[CTRL] Bush's Hit List At the United Nations
-Caveat Lector- This story has been forwarded to you from http://www.alternet.org by [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Bush's Hit List At the United Nations http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13088 The U.S. has mounted a systematic campaign to oust top United Nations officials opposed to the war on terrorism.brnbsp; - A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Once-Secret Nixon
-Caveat Lector- This story has been forwarded to you from http://www.alternet.org by [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tricky Dick Puff the Dragon - Once-Secret Nixon Tapes Show Why the U.S. Outlawed Pot http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12666 Lumping marijuana, homosexuality, Jews and Commies into one grand conspiracy, a paranoid Richard Nixon launched America's war on pot 30 years ago. Here are the tapes to prove it. - A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Revolving door poses danger to defense
-Caveat Lector- From: Alamaine Revolving door poses danger to defense By James J. Zogby August 7, 2001 WASHINGTON - The Senate's confirmation of Douglas J. Feith as undersecretary of defense for policy is a classic illustration of the dangerous abuses inherent in the revolving door that operates between government and private industry. Mr. Feith is a political appointee who has used his time in government to build relations that can be used for business purposes, and then returns to government. As the Pentagon's policy chief, his responsibilities include: - Developing policy on the conduct of alliances and defense relationships with foreign governments and their military establishments. - Coordinating and overseeing the implementation of international security strategy and policy on issues that relate to foreign governments and their defense establishments. - Providing oversight of all Pentagon efforts related to international technology transfer. This is a powerful position and holds great potential for conflicts of interest. With previous Pentagon experience under President Ronald Reagan and as special counsel to Richard Perle, who was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, Mr. Feith accumulated friends in and out of government who have U.S. defense contracts and relationships. Most recently, Mr. Feith was an attorney with the Washington firm of Feith and Zell. His biography says that he specializes in technology transfer, joint ventures and foreign investment in the defense and aerospace industries. His firm has one international affiliate, in Israel. More than two-thirds of all of its reported casework involves representing Israeli or other foreign interests. In light of Mr. Feith's new appointment, one of these cases deserves some attention. As described on the firm's Web site, Mr. Feith represented a leading Israeli armaments manufacturer in establishing joint ventures with leading U.S. aerospace manufacturers for manufacture and sale of missile systems, to the U.S. Department of Defense and worldwide. Mr. Feith has also been a registered foreign agent for Turkey, seeking to promote the objective of U.S.-Turkish defense industrial cooperation through a company called IAI. At the time, Mr. Perle, Mr. Feith's former boss, disavowed IAI's efforts, claiming that I find very distasteful this business where people leave the government and, the next thing you know, they're on the other side of the table negotiating with the U.S. This did not stop Mr. Perle from being IAI's highest-paid consultant. More recently, Mr. Feith and Mr. Perle teamed to represent the Bosnian government. According to Richard Holbrooke, the principal U.S. negotiator at the 1995 Dayton peace talks, Mr. Perle and Mr. Feith worked for and advised the Bosnians during the talks. This time, however, they did not register with the Justice Department, as foreign agents are required to do. Mr. Feith also represented the Loral Corp., which the Pentagon accused of selling sensitive technology to China. Mr. Feith argued Loral's case before the Senate. On the political front, Mr. Feith sees the world in ideological dualistic terms - the forces of absolute good confronting the forces of absolute evil. He is especially adept at fitting the Middle East into this paradigm. A prolific writer, Mr. Feith has left a long paper trail of vehemently anti-Arab tracts and diatribes against those who challenge or seek to question Israeli policy or as he says, Israel's moral superiority over the Arabs. At his initial Senate hearing, several senators raised their concerns with Mr. Feith's previous statements about the Middle East, his support for scrapping existing arms control agreements and his support for unilateral development of a missile defense shield. Now that the Senate has confirmed Mr. Feith's nomination, his work and the policies he creates must be closely scrutinized. His pattern of behavior and obvious conflicts of interest should have disqualified him from such a sensitive post; the issues raised at his confirmation hearing demonstrated that. He is now shaping policy at the Pentagon. Unfortunately, he is the wrong person to do so. James J. Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute. Copyright (c) 2001, The Baltimore Sun Link to the article: http://www.sunspot.net/bal-op.feith07aug07.story Visit http://www.sunspot.net A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Alamaine spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The ruins Tony Blair should visit Forget Cancun, globalisation has destroyed the real Latin America Special report: globalisation Isabel Hilton Tuesday August 07 2001 The Guardian Tony Blair is unlikely to be troubled on the beaches of Cancun in Mexico - where he is taking a much needed holiday - by any challenge to the vision of global prosperity that he promoted in his brief tour of Latin America. Cancun is an affluent resort, much favoured for Latin American summits and well endowed with that combination of natural beauty and comfortable surroundings that our leaders favour when they gather to order our lives. But perhaps the prime minister might notice that the benefits of the economic liberalisation that most countries in Latin America have pursued over the past 15 years are less evident to those around him than he might hope. In fact, as a senior UN development programme official put it two years ago: For the millions of poor, the slum dwellers, globalisation now has the face of cruelty, of unemployment and marginalisation... The distribution of wealth and income in the region is the most unequal in the world and the rise in daily criminal violence ... continuing drug-related problems, as well as the incidence of official corruption [are], in part, a manifestation of the unequal pattern of development. It is not a great moment for advocates of globalisation in Latin America. Argentina, for instance, was until lately a country cited as a fine example: it had a president who, despite his Peronist label, had implemented the policies of the free market, pegged the local currency to the dollar, controlled inflation and carried out wholesale privatisation. Argentina appeared to blossom and bankers and financiers sang the praises of Carlos Menem from New York to Zurich. Now, though, ex-president Menem faces criminal charges, Argentina's external debt has reached a staggering #163;90bn, unemployment stands at 18% and the country is bankrupt. In Brazil, things are only slightly better. There, too, the president is a liberaliser, but after a promising start, the economy has been plagued by recurring crises. Two years ago, with inflation running at nearly 20% and