Letter Never Sent

George Kelly, a new friend of mine, emailed me a link to an article in the NY Times about Bush pushing through two controversial appointees essentially bypassing the Democratic-controlled senate, essentially bypassing the idea that we have in this country of the separation of powers, checks and balances. The NY Times fails to mention the corruption and abuse of power that the Bush administration is displaying with this move. On this point they are utterly spineless and state only the barest necessary factual details rather than making the appropriate connections dictated by journalistic integrity. At issue, are the appointments of Otto J. Reich and Eugene Scalia, son of Antonin Scalia. Otto Reich is a criminal leftover from the Iran-Contra scandal during which time he engaged in prohibited acts of domestic propaganda. Yes, in other words, he engaged in a campaign to manipulate American public opinion by writing editorials under the name of a contra leader. He is a criminal, a propagandist, and a liar. This is only what we know about. All of this would not have been a problem for our government except that he was doing this in our country to our own people. The NY Times makes a very bland statement with regards to his culpability:

“A government investigation concluded that Mr. Reich’s office engaged in prohibited acts of domestic propaganda, like writing letters to the op-ed pages of American newspapers to appear as if they came from a contra leader.”

So the investigation concluded that he committed these crimes? Why not just say he did? The connection to ‘Cuban exiles’ is also weakly stated. Apparently, this is a bone thrown to the Cuban-Americans because of the excellent job they did making sure Bush won Florida. What kind of message does this send about the nature of this administration? Placing a convicted criminal, arguably a fascist anti-communist, and propagandist in a high-profile foreign policy position. The paragraph on Otto Reich ends happily with this oblique and unnecessary statement: “Republicans in support of the Reich nomination say he is well qualified for the job.” Of course to them he is well qualified. When’s Ollie North getting his appointment?

The second appointment is the son of Antonin Scalia, ‘labor’ lawyer Eugene Scalia. The NY Times fails to mention what sort of labor lawyer he is, namely one who fights against organized labor. They also fail to mention how Eugene Scalia’s law firm helped Bush win in Florida and how his father, the arch-conservative Antonin Scalia, played his part in Florida by helping to stop the vote recount. It’s typical how out in the open Republicans are with their corruption. I also have to give them credit for their sense of irony and humor in supporting the appointment of an anti-unionist to the Department of Labor. This whole story barely warranted a page and was barely mentioned on the front page.

Here are some thoughtful Voltaire quotes for you:

Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short on: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

I’m going to be writing an extensive piece regarding the marching orders made to the Bush administration by the Carlyle Group and the Rand Corporation immediately after the electoral coup in November 2000. In a joint paper called A Global Agenda for the U.S. President instructions to the Bush administration and the American government are explicitly described. I really hope you decide to read it for yourself. It is long and complicated but you will be glad that you did. Of course, the same group of people who control the Rand Corporation and the Carlyle Group are effectively in control of our democracy so there will be no conflict about the aims and goals. Just for starters let’s look at the most obvious examples of how this kind of good old-boy, global elite system operates, the current President Bush’s father George HW Bush is on the Carlyle payroll, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Yale roommate Franklin Carlucci is CEO of the Carlyle Group, and until recently Osama bin Laden’s family was on the Carlyle Group payroll. The rot and corruption is deep. One of the most prominent Carlyle properties, United Defense Industries Inc., is doing so well as a result of this so-called War on Terrorism that they’ve decided to file for an IPO and publicly offer their stock. It’s nice how well business and warfare support one another. The benefits of this partnership were realized a long time ago.

In front page news, Bush had some non-cancerous lesions removed from his face. Someone’s Christmas prayers were answered! Thank you, baby Jesus! I think they call these Evil Blisters. Actually, all joking aside, I would never wish acne or noncancerous lesions on the President. We all know what can happen when jokes are incorrectly interpreted by government goons. There was this guy once who received a visit from the SS because he had written a satirical piece in a university newspaper about praying that Christ smite Bush (and also Carson Daly). He was probably pretty freaked out. He was given a psychological evaluation and had his home searched by the Secret Service. I hear they’re still looking for this Christ character.

Bits and pieces:
• Americans covered up massacre of 280 Taliban
• A Surge in Demand to Use Biometrics I like how they describe these things, a surge in demand as if it were some sort of natural phenomenon.
• National ID Card Gaining Support Example of typical jackass: “I know the government will have more access to my information,” Jimenez said. “But I know it’s going to be used in the right way. I feel protected.” Well, I’m glad you feel protected, but I’m not sure how you know the information will be used in the right way.
• Beginning the American Occupation The Flag is raised. Now everyone put your hand over your hearts.
• FBI wants access to worm’s pilfered data
• US hush hush on the origins of the bin Laden ‘evidence’ tape Duh, they probably made it.
• Bush says if you use drugs you’re a terrorist. Doesn’t this make him a terrorist? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

