also has Enron, Sweden free speech
this may be heavy for survivors
from L Moss Sharman List of Priests removed from duty Since early February, the Archdiocese of Boston has removed 24 priests from active duty as the church investigates sexual abuse allegations against them. http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/extras/removed_list.htm
http://www.vheadline.com/0212/14248.asp
USA intelligence agencies revealed in plot to oust Venezuela's President
report © by VHeadline.com Reporters
VHeadline.com : Thursday, December 12, 2002 -- Uruguayan EP-FA congressman Jose Bayardi says he has information that far-reaching plans have been put into operation by the CIA and other North American intelligence agencies to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias within the next 72 hours. Bayardi says he has received copies of top-secret communications between the Bush administration in Washington and the government of Uruguay requesting the latter's cooperation to support white collar executives and trade union activists "to break down levels of intransigence within the Chavez Frias administration."
Published on Sunday, December 8, 2002 by the Los Angeles Times
New Breed of Patriots Speaking Up
Grass-roots efforts to rein in the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act gain
support. Eugene, Ore., and other cities formally oppose aspects of law
by Scott Martelle
EUGENE, Ore. -.... the excesses of the USA Patriot Act, a sweeping federal law enacted after last year's terrorist attacks that broadens the government's ability to use secret searches, wiretaps and other covert surveillance techniques in the pursuit of terrorists. While the law's defenders say average citizens have nothing to fear, civil libertarians like Marston believe the law opens the door for government agents to resume the kind of domestic spying that flourished under J. Edgar Hoover, when affiliation with radical ideas was enough to get someone a place in the FBI's secret files. "We don't know how many people have had their homes searched, or their library or bookstore records checked," said Marston, a part-time secretary who launched the Eugene campaign after reading about similar efforts elsewhere. "People were amazed that there was something they could do locally." Under pressure from a campaign that drew together liberals and Libertarians, Democrats and even a few Republicans, the Eugene City Council recently joined a growing list of local governments calling for a full or partial repeal of the Patriot Act, part of a nascent nationwide effort organizers hope will persuade Congress to undo the law. Last week, city councils in Sebastopol, about 50 miles north of San Francisco, and Burlington, Vt., joined with their own resolutions, and activists are busy in Pasadena, Santa Barbara and at least eight other California communities. The campaign began in November 2001 in Northampton, Mass., although
the first cities to pass resolutions were Ann Arbor, Mich., and Denver, said Nancy Talanian, one of the Massachusetts organizers. So far, 17 cities have passed resolutions, and campaigns are underway in at least 50 cities in 25 states. Organizers hope that by marshaling the voices of locally elected
officials, they can better pressure Congress. "Resolutions passed by elected local leaders carry a lot more weight than letters from individual citizens," Talanian said. Still, the resolutions are largely symbolic, as local governments have no authority over federal laws or issues.
....
At the heart of the challenge are elements of the USA Patriot Act that grant federal investigators wide latitude in "foreign intelligence surveillance." That authority was backed last month by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which overturned a ruling that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was using the Patriot Act to improperly broaden the FBI's spying abilities. Under the act, federal investigators can secretly enter homes, plant wiretaps, search computers and take other investigative steps if they believe someone is connected with foreign terrorists. The act also
makes it illegal for anyone who has been served a warrant under the act – such as bookstore owners or librarians -- from talking about it.
Replacement Sought for 9/11 Panel
WASHINGTON (Dec. 14) - President Bush is expected to move swiftly to find a replacement for Henry Kissinger as chairman of a commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks after the former secretary of state abruptly resigned because of conflict-of-interest concerns. Kissinger's resignation Friday came two weeks after his appointment and two days after the panel's vice chairman, former Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine, stepped down. The twin resignations came as the commission hoped to begin its work next month and after disputes about its organization and its authority to issue subpoenas.