a general collapse in middle-class incomes, more than 100,000 people marched in Brasilia to demand the resignation of the president and an end to IMF reforms. Then there is Peru - another case of a promising start gone wrong. Alberto Fujimori's regime ended last year in chaos, but he also was once the darling of international finance - a man who appeared to have tamed inflation and was liberalising the economy. Today he is hiding out in Japan, a country of which he recently admitted to being a citizen. (If he had owned up 10 years ago, of course, he would have been disqualified the presidency of Peru.) His government collapsed in a corruption scandal of breathtaking proportions and he is reduced to posting messages on his website, singing his own praises. Colombia also has a president who is keen on liberalisation - but his main preoccupation is the fact that his country has become, with Plan Colombia, the latest arena for the theatre of American military illusions. Plan Colombia has notched up the achievement of uniting most Colombians against the environmental disaster of enforced aerial spraying of toxic chemicals and further victories are in the pipeline - a growth of paramilitary human rights abuses, escalation of military activity and the likely export of Colombia's problems to her neighbours are all on the cards. But there is one major Latin American country that is bucking the trend of liberalisation: in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, the still popular president of the country that boasts one of the largest oil reserves in the western hemisphere, offers an interesting exception to the general rule. In most of Latin America it is the poor and the newly impoverished middle classes - the teachers and health workers who no longer have jobs, the pensioners who no longer have pensions - who articulate the opposition to economic liberalism. They have the bad grace to point out that, so far at least, it has brought dramatic increases in inequalities in the distribution of incomes and assets. In Venezuela, though, it is the president who says so. Chavez is an old-fashioned nationalist caudillo who prefers the company of Fidel Castro to that of George Bush or Tony Blair. Chavez seems determined to introduce to Venezuela some Cuban-style social control though, so far, this does not seem to have dented his domestic ratings. He's a wild card who might not matter but for those oil reserves. In the 50s and 60s, behaviour such as Chavez's would certainly have invited destabilisation and a military
[CTRL] A State Agency with the Power to 'Kidnap with Impunity'
-Caveat Lector- Monday, July 30, 2001 By Wendy McElroy Click on the URL below for the rest of this story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,30915,00.html A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] The American Dream
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/522/op9.htm }}Begin Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 22 - 28 February 2001 Issue No.522 Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 Current issue | Previous issue | Site map Reflections An all-American dream By Hani Shukrallah Why are the Americans so shabby in their treatment of their "friends" in this particular corner of the global empire? Notwithstanding the CIA's concerns about restive "youth bulges" in the Arab world, Washington seems bent on destabilising its Arab allies, and worse. To what aim? It's enough to give the "friends" a positive persecution complex. The "rogues" have been so beaten to the ground by deliberate action and by historical circumstances they cut very comic figures when presented (whether by the US or by themselves) as a "threat" to US/Israeli interests in the region. The "moderates," on the other hand, have been bled dry of concessions and assurances of loyalty. Mind you, this is not a question of lack of communication (among friends). In Camp David and till the very eve of Sharon's election, Arafat was telling anyone who would listen, most notably the CIA's youth-bulge-concerned Tanner, that the concessions demanded of him would be tantamount to signing his own death warrant. America's allies have been at great pains to explain to their friends and patrons in Washington that the Arabs' cup of humiliation has run over, and that the indignities heaped upon the regimes and peoples of the region are calling forth the presumably shared horror of the "Islamic threat." None of this seems to make much of an impression, however, either on the various White House residents and their men, or, a fortiori, on the lawmakers in Congress. Bush Jr's oil-and-armaments cronies are already proving a s sensitive to their Arab friends' dilemma as Clinton's arch-Zionist lot were. One obvious reason for such callous disregard is that, deep down, the people in Washington are convinced that the so-called Islamic threat is more bogus than real. This, I believe, is an accurate assessment. Under the fashionable cultural-essence disguise, today's Islamists are yesterday's Arab nationalists, but mutated -- with all the faults (magnified) and no ne of the attributes, ergo Saddam Hussein's reincarnation as caliph in bombed-back-to-the-Middle-Ages Baghdad. So the boys in Washington are lying through their teeth when they rant about the threat of Islamic terrorism, Saddam, Gaddafi or Sudan's Al-Bashir. Nevertheless, this does not explain the lengths to which they are willing to go to humiliate the Arabs and embarrass their alleged pals and allies in the region. Observe the timing of Bush Jr's first Middle East "initiative" (Britain's Blair is irrelevant now as ever -- whether it's "third way" Democrats or "right-wing conspiracy" Republicans in the White House, he happily does wh at he is told). An acknowledged war criminal has just won the premiership in Israel. He is forming a cabinet straight out of the Arabs' worst nightmare, a grim Zionist monolith that leaves not the slightest room for illus ion; one great big happy Zionist family, stretching all the way from the Arabs' pet dove, Peres (who remembers Qana anyway?), to a couple of frothing-at-the-mouth genocidal maniacs with freakish dreams of wiping out half of Egypt's 60 million people by bombing the High Dam. Nearly ten years after Madrid, the peace process has been declared over and done with. There shall be no "final and lasting" Arab-Israeli peace. Israel is to have a wa r cabinet, and the whole region seems to be hanging over a precipice of apocalyptic violence. And Bush Jr goes and bombs Baghdad. If only to underline the linkage, the allegedly "routine" bombing of the beleaguered Arab capital is to be followed soon after by joint US-Israeli Patriot missile exercises, also "routine." Such breezy disregard for the stability and, at the very least, medium-term survival prospects of America's friends in the Arab world seems, at first glance, totally bewildering -- even more so now that the AIPAC crowd is out of the White House, having been replaced by the Arabs' alleged friends in the oil industry. The point, of course, is that in today's US, one does not need to be Jewish to be a Zionist, as Edward Said has so clearly i llustrated in his series of articles on Zionism in America. It is not that the "Zionist lobby" has become all-powerful in America, but that Zionism, in ideology and practice, has become the most accurate expression of Ame rica's imperial self-image and needs in a post-Cold War, globalised and globalising world. No other ideology and practice seems to both embody and epitomise the arrogance of power, the arbitrary and unchecked dispensing o f violence, the unequivocally racist contempt for the oppressed and the heartless denial of their most fundamental rights, that appear more and more to be essential requisites of US-led capitalist
