-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 130 December, 2000
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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QUOTE:
"We do not wish to be ruled. And by this very fact, do we not
declare that we ourselves wish to rule nobody?"
--Peter Kropotkin, 'Anarchist Morality'
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How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.)
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Contents:
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--About What It Is..
--Cover-ups and withholding ballot information: same old Republican tricks
--US "Outsourcing" Colombian War?
--Police role in terror task force criticized
--On black disenfranchisement
--Ebola Toll Reaches 400
Linked stories:
*By Revealing Their Discord, Justices Break Unwritten Rule
*Gore camp hints at election defeat
*High court may ease market anxiety
*Privacy a Victim of the Drug War
*Cop joins call for end to police violence
*More Than 20,000 Workers Penalized Annually for Union Efforts
*Audio: Hunter S. Thompson
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Begin stories:
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About What It Is..
[edited]
What worries me is that the Republican political machine accuses
opponents of doing what they are planning to do, or already
have done.
While the GOP was stealing the election, they were accusing Gore of doing
it! The Republican Secretary of State of Florida removed people from the
rolls improperly. Black voters were turned away from the polls, even when
they had voter registration cards. The Republicans said Gore would "do
anything to win the election by hook or by crook" while they were clearly
doing that themselves.
Further, they said Gore wanted to count votes only in Democratic
counties, when it was the Bush camp who refused an offer to count the
whole state.
The Republicans complained about court challenges, but they filed more
actions than the Gore people, and tried to prevent votes from being
counted! Then, although fond of law and order, they imported a mob from
out of state to bang on doors and intimidate vote counters in Miami.
The party that claims to favor local solutions used the US Supreme Court
to prevent a ballot count ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. If that
isn't enough, the Republican majority of the Florida Legislature tried to
replace the Florida voters in selecting the State's members of the
Electoral College.
At least, this stops short of calling in the military to impose the
party's rule, as is done in many other countries, but I don't like it.
Richard A. Stimson
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Cover-ups and withholding ballot information: same old Republican tricks
Online Journal - <http://www.onlinejournal.com>
12-12-00
By Carla Binion
Sociologist Max Weber once said that the first line of
defense of any bureaucracy is the withholding of information. George W.
Bush's team includes some of his dad's cronies, such as James Baker,
George Schultz, and Richard Thornberg. None of them are strangers to
withholding information as a means of defending corruption.
It makes sense that the Bush team now argues against counting the ballots.
They have long favored secrecy over disclosure.
George H. W. Bush was CIA Director in the mid-1970s. The CIA, and George
W.'s dad, are no strangers to rigged elections-in Third World countries.
In 1984, when Manuel Noriega chose Nicolas Barletta to be Panama's
president, the Reagan/Bush administration knew the election was rigged,
that ballot boxes were stuffed, and that documents were falsified.
(Imperial Alibis, Stephen R. Shalom, South End Press, 1993.)
Under Reagan/Bush, the U. S. government funneled money to Barletta's
campaign. Following the vote fraud, U. S. aid to Panama grew from $12
million to $75 million. After the "election," Reagan invited Barletta to
the White House to congratulate him on his win. (Imperial Alibis.)
Secretary of State George Schultz, adviser to George W. in Campaign 2000,
attended Barletta's inauguration and lauded Panama's "democratization."
(Unreliable Sources, Norman Solomon and Martin A. Lee, Carol Publishing
Group, 1992.)
Bush team adviser and daddy-Bush crony, James Baker, said recently that
the team is not trying to "run out the clock" regarding ballot counting.
However, Baker was part of the Reagan administration when the Reagan/Bush
crew used delay tactics to evade responsibility for Iran-contra.
Remember how George H. W. Bush got away with his Iran-contra misdeeds?
Reagan's attorney general, Richard Thornburgh (another current member of
George W.'s team), claimed that certain Iran-contra evidence-including
names and locations that had already been published in the press-were
government secrets too sensitive to reveal in court. Independent
prosecutor Lawrence Walsh called them "fictional secrets." In addition,
the Reagan-Bush team stonewalled endlessly. They delayed releasing
critical records to the court and hid personal notes. (Blank Check, Tim
Weiner, 1990.)
Journalist Tim Weiner says that by hiding key evidence behind a cloak of
government secrecy "the Justice Department drove a stake into the heart of
the criminal cases against North, Poindexter and Secord. It effectively
prevented the independent prosecutor appointed to try the cases from
functioning independently." (Blank Check, Weiner.)
