from abroad, it is not clear how the Palestinian Authority can function.

The European Union joined the United States in suspending all financial assistance for the authority after Hamas took office in late March as a result of its decisive victory in Palestinian legislative elections. Israel has also frozen the roughly $50 million it collects in tax and customs revenues each month on behalf of the Palestinians.

Now, with the United States Treasury's action, even Arab and Muslim countries that want to assist the authority have not been able to deliver their aid.

American diplomats say the United States is not directly putting pressure on the banks. But the Treasury has publicized the government's position that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that financial transactions with the Palestinian Authority are barred. There are a few exceptions to the ban, including dealings with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, who opposes violence against Israel and supports peace talks.

"Generally speaking, if an organization or individual is facilitating direct fund-raising for Hamas, they open themselves up to action by the United States," said Molly Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the Treasury in Washington.

On Tuesday, Stuart Levey, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury, was in Israel to meet with senior Israeli officials on how to prevent money from reaching designated terrorist groups, the United States Embassy said.

The Palestinian Authority needs at least $150 million a month just to pay salaries and run essential institutions like schools, hospitals and the police force. On its own the authority raises barely $30 million a month, and it is falling deeper into debt each day.

Since coming to power, the Hamas-dominated government has missed two paydays for the authority's 165,000 employees. Palestinian nurses and teachers, civil servants and security force officers like Muhammad Burbar, 23, are caught in the middle.

Mr. Burbar has not received his monthly $333 paycheck since February. He is out of cash, and his wife needs medical treatment. On Tuesday the couple sold a tiny gold bracelet and a pendant they bought for their daughter when she was born last year.

They received $28 from a gold shop in Ramallah.

"We didn't have any other choice," Mr. Burbar said. "I have no idea when I will get paid again, and I'm not optimistic. This could go on for another six months."

The shop owner, Khader al-Asbah, said 99 percent of his customers in the last two months sold family jewelry, traditionally held as a form of savings by Palestinian families.

Economists and aid groups say the Palestinian economy, ailing since the start of an uprising against Israel in 2000, risks a major contraction if government workers go unpaid for months.

The United States government lacks legal jurisdiction over financial transactions abroad if no American citizens or institutions are involved. But many Middle Eastern banks have branches in the United States or have business relationships with American banks to handle international transactions.

Banks here fear they could jeopardize their ties to the United States or put themselves at legal risk if they handle money for the Palestinian Authority, regardless of its origin, said George Abed, governor of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, which effectively serves as the Palestinian central bank.

The Arab Bank, based in Jordan, has held the main account for the Palestinian Authority in recent years. Officials there and at other banks have refused to discuss the issue of transactions for the authority.

But Mr. Abed acknowledged that the Palestinian government and the banks were in an extremely awkward position. "Banks, being careful as they usually are, have been telling the Palestinian Authority that they can't complete these transactions," Mr. Abed said Tuesday in an interview in Ramallah.

The Arab Bank, which has branches in the United States, has been subject to American legal action, including a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn by about 50 American survivors or relatives of people killed in suicide bombings or other attacks by Hamas.

"No bank wants to risk being cut off from international transactions," Mr. Abed said. "This is oxygen for banks. If you are a bank, and you shut yourself out of the United States and Europe, what are you going to do — conduct all your transactions in rupees?"

Though the banks are wary, Hamas says it will not give in.

One option is to have the Arab League send the donated money directly into the personal bank accounts of Palestinian Authority employees, bypassing the authority. But that may be highly impractical, because money would have to be wired into 165,000 separate bank accounts.

"It is being studied, but it does not sound very feasible," Hesham Youssef, a senior Arab League official, said in a phone interview from Cairo.

The United States, the European Union and Israel have demanded that Hamas do three things before they will consider dealing with the group: recognize Israel, disavow violence and accept existing Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Hamas has refused, instead appealing to Arab and Muslim countries to replace the lost financing.

Arab League countries recently renewed a pledge made years ago to provide the Palestinian Authority with $55 million a month, but it has regularly fallen short. Even if the league finds a way to get the money to the Palestinian Authority, it is barely one-third of what the authority needs to pay its monthly bills.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html?_r=2&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

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[political-researchp] Bloglines - David Brooks: Soviet Shrink

Bloglines user bill.giltner@gmail.com has sent this item to you.


Bark Bark Woof Woof
The blog of Mustang Bobby, a writer in South Florida who looks at the world with dry bemusement and tries to get through life without bumping into the furniture. A proud member of the Reality-Based Community.

David Brooks: Soviet Shrink

By Mustang Bobby

As the post below points out, it's not always pretty but it is fun to watch the righties turn on their own. David Brooks joins the fray when he rips into one of the elder statesmen of the GOP, Kevin Phillips, who in 1969, at the tipping point of liberalism's hold on power, predicted quite accurately the resurgence of conservativism and heralded the rise of Ronald Reagan and the Christian right.
There's always been a strain of paranoia running through American politics. Back in the mid-1960's, when the right felt powerless, the John Birch Society thrived. Today, when the left feels disinherited, liberals seize upon the conspiracy fantasies of Kevin Phillips, whose book "American Theocracy" is in its fifth week on The Times's best-seller list.

Phillips's method is pretty conventional for conspiracists — he takes a single issue or set of data points and constructs an all-explaining story line to show how hidden cabals are controlling America.

In the first part of "American Theocracy," he describes the rise of the "fossil-fuels political alliance." Dwight Eisenhower was "born in oil country" and in 1952 became the first Republican to sweep the Southern oil centers. Nixon too "had an oil-state childhood" and deepened oil's influence.

Pretty soon, Republicans could count not only on energy and automobile producers but also on "secondary cadres" including "racing fans, hobbyists, collectors, and dedicated readers of automotive magazines, as well as the tens of millions of automobile commuters from suburbs and distant exurbs."

By 1997, reasons were mounting to take over Iraq's oil, Phillips asserts. "A near-final decision to invade seems to have been made in early 2001," he adds, months before 9/11. The Iraq war was born.

The oil alliance melded with another hidden army, the "end-times electorate," Phillips continues. Relying on the fact that millions of people read the "Left Behind" apocalyptic fantasy novels, Phillips asserts that 50 to 60 percent of Republicans believe in Armageddon and are influenced by the argument that the "destruction of the new Babylon" in Iraq will hasten the coming of the messiah.

Phillips says that the Bush White House sends messages to these Americans through "double-coding" in his speeches — phrases that mean one thing to secular America but contain hidden meanings to people with the "biblical worldview." Phillips cites research showing President Bush used the phrase "I believe" 12 times in his 2004 G.O.P. convention speech — code for religious zealots.

Needless to say, Phillips's book is rife with bizarre assertions. He writes that "many Orthodox Jewish females cannot even study the Torah," that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon "has been close to the Bush family," that the American Revolution was "in many ways a religious war."

But his method is pretty standard. First, he takes advantage of the record of his liberal readers' ignorance of evangelical communities to make ludicrous assertions. Second, as Jacob Weisberg noted in Slate, Phillips will begin a chapter making some grand accusation. Then he will depart on what Weisberg accurately calls "a pompous, pedantic history tour" of medieval mineralogy or 16th-century politics. Then, without presenting any evidence or answering any objections, he will repeat his accusation in stronger language.

Third, Phillips is a master of slicing reality so that it conforms to predetermined conclusions. To take one example among many, in 2002 the evangelist Franklin Graham organized a meeting to address the AIDS crisis. Graham said evangelicals should be ashamed of how slowly they've responded to the crisis, "I have to point the finger at myself and say, 'I'm late.' " AIDS is not about homosexuality, he continued, "the danger is to all of us." He praised Colin Powell's efforts, even though Powell is a strong advocate of condoms. He accelerated what has become a strong evangelical mobilization against AIDS.

Philips writes about that meeting, but ignores all of this. Instead Phillips lumps the conference in with gay-bashing and writes, "Only Jesus Christ can bring about the societal change needed to stop AIDS, preacher Franklin Graham told a 2002 Washington conference."

This is intellectual dishonesty on stilts. Nonetheless, Phillips's books fly off bookstore shelves, and he's given respectable platforms in the major media and at universities.

We're at a moment when crude conspiracy mongering — whether it is academic papers on the Israel lobby or George Clooney's "Syriana" — is emerging from the belly of the American establishment.

And while many informed critics have picked apart Phillips's fantasies, other Americans, at once cynical and naïve, are willing to believe any whacked-out theory, so long as it focuses hatred on Bush.

It's a funny way to run a theocracy.
Back in the days of the Soviet Union, political dissenters like Andrei Sakharov were put in psychiatric hospitals because, according to the Kremlin, anyone who was opposed to the leadership of the government had to be insane. It looks like Mr. Brooks subscribes to that theory of totalitarian pathology: anyone who opposes George W. Bush must be nuts.