[CTRL] Socialising Email
-Caveat Lector- From www.wsws.org WSWS : News Analysis : Europe : Germany Germany: new law allows more extensive government monitoring of phone calls and email By Alexander Boulerian 20 February 2001 Back to screen version| Send this link by email The Social Democratic Party (SPD)-Green Party coalition government in Germany has agreed on a new law governing state organised wiretaps, bugging and the interception of e-mail. The Gesetz zur Beschrnkung des Brief-, Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnisses (law restricting postal and telecommunications secrecy) will regulate the ability of the German secret services to listen in on telephone calls and intercept faxes and e- mail. The law is a crucial step in strengthening the state's powers and a further restriction of fundamental democratic rights, whereby the SPD-Green federal government is continuing the work of i s conservative predecessors. The new regulation is known as the G-10 law, named after Article 10 in the German constitution: The secrecy of the mail and telecommunications is inviolable. However, legal restrictions may be imposed. The new regulations became necessary when, in 1999, the Supreme Court ruled sections of the 1994 law dealing with these issues to be unconstitutional and called for juridical clarity, particularly in relation to the handling of personal data. SPD Prime Minister Schroeder has used the Supreme Court ruling to greatly expand the powers of the secret services. Although the regulations dealing with personal data are more strictly drawn in the new billthe authorities must now inform each person who is subject to a bugging order as soon as the data relating to him has been stored, whereas previously such data could be used secretly for three monthsthe regulations covering the monitoring activities of the G-10 Commission have been extended. In future, the secret service can begin bugging if suspicion to commit racial incitement exists and other ways to inv stigate the facts offer no prospects or would be substantially more difficult. The monitoring of persons under suspicion is to be simplified. While previously someone could only be bugged if he were suspected of belonging to a terrorist organisationwhich required the involvement of at least three alleged culprit in future, one suspect is enough. The government sees the danger coming particularly from extremist individuals or small groups who might employ explosives or firearms. Moreover, the secret services now have per ission to spy on telephone calls and e- mails that are carried over optical fibre cables (apparently, the most frequently used transmission technology today). Previously, they were only permitted to listen in on satellite and radio relay links. The powers of the secret services are further expanded, in that they can listen in where suspicion exists of terrorism, drug dealing, illegal arms exports or hostage- taking abroad, if the interests of the Federal Republic o Germany are directly affected. According to an article in Der Spiegel magazine, a special task force designed to act in the event of a crisis has already been formed within the secret services. For the first time, with this law, a new statute came into effect before being formally passed by the federal parliament (Bundestag). In the case of the German Wallert family, who had been kidnapped by Muslim rebels on the Philippine island of Jolo, the Bundestag Committee for Intelligence Services listening operations rapidly approved a bugging operation because of the danger to life and limb of the hostages. In addition, the results of telephone monitoring will expressly become acceptable as proof in procedures to prohibit unconstitutional parties and extremist associations. Previously this was the case only in criminal proceedings. This means that secret, classified telephone logs and reports of undercover agents can in the future play a crucial role in court actions. The intention to use such logs in pending Supreme Court proceedings against the neo- Nazi Nationale Partei Deutschlands (NPD) has caused particular concern on the part of the Green party, which does not want to give the impression that a Lex NPD is being established. In reality, the initiators of the law only distanced themselves because the special committee dealing with the preparation of an NPD ban complained that such dossiers were not necessary for a prohibition. Those pushing for the new law included Guenther Beckstein, interior minister in Bavaria's Christian Social Union state gov rnment, who for some time has agitated for such provisions. His proposals now appear almost word for word in the legal text. This right-wing political hard-liner, renowned for his draconian actions against asylum-seekers, immigrants and supporters of minority religions, was also the first to push for an NPD ban. Beckstein and Federal Interior Minister Otto Schily (SPD) have from the start been passing the ball back and forth between one
[CTRL] (Fwd) Release: Lemon drop drugs and paper guns: Zero-tolerance
-Caveat Lector- --- Forwarded message follows --- Date sent: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:38:57 -0500 (EST) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Release: Lemon drop drugs and paper guns: Zero-tolerance laws get bizarre From: Libertarian Party Announcements [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- === NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100 Washington DC 20037 World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org === For release: February 21, 2001 === For additional information: George Getz, Press Secretary Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] === Lemon drop drugs and paper guns: Zero-tolerance laws get bizarre WASHINGTON, DC -- Three cheers for the American Bar Association's decision to oppose zero tolerance policies which allow kids to be kicked out of school for possession of "drugs" like lemon drops and Kool-Aid, and for "weapons" like fingers and rubber bands, the Libertarian Party said today. "Finally, some sanity about America's zero tolerance nonsense," said Steve Dasbach, the party's national director. "In a country where students can be expelled for sniffing Kool- Aid, for sharing candy, and for brandishing potato chip canisters, the American Bar Association has interjected a note of common sense." On Monday, the leadership of the ABA voted to recommend an end to zero-tolerance policies in the nation's 14,000 school districts. The 400,000-member lawyer's organization, which held its winter meeting in San Diego, said such policies are a misguided "one-size- fits-all solution to all the problems schools confront" and have "redefined students as criminals." Zero tolerance policies -- many mandated by state law after the tragic school shootings in Columbine, Colorado -- require government- run schools to expel or suspend students for any violation of weapons or drugs regulations. Such policies have led to bizarre results, including: * A 6-year-old in Colorado was suspended for violating the school's anti-drug policy after a teacher saw him share a lemon drop candy with a friend. The school also called an ambulance for the lemon- drop-eating friend. * In New Jersey, a 9-year-old was suspended -- and forced to undergo psychiatric counseling -- for threatening to shoot a classmate with a rubber band. * A 10-year-old in Colorado was expelled because her mother put a small knife in her lunchbox to cut an apple. When the girl realized the knife could violate the school's anti-weapons policy, she turned it