George H. W. Bush participated in a cover-up again after he became
president by arbitrarily pardoning his cronies. CNN political analyst
William Schneider said Bush pardoned his political allies "for illegal
activities in which he himself may have been implicated." (Lawrence Walsh,
Firewall, 1997.)
Recently Supreme Court members (some appointed by George W.'s dad) stopped
the ballot recount. Reagan appointee, Justice Antonin Scalia, said
counting the votes might harm Bush by "casting a cloud" on his legitimacy.
That is not the first time in recent history that the Supreme Court ruled
against the public's right to know. When Public Citizen filed a Freedom of
Information Act request to examine a domestic CIA operation, MKULTRA, the
CIA refused to release the documents. In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled for
the CIA. The Court held that "Congress vested in the Director of Central
Intelligence very broad authority to protect all sources of intelligence
information from disclosure." (A Culture of Secrecy, Athan G. Theoharis,
University Press of Kansas, 1998.)
A Bush win will always appear illegitimate unless the votes are counted.
The public already knows enough about the Bush team's history, tactics and
values to raise questions about the candidate's legitimacy. For example:
(1) We know that certain Bush team members have no particular respect for
the law, considering their participation in, and cover-up of, their
Iran-contra involvement.
(2) We know that some Bush team members (and certain members of the CIA)
have little love for democracy-at least not for democracy in Third World
countries.
The question is, do those members of the Bush team respect American
election law and American democracy? Do they see any difference between
elections and democracy in the Third World and in our own? And, one more
question that has been asked repeatedly but never answered honestly-why
doesn't the Bush team want the ballots recounted unless they are afraid
Gore won?
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US "Outsourcing" Colombian War?
Weekly News Update on the Americas, 12/13/00
The St. Petersburg Times of Florida reported on Dec. 2 that the
Clinton administration has hired a high-level group of former US
military personnel as "consultants," who keep in close contact
with Pentagon officials while advising Colombians on efforts to
improve the Colombian army, and how new laws could make the
Colombian military more professional and effective, as well as
helping to revamp Colombia's National Police. The consultants
work for Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), an
Alexandria, Virginia-based company run mostly by retired US
military officers. Critics say the practice, known as
outsourcing, is intended to bypass congressional oversight and
provide political cover to the White House if something goes
wrong. MPRI has done other work for Washington around the world,
including in the Balkans.
MPRI is now working full time in Colombia under a $6 million
contract. The arrangement was approved by the US Congress. The
company has dispatched 14 employees to Bogota under the direction
of a retired army major general. Specifically, MPRI is working
with the Colombian armed forces and National Police in the areas
of planning; operations, including psychological operations;
training; logistics; intelligence; and personnel management.
"It's very handy to have an outfit not part of the US armed
forces, obviously," said former US ambassador to Colombia Myles
Frechette. "If somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it's
not a member of the armed forces. Nobody wants to see American
military men killed." MPRI and the Pentagon both denied requests
by the St. Petersburg Times to review the MPRI contract, which is
renewable each year.
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Police role in terror task force criticized
<http://www.oregonlive.com:80/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/12/lc_41pact06.frame>
Critics fear Portland's agreement with the FBI will blur lines and permit
the infiltration of lawful political protests
Wednesday, December 6, 2000
By Mark Larabee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Oregonian
A new task force on domestic terrorism that includes Portland police
officers and FBI agents follows a national trend to combat terrorism on
U.S. soil.
But some think the wording of an agreement between the city and the FBI is
merely window dressing for a newly formed "Red Squad" to infiltrate lawful
political protests and their organizers.
The FBI's budget and number of counter-terrorism agents have jumped
significantly each year since 1993, when a bomb blast rocked New York's
World Trade Center and the nation's psyche.
The government's resolve to battle such violence hardened two years later
when a bomb planted inside a yellow rental truck ripped apart the federal
office building in Oklahoma City, killing 168.
Portland's task force was formed specifically to investigate crimes by
extremist groups. An agreement between the FBI and the city names the Earth
Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, militant environmental
groups that have claimed responsibility for crimes.
"It's Big Brother keeping his spying eyes on people," said Spencer Neal, a
Portland civil rights lawyer who has filed numerous lawsuits against the
city and police. "I think they're going to have a problem."
Some activists are calling on the City Council to reconsider its approval
of the agreement, or at a minimum, hold a hearing in which their opinions
can be fully aired. Several have signed up to be heard at today's City
Council meeting.