The irony is that Mr. Phillips has been doing his best to save the Republican party as he knew it and wrote about back in the 1960's; the party of Nelson Rockefeller, Dwight Eisenhower, and even libertarians like Barry Goldwater: Republicans who believed in smaller government, balanced budgets, and keeping the government out of the private lives of its citizens. Today, those people would be considered apostates in the GOP, or worse, labeled as "Democrats." Quick, get the straitjacket.




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CNN.com - Analysts: Why 9/11 planners won't face trial - May 4, 2006

CNN.com - Analysts: Why 9/11 planners won't face trial - May 4, 2006

Bergen supports the obvious about Moussaoui

Bloglines - Southern Cross

Bloglines user bill.giltner@gmail.com has sent this item to you.


Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium
Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium.

Southern Cross

By chris@chris-floyd.com

Stephen Lendman gives us a useful lesson in decoding The Wall Street Journal and how its recent "reporting" of Bolivia's May Day move to nationalize its natural resources signals big trouble coming up south of the border. From OpEdNews.com: Evo Morales Now Joins Hugo Chavez As A US Target.

.


BlondeSense: Bummer, man

BlondeSense: Bummer, man

TheJuan Cole and His Critics

Blogger Thoughts: Of course I see this as a hit piece against Cole.

The American Thinker: " American Middle East policy and of Israeli policy in the region.

Emotions, like fear, rest on subjective beliefs about the nature of the objective world. And when this fear is based on a false belief about the world – such as the false belief that any discussion of the American/Israeli relationship elicits charges of anti-Semitism – it will likely be considered mildly paranoid. The American/Israeli relationship is in fact critically discussed openly and frequently throughout the United States: on the web, in the university, on cable news, in columns, on book jackets, in dedications, on screen, on radio. All over the place. The Jewish presidents may well conclude that what annoys the signatories to this letter is that most Americans, during this free debate, don’t agree much with their hostile opinions of Israel.

Nevertheless, Cole’s letter goes on to lecture about the nature of democratic debate, all the while continuing to forget to whom his letter is addressing: "

The Moussaoui Paradox

The Moussaoui Paradox: "The twelve anonymous jurors who sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison Wednesday showed that it is possible to reconcile prosecution of terror with the rule of law."

Blogger: Wrong! I haven't read the rest yet, but with a start like this, I see little hope.

Ex-spook condemns Bush 'manipulation campaign' : Mail & Guardian Online

Ex-spook condemns Bush 'manipulation campaign' : Mail & Guardian Online

[september_eleven_vreeland] Digest Number 1348

There are 3 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

1. Susan Lindauer - Communication and its / her " Legal " and Psychiatric Containment
From: w r <three_judges@yahoo.com>
2. Forty licks ... Jagger refuses to give up room for Bush
From: "norgesen" <norgesen@yahoo.com>
3. HearingVowedOn Bush's powers+Poll onSheriff's Posse arresting illegals
From: ranger116@webtv.net

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 08:25:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: w r <three_judges@yahoo.com>
Subject: Susan Lindauer - Communication and its / her " Legal " and Psychiatric Containment

http://jayspolitics.blogspot.com/

http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/Lindauer1.jpg

" Susan's Psychiatric Evaluation "

Monday, April 24, 2006

Susan Lindauer will be in Federal court in New York on May 4th.

The court is holding a hearing on whether or not to declare her incompetent and commit her permanently to a mental hospital and forcibly medicate her.

Susan is not charged with espionage or treason.

She is charged with being an unregistered lobbiest, and the Justice Department flowered up the indictment.

^

http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/

http://www.jbfields3.com/journal/Susan/susan.htm

http://www.jbfields3.com/journal/Susan/susanslettersjpgs.htm

http://www.cicentre.com/Documents/DOC_Susan_Lindauer_Case.htm

^

http://houston.indymedia.org/mail.php?id=27458

" Ex-congressional aide is accused of spying for Iraq
"
March 12, 2004

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095556/posts

http://files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/iraq/uslindauer31004ind.pdf

Text of indictment against American spying for Iraq

In Executive Order Number 12722,

signed on August 9 , 1990,

President George H. W. Bush declared that

�the policies and actions of the Government of Iraq
constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the
national security and foreign policy of the United
States,� and declared �a national emergency to deal with that threat.�

The Order, which was still in effect at all times relevant to this Indictment..

^
http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/SusanMedical-03-13-2004-1.jpg

The patient is a 40 year old single white female
referred by the U.S. District Court District of
Maryland Probation and Pretrial Services for evaluation and continued [ ? ] pharmacotherapy.

Two days ago , the patient was indicted on four counts of being an
Unregistered Foreign Agent of a Foreign Government,two counts of illegal financial transactions with a foreign government, and five counts of Making False Statements .

^

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00000951----000-.html

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 45 > sec. 951

sec. 951. Agents of foreign governments

(d) For purposes of this section, the term �agent of a foreign government� means an individual who agrees to operate within the United States subject to the direction or control of a foreign government or official, except that such term does not include...

^

http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0607/lindauer.php

" From 'Spy' to Psychotic "

February 15, 2006

"She was not specifically charged with spying or
espionage. The bigger question, however , was always her sanity."

^

"This country is going so far to the right you won't believe it."
- Martha Mitchell, quoted in Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing Campaign Trail '72"

^

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson/index1.html?pn=2

First, there's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty.

Second, see, the law changes and I don't.

^

http://www.getunderground.com/underground/features/article.cfm?Article_ID=1073

" Hunter S. Thompson - The Salon Interview "

By John Glassie - February 3, 2003

MB: "You compare [ Bush ] to Hitler [in " Kingdom of Fear " ]."

HST: "Yeah. Easy comparison. You can't compare him to Nazi Germany?
Wait a minute, of course we can. What else can we compare it to? "

JG: "I assume you've taken a side in the civil liberties debate that's come up in the aftermath of 9/11?"

HST: "It's a disaster of unthinkable proportions -- part of the downward spiral of dumbness.

Civil liberties are black and white issues.

I don't think people think far enough to see the ramifications.

The PATRIOT Act was a dagger in the heart, really, of even the concept of a democratic government that is free, equal and just.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson/index1.html

HST: I believe the Republicans have seen what they've believed all along.. that people don't want to be burdened by political
affairs. That people would rather just be taken care of.

The oligarchy doesn't need an educated public.
And maybe the nation does prefer tyranny.
I think that's what worries me.


It goes back to Fourth Amendment issues.
How much do you value your freedom?
Would you trade your freedom for some illusion of security?
Freedom is something that dies unless it's used."

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson/index1.html?pn=3

JG: "You have famously attached yourself to the word "fear" since you wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
Now you've written "Kingdom of Fear." Will you explain? "

HST: I don't think fear is a very effective way of dealing with things -- of responding to reality. Fear is just another word for ignorance."

JG: "You've also referred to your beat as the "Death of the American Dream." That was the ostensible "subject" of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Has it just sort of been on its deathbed since 1968? "

HST: "I think that's right."

JG: "A lot of people would argue with you about that anyway, and believe that the American Dream is alive and well."

HST: "They need to take a better look around."

^

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson/index1.html?pn=2

JG: Many people would say you're un-American and unpatriotic.

HST: "I think I'm one of the most patriotic people that I've ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way -- not by donations, I work at it. "

^

http://users.cwnet.com/phelps/spmfsto5.html

" The Perils of the Therapeutic State "

When Daniel Ellsberg leaked secret Defense Department papers to The New York Times in an effort to expose the corruption and profiteering that were giving the Vietnam War its greatest impetus, President Richard Nixon recruited Chuck Colson to disseminate damaging information about Ellsberg.

White House consultant Howard Hunt was hired to discredit Ellsberg, and he ordered the CIA to unearth a psychological profile to destroy Ellsberg's reputation.

Repeated CIA attempts to obtain confidential
psychiatric records from Ellsberg's analyst failed
because the therapist stubbornly resisted CIA pressure
to extract personal records...

and because the CIA agents who broke into the
therapist's office bungled the job and were unable to
access the private files.

Nine months after breaking into the office of
Ellsberg's therapist,

Hunt led the Watergate break-in of Democratic
headquarters in an attempt to secure confidential
files and information Nixon might use to smear
Democratic opponents or become privy to Democratic
campaign strategies.

Martha Mitchell, wife of then-attorney general John
Mitchell, attempted to alert the press to the covert
activities of the Committee to Re-Elect the President,
her husband's involvement in the illegal activities
and the president's knowledge of them.

But Ms. Mitchell was disbelieved by all but one member
of the press, her personal friend Helen Thomas,

because she was known to be alcoholic and eccentric,

with both a history of heavy drinking and psychiatric "attentions."

People close to Nixon kept feeding the press
allegations that Ms. Mitchell was crazy and
hysterical, that her allegations of a massive cover-up
were symptoms of hysteria and paranoia.