over to a teacher. The school then expelled the girl. * Three grammar school students in Colorado were suspended for possessing a weapon -- a water pistol. * A 13-year-old in Arizona, inspired by the movie October Sky, built a rocket -- fueled by three match heads -- out of a Pringles potato chip canister. When he brought the potato chip canister to school he was suspended for a year for having a "weapon." The school also reported him to the police. * In Michigan, a third-grader was suspended for showing his classmates a gun-shaped medallion, slightly larger than a charm for a necklace. He had found the piece of jewelry in a snowbank. "State law requires us to take action even though it was a toy," said a school administrator. * A school in New Jersey suspended two kindergarten students for playing "cops and robbers" on the playground. They had pointed their fingers at each other like guns and shouted, "Bang bang!" * In Maryland, a school suspended a 9-year-old after he drew a picture of a gun on a piece of paper. * In Virginia, eight students were suspended for one week after they were caught sniffing Kool-Aid. They were charged with "possession of contraband" because they were "using Kool-Aid in a way that imitated the use of illegal drugs," school officials said. Given such ridiculous results, zero tolerance policies are clearly ineffective, said Dasbach. "Expelling children for possession of a rubber band, a water pistol, or a finger doesn't keep anyone safe," he said. "Schools don't seem to recognize that there is a difference between a psychotic student with a semi-automatic weapon and a 6-year-old with a rubber band. "And to the degree that these policies force school officials to pay attention to such trivial transgressions while ignoring real potential dangers, students may actually be less safe. That's bad news for parents whose children are trapped in government schools." At their worst, the kind of zero tolerance policies opposed by the American Bar Association send a chilling message to children, said Dasbach. "These policies teach children that
[CTRL] The Pipeline
-Caveat Lector-
Beginning of article from
}}Begin
Published on Thursday, February 15, 2001 in the Guardian of London
A Discreet Deal in the Pipeline
Nato Mocked Those Who Claimed There was a Plan for Caspian Oil
by George Monbiot
Gordon Brown knows precisely what he should do about BP. The company's 10bn profits
are crying out for a windfall tax. Royalties and petroleum revenue tax, both lifted
when the oil price was low, are in urgent need of reinstatement. These measures
would be popular and fair. But, as all political leaders are aware, you don't mess
with Big Oil.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such
material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental,
political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues,
etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those
who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted
material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must
obtain permission from the copyright owner.
NewsCenter
| NewsWire
Search | Contacting Us | Sign-Up | Privacy
Tell Us What You Think:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Making News?: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Copyrighted 1997-2000
All Rights Reserved. Common Dreams. www.commondreams.org
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
[CTRL] Dad in the Bagh!!
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/iraq2.html }}Begin Why Did Bush Bomb? by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. The Clinton administration helped train us to never believe the official rationale for a bombing of a foreign country, particularly an impoverished one. In the 1990s, foreign policy had more to do with domestic woes than with actual international threats, no matter what Clinton or his spokesmen said. But when it comes to providing something believable in place of the truth, the Bush administration seems even less competent than its predecessor. All the Bush White House could come up with for why it is bombing and killing people in Iraq was "self defense." Look: Americans know what self defense is. Its when you shoot the guy who has broken into your home to attack you. Its when you blast the fellow whos trying to mug you or steal your car. Its a violent action taken to prevent an aggression against your person or property. Transfer the idea of "self defense" to national policy: it is something a nation undertakes when its borders are attacked or its embassies blown up. The US military was not defending itself when it dropped bombs outside Baghdad, even if you believe that Iraq was bolstering its anti-aircraft capacities. When you are standing on Iraqi soil and look up to see US fighters zooming around your airspace, and you look around and see that the country has been beaten to a pulp by ten years of cruel sanctions, and you notice that these planes drop bombs on a regular basis to correspond with US political priorities, you too might consider bolstering your defenses. Lets call the US bombing what it was, not defense but aggression, an extension of a decade of aggression that has taken both economic and military forms. There is no moral code, no religious tenet, no traditional accepted rule of international law under which such a policy can be seen as anything but immoral. Whats more, it has undermined US credibility yet again, just at the time much of the world was willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. What is it about the office of the US presidency that leads men who would never kill anyone in their capacity as individuals to believe that doing so is fine so long as you use a weapon of mass destruction funded by the taxpayer? What does George W. Bush think when he sees pictures of dead Iraqi civilians and wounded women and children? Is he really (like Madeline Albright) prepared to say it is "worth the price"? Under what system of ethics, what rule of law? We know W. as a man of compassion, someone who reaches across the aisle to befriend even sworn enemies. Hes turned the other cheek many times, in the election and since becoming president. He likes to put the past behind him. What then are we to make of his behavior toward Saddam, which seems designed to make a lifetime enemy at a time when relations were moving toward normalization? He wouldnt lift a finger to punish Clintons gang for trashing the White House, but let Iraq try to protect itself from armed American warplanes and Bush starts shooting and bombing people hes never met. Listening to the pundits, reading discussion boards, scanning opinion columns, you can take your pick of what you think is the REAL reason he gave the go ahead. The number one theory says that Bush is settling old family business, continuing a war begun by his father. In this scenario, both the president and the vice president are simply pursuing a vendetta against Saddam Hussein. But its a heck of a way to do it, since every bomb that falls on Iraq only strengthens Saddams political standing in Iraq and the entire Arab world. Other explanations are more creative. The Bush administration is in hock to the oil interests who want to keep Iraq crippled in its producing capacity, and thereby keep prices high and give monopoly profits to their friends in Texas. This theory notes that Iraq has dramatically increased its oil production in the last quarter possibly becoming a competitive threat to American oil interests. Another theory has partisans of Israel within the
[CTRL] Just Makes You Wanna Say Hmmm
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38432f49307d.htm
}}Begin
Help!