As a reader of Antiwar.com points out in their backtalk section, there are many reasons to be wary of this big deal Osama bin Laden tape that supposedly implicates him further in the WTC disaster. If they only recently acquired this tape where is the evidence we showed the allies to get them behind the US? As this reader points out from her experience as a court reporter the OBL tape would most likely be thrown out if it were used as evidence in court:

I was a court reporter for years, and therefore watched the much publicized Osama bin Laden tape and transcription with great curiosity today. In my profession, I learned that the omission of one single word or a misplaced comma can alter the entire context of a sentence or paragraph. For instance, the omission of the word “if” before a sentence transforms the sentence from what might be theoretical musing to a statement of fact. The misplacement of a comma, as in “I don’t know,” to “I don’t, no,” can be catastrophic. Also, there are no “(inaudible words)” acceptable in a valid transcript. A transcript such as was shown on TV today would be thrown out of court, for not only was it non-verbatim, but also it was manhandled in ways unknown to the public for three weeks by the prosecutor and his team. Another observation: At the beginning, bin Laden and his friend are discussing dreams they all had, and these dream segments, related by both, and then a third party, are intertwined with what are purported to be statements of reality. The listener doesn’t know where the dream begins and this alleged reality takes over. I personally find the tape totally unacceptable as any kind of proof of anything.

As expected, the trail of Osama bin Laden has gone cold again. I’m telling you, the US will never find this guy. He’s probably on Uncle Sam’s payroll.

I wrote on the December 10th about John Walker Lindh and I touched upon how his story has turned into a criticism of ‘liberal parenting’ by conservatives and other small minded people. Religious and social conservatives have blamed his parents and his wealthy hometown for his lack of ‘traditional moral values’. Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune writes more adeptly than I did about this subject in a piece, Is John Walker a failure of liberalism? He makes a few points I failed to make like how in the cases of Timothy McVeigh and Theodore Kaczynski no one criticized their conservative, middle-class upbringing for what they later became and did. Chapman also makes this scathing observation levelled at these tutting armchair moralists:

Plenty of bad people have grown up in wealthy, permissive, liberal towns–and plenty have grown up in middle-class, authoritarian, conservative ones. Human nature is the same in both places, and neither environment guarantees good citizenship. If old-fashioned moral attitudes are more likely to provide a reliable check on our baser impulses, why is it that murder rates are higher in Bible-Belt states like Mississippi and Alabama than in more liberal locales? Why do mass school shootings typically take place in Norman Rockwell country instead of Cambridge or Berkeley?

The UN is planning on fingerprinting everyone on earth to prevent illegal immigration. Of course, illegal immigration makes it harder for the global elite to control economic situations.

It’s starting to look like our own government is responsible for the biological anthrax attacks. The anthrax spores mailed to US Senators match a strain developed at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.: “That means the original source [of the terrorist material] had to have been USAMRIID,” said one of the scientists.” Of course, since the CIA and who knows what other part of the government have also been developing anthrax the danger is hardly over. It’s funny that the US criticizes ‘rogue states’ such as Iraq and North Korea for their chemical weapons projects but we do the same thing on a much larger scale. Essentially, this makes us a rogues state and our leaders are criminals and terrorists. The US has more weapons of mass destruction than anyone else and we rarely follow international law when we attack other countries unilaterally. It’s a sick joke.

In a depressing yet not completely surprising move the international corporo-governmental appartus in conjunction with the American gestapo powers, namely the FBI and the US Customs Service, have raided groups and individuals in 28 cities on December 11, 2001 as part of a three-pronged operation to attempt to stamp out digital ‘piracy’. It seems through joint efforts between the Justice Department and industry groups (surprise, surprise) such as the Business Software Alliance, Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America under operations code-named “Operation Buccaneer”, “Operation Piratez” and “Operation Bandwidth” the government is attempting to dismantle what they see as an international criminal conspiracy to commit large-scale copyright violation. Interestingly, no arrests have been made in the US suggesting that law-enforcement is undoubtedly attempting to infiltrate these groups and acquire information and assistance from terrorized individuals which will then be used to move against various other groups and parties on the government hitlist.

Coverage on the raids:

• DOJ official release on the raids from head demon, John Ashcroft.
• From Cryptome
• On Yahoo!
• Wired News
• From the BBC
• Information from insiders relating to the ‘warez’ scene busts.

WARNING: For any potential EFNet users out there: “Confirmed insider information, that four major efnet servers are currently running in debug mode, which enables them to see ALL private traffic, like private chat, passwords sent to channel protection bots, messages, etc. and the information is being filtered and sent to the FBI, which requested this. Currently, a big EDU server, and .ORG server!” In other words, stay off EFNet unless you’re just engaging in cybersex. Big brother is watching.

According to statements made by law-enforcement officials, more raids can be expected in the coming months. No doubt the recent events will help them finger other people and groups. Anyone who could be targetted as a ‘pirate’ (basically anyone who ever shares mp3s or movies) should definitely lay low for a few months. Immediate strategies should be developed to deal with the implications of this event. This is the first time that a large-scale attempt to attack those responsible for releasing the software and tools that millions of people download. Security should be the primary concern with efforts on fronts to protect privacy, anonymity, etc using many different methods.