Growing trend
It's not just front-page incidents such as the Oklahoma City and the World
Trade Center bombs that have the feds concerned. Smaller scale threats,
from razor-blade letters to scares of widespread releases of toxic germs,
are becoming more common.
The official response has been preparedness. More than 30 cities across the
country have formed antiterrorism task forces that include federal agents
and local police. Seattle formed one in September to thwart such things as
white supremacist violence.
The FBI also has teamed with police departments to battle cyber terrorists
who could hack into computer systems to do such things as shut down the
nation's power grid or collide two airliners.
The FBI budget was $3 billion last year, up from $2.1 billion in 1994. Much
of that increase is attributed to the agency's counter-terrorism efforts.
Other federal agencies are also preparing. The federal Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention has a $155 million annual bio-terrorism research
program with 100 full-time employees, according to a September report by
Newhouse News Service. The CDC is stockpiling drugs in case of large-scale
exposures to such things as anthrax and smallpox.
Extremist activity on the rise
Given that, the local task forces make perfect sense to the FBI.
In Portland, the agency and police came together in 1998 to investigate any
crimes that might have come out of the Nike World Games.
"We've seen all around the country a rise in the level of criminal activity
on behalf of these extremist protest groups," said FBI Special Agent Kevin
Favreau, who supervises Portland's domestic terrorism program.
He said the FBI has the money to supply office space and equipment, such as
computers, as well as crime analysis. The 12 federal agents, eight Portland
police officers and three other state law enforcement officers on the task
force will investigate crimes of intimidation, from arson to
vandalism.
"If we turn a deaf ear to those things as they start happening, then we
leave ourselves open to them getting worse," Favreau said.
Apprehension
But some say having the police gathering intelligence on extremist groups
presents difficult choices for a nation that values civil liberties. They
caution that the potential to cross the line is far too easy.
"The FBI has a long history of spying on political groups," said Portland
attorney Alan Graf of the National Lawyers Guild. "They're identifying
people based on political ideology and association with certain groups."
Attorney Neal is suing the city in federal court on behalf of Robert E.
Challis, a member of the Brother Speed Motorcycle Club, who alleges the
police have collected information about him that is unrelated to any crime.
Neal cited a state statute that prohibits police from collecting
information about political, religious or social groups unless it directly
relates to criminal activity.
In 1996, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Michael Marcus upheld the law,
ordering the Portland police to purge its files of some criminal
intelligence reports. He said a person's or group's mere presence at an
event where criminal behavior is planned or conducted is not enough to
allow police to start an intelligence file.
Graf thinks the task force approach would be too invasive and their written
directive is too broad. Under the city's agreement with the FBI, an
investigation is triggered by "criminal activity," which Graf said could be
interpreted to mean such things as jaywalking.
"I'm all for the FBI and the police stopping violent acts," Graf said. But
he said the language should be exact, allowing an investigation only in
cases where there is "a pattern of violence against people and property."
Favreau cited the latest federal Department of Justice guidelines that
require special care in sorting out criminal activity from those that are
protected.
"This is not for the purpose of being anti-civil rights, trying to go out
and find out about people who are protesting, and it never will be,"
Favreau said of the task force. "We don't have time to be investigating
thoughts and protests."
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On black disenfranchisement
The Observer (London)
Sunday December 10, 2000
Gregory Palast <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hey, Al, take a look at this. Every time I cut open another alligator, I
find the bones of more Gore voters. This week, I was hacking my way
through the Florida swampland known as the Office of Secretary of State
Katherine Harris and found a couple thousand more names of voters
electronically 'disappeared' from the vote rolls. About half of those
named are African-Americans. They had the right to vote, but they never
made it to the balloting booths.
When we left off our Florida story two weeks ago, The Observer discovered
that Harris's office had ordered the elimination of 8,000 Florida voters
on the grounds that they had committed felonies in other states. None had.
Harris bought the bum list from a company called ChoicePoint, a firm whose
Atlanta executive suite and boardroom are filled with Republican funders.
ChoicePoint, we have learned, picked up the list of faux felons from state
officials in - ahem - Texas. In fact, it was a roster of people who, like
their Governor, George W, had committed nothing more than misdemeanours.