]
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and
do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All
materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair
use of copyrighted works.
Bush Son Had Dinner Plans With Hinckley Brother Before Shooting
Crime/Corruption Front Page News Keywords: NEIL BUSH, GEORGE W. BUSH, GEORGE BUSH,
JOHN W. HINCKLEY JR., SCOTT HINCKLEY
Source: The Associated Press
Published: March 31, 1981 Author: wire
Posted on 11/29/1999 17:58:33 PST by Wallaby
Bush Son Had Dinner Plans With Hinckley Brother Before
Shooting
The Associated Press
Domestic News
March 31, 1981, Tuesday, PM cycle
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
[CTRL] (T)Reason
-Caveat Lector- From http://128.121.216.19/justin/pf/p-j021601.html }}Begin Behind the Headlines by Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com February 16, 2001 MARC RICH: TREASON IS THE REASON The Marc Rich Pardon was a payoff but to whom? Everybody's talking about the Marc Rich pardon, but in all the newsprint (and bandwidth) devoted to this story the spin is that this is just the crowning example of Clinton's utter depravity: it's all supposed to be about money. But is it? Did the President of these United States, in his final hours in the White House, really pardon one of the top ten on Interpol's list of most wanted criminals and set himself up for a storm of protest and opprobrium all for a measly $450,000 contribution to his presidential library? THE SHORT END This is a question that seems to answer itself. Even if you add in the $1 million-plus given by Marc's ex-wife, Denise Rich, to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Rodham Clinton's successful campaign for a Senate seat, it seems obvious that, in this supposed deal, the usually crafty Clinton somehow got the short end of the stick. Our ex-President is facing a veritable storm of criticism, some of the harshest coming from members of his own party, and even his biggest defenders are taken aback: they always knew that he was reckless and vulgar, but the sheer scale of this latest example of Bill Clinton's moral turpitude has disgusted even them. They didn't mind when the Lincoln bedroom was being rented out like a Motel 6, but selling presidential pardons to the highest bidder? It didn't go over very well, to say the least: why, even Joe Conason, who took Sidney Blumenthal's place as Clinton's journalistic champion when the latter went on the White House payroll, hung his head in reflected shame at the actions of the man he has so consistently defended: "The Rich pardon will never reflect well on the former president. Exercising an extraordinary power that ought to be reserved for the repentant and rehabilitated, he rushed to a bad judgment that benefited a very bad man. Yet the true motives behind that decision may be far less damning than whatever Clinton's most demented detractors want us to believe." A LOBBY TO DIE FOR Aha! And what, pray tell, were his "true motives"? According to Conason, it wasn't for the love of money, but for the love of Israel: Clinton gave in to pressure from Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, and Shabtai Shavit the former chief of the Mossad intelligence service, not to mention the Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and a long list of Israeli dignitaries. A series of emails between various members of Rich's legal team, published in Salon, details the concerted campaign to mobilize Israeli support, while Zev Chafets, writing in the New York Daily News, snorts in disgust at the well-organized pressure on behalf of the Rich pardon from Israel's friends in the US, including Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and Eli Wiesel who now denies it. Conason writes that "it is almost certain that those entreaties swayed him more than the largesse of Rich's ex-wife Denise, who donated more than $1 million to Democrats over the last decade." DAMN YOU Yes, Joe, but just how much "less damning" is this explanation than the charge of selling out for filthy lucre? Indeed, such a motive seems far more damning and dangerous, for what we are talking about is a President's circumvention of American justice at the behest of a foreign power. We all knew Clinton was a sleazeball: that, after all, was a key factor in his popularity among certain sectors of the population. It was part of his charm. Why the popular revulsion at this latest revelation? A sleazeball they could handle. Sullying the Oval Office with his furtive trysts was one thing, but selling out American justice to satisfy demands emanating from beyond our borders? That's a different story and it's the real story of the Marc Rich Affair. NOT SO SECRET AGENT Barak called Clinton twice, just before the announcement of the President's pardons, and interceded on Rich's behalf: following a scenario spelled out in the Rich legal team's memos, Barak in effect said he'd settle for Rich in lieu of a pardon for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. Wiesel, on the other hand, now claims that, while he was solicited to appeal to Clinton to grant the pardon, he was determined to hold out for Pollard. Why would the Israelis go all out for Rich? The story is that he has performed certain "services" for the Israeli government, and they are "grateful" for his "unselfish" and even noble actions, which are vaguely connected to the alleged "rescue" of Israelis from Arab clutches and other good deeds. But now it is coming to
[CTRL] Make the Wheel Squeak and Get Some
-Caveat Lector- You guessed it! Oil! Let's see, now, the over ten-year old war against Iraq; the almost ten-year-old war against Yugoslavia (as a convenient bag); Columbia; E Timor (Indonesia?). What kind of foreign policy mandates the oil trade at the point of a missile? Rumour had it once that VietNam was part of LBJ's oil crusade. This is like the trade deficit with the Chinese; once we become too reliant on others' goods and services (resources), we become hollow. AER www.sfgate.com Return to regular view For All the Oil in Colombia Wednesday, February 14, 2001 2001 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/02/14/ED92758.DTL PRESIDENT BUSH has inherited a $1.3 billion commitment to supply and train government troops to fight rebel forces who protect -- and profit from -- Colombian coca-growing peasants. Now he must decide whether to pursue a policy that has failed miserably and threatens to spread the 37-year-old Colombian civil war into Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. The first hopeful sign appeared last week, when President Andres Pastrana -- risking political support, as well as his life -- ventured into rebel-controlled territory and rekindled peace talks that had been dormant for months. For that brave and audacious gesture, however, U.S. military aid was unnecessary. Otherwise, the news from Colombia has been grim. Last year, paramilitary forces killed 60 labor leaders. Seven hundred peasants caught in the cross fire -- their crops and families fumigated by military helicopters -- fled to Panama last month. Colombian guerrilla forces have recently clashed with government troops in Ecuador. Why are we in Colombia? It may be that the country's huge oil reserves interest President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- both oil men from Texas -- more than coca leaves. Last year, Colombia's main export poured some $4.6 billion into its economy. But oil is not easy to procure there. Just days ago, leftist rebels bombed Colombia's second-largest crude export pipeline, which forced Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. to drastically reduce its production. Guerrilla groups, which view the above-ground pipeline as the most visible symbol of foreign corporate exploitation of Colombia's natural resources, bombed the 485-mile oil duct 98 times last year alone. So far this year, they have crippled the pipeline 13 times. When he campaigned for the presidency, Bush pledged to make Latin America his highest priority. In the region, he sees a unique opportunity to leave a distinguished foreign policy legacy. But what kind of legacy? Neither the drug war nor the civil war in Colombia can be won quickly or easily by military means. And if it is the flow of oil that Bush seeks to protect, he needs to make his case honestly and directly to the American people. 2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page A24 AER Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread
[CTRL] (Fwd) Release: Shocking FBI study: Blacks are more likely to b
-Caveat Lector- --- Forwarded message follows --- Date sent: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 15:23:14 -0500 (EST) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Release: Shocking FBI study: Blacks are more likely to be arrested for hate crimes From: Libertarian Party Announcements [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- === NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100 Washington DC 20037 World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org === For release: February 15, 2001 === For additional information: George Getz, Press Secretary Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] === Shocking FBI study: Blacks are more likely to be arrested for hate crimes WASHINGTON, DC -- African-Americans who thought that hate crime laws would protect them against rampaging white racists are in for a shock: A new FBI study reveals that blacks are proportionally one-and- a-half times more likely to be arrested for hate crimes against whites than vice versa. "This new hate crime study is Jesse Jackson's worst nightmare," said Steve Dasbach, Libertarian Party national director. "It appears that he and other African-American leaders have been duped into crusading for laws that have condemned a disproportionate number of blacks to prison. "In light of this study, it's fair to ask who poses a greater threat to the black community: Racist, violent whites -- or oblivious black politicians?" The hate-crime issue was thrust back into the national spotlight on Tuesday when the FBI released its "Hate Crime Statistics" report for 1999, which is part of the agency's annual Uniform Crime Report. Law enforcement agencies nationwide reported that 2,030 whites were arrested for hate crimes against blacks, while 524 African- Americans were arrested for such crimes against whites. Adjusting for the fact that blacks make up only 13% of the population, blacks were statistically one-and-a-half times more likely than whites to face prosecution for hate crimes. "Unfortunately, hate crime laws have boomeranged on blacks," said Dasbach. "African-Americans thought that hate crime legislation would protect them, but instead they're being used as another legal weapon to prosecute them. "And though Americans may assume that politicians who write such laws are well-intended, it's obvious that for blacks, the road to prison is paved with good intentions." The study also revealed that, shockingly, 87 African-Americans were arrested in 1999 for hate crimes against other blacks, meaning that even among same-race crimes, some minorities face heightened jail terms because of hate crime laws. "Hate crimes aren't just for KKK members anymore," said Dasbach. "They are now being applied even to same-race crimes -- apparently giving racist police, prosecutors, or judges another weapon to use against African-Americans." The solution to this disproportionate application of hate crime laws is simple, said Dasbach: Eliminate hate crime laws. "Racist criminals, whether white or black, should be punished for their crimes, but hate crime laws aren't needed to do that," he said. "Murder is murder and assault is assault -- regardless of whether the criminal was motivated by racist hate, generic hate, or pure greed, lust, or envy. People should be prosecuted for their actions, not for their opinions." Such a straightforward system of punishing criminals for their crimes, not their thoughts, would make the criminal justice system more fair, more simple, and more effective, said Dasbach. "Real crimes -- like rape, murder, and robbery -- don't require police to play a guessing game to determine whether they actually occurred, but 'thought crimes' do," he said. "For example, how is a police officer supposed to determine whether a hypothetical black criminal chose a robbery victim because he was rich, because he was white, or because he was rich and white? And why should it make a difference? People should be prosecuted for their actions, not for their opinions." The bottom line is that crimes against a certain protected class of citizens should not be treated more seriously than crimes against anyone else, said Dasbach. "To do so is un-American, and a violation of equal justice under the law," he said. "It also creates the ironic situation we now face: Laws that were supposed to stop racism apparently have racist consequences -- making hate crime laws themselves a hate crime against African-Americans." -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBOoxkiNCSe1KnQG7RAQFwSQQAqMMxoM5zm9hNDWwAAHHxGZxW99pOWS1y pWMuBSAD0CYnHQf48UtGvK7X+k3NACGlju9CftiPVhKutjX2eXIN6AG/YllI09tb
[CTRL] Meddlers
-Caveat Lector- From http://opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=85000578 }}Begin PRINT WINDOWCLOSE WINDOW THE BUSH AGENDA Harding's Lesson Leaving the Balkans now could prove costly. BY MAX BOOT Monday, February 12, 2001 12:01 a.m. During the presidential campaign, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice caused a furor by suggesting that a Bush administration would be interested in rethinking the U.S. commitment to Balkan peacekeeping: "We don't need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten." Now the whole issue is said to be "under review." As part of that process, Team Bush should look at a historical parallel that suggests getting out may not be easy or desirable. This isn't the first time a Republican president has come into office having criticized interventions undertaken by his two-term Democratic predecessor. So did Warren G. Harding in 1920. Woodrow Wilson had been even more interventionist than Bill Clinton, and for much the same reason. Both presidents believed that expanding democracy around the world was in America's interest. Wilson wound up not only getting America into World War I but also occupying Veracruz, Mexico (1914), Haiti (1915), the Dominican Republic (1916) and part of Cuba (1917); sending Gen. John J. Pershing deep into Mexico with 10,000 soldiers in pursuit of Pancho Villa (1916); and dispatching 15,000 soldiers to North Russia and Siberia in 1918 to safeguard Allied war supplies and cooperate with anti-Bolshevik forces. Although Wilson, like Mr. Clinton, succeeded GOP presidents who believed in a muscular foreign policy, by the end of his term he too found himself