She did well to be paranoid, because when the
plumber's break-in occurred at the Watergate Hotel,
Ms. Mitchell was, upon her husband's order, kidnapped
by CIA agents and held incommunicado for four days to
prevent her leaking more insider information to the press.

When she attempted to call Helen Thomas, a CIA agent wrestled her against a window, which cut her hand.

At the emergency room, she said she was a political prisoner
but was not believed as her keepers explained to the doctors
that she was hysterical and drunk.

The mainstream press had a field day with her psychiatric history, publishing reports of her untrustworthiness based on a nervous breakdown in her history.

When the story of her detention was published, it was simply a caricature of the unreliable mental patient and known alcoholic
acting out her paranoia and hysteria.

The government publicly deplores discrimination and
stigma surrounding mental patients.

Privately, government officials know the destruction of reputation and personal credibility attached to alleged mental illness and
use psychiatric histories as weapons to devalue and discredit individuals who dare to criticize or expose its corruptions and bunglings.

"The ultimate political power a psychiatrist can
possess is to determine who is qualified to lead and to rule,"
says Jonas Robitcscher, J.D., M.D., in "The Powers of Psychiatry,"
his 1980 expose of the psychiatric welterworld.

Thomas Eagleton was a nominee for the office of
vice-president in 1972 when detractors leaked word to
the press of his psychiatric history.

The press reports revealed he had taken two courses of
electroshock therapy and been three times an inmate of
psychiatric facilities.

Instantly, his credibility and viability as a
candidate evaporated. He lost the support of his party
and his running mate and was forced to withdraw from
the running.

Daniel Ellsberg, Thomas Eagleton and Martha Mitchell,
the dead who were given drugs secretly and experimentally,
the Soviet defectors who were branded mentally ill and
held in isolation..

*the "blown" agents whose memories were erased with
drugs and torture*, the prisoners who were terrorized with breath-stopping "therapy" - all these are testimony that what happened in Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union can and does happen here in America, the purported land of the brave and home of the free,
the idealized paragon of practical democracy and respect for human rights and liberties.

^

http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/Lindauer_Moved_From_OKC_to_NYC.txt

Those who do not know Susan Lindauer
may not be too concerned that an activist /dissident/
reporter may just disappear off the grid.

So let's be clear here how this may affect those
reading this email.

Bush has been designing programs so that we may all be
tested for "mental health."

Those of us who, like Susan Lindauer, are
activists/dissidents/truth tellers, may soon find ourselves shackled to a bed next toSusan Lindauer.

^

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/sophocles/antigone.htm

CREON

An enemy can never be a friend, not even in death.

ANTIGONE

But my nature is to love. I cannot hate.

>

CREON

In all of Thebes, you�re the only one
who looks at things that way.

ANTIGONE


They share my views,

but they keep their mouths shut just for
you.

^

CHORUS LEADER


It�s clear enough
the spirit in this girl is passionate�

her father [ Oedipus ] was the same.

She has no sense
of compromise in times of trouble.

^

GUARD

A long time passed. The storm came to an end.

That�s when we saw the girl.

She was shrieking� a distressing painful cry,

just like a bird

who�s seen an empty nest, its fledglings gone.


That�s how she was when she saw the naked corpse.

She screamed out a lament, and then she swore,

calling evil curses down upon the ones who�d done
this.

Then right away her hands threw on the thirsty dust.

She lifted up a finely made bronze jug

and then three times

poured out her tributes to the dead.


When we saw that,

we rushed up right away and grabbed her.

She was not afraid at all.

We charged her with

her previous offence as well as this one.

She just kept standing there,

denying nothing.

That made me happy�

though it was painful, too.

For it�s a joy escaping troubles which affect oneself,

but painful to bring evil on one�s friends.

But all that is

of less concern to me than my own safety.

^

HAEMON

A city which belongs

to just one man is no true city.

CREON

According to our laws,

does not the ruler own the city?

HAEMON

By yourself

you�d make an excellent king but in a desert.

CREON

- don�t try to win me over.

HAEMON


What do you want�

to speak and never hear someone reply?

^

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson/index1.html?pn=2

JG :

[Y]ou've been arrested dozens of times in your life.

Specific incidents aside,

what's common to these run-ins?

Where do you stand vis--vis the law?

HST :

Goddammit. Yeah, I have.

First, there's a huge difference

between being arrested and being guilty.

Second, see, the law changes and I don't.

How I stand vis--vis the law

at any given moment depends on the law.

The law can change from state to state,

from nation to nation, from city to city.

I guess I have to go by a higher law.

How's that?

Yeah, I consider myself

a road man for the lords of karma.

^

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200305/?read=interview_butler

I think Americans have certain ideas about freedom and
rationality that we�ve inherited from classical
liberal philosophy, but also from the American
ideology that prizes individualism and
self-determination. But I think agency�how a person
acts as a person�is a broader word than individualism
and self-determination allow.

It allows us to imagine various kinds of practices
that may well even be exercises of freedom that are
not necessarily generated from the individual or from
some kind of internal notion of self-determination.

^

http://jayspolitics.blogspot.com/

" Susan's Psychiatric Evaluation "

Monday, April 24, 2006

Susan Lindauer

will be in Federal court in New York on May 4th.

The court is holding a hearing on whether or not to
declare her incompetent and commit her permanently to
a mental hospital and forcibly medicate her.

Her public defender

has resolutely refused to mount any serious defense.

Susan refuses to plea bargain,

and it seems that

this is all public defenders really do, anymore.

Susan is not charged with espionage or treason.

She is charged with being an unregistered lobbiest,
and the Justice Department flowered up the indictment.

They alleged that she conspired with the sons of the
Iraq diplomat representing Iraq in weapons inspection
talks.

Those sons were not convicted of anything, but were
shipped out of the country on immigration charges.

Susan's attorney, I'm told, has no depositions even
from them, and he had plenty of time to get the job
done before they were deported.

Susan has witnesses who know her thoughts during the
FBI's attempted counter inteligence sting operation...

Her lawyer wants to claim in court that Susan's
insistence that she was trying to work as an asset (or
was doing so) for American inteligence agencies is
delusional.

Unfortunately, for him,

Susan's connections were well documented by the
Scottish court during the Lockerbie trial, where it
seems our government, or at least its political
leadership, was so eager to not look impotent

that they knowingly prosecuted Libyans

instead of the Syrians who Susan claimed Dr. Fuisz,
reportedly the former Syria CIA station chief, told
Susan he knew had planned and executed it. ...

From my point of view, Susan told anybody she could
what she was up to.

Given the notorious lack of human inteligence assets
in Iraq,

it seems to me that the likelihood that the CIA was
ignorant of what Andy Card's cousin was up to, is very
unlikely.

The fact that she did have access to senior diplomats,
and the fact that she was Andy Card's cousin all fits
pretty well to argue against delusion.

With such access and connections, any peace activist
might feel compelled to engage.

Susan's Psychiatric records during pre-trial
counseling are posted at

[ http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/#medical ]

You will see that the doctor directly addresses the
question of psychosis and finds contrary to what her
lawyer and the prosecution are alleging. "

^

http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/LindauerPanAm103-SundayHerald.txt

http://www.sundayherald.com/8759

" Lockerbie: CIA witness gagged by US government "

28 May 2000

A FORMER CIA agent who claims Libya is not responsible
for the Lockerbie bombing

is being gagged by the US government under state
secrecy laws and faces 10 years in prison if he
reveals any information about the terrorist attack.

One month before a court order was served on him by
the US government gagging him from speaking on the
grounds of national security,

he spoke to US congressional aide Susan Lindauer,
telling her he knew the identities of the Lockerbie
bombers and claiming they were not Libyan.

The 1994 gagging order was issued following
disclosures by Fuisz during other legal proceedings

about alleged illegal exports of military equipment to
Iraq.

The order claims that the information held by Fuisz is
vital to the "nation's security or diplomatic
relations" and

can not be revealed "no matter how compelling the need
for, and relevance of, the information".

The submission also makes clear that the government is
empowered to "protect its interests in this case in
the future",

thereby gagging Fuisz permanently.

^

The Susan Kindauer case seems to be very politically
signficant ,

as it deals with policy regarding free expression ,
free association and its facilitation , in this case
by occasionally helpful financial assistance from
Iraqi diplomats, of communication , absent which
there can be , from domestic dispute up to
international saber rattling, no conflict resolution
of any kind .

I will try to elaborate , examining the indictment
itself, these concerns about the civil rights
implications of the Lindauer case and their
inevitiable effects of constraining foreign policy
debate and options , in a later post .

For now, I want to ask those who may have information
[ Mr. Fields, in particular ] , to share what they
can regarding gaps in my understanding of the
circumstances of her psychiatric incarceration since
October 2005

and of the work of her legal representatives to deal
with this remand to state custody and with the
substance of her legal case.