For Harris, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his brother, the Texas blacklist
was a mistake made in Heaven. Most of those targeted to have their names
'scrubbed' from the voter roles were African-Americans, Hispanics and poor
white folk, likely voters for Vice-President Gore. We don't know how many
voters lost their citizenship rights before the error was discovered by a
few sceptical county officials, before ChoicePoint, which has gamely
'fessed-up to the Texas-sized error, produced a new list of 58,000 felons.
In May, Harris sent on the new, improved scrub sheets to the county
election boards. Maybe it's my bad attitude, but I thought it worthwhile
to check out the new list. Sleuthing around county offices with a team of
researchers from internet newspaper Salon.com, we discovered that the
'correct' list wasn't so correct.
One elections supervisor, Linda Howell of Madison County, was so upset by
the errors that she refused to use the Harris/ChoicePoint list. How could
she be so sure the new list identified innocent people as felons? Because
her own name was on it, 'and I assure you, I am not a felon'.
Our 10-county review suggests a minimum 15 per cent misidentification
rate. That makes another 7,000 innocent people accused of crimes and
stripped of their citizenship rights in the run-up to the presidential
race. And not just any 7,000 people. Hillsborough (Tampa) county
statisticians found that 54 per cent of the names on the scrub list
belonged to African-Americans, who voted 93 per cent for Gore.
Now our team, diving deeper into the swamps, has discovered yet a third
group whose voting rights were stripped. The ChoicePoint-generated list
includes 1,704 names of people who, earlier in their lives, were convicted
of felonies in Illinois and Ohio. Like most American states, these two
restore citizenship rights to people who have served their time in prison
and then remained on the good side of the law.
Florida strips those convicted in its own courts of voting rights for
life. But Harris's office concedes, and county officials concur, that the
state of Florida has no right to impose this penalty on people who have
moved in from these other states. (Only 13 states, most in the Old
Confederacy, bar reformed criminals from voting.)
Going deeper into the Harris lists, we find hundreds more convicts from
the 35 other states which restored their rights at the end of sentences
served. If they have the right to vote, why were these citizens barred
from the polls? Harris didn't return my calls. But Alan Dershowitz did.
The Harvard law professor, a renowned authority on legal process, said:
'What's emerging is a pattern of reducing the total number of voters in
Florida, which they know will reduce the Democratic vote.'
How could Florida's Republican rulers know how these people would vote? I
put the question to David Bositis, America's top expert on voting
demographics. Once he stopped laughing, he said the way Florida used the
lists from a private firm was, 'an obvious technique to discriminate
against black voters'. In a darker mood, Bositis, of Washington's Center
for Political and Economic Studies, said the sad truth of American justice
is that 46 per cent of those convicted of felony are African-American. In
Florida, a record number of black folk, over 80 per cent of those
registered to vote, packed the polling booths on November 7. Behind the
curtains, nine out of 10 black people voted Gore.
Mark Mauer of the Sentencing Project, Washington, pointed out that the
'white' half of the purge list would be peopled overwhelmingly by the
poor, also solid Democratic voters.
Add it up. The dead-wrong Texas list, the uncorrected 'corrected' list,
plus the out-of-state ex-con list. By golly, it's enough to swing a
presidential election. I bet the busy Harris, simultaneously in charge of
both Florida's voter rolls and George Bush's presidential campaign, never
thought of that.
But enough is never enough, it seems. We have discovered a fourth group of
Gore voters also barred from the polls.
It was Thursday, 2am. On the other end of the line, heavy breathing, then
a torrent too fast for me to catch it all. 'Vile... lying... inaccurate...
pack of nonsense... riddled with errors'... click! This was not a
ChoicePoint whistleblower telling me about the company's notorious list.
It was ChoicePoint's own media communications representative, Marty Fagan,
communicating with me about my, 'sleazy disgusting journalism' in
reporting on it.
I was curious about this company that appears - although never say never
in this game - to have chosen the next President for America's voters. Its
board dazzles with Republican stars, including billionaire Ken Langone and
Home Depot tycoon Bernard Marcus, big Republican funders.
Florida is the only state to hire an outside firm to suggest who should
lose citizenship rights. That may change. 'Given a new President, and what
we accomplished in Florida, we expect to roll across the nation,'
ChoicePoint told me ominously.
They have quite a pedigree for this solemn task. The company's Florida
subsidiary, Database Technologies (now DBT Online), was founded by one
Hank Asher. When US law enforcement agencies alleged that he may have been
associated with Bahamian drug dealers - although no charges were brought -
the company lost its data management contract with the FBI. Hank and his
friends left last year and so, in Florida's eyes, the past is forgiven.