assailed by Republicans who claimed that U.S. troops were doing too much. During the 1920 campaign, in particular, Harding denounced "the rape of Haiti." This helped him appeal for the votes of blacks, then a Republican constituency, and it gave him a cudgel with which to beat the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who as an assistant secretary of the Navy had played a prominent role in setting occupation policy. Harding vowed he would not "empower an assistant secretary of the Nav y to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets." Once in office, however, Harding found pulling out a lot tougher than it seemed. His powerful secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes, launched protracted and laborious negotiations with Dominican politicians over the te rms of withdrawal. The last Marines did not leave Dominican soil until 1924, and then only after the U.S. had won agreement on a treaty that gave Washington a fair amount of say in the republic's financial affairs. As for Haiti, Harding deferred to Congress. A special Senate committee chaired by Sen. Medill McCormick of Illinois spent 11 months studying conditions in Hispaniola, taking testimony from both critics and supporters of t he occupation. The committee criticized some abuses committed by the Marines but did not find evidence of widespread atrocities. The senators concluded that a U.S. pull-out would lead to a return to the kind of anarchy th at had led U.S. troops to land in 1915. "We are there, and in my judgment we ought to stay there for 20 years," Sen. McCormick said. Harding followed this advice, even if it was at odds with his campaign rhetoric. The U.S. Marines remained until 1934 when, ironically enough, former Assistant Navy Secretary Roosevelt pulled them out. It did not take Haiti long to return to a state of despotism interspersed with periods of chaos. By contrast, the 1920s had been one of the most peaceful and prosperous decades in the country's troubled history--as the 1990s might have been, had Mr. Clinton not ended the second U.S. occupation so soon. While the GOP administrations of the 1920s stayed in Haiti, they did briefly abandon another military commitment, in Nicaragua. U.S. Marines had first been sent there by President Taft in 1909-12 to help depose a dictator who had destabilized Central America. Thereafter, a legation guard of 100 Marines remained in Managua--an implicit threat that an unconstitutional usurpation of power would be met with American military force. This helpe d ensure 13 years of relative stability. But in 1925 Calvin Coolidge, Harding's vice president and successor, decided to withdraw the legation guard. Within a month, Conservative strongman Emiliano Chamorro overthrew the Managua government. The opposing political party, the Liberals, raised the banner of revolt. By 1926 U.S. Marines were back in Nicaragua to protect Am erican lives and property from the ensuing civil war. The U.S. then supervised a fair election that resulted in a victory for the Liberal candidate. But a rival Liberal leader, Augusto Sandino, wanted power for himself an d launched a guerrilla campaign to seize it. The U.S. Marines would spend six frustrating years chasing the
[CTRL] (Fwd) Release: Should your children be required to submit 'fin
-Caveat Lector- --- Forwarded message follows --- Date sent: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 09:56:09 -0500 (EST) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Release: Should your children be required to submit 'fingerprints for food' at school? From: Libertarian Party Announcements [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- === NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100 Washington DC 20037 World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org === For release: February 7, 2001 === For additional information: George Getz, Press Secretary Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] === Should your children be required to submit 'fingerprints for food' at school? WASHINGTON, DC -- A new "fingerprints-for-food" program -- which encourages children to submit their fingerprints to purchase school lunches -- is another frightening example of how law enforcement-style technology is being used to monitor children in public schools, the Libertarian Party said today. "Should 7- and 8-year-olds be required to submit biometric identifiers so they can eat lunch?" asked Steve Dasbach, the party's national director. "Should children in grammar school be treated like criminals for the convenience of public school bureaucrats? Or has schoolyard surveillance finally gone too far?" This week, national attention has become focused on 35 public schools in Pennsylvania, where school officials have implemented an unprecedented "fingerprints-for-food" program. Using technology supplied by a company called Sagem Morpho -- which also sells fingerprint-tracking devices to the FBI and the Secret Service -- schools such as the Welsh Valley Middle School encourage children to have a fingerprint scanned, and a numerical representation of it saved in the school's database. Then, children can put an index finger on a scanner as they move through the cafeteria checkout line. The print is matched in the database, and the price of the lunch is deducted from the family's account. School officials say fingerprinting speeds up lunch lines and ends the problem of lost or stolen lunch money. It's so successful, they say, the technology may be expanded to allow children to check out books from school libraries, board school buses, and have their attendance taken. Not so fast, says Dasbach. Before schoolchildren are routinely fingerprinted, Americans need to ask: * Do we want our children treated like criminal suspects? "Fingerprinting isn't just for criminals any more -- now it's for schoolchildren who only want a hot lunch," noted Dasbach. "Is that the message we want to send about our children?" * Do such programs desensitize children to government demands for biometric identifiers? "Adults are reluctant to allow the government to build databases of biometric identifiers because we know how politicians can abuse such information, and because we understand the Constitutional prohibitions against such privacy-invading programs," he said. "Perhaps the most ominous thing about fingerprinting schoolchildren is that it conditions them to surrender biometric data whenever the government demands it." * Will the government eventually misuse the information it collects? "School officials insist these fingerprint images won't be used for any other purpose," said Dasbach. "But keep in mind, politicians once promised that Social Security numbers would never be used for general identification purposes, that IRS employees would never illegally divulge your income tax records, and that state motor vehicle departments would never sell your drivers license photo. Yet each of those things happened. "So, should we trust school bureaucrats when they say they won't misuse your childrens' fingerprints in the future?" * Are we sacrificing too much for the sake of efficiency? "This fingerprinting procedure may indeed save time and money, like any other industrial assembly line procedure," said Dasbach. "But do we really want our children to be monitored like pieces of machinery? "In a way, this new program exemplifies what is wrong with government-run education: It treats children like interchangeable cogs in a machine, rather than respecting each student as a unique individual." In light of all these concerns, parents ought to find out whether their local school district is planning to start implementing a similar "fingerprints-for-food" program, and speak out against it, he said. "Don't allow your children to be fingerprinted like criminals," he said. "Don't allow your children to be put under the government's thumb." -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.2