The mainstream media has been very interested in the case of the so-called “American Taleban”, John Walker Lindh. They have seized his story with a particular sort of zeal that begs further examination. In the case of John Walker the media have found their human interest story. A story which can be related to the simple folks at home while intoning a clear, home-spun message of ‘patriotism’. As adept artisans of public opinion the mainstream media operates from many angles. For concerned parents there is the element of ‘could this happen to my son?’. For religious and social conservatives there is this apparent example of ‘liberal parenting’ gone awry, let your children question their own beliefs and they could become bearded religious fanatics! For stalwart establishmentarians there is confirmation for their suspicion of young people. Implicit is the idea that in America people can take advantage of the generous freedoms they are allowed. This contains a tacit justification for any repression under the aegis of ‘security’ or ‘the war on terrorism’. Instead of a news story, one about an American youth who left his country and his culture behind to adopt a new identity in a different culture and who later wound up in an Afghan prison as a prisoner of war, you are given, in nearly every instance, a story devoid of any journalistic integrity or objectivity. A story reduced to comic-book simplicity permeated with moralistic editorializing intent on manipulating the emotions of American news-junkies.

In an earnestly titled story in the New York Times called “One for His Country, and One Against It”, we are treated to a large dose of wishful propaganda masquerading as important front-page news. As the tagline hints, it is essentially a personality piece, a story in contrasts as told by the New York Times. In one corner you have the American traitor and spoiled, religious dabbler John Walker, in the other corner you have the ‘American hero’, CIA agent, and all-around God-loving patriot, Johnny Michael Spann. Spann as painted by the Times is home-town boy made good:

Mr. Spann grew up foursquare in a four-stoplight Alabama town. Life in Winfield revolved around family, church, duty and high school football, and Mike Spann embraced them all. He took apples to his teacher, played soldier at recess and prayed on Sunday with his family at the Church of Christ. A favorite boyhood picture shows him sitting on the barrel of a tank. At 16, he knew what he wanted. He would be a marine, he told friends, then serve in the F.B.I. or C.I.A.

In contrast is the description of Walker:

Mr. Walker came of age across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in affluent Marin County, frequently caricatured as a haven for politically correct Californians who drive Porsches and who raise children made muddle-headed by too much freedom.

Like Mr. Spann, Mr. Walker figured out what he wanted to do with his life at 16. Encouraged by his divorcing parents to seek his own spiritual path, he found himself by rejecting teenage culture in the name of Islam. He sold off his hip- hop records, immersed himself in the Koran and started wearing a long white robe.

This statement is particularly irresponsible: “affluent Marin County, frequently caricatured as a haven for politically correct Californians who drive Porsches and who raise children made muddle-headed by too much freedom” Caricatured by whom? Does everyone in Marin County drive a Porsche? By saying it is “frequently caricatured” without explanation as to where, when or who is responsible for the caricature the Times is in effect making this characterization itself. This is bad journalism. It would be the same if they said “Winfield, Alabama, frequently caricatured as the home of rednecks who drive Ford Expeditions and who raise children made thick-headed by too many beatings.”

The rest of the article continues along this predictable vein and ends up sounding like a recruiting advertisement for the CIA. The New York Times article is the most glaring example of this sort of yellow journalism. More similar stories on the ‘American Taleban’:

• The Taliban Next Door
• Religious Quest Led American To Taliban Side This article shouldn’t actually be included in this group but is good for comparison.
• Video game explains an American traitor Video games, video poker, the real enemy.
• Treason chic started in the ’60s “Walker is another bored child of privilege who chose the path of revolution….”

A good friend, Horselover, emailed me a transcript of the Alex Jones monologue from Waking Life. Where he got it I don’t know. He has strange powers. Here it is:

You can’t fight city hall. Death and taxes. Don’t talk about politics and religion. This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda rolling across the picket line. Lay down G.I., lay down G.I. We saw it all through the 20th century and now in the 21st century it’s time to stand up and realize that we should not allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not submit to dehumanization. I don’t know about you but I’m concerned with what’s happening in this world. I’m concerned with the structure. I’m concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life and those seek to control it even more. I want freedom, that’s what I want and that’s what you should want. It’s up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes the insecurities, because that is a simple mode of control, make us feel pathetic, small, so we’ll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny.

We have got to realize that we’re being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state. The 21st century’s going to be a new century. Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues with no significance but classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control. It’s going to be the age of humankind standing up for something pure and something right. Not a bunch of garbage — liberal democrat, conservative republican; it’s all there to control you, two sides of the same coin, two management teams bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery, Inc. The truth is out there in front of you but they lay out this buffet of lies. I’M SICK OF IT AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF IT! DO YOU GOT ME?!

Resistance is not futile, we’re going to win this thing. Humankind is too good, we’re not a bunch of underachievers. We’re going to stand up and we’re going to be human beings. We’re going to get fired up about the real things, the things that matter, creativity and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit.

Well that’s it, that’s all I got to say.