Thursday, 3am. (I should say both calls were at my request). A new,
gentler voice giving me ChoicePoint's upbeat spin. 'You say we got over 15
per cent wrong - we like to look at that as up to 85 per cent right!'
That's 7,000 votes-plus - the bulk Democrats, not to mention the thousands
on the Texas list. Gore may lose by 500 votes.
I contacted San Francisco-based expert Mark Swedlund. 'It's just
fundamental industry practice that you don't roll out the list statewide
until you have tested it and tested it again,' he said. 'Dershowitz is
right: they had to know that this jeopardised thousands of people's
registrations. And they would also know the [racial] profile of those
voters.'
'They' is Florida state, not ChoicePoint. Let's not get confused where the
blame lies. Harris's crew lit this database fuse, then acted surprised
when it blew up. Swedlund says ChoicePoint had a professional
responsibility to tell the state to test the list; ChoicePoint says the
state should not have used its 'raw' data.
Until Florida privatised its Big Brother powers, laws kept the process out
in the open. This year, when one county asked to see ChoicePoint's
formulas and back-up for blacklisting voters, they refused - these were
commercial secrets. So we'll never know how America's president was
chosen.
ChoicePoint complains that I said Harris signed their contract. It was a
Beth Emory. I'm still more than 85 per cent accurate.
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Ebola Toll Reaches 400
December 11, 2000
By HENRY WASSWA
Associated Press Writer
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP)
The number of people infected with the
deadly Ebola virus reached 400 on Friday, with 160 of those victims
dying from the highly contagious disease, a health official said.
In the last three days, two people have died in the northern
town of Gulu, while two others died in Masindi, 125 miles northwest
of Kampala, said Dr. Alex Opio, assistant director of the National
Disease Control Center.
During the same period, Opio said seven new cases were
identified in Gulu, the epicenter of the outbreak. So far the
disease has been confined to Gulu, Masindi and Mbarara districts,
he added.
With the rate of new cases dwindling, Ugandan officials have no
plans to restrict travel during the busy Christmas season because
there was little chance at this stage of the outbreak worsening,
Opio said.
The outbreak has taken a staggering toll on the health workers
in Gulu.
``So far 26 health workers have been affected by the virus,''
Opio said. ``Of the 13 of these people who have died in Gulu, they
include 11 nurses, one doctor and a clinical officer ... two nurses
and one doctor are down with the disease.''
The fever caused by the Ebola virus is transmitted through body
fluids. The disease can cause severe hemorrhagic fever and is often
fatal, but victims aggressively treated with fluids to fight
dehydration stand a better chances of survival.
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Linked stories:
********************
By Revealing Their Discord, Justices Break Unwritten Rule
<http://tm0.com/IHT/sbct.cgi?s=80180978&i=283910&d=717813>
Abandoning all pretense of unanimity, the U.S. Supreme Court's
liberal and conservative members openly attacked each other over
whether to stop the manual recounting of ballots in Florida.
********************
Gore camp hints at election defeat
<http://itn.co.uk/news/20001211/world/02uselex.shtml>
Representatives for Al Gore have indicated that he may concede in the US
election if the latest Supreme Court ruling goes against him.
********************
High court may ease market anxiety
<http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_infobeatBIZ.asp?/news/501406.asp>
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that may bring a definitive end to the
presidential impasse this week could alleviate anxiety on Wall Street,
lifting stocks and the dollar while stalling the bond market's recent surge.
********************
Privacy a Victim of the Drug
War <http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40532,00.html?tw=wn20001211>
A recent Supreme Court ruling banning drug checkpoints won't have much
effect, scholars say. The war on drugs has already led to reduced
privacy rights and increased government surveillance.
********************
Cop joins call for end to police violence
<http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/cox12102000.htm>
A Boston police officer once beaten almost to death by fellow
cops joined with other victims of official violence to address
an audience at Harvard on the problem of police brutality.
********************
More Than 20,000 Workers Penalized Annually for Union Efforts
<http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/s/20001211/n11137746.html>
The numbers of workers illegally harassed or fired by employers for union
organizing activities is soaring.
********************
Audio: Hunter S. Thompson
<http://bf.salon.com/XBRT072A14AD3B0AA77F>
In this rare interview, George Plimpton talks to Thompson about Vietnam
and the death of the American dream.
********************
======================================================
"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
-Jim Dodge
======================================================
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
-Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
======================================================
"It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."
-J. Krishnamurti
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