Mr. Fields indicates above that the principal legal "
strategy " of her attorney , Sanford Talkin , is to
implicitly confirm the legitimacy of and presumably
extend the term of the government's psychiatric
incarceration of Susan by virtue of a plea of
..insanity / incompetence .

This would obviously seem redundant of the awful ,
sitaution in which she currently finds herself and a
rather small work product of what Mr. Talkin is quoted
in the Seattle Times article . " From ' Spy ' to
Psycho " ( It's far from clear to me that she is or
has ever been either ) , indicates to be , thousands
of hours " expended .. in preparing Susan's defense ".

I read on Mr. Bilk's website http://cosmicpenguin.com

an appeal for new representation .

Is this what Susan wants?

Is Susan's uncle [ ( Ted ) apprised of the progress
of Talkin's work and has he communicated his assesment

of it with anyone reading , presumably Mr. Fields ?

After completing a year of court mandated
psychotherapy to the clear satisfaction of her
therapist,

she was , in October 2005 , remanded for further
inpatient observation to Carswell federal medical
center in Fort Worth, based, as indicated below, on
the testimony of two court appointed psychiatrists ,
presumably examining her in the summer of 2005, one
one of their claims about her being that she suffered
from " delusional disorder ".

I include the material about her contact with Dr.
Fuisz on the Lockerbie affair because Mr.
Fieldsexpresses his ssense that her contact with
Fuisz gives credence to her asssertion that she was
working as a U. S. government intelligence asset ,
which assertion the court in 2005 , according to
Fields , found delusional.

Whatever one thinks of how she handled communicating
the information she elicited from foreign nationals,

it might be consdiered

that it is not the matter of her sanity ,

but of the nature of the potentially multilateral
benefits of intermediation and negotiation in the
first place

that make ambiguous whether action on behalf of one
nation cannot also be action on behalf of antother ,
whether or not per se agency is ever an issue.

Helping Iraq with America ,

she helps America with Iraq ,

and as such ,

her communications with Iraqi diplomats

potentially do serve ,

however unofficial they may be ,

as she pointed out repeatedly

in her correpsondence withe Andrew Card ,

the moreso for being unofficial,

as American intelligence assets ,

simultaneously with being Iraqi intelligence assets ,

Susan , herself , an asset to both ,

and ,being an independent actor,

an agent of neither.

The issue at stake in whether she has credibility
as an official American intelligence asset ,
would seem to not be one of her sanity
but of the same national security concerns
which have led to the gagging of Dr. Fuisz.

How she is recognised ( as an official asset or
unofficial )

affects not so significantly her own credibility

but that of Dr. Fuisz , and her communications with
him, the credibility of this apparent official
American intelligence asset, who is, apparently under
lifetime gag order on matters related to American
national security ,

because in the course of examining the Lockerbie case
, according to the Sunday Herald article excerpted
above , he appears to have learned, as an official US
intelligence agent, too much .. about American arms
sales to Iraq.

Susan then becomes the woman who knows too much and
must be discredited or given the appearance that she
discredits hereself , even if by breaking her down to
the point were the credibility she had with her court
mandated therapist from MArch 2004 to MArch 2005 is
challenged

by the subsequent seemingly unreasonable , ostensibly
unfathomable and clearly overextended remand to
Carswell federal medical center in Fort Worth in
October 2005 from which she emerges this week to be
evaluated for more extended and invasive psychiatric
commitment .

http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/SusanMedical-03-13-2004-3.jpg

As readers familiar with the case are certainly aware,
Susan was arrested in March 2004 ,

given a psychiatric evaluation on March 13 by Dr. John
Kennedy , who found her of essentially sound mind ,
not needing olanzapine ( an anti-psychotic ) and
recommending she take depakote as a mood stabiliser .

It appears that the court mandated a year of weekly
psychotherapy sessions which she followed through on
with consistent recognition of sanity and stability by
her therapist [ I can't read the signature , but it
is the same therapist throught the following year of
evaluaton and treatment ] .

The intial evaluation and notes from the monthly
meetings can be easily accessed through

http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/#medical

Susan's last notes from Kennedy were as approving as
those written a year prior :

http://thewebfairy.com/911/lindauer/004.jpg

" Ms. Lindauer attended one session this month . She
reported that she gained a full-time employment and
remained concerned about her legal problem .

So far she has shown no sign of mania or depression
and symptom of any psychosis that may require
additional intervention . "

All this is familiar, although I want to emphasise
that her therapist's closing notes of March 2005
echoed the esentially positive bill of mental health
he and Kennedy gave her a year prior and which were
esentailly unmodified throughout the intervening year
.

The question I have is whether anyone knows what
happened between March 2005 when she left Dr. Kennedy
in a good place and September 2005 ,

when U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey ,

before whom , according to newsday.com cited above ,

she appeared in Manhattan on March 15 , 2004 , two
days after her essentially favorable psychiatric
evaluation by Dr. Kennedy,

and was allowed by Mukasey out on bail and allowed to
engage in outpatient therapy .

Six months after that course of therapy was , in March
2005, closed out and

"after reading the assessments of two psychiatrists,
decided more thorough observation was needed .

[ Mukasey ] ordered Lindauer to turn herself in on
Oct. 3 at Carswell federal medical center in Fort
Worth, which specializes in mental-health services for
female offenders....

[ U.S. Attorney in New York Michael ] Garcia's office
did provide a copy of

the Sept. 22, 2005, court order

in which Mukasey directed Lindauer to surrender at
Carswell or face rearrest.

Unable to pay travel expenses, Lindauer was provided
airfare from Baltimore to Fort Worth by the
government.

She was committed

"for a reasonable period,

not to exceed four months,

to determine whether there is a substantial
probability that in the foreseeable [future] she will
attain the capacity to permit a trial," the order
states. "

Ironic of course , becase as the SW article indicates
, , it is this extended commitment to Carswell which ,
if anything would compromise her capacity .
competence to stand trial .

One wonders why a mandated maximum of four months at
Carswell , which was subsequently somehow extended by
three months ,

would be needed for evaluation, never mind what seems
to be suggested as a form of rehabilitation ,

when Dr. Kennedy's evaluaton of her in 2004 was made
in one day , on March 13 , and bore itself out
through the course of unconfined outpatient presumably
rehabilitative , stabilising ( anyone could presumably
use some stabilisation after being arrested, unaware
of having committed any crime ) psychotherapy for the
course of the year following .

" Friends say her mental state seems to have worsened
during incarceration since October.

"It's not clear when she's getting out now," says
J.B. Fields, a federal employee with a low-level
security clearance who rents a basement apartment from
Lindauer at her Takoma Park, Md., home, and who talks
with her regularly. " ( SW )

The commitment order of September 22, 2005 was based
on the evaluation of " two court-appointed doctors [
who ] determined, according to a ruling last fall by
U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey,

"the defendant is suffering from

psychotic disorder not otherwise specified,

delusional disorder, hallucinatory phenomena,

and mood disturbance that render her mentally
incompetent to the extent that she does not understand
the nature and consequences of the proceedings against
her and is unable to assist properly in her defense at
this time."

This would seem to be one heck of a big and sudden
plunge into the abyss of alleged madness for someone
who has been , within the last half dozen months
favorably discharged from mandated psychotherapy
aroudn which time securing full time employment

( Does anyone know what the employment was

and if the employer was surprised to hear of the
alleged mental incompetentce / incapacity of his /
her new employee ? )

Kind of suspicious and far from insignificant
diagnostically,

the seeming morphing of Dr. Kennedy's best guess on
March 13 , 2004 at an Axis I diagnosis of

" Mood Disorder NOS "

to this newly convenient spin of Kennedy's diagnois ,
now to

" Psychotic Disorder NOS " .

Odd , too , that this new diagnosis , significant in
its implication of suggesting a disabling psychosis,
is actually a shorthand way of asserting .. well ,
very little , if anything at all.. substantive,

which is always useful if you want to nail someone
without actually having to defend your actions ..

"Not otherwise specified " is seemingly a way of
asserting disorder wihtout , it would seem ,
characterising it to the extent that it can be
recognised as taking a specific form .

It is an assertion which, it would seem , can't be
denied by evidence to the contrary , because of its
vaugueness.

Welcome to Wonderland .. I mean ,

Carswell federal medical center , Fort Worth .

http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/nos.htm

http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/dsm4TRclassification.htm#Schizophrenia

" This designation abbreviated NOS

can be used when the mental disorder

appears to fall within the larger category

but does not meet the criteria

of any specific disorder within that category. "

^

As for so -called " delusional disorder", we seem to
be up against yet another convenient cipher to allow a
rather lurid label to be affixed to the object of
interest without saying anything in particular .

See if you can find anything in the definition below
more than suggestions of disorder being constantly
undercut by terms suggesting its absence at any step
along the way .

http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/delusionaldis.htm

This psychotic mental disorder is diagnosed

when prominent * nonbizarre * [ emphasis added ]

delusions are present for at least one month and

the symptom criteria for Schizophrenia

* have never been met * . [ emphasis added ]

Hallucinations * may * be present, but

auditory or visual hallucinations

cannot be prominent.