Kissinger cited concerns that had been raised about possible conflicts of interests involving his business clients and demands by some Democratic lawmakers that he make public the names of all of his clients. The White House had argued he was not required to make such disclosures because the chairmanship was an unpaid position. In a letter to Bush, Kissinger said he was willing to submit ``all relevant financial information'' to the White House and to an independent review to counter allegations of conflict of interest. But he said he feared critics would demand he liquidate his international consulting firm, Kissinger Associates - something he was not prepared to do. Kissinger's resignation came one day after he tried to assure victims' relatives that his business interests would not conflict with his duties as chairman. On Wednesday, Mitchell, the former Democratic senator from Maine, submitted his resignation because he said the job would conflict with his responsibilities to his law firm.
http://www.rense.com/general32/sdln.htm
Sweden Offers Free Speech Refuge To US Officials By Dennis Hans LiberalSlant.com 12-13-02
"...Some leaders of underdeveloped democracies have welcomed Sweden's "democracy teams," encouraging their efforts to create a culture of candor and transparency in the corridors of power. Those efforts comprise the overt component of the Palme Plan. The covert component kicks in when a leader is hostile to the very notions of candor and transparency. Palme, who was Carlsson's political mentor, believed his greatest failure as president was his inability, during the Vietnam War, to persuade U.S. officialdom of the virtues of public candor. "Palme believed that if the national security bureaucracy had not been cowed into silence in the face of a torrent of deceit from a determined White House, the U.S. would never have invaded and destroyed Vietnam," Carlsson said. An October 8 story in the Houston Chronicle, by Jonathan Landy and Warren Strobel ( http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1607676), convinced Carlsson that the same suffocating environment had enveloped key sectors of the Bush administration. Thirteen officials from the CIA, State Department and Pentagon, many with vast experience in the Middle East and South Asia, told Landy and Strobel the same thing: The White House has squelched dissent, imposed conformity and silence, demanded skewed analyses to justify its hard line, and repeatedly exaggerated or falsified intelligence information to inflate the Saddam threat."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/politics/13INQU.html?8bhp
Kissinger Will Disclose His Clients to Families of 9/11 Victims
By DAVID FIRESTONE
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — Henry A. Kissinger, President Bush's choice to head a panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, met with victims' families today and agreed to issue subpoenas ....Why did the Immigration and Naturalization Service allow so many of the hijackers into the country to attend flight school? ¶Why did the nation's air defense command have no planes in the air on Sept. 11 to protect New York and Washington once the attacks had begun? ¶How many hijackers were on the C.I.A.'s terrorist watch list, and if any of them were known to intelligence agents, why were the F.B.I. and the Federal Aviation Administration not notified?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/12.14D.enron.12.13.02.htm
t r u t h o u t | Statement Senator Carl Levin Chairman Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Hearing On Oversight of Investment Banks' Response to the Lessons of Enron Leading US Financial Institutions Designed, Advanced and Profited from Enron Wednesday, 11 December, 2002 Enron Hearing
One year ago, on December 2, 2001, Enron Corporation, then the seventh largest company in the United States, declared bankruptcy. The follow up to this financial disaster revealed a litany of Enron corporate abuses from accounting fraud, to price manipulation, insider dealing, and tax. Yet it is still the case today, as it was a year ago, that most top Enron officials have walked away from the scandal they created with tens of millions of dollars in their pockets, while Enron employees, creditors, and shareholders have suffered substantial losses. As disturbing as Enron's own misconduct is the growing evidence that leading U.S. financial institutions not only took part in Enron's deceptive practices, but at times designed, advanced, and profited from them. This is the third in a series of hearings held by this Subcommittee focusing on the role of financial institutions in Enron's collapse. Our first hearing looked at more than $8 billion in deceptive transactions referred to as "prepays." Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase repeatedly used these deceptive prepays to issue Enron huge loans that were disguised as energy trades, which enabled Enron to misstate the loan proceeds as cash flow from business operations. Investors and analysts were misled, along with the many employees who lost their life savings and jobs. Our second hearing looked in detail at a sham asset sale from Enron to Merrill Lynch just before the end of the year 2000, so that Enron could book the fake sale revenue and boost both its year-end earnings and cash flow from operations. This transaction didn't qualify as a true sale under accounting rules, because Enron had eliminated risk from the deal by secretly promising Merrill Lynch to arrange a resale of the barges within 6 months, while guaranteeing a 15 percent profit.