Olfactory or tactile hallucinations

* may * be prominent,

but * only *

if they are related to the content of the
delusion.

Psychosocial functioning

* may not * be impaired

and any co-occurring mood episodes

must be of relatively brief duration.

Diagnostic criteria for 297.1 Delusional Disorder

A. Nonbizarre delusions

(i.e., involving situations that occur in real life,

such as

being followed, poisoned, infected, loved at a
distance, or deceived by spouse or lover, or having a
disease) of at least 1 month's duration....

^

Interesting that this may relate to Susan's assertions
that she was under surveillance , which .. well you
know ..

Conspiring against someone sane enough to know they
are the object of a conspiracy should do the trick for
generating the appearance that they are not ( sane ) .

And ,

as Fields suggested and was taken into consideration
in terms of her dealings with Dr. Fuisz ,

the question of whether it was delusional,

* if she did indeed assert it at all * , which may be
just conjecture or hearsay , that she was a per se,
offficial , rather than a functionally implicit ,
unofficial, unregistered American intelligence assset
.

^

http://www.psymed.com/bad.html

Finally , the term " mood disturbance " is seemingly
not a specific DSM category itself

but rather a broad characterisation of the mood
disorders, particularly the so-called bipolar
disorders,

which are very fastidiously cateogrised
and subcategorised in the DSM [ Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ]

and which characterisation seems a way of further
evading accountability by the clinician for any
particular diagnosis at all , even one as vague as Dr.
Kennedy's " Mood Disorder NOS " of March 2004 .

What, more importantly,

could be the weight of these evaluations

against the consistent reports of a therapist Susan
had been seeing nearly weekly for the previous year
and left only six months previous to the issuance of
Mukasey's court order remanding her to Carswell
federal medical center in Fort Worth based on them ?

When were they made and what was the reason they were
made and are they available for the same inspection
taht her therapy records from March 2004 to March 2005
are ? ?

AS SW points out on February 15 , 2005,

"She is being held past her scheduled release date,
which had been sometime early this month,

and, she tells friends, [ she ] might be forcibly
medicated as part of her treatment."

This makes sense given her remand date of October 3 ,
with a term to expire after

" a reasonable period, not to exceed four months " ,
i.e. no later than February 3 , 2006.

Now a hearing to determine whether she will be
forced to take medication is set for three months
subsequent to that originally maximum release date .

Unsurprising that on the day after what should have
been her last possible release date from Carswell in
Fort Worth, she caled Mr. Fields :

"I got a call from her Feb. 4," says renter Fields.

"They are talking about forcibly medicating her.

She sees women around her, in Carswell,

who can't hold their own silverware to eat because of
medications, and she doesn't see how such treatments
make anyone more fit for trial.

Seems a lot like the way the Soviets used to treat
dissidents." ( SW )

There seems to be very happy consequence for the state

in having Susan declared ,

whether through chicanery of court - appointed
psychiatrists or a so indicated above at jayspolitics
, defense strategy by her attorney / legal team ,

"mentally incompetent to the extent that she does not
understand the nature and consequences of the
proceedings against her and is unable to assist
properly in her defense at this time."

Finding of mental incompetence allows what seems a
really weak , however scary and intimidating , case
against Susan,

and one which I understand she has wanted contested on
its ( lack of ) merits , to go unchallenged ,

leaving it a model [ I am not a lawyer and don't know
anything about the type of value for precedent this
case might or might not have if it is not contested by
reason of mental incomeptence.. please fill me in if
the case is other than discarded as moot ]

for the criminalizing of communication with foreign
nationals about American foreign policy in the absence
of any illicit content communicated , but merely
because of the action of communication itself,

never mind criminalising communication with a domestic

political represntative on the subject of foreign
policy ,

out of fear that this might be perceived as an attempt
to influence foreign policy.

God forbid anyone should try to do this in a democracy
, in the land of the free , the home of the brave.

And such a finding ,

already the opinion of court appointed psyuchiatrists
responsible for her confinement of the last seven
months ,

leaves Susan Lindauer , already beat down and captive
three months beyond even the extent of a seemingly
grossly inappropriate commitment last October,

facing not only seemingly indefinitely extended

[ does anyone want to hazard a guess about how long
Susan would be held if she is found incompetent to
stand trial on a case such as this ? ]

psychiatric confinement , but psychiatric drugging
that was precisely found

by Dr. John Kennedy to be inapprorpiate two years ago.

All done with the broad brush strokes of two court
appointed psychiatrists who , in the summer of 2005
are ,

for some reason that I hope to learn , called to offer
diagnosis that seesm , as referenced in SW,

to be as non - specific as possible,

contradictory of prior diagnois and findings of a year
long therapist

and which diagnosis is apparently asserted at a time
when Susan was apprently not only doing well, but
starting a new job and presumably engaged by it .

Does anyone know anything about Susan's current legal
defense strategy regarding both the psychiatric and
the
political dimensions of her circumstanes ,

about what happened to bring the court appointed
psychiatrists into the picture last summer , about
what kind of process of evaluation will be brought to
bear in the hearing this week

and about whether the poltical case is suspended or
mooted if she is found incompetent to participate in
her own defense ..

This is implicitly a posted open letter to Mr. Fields,
who I encourage to write back if he is comfortable
with having his response posted to these groups.

Sir , are you sure that an insanity plea is all the
defense team has in mind at this time and
have you recentkly been in comuication with Susan or
her uncle about legal strategy apart from this ?

Quotes Cassandra in Aeschylus' " Agamemnon " at the
footer of ths post

have t o do with my sense of Martha Mitchell as an
American Cassandra, of Susan Lindauer as an American
Antigone.

Hunter Thompson is brought into the dialogue of quotes
, becaue he prophetically recognised Mitchell

as a so signficant herald of a drift towards fascism
in American political culture

whcih he would come to recocognise as taking a "
Fourth Reich ' form post 9 /11 under Bush Jr.,

and which may have played a role i his own death , if
it was not waht it seemed, whihch hs been suggesteed,

leaving an otherwise irrational suicide to be
rationalised away by the public,

as , what else , suggesting that his visceral nature
was a borderline insanity ,

maybe a kind of manic = depression , with the latter
wining out , becaue of alcohol and drug use running
him down.

I was working on a synopsis of Antigone to try to bear
out the comparison of Susan with Antigone as a kind of
fulfillment of t he prophecy of Cassandra,

but this post has run on long and is tiem sensitive
and I don't want o sabotage it not being read to the
end by going into this analogy futher at this time .

Suffice to say that Antigone did wat felt clearly
right to her in burying herbrothr , pronounced an
enemy combattant and left to rot above groudn ,

denied the burial given her borther , a homeland hero
for fighting the exiled borther.

Aware of the death penalty for what she was doing ,
she did it again.

Waht Susan did in speaking with diplomats

to try to save lives in Iraq agaisnt regimes of
sanctions which were taking lives

through starvation and later

through " trying to influence American policy " by
writing a letter tencouraging delay in invadig Iraq ,

at least til the Blix / El Baradei report was more
fully rounded out and confirmed

[ I think she delivered or had delivered this letter
to " Andy " Card on February 22. if memory serves ] .

She did what felt natural and right in trying to plat
an intermediary role in international conflict to try
to save lives and prevent violence.

Once arrested for having ,

with no intent to conceal her work of intermediaton ,

but rather trying to make clear the probity of her
work

by letting Card know from the beginning

of her communcaitons with foreign diplomats.

Once arrested , she like Antigone , has taken
responsiblity for her actions in a second cycle ,

where as Antigone who could have escaped punishment
for burying Polneices the first time ,

returned to bury him again ,

knowing that as Susan

in Carswell and maybe beyond ,

she would be buried alive

for burying her borther with honors,

So Susan in her second cycle of her communciations
work ,

asserts the legitimacy of that communication

by not copping a plea, by not using the
characterisation of her as insane by others ,

to possibly mitigate the legal problems borught on
herself unwittingly

by doing what seemed natural and right,

but to complete that communications work ,

by owning not merely the commnications themselves ,

but the principles of communication which does no harm
,

but rather seeks to, without breaking any other laws

than making the communication itself,

insists on a space ,

a clearing , an " aletheia " as it would be called
in greek philosophy , for communication ,

communication which can help or harm ,

but which can at least have its place

to be brought into play and

to be evaluated openly for being offered openly.

We know daily how many thousands of American soldiers
are killed an have some guess how many are wounded .

Secretary Rumsfeld says , of the Iraqis that ,

in what has never been declared as " war" , but which
he apparently so regards,

" We don't do * body * counts " ,

of Iraqis killed , of civilians made soliders because
their county was invaded,

of their friends , their wives ,

children , members of extended families .

http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&context=csls

Excerpts are found at the top of this post from
Sophocles' " Antigone " ,

about which Phillipe Nonet writes

in his essay , " Antigone's Law "

of Antigone and her insitence on giving

proper burial and rites to the by her uncle Creon, now
the ruler of thebes command ,

still unburied body of her brother Polyneices ,

Polyneices now considered an enemy ,

her brother , Eteokles , as the " homeland " hero and
defender ,

but essentially playing the same role as Polyneices ,
only from within the city ,

constesting his exiled brother for the throne vacated
by their father Oedipus,

both brothers having killed one another before the
play began,

is now considered and dealt with as

an enemy combattant ,

not worthy of proper burial,

in fact left to scavenging by carrion

as commanded by Creon , now ruler of Thebes

that he be left unburied

as an example to others

not to challenge Creon's " leadership " ,

Nonet writes ,

" In the dead body of Poluneik�s,

in immediate proximity to Antigon�,

are present, inseparably joined,

the event of this body once having come out of her
mother's womb,

and the event of this brother's death, -- birth and
death,

the two ends between which spans a life, her own as
well as his.

She too came out of that womb, she too is destined to
death.

In this dead body,

lies what remains of this other, eteros,

who by birth was most nearly the same, autos ,

as herself, and whose being is thus

most properly called "her own," filos ,

that is, a eteros autos , "another self."

What is the significance of this

joint presence of birth and death in the body of her
other self?

In its first and most general sense,

the unity of birth and death signifies phusis

as the eternal movement of fuein ,

namely

the being (das Sein) of being

in its totality (das Seiendeim Ganzen).

Birth is the emergence of beings (ta onta )

from concealment in the darkness of Earth,

into the illuminated openness under Sky,

where they show themselves in the radiance of their
presence (ousia ).

Death is return into the concealing darkness

from the depth of which all birth originates.

In the Dionysian mystery that tragedy celebrates,

the poet tells, and the people hallow the
holiness of phusis.

But in a second, restricted sense, -- already implicit
in the first, --

birth and death signify a destiny unique to man,

indeed not so much to "man in general," as in every
case

to this man who each man is before himself,

as Antigon� is in the presence of her other self. "

Regarding the impending Iraq invasion ,

looking back on the harms of Iraqi sanctions ,

which so concerned Susan when communicating with Iraqi
diplomats ,

Judith Butler , author of

" Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death "

wrote,

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200305/?read=interview_butler

" It won�t do just to grieve one�s own.

We need to extend our notion of who is grievable

so that we are not just grieving

on the basis of established identifications.

Until we learn that other lives are equally grievable

and have an equal demand on us to be grieved�

especially the ones that we�ve helped to eliminate -

I�m not sure we�ll really be on the way

to overcoming the problem of dehumanization. "

Butler suggest that the dehumanization comes in part
through how media

transfixes us with images of bombs bursting over
Baghdad and similarly spectacular implosions of
skyscrapers ,

almost addicting us to images of modern
technologically made horror and spectacle , so that
its victims becomes less palpable , as they become
fucntions of spectacle , even of war - " gaming" , by
virtue of their roles as its objects ,

especially where they are reduced in humanity as
collateral " damage" rationalised as inevitable in
the pursuit of " the bad guys" , " alleged terrorists
" , insurgents" , etc.

Madeline Albright who famously said that the deaths by
starvation of a half million Iraqi children from the
kinds of sanctions Susan Lindauer practiced idividual
activism through private communicatoins with public
actors and agents to have remitted , were ,
esesentially " collateral damage " that was " worth
it.

These days , as once Herod once had childern killed
lest one of them come to slay him ,

so the deaths of women and children under non-
declared " warfare " with / invasion of Iraq are
collateral damage even less mourned " than under
Clinton / Albright .

Now the children might as they are or grow up , if
they have the chance , to be, their mothers might be
, " suicide bombers " or insurgents , complicating our
occupation , I mean , liberation , of Afghanistan,
Iraq , etc.

http://vitw.org/archives/08

August 8, 2003

http://vitw.org/archives/579

August 12, 2003

http://vitw.org/archives/485

September 29, 2003

"Voices in the Wilderness served with a summons by the
US government. "

http://www.intl.faa.gov/restrictions/EO12722iraq.htm

" Blocking Iraqi Government Property and Prohibiting
Transactions With Iraq "

DATE: 08-02-90

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/newsprint.cgi?file=/news2005/0615-27.htm

"Iraq Humanitarian Traveler Challenges Treasury
Department "

^

I will in a subsequent email look at the "Iraq
Sanction Regulations ", violation of which through
accepting money for food , transportation , shelter
and consutancy ( communication ) Susan is charged with
violating , and which acceptance , because she didn't
have money to fly to Iraq without assiatance , stay at
hotels in Manhattan , wahtever , contribute to her
characterisatoin as an agent of a foreign government.

The " Iraqi sanction Regulations " have been
challenged , as indicated above , by Judith Karpova
and Voices in the Wilderness.

These challenges may be worth scrutinizing in terms
of the Indictment , which is not the principal subject
of this post , but rather the person, circumstances
and representation of Susan in her dealings
principally with Iraq , compications of that up to the
present , with tomorrow a pivot into the future.

http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/8124727.html

" Death Made In America

Wondering if your conscience is still anesthetized "

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200305/?read=interview_butler

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023111/0231118945.HTM

Judith Butler , who has written a book

" Antigone's Claim; Kinship Between Life and Death "

was interviewed mostly on the subject of war and non -
violence .. by Jill Stuaffer of Believer magazine,
three days after the " shock and awe ' invasion of
Iraq

Excerpts from that inteview follow..

The livejournal arcile , about the effects of depleted
uranium on chlderen born in Afghanistan and Iraq since
our invasions of these countries, is given as a
complement to these excerpts ..

" The lights are off in Baghdad as we speak. One can�t
help wondering what that is like, to live in a city
without electricity, and wondering who needs the
electricity for medical reasons, and what about the
children whose milk is going sour. And then we hear
about the dead children of Basra. Is this situation
really so unthinkable to us? Do we really not, in some
sense, know them? It seems to me there are certain
shared conditions of existence that we have with these
individuals. Grief equalizes us...

So if you want

to get back to the philosophical question,

�what are our obligations to people we do not know?�

or

�why is it that we might have an obligation to follow
an ethic of non-violence toward people we do not
know?�

we have to ask a prior question, which is

�how does our relationship to those other people

get represented for us in the media

such that we cannot answer such questions?�

What determines that those kinds of questions

do * not become salient * questions for us?

In other words,

it seems to me that the philosophical question I want
to pursue

is being systematically undermined

by the conditions under which �those other people� are
represented to us,

because they are represented at such an infinite
distance and through a moral shroud of sorts....

Bush is protecting and liberating

a construction of them and their desires,

a construction in which they had no part.

We don�t have their voices,

we don�t know their wishes, we�ve not been invited.

And even the recent uprisings in Basra

have no voice for us as of yet. "

^

The irony bring this back to Susan , is that ,

as we / our government, President , Secretary of "
Defense " / Full Spectrum Dominance , indictments by
the Department of " Justice"

categorise others, as

enemies, enemy combattants , intelligence officers /
Mukharabat ,

instead of as diplomats who are accorded v.i.p.
treatmetn in our country ,

but whom our citizens are at risk for speaking with ,

so , we make ourselves vulnerable

to being called, after we act in good faith to try to
communicate with others with no ostensible laws broken
,

called agents of foreign govenrmnets,

when we are trying to be actors on behalf , assets for
and at worst

agents of our.. own nation , of our own national
interest/s in dealing with " foreign nationals" , some
of whom are referred to as " illegal aliens ',

of our own personal interests , as we best try to
understand or conjecture them ,

as we best try to understand , conjecture and so ..
legally , as we best are familiar with and understand
the laws of our country, affect .. our country's
national intersts ,

and almost by systemic inevitability , come to try to
affect, hopefully for what we think of as the better ,

the dependent or interdependent interests of foreign
nations, even of nations not yet ..colonised

( after all, what else can you call our presence in
Iraq , Afghanistan et al. , but a form of colnialism
with a vengeance. ) by the United States,

and in so doing, reciprocally try to affect ,
hopefully for the better , the intersts of our own
nation , of ourselves , as we best conjecture them ,
respectively .

Finally , I wantto mention in terms of the indictment
, what we have seen as a strategy of vagueness in
psychiatric diagnostic categories so that one vague
term pscyhoic or mood , preferably with"disorder NOS
" as its appendage ,

can be fudged to fit just about anyone with any range
of feeling or passion , ecdcentricity or sense of
humor, irony , god forbid,

so , similarly in the indictment on charges of being
an " unrgistered " foreign agent , the definition of
the term depends on such broad langauge as

" an individual who agrees to operate within the
United States " ( how overbroad could a definition be

when " operating within the United States "

is actually , with a straight face, taken as a
description of a potentially culpable activity

if one does not recognise that one is doing so ,

especially if one , somehow ,

does not realise that one is doing so

" subject to " " direction or control " .

Susan , always scruplous about letting her actions be
known , asking often from her seemingly consistently
unresponsive second cousin, Mr. Card , for direction ,
but probably not control, as son as possilbe after she
had taken them ,

would have no reason not to be any less scrupulous ,
probably have been eager to apply for the protections
of being registered to do what she was doing if she
had thought that what she was doing had anythign to do
with being subject to control or direction , by
anyone, apart maybe from " Andy ' Card and ,
presumbably tothe extnt taht she at least looked for
directon from him , she didn't thnk this called for
registering as an agent of a foreign nation to do so .

It seems almost astonishing the seeming negligence of
temerity of the government

to write defintions of third parties which apparently
depend for their proper applicatoin upon seeming
access to the subjectivity , their state of mind , of
those " third parties"

without somehow " knowing " tat person's state of
mind which it would seem impossible to know if a
person is somehow , or consdiers him or herself to be
acting ' subject to direction or control " of anyone ,
foreign or otherwise,

unless the government itself knew the alleged agent
was chipped or somehow reduced to a kind of "
Manchurian Operator " by virtue of some tehcnology or
psychological conditioning whcih it would have to have
probaly , itself performed in order to know abouthis ,
in which the alleged agent of a foregn nation would be
.. i dunno.. a mole .. or a shared .. property

Of course , I'm being facetious here,

but the definition of an "Agent of a foreign
government " itself calls for some kind of derision ,

precisely because to take it at its word , if that
can actually be done, given the problems however
faceitiously indicated above ,

it can be used abusively and opportunistically both
becaue of both its overbroad language ( operating
within ) and its audaciously presupmtous language " (
subject to directoin or control ) whi hserves as a net
to catch just about anyone doing anything ,

but then harpoon the person caught in the net ,
becaeu of the kind of terror induced by the audacity
of any government which woudl actually write code
based on presumed capability to " know" the subjective
state of mind of soone, anyone , operating within the
United States .

It is the nature of audacity to be intimidating ,
precisely because a person , especially an offical or
a governemnt that asserts it can do , what seems
patently not doable, to know what is presumably
unkownable ( a third parties subjective sense of being
subject to control or direction ) , is person ,
government or offical, who / which seems to be all
but flaunting how disintersted in reality it is , as a
criterion for dealing with those caught in its net.

Such a broad net can of course catch any fish it
wants.. allowing the possible entrapment of one
unsupectingly fitting the description of a definition
so broadly drawn that this person would never imagine
him / herself to fit that bill..

such a person , one conjectures would seem very
unlikely to " wittingly and knowingly " choose to not
register as an " Agent of a Foreign Governemnt , " if
there is nothing but protection from the consequences
of not doing so failure to do so , to be gained , and
notin conceivable to be lost in dong so , ecept maybe
a a registration fee . It seems to make no sense not
to do it if one has a clue that it is called for .

Well, some of this I have touched on above , and will
take a closer look at the indictment , including
picking away at this problematic in a later email.

Right now, the main concern of this email is

to find out , how Susan came into this circumstance of
psychiatric captivity ,

to find out what legal strategies , other than giving
an incapacity defense to a governemnt that seems all
too ready to both ( continue to ) incapacitate her and
declare her incapacitated, are being considered in
response to the indictment itself ..

and to find ot waht ws the basis forthe evaluations
which had her rcommitted in October 2005 and how the
may continue to , hwoever spurious play a role in
prejudicing future evaluations , presumably including
that one tomorrow, ..

I am curious when the indictment , written more than
two years ago now, may ever be brought against Susan ,
or if it will be mooted by an incapacity defense ( by
her lawyers ) or an incapacity determination ( by the
government ) ..

In spite of what Rick Anderson in the Seattle Weekly
wrote glibly ( never mind the cruel glibmess of
referring to her as both a spy and a psycho, where she
is clearly neither ) ,

Susan's sanity has seemingly never been " the question
" , to anyone who has not wanted to make it the
question for presumably opportunistic reasons
ostensibly having little to do with the reality of her
extensively attested stability .

This is , rather , a political case of great
importance.

Of sufficient political importance that it may serve
the government's interests to use it to commandeer her
life , and then to bring in the mysery shrinks of
2005 * to make * her sanity the issue ,

so that the political case used to grab her ,

never has to be heard in court and be challenged as
Susan has expressed her preference , on its purported
merits , on which challenge she , i imagine non
delusionally thinks or has thought she can prevail. ,

assuming represntation of consdirable competence ,
questions about whch have been suggsted by Mr. Fields,

never mind , by the very fact of her being detained
three months beyond what was to be the maximum extent
of her commitment to Carswell.

Where was Mr. Talkin in early February wehn Mr. Fields
ws getting a call from Susan on February 4 ?

What did he , what could he do such that she
overstayed even the term given her at maximum by Judge
Mukasey ?

Right now, I thank Ms. Phelan for posting about her
and reminding readers how painful her circumstnaces
are ,

how almost inescapably they cannot but engage a
reader's concen ad sympathy and hopes for her ,

and concerns that , given the broadness of the terms
which seem, like a wide net to have caught her up and
now pinned her down without even being contested on
their own merits, possibly because of their paucity of
merits ,

we all are , in this , as in so many other regards ,

more and more vulnerable to characterisatiosn by our
government which can put us at risk of captivity ,
civil and human rights violations from our own
government .

What is unique about the challenge to which Susan is
now subjected is that

it is a challenge in the form of an indictment ,

which sanctions the very communication , with foreign
nationals , officials, diplomats , the like ,

as well as domestic politicains , maybe even the media
, lest these communications be seen or characterisd as
attempts to " influence American foreign policy " ,

on which depends , as indicated above ,

conflict resolution between governments, between
individuals , between groups of individuals,

between individuals , like Susan Lindauer , or any of
the rest of us ,and our government ,

absent which , conflict is " minimised " by the
recognition by the weaker party , usually th
individual before the government ,

that any assertion of rights or liberties or decencies
is irrelevant if one is afraid that commuication
itself can , by its very fact , put the communicator
so at risk , that no message , no negotiation , no
community is possible .

How can community not depend on communication .. not
be its byproduct.. ITss jsut too etymologically
obviosu..

How can it exist if people are too afraid to speak out
because they are afraid they will be characterised as
agents of others ( the com-simps, fellow t ravellers ,
the viet kong , terrorists , foreign governments )
when they mean merely speak for them selvees,

are afraid that their speech is all the more damned if
it is close enough to being effective communication
that it runs the risk of achieving its purposes ,
informing and pesuading and afecting others, with the
now sanctioned effect , if Lindauer were to go down as
precedent , of " influencing Aemrican policy , by
speaking to or writing to a goverment ' official " or
anyone else who might in some responsibe and
intemediary way play ar ole in affecting policy ..
foreign , domestic , who knows....

IT has become a regualr matter now for people
classified as enemy combattants , ror suspected
terroists and to be denied trial even representation
, becasue their speech ,their communication is
considered too dangerous to be allowed ,wehre as , it
is , of course , not communication , but the dearth
of becaue of sanctgioning sanctioning of communication
, which is dangerous..

Thinkig of shutting down communicatoin , alternative
points of view , I have a surreal nightmare of Bill O'
Reilly as, I dunno, a Supreme Court Justice ? A
president at a presscoference The judge at a tril of
Susan Lindauer ?

They called Cardinal Ratzinger , " God's Rottweiller"
.. I guess that would make Rupert Murdoch " God " and
O' Reilly .. never mind..

I wrote , above , of Martha Mitchell as a precusrosr
to Susan ,

an American Cassandra to her American Antigone,

as a kind of propeht / seer of worse to come.. Susan
, a witness to and challenge to that worst which
seems to be here..

as evidenced by the fact that this kind of legal and
psychiatric attack could be and has been made and
sustained and found credible to indict on vague but
never the less criminal charges

a bright young woman who just wanted to be helpful in
, yes, influencing American foreign policy ,

as she presumably assumed to be the right and
responsiblity of a good citizen,

to try to influence it based on what she thought and
hoped , to be the best sense of the nation's best
intersts should could conjecture , knowing that her
sese of gcnjecturing those best intersts correctly
would depend on ..commuicatoin with others.. where she
would no more influence policy wihtout having her
ideas tested through feedack which woudl shoot down
waht would not makeit past a doemestic or foreign
politicans's sesne of waht is ethical and waht is
practical , than she woudl be influenced by or subject
to control or direction from any officiaol or
government , foreign or doemstic which did not make
ethical and practical sense to her..

It's just a case of the government pretending it can
be easily improperly influenced by the communications
of citizens voicing their opinions ( fat chance unless
there is a lot of campaign money behind the improper
influence ) ,

that allows the government to turn the tables and
suggest that the citizenry can be similarly influenced
, subjected to control or direction

by communications which aren't persuasive practically
or which are objectionalbe ethically ..

that is unless through intimidation , and making
examples of someone like Susan as a way of scaring
others from communicating ,

the government influences the citizenry throgh
intimidation in ways it only pretends / feigns that
the citizenry can influence it through communication
and persuasion..

and through this charade, rationalising shutting down
the kind of information , communication and persuasion
ttht Susan tried to bring to bear to , succesful in
some ways, unsuccesful in others,

indeed, influence foreign policy in ways she thought
would be in her intersts, American intersts, Iraqi
interests Midlle Eastern regional intersts, .. all
that ..

but if the government gets away with pretending that
such communication needs to be crimina

lized , it leavees only its own communication , the
main function of which is intimidation of others , to
shut down their communication and their ability to
asert and negotiate their intersts through that
commnication ..

that's what , at core this case seems to be about..

and what hangs on it..

as well as Susan's well being , in particular..

for whch all readers and this writer have highest
hopes and gravest concerns..

Below , if you wish , are excerpts from Aeschylus' "
Agammemon " .

Above I excerpted from Spohocles " Antigone " to make
analogy of Susan to Antigone..

Pleae be encouraged to read a short excerpt from the
" Agamemnon " below , where Cassandra anticipates the
ruin of the house of Atreus

as Martha Mitchell spoke of the ruins of our
constitutional democracy as we at least have been able
to consider it in the past.. " pre - 9 / 11 " ..

For lack of effective ethical communication , we have
slipped very far since tha day Bush fully acceded his
imperial presidnecy power ..

He's still given us a few last chances as lays the
bricks to bury us alive , as Creon did to Antigone..

At least he had a change of mind .. too late , but
this is more than Bsh has ever had or will ever have..

Four years and counting since 9 / 11 .. adn so many
triggers for martial law near ready to kick in..

Susan's case shoudl be awake up call that , if Susan
loses her case, if Suan is buried alive in a mental
hopital or a jail, her loss will be all of ours ..

The right to communicate , to try to legitmately play
a citizen's role in affecting national policy without
being arrested , declared incompetent and then made
incompetent through forced mediaton and indefinite
confinement..

Hell , not that Martha Mithcell and Casandra didn't
see it coming..

It's here..

" Thus country is going

so far to the right , you wouldn't believe it "

- Martha Mitchell.. 1972

^

http://www.greekmythology.com/Books/Classic/aeschylus/agamemnon_16.html

" AGAMEMNON " by Aeschylus, Part 16

LEADER

No native is she, thus to read thy words
Unaided:

like some wild thing of the wood,
New-trapped, behold! she shrinks and glares on thee.

CLYTEMNESTRA

'Tis madness and the rule of mind distraught,

Since she beheld her city sink in fire,
And hither comes, nor brooks the bit, until
In foam and blood her wrath be champed away.

See ye to her; unqueenly 'tis for me,
Unheeded thus to cast away my words.

LEADER

But with me pity sits in anger's place.

Poor maiden, come thou from the car; no way
There is but this-take up thy servitude...

CASSANDRA (chanting)

Home cursed of God! Bear witness unto me,

Ye visioned woes within-

The blood-stained hands of them that smite their kin-

The strangling noose, and,

spattered o'er With human blood, the reeking floor!

LEADER

How like a sleuth-hound questing on the track,

Keen-scented unto blood and death she hies!

CASSANDRA (chanting)

Ah! can the ghostly guidance fail,
Whereby my prophet-soul is onwards led?

Look! for their flesh the spectre-children wail,

Their sodden limbs on which their father fed!

LEADER

Long since we knew of thy prophetic fame,-

But for those deeds we seek no prophet's tongue-

CASSANDRA (chanting)

God! 'tis another crime-

Worse than the storied woe of olden time,
Cureless, abhorred, that one is plotting here-

A shaming death, for those that should be dear

Alas! and far away, in foreign land,

He that should help doth stand!

LEADER

I knew th' old tales, the city rings withal-
But now thy speech is dark, beyond my ken.

CASSANDRA (chanting)

O wretch, O purpose fell!

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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 13:30:00 -0400
From: "norgesen" <norgesen@yahoo.com>
Subject: Forty licks ... Jagger refuses to give up room for Bush

Title: Forty licks ... Jagger refuses to give up room for Bush
Source: The Sun UK
URL Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006180696,00.html
Published: Apr 24, 2006
Author: By THOMAS WHITAKER

Mick beats George to suite

Forty licks ... Jagger refuses to give up room for Bush

By THOMAS WHITAKER

Showbiz Reporter

PRESIDENT George Bush can�t get no satisfaction � after Mick Jagger grabbed his hotel room.

The Rolling Stone splashed out �3,600 a night for the suite days before the US leader tried to book it.

Now Mick, 62, who has been a fierce critic of the Bush-led war in Iraq, is refusing to give it up.

The veteran rocker hired the luxury Royal Suite at the five-star Imperial Hotel in Vienna, Austria, for June when the Stones are due to play a gig in the city.

President Bush ... will have to find other luxury suite

No room ... President Bush

Bush�s aides then tried to book it to tie in with a summit meeting.

But Mick put his foot down and insisted he was keeping the booking.

A source close to the millionaire singer said last night: �White House officials had wanted to reserve the suite and all the other rooms on the first floor.

�But Mick and the Stones had already booked every one of them.

Stony reception ... Jagger has grabbed Imperial booking

�Bush�s people seemed to be under the impression that they would just hand over the suites but there was no way Mick was going to do that.�

The classically-designed suite is said to be among the top 100 hotel rooms in the world. It boasts a 7ft 4in bed, chandeliers and oil paintings.

Former presidents Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy and George Bush Snr all stayed there while they were in office.

Suite luxury ... room Mick won't give up for George

The hotel last night admitted US secret service agents vetted the accommodation � and confirmed that Bush would no longer be staying there.

An American Embassy official refused to say where he was now staying for �security reasons�.

Mick takes a swipe at Bush, 59, on the latest Stones album A Bigger Bang, savaging his Iraq War policy.

[This message contained attachments]

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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 13:48:49 -0400
From: ranger116@webtv.net
Subject: HearingVowedOn Bush's powers+Poll onSheriff's Posse arresting illegals

HearingVowedOn Bush's powers+Poll onSheriff's Posse arresting illegals

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Hearing vowed on Bush's powers

03�May�2006
http://www.legitgov.org/
�http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

Hearing vowed on Bush's powers
--Senator questions bypassing of laws 03

May 2006
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee [Arlen Specter,
R-PA], accusing the White House of a ''very blatant encroachment" on
congressional authority, said yesterday he will hold an oversight
hearing into President [sic] Bush's assertion that he has the power to
bypass more than 750 laws enacted over the past five years. Specter's
announcement followed a report in the Sunday Globe that Bush
has quietly asserted the authority to ignore provisions in 750 bills he
has signed --
about 1 in 10. Over the past five years, Bush has stated that he
can defy any statute that conflicts with his interpretation of the
Constitution.

Address�to receive newsletter: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg
Please write to: signup@legitgov.org�for inquiries. lrp/mdr

CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price,
General Manager. Copyright � 2006, Citizens For Legitimate Government
� All rights reserved. CLG Founder and Chair is Michael Rectenwald,
Ph.D.

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KPHO Phoenix - Sheriff to Start Posse Patrols to Curb Illegal
Immigration Flow
Address:http://www.kpho.com/Global/story.asp?S=4850859&nav=23Ku

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FT.com / World / US -
Bush in ‘ceaseless push for power’
Address:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6ec15f3c-d93d-11da-8b06-0000779e2340.html

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Colbert Lampoons Bush
The Randi Rhodes Show on Air America Radio
Address:http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/node/3009

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Ohio "As Usual" Voters Experience Problems at the Polls with computer
voting terminals
Address:http://www.onnnews.com/?sec=home&story=10tv/content/pool/200605/1346034745.html

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Rare German Photos Expose 9/11 Pentagon Hoax

Address:http://www.rense.com/general70/3o.htm

Even More On 9/11 And Fortuitous Events
Address:http://www.rense.com/general70/more.htm

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Martial Law 9/11 Video Now Available For Free Download
Address:http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/020506martiallaw.htm

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Summer may be deadliest yet for Mexican border crossers - Due to Hot
Weather ? !
( DO WE CARE !! ??)
- U.S. Security - MSNBC.com
Address:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12598535/

Myth Vs Fact Of Illegal Immigration
Address:http://www.rense.com/general70/myth.htm

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MYSTERY OF 5.5 TON COKE PLANE DEEPENS
Address:http://www.madcowprod.com/05022006.html

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The US Government's Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
Address:http://www.rense.com/general70/doro.htm

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Susan Lindauer - U.S. Political Prisoner
Address:http://cosmicpenguin.com/Lindauer/ Changed:4:36 PM on Sunday,
April 30, 2006

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