[CTRL] The Solana Also Rises
-Caveat Lector- From The URL for his article is http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/javier/solnato2.htm www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes] The Incorporation of Spain and Javier Solana Into NATO An Historical Analysis by Francisco Javier Bernal, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] One of the main contentions regarding Javier Solana Madariaga's past is his presumed anti-NATO stance during the 1980s. Although this volte-face from alleged peace activist to born-again militarist has been debated many times before, I think it is necessary to put it into historical context. In June 1980 U.S. President Jimmy Carter affirmed his administration's conviction that Spanish membership in NATO would significantly enhance the Organization's defensive capability. During the Cold War, the importance of Spain for NATO was clear due to its great geo-strategic importance, particularly its possession of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast, next to the straight of Gibraltar, and of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. It meant that Spain controlled a vital maritime route. Moreover, it had first- class facilities for air-force operations, like Morn de la Frontera, an American base in Andalusia that had been operative since 1953, following an agreement between President Eisenhower and Generalsimo Franco. However, at that time the by then Spanish Prime Minister, Adolfo Surez, was not being very "cooperative". Though coming from a conservative party, the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD), he was conducting himself as an individual too independent in his views, making contacts with Castro, Qadhafi, Arafat and other pariah leaders. Of course, something needed to be done: The Pentagon's impatience with such disobedience soon resulted in its rattling its sabers... In just two months, Suarez was the victim of a smear campaign from inside his own party, leading him to resign shortly thereafter. The objective of the White House was to integrate Spain into its military engines, even at the cost of seriously damaging (or even aborting) the constitutional process in the course of performing this integration. In February 1981, an attempted coup d'etat occurred: The U.S. Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, affirmed publicly that "it was an internal affair only of concern to Spain," despite the publicly known active participation of agents from the U.S. Embassy in the preparations of the military pronunciamiento. Solana's Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) had already shown itself as very useful for the U.S. Secretary of State's purposes, having promoted a vote of no confidence in the parliament against PM Surez. The new UCD designated Prime Minister, the greatly unpopular Calvo Sotelo, pushed the incorporation of Spain into the Atlantic Alliance in the autumn of 1981. Of course, it was still not the ideal situation for the Pentagon. Javier Solana, an old Fullbrighter, accused of being a CIA man inside the PSOE structure (see the book. 'Soberanos e Intervenidos, Estrategias globales, americanos y espaoles,' by Jaon Garces), was the person who made the official presentation of Felipe Gonzlez (PSOE's Secretary General) to the US Embassy in Madrid. Washington was very much interested in controlling the Spanish political scene, as it had done through the efforts of U.S. Ambassador Frank Carlucci shortly before in Portugal to "manage" the revolution of 25 April there, isolating people like Saraiva de Carvalho and, mainly, Vasco Goncalves, and offering in exchange blind support for "moderate democrats" like Costa Gomes. What the Spanish Socialist Party receivedas payment was indirect financing for the next round of general elections, via the omnipresent AFL-CIO trade union federation, whose foreign activities peculiarly always coincided with the State Department's and the CIA's interests. Anyway, if the Socialists wanted to win the elections they needed to play the NATO card very wisely. Most of the Spanish people were fiercely anti-NATO and any different position would alienate the leftist voters. (The Communist Party, PCE, had been the only real political underground opposition during Franco's dictatorship). The views of the PSOE on that matter were always far from being clear. Even their slogan for the 1982 campaign had a strange double meaning: "OTAN, de entrada no" that could be understood as "NATO. No incorporation" or "NATO, at first no; but later..." The Socialists also promised a referendum so that Spaniards could decide whether they wanted their country to remain inside NATO or not. After winning the elections in October 1982, the Socialists changed their position and the new government of Felipe Gonzlez quickly adopted a pro-NATO stance. Three months later they signed an agreement for the renewal of the US military bases in Spain. With each succeeding day, they were making clear their NATOist position: "The permanence in the alliance is a vital
[CTRL] Back Pay Back?
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.newsmax.com/cgi-bin/printer_friendly.pl This is an issue that should be directed to those who initiated the practice in the first place. AER }}Begin Popularity of Reparations for Slavery Growing NewsMax.com Wires Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001 CHICAGO (UPI) The sign in front of Christ Apostolic Church reads: "Black Reparations Now." The church is in Woodlawn, a neighborhood on the South Side where you don't want to be after the sun sets. Woodlawn is littered by vacant lots and pockets of poverty, crime, unemployment and despair decades after the hopeful optimism of the '60s civil rights era faded into broken dreams in this part of town. "It's starting here," said Dr. Leon Finney, national co-chair of the National Reparations Convention, which met Feb. 1-4 at the McCormick Place Exposition Center. The veteran community organizer and other leaders want to see the reparations issue become more mainstream. "This movement is a worldwide movement. It is not a new movement. This is an old movement. It is as old as slavery," Finney said. Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman, organizer of the weekend convention, said reparations for slavery is the movement of the millennium. Tillman, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sponsored City Council hearings last year that led Chicago in May to pass a resolution supporting reparations for the descendants of black slaves. Mayor Richard M. Dal ey gave the issue his support. "It's not becoming a movement. It is a movement," Tillman told United Press International. "It is all over this country and the shocking thing about it is it is not just a black movement. She said white students at the Un iversity of Illinois-Chicago were doing research for reparations groups. "It's a movement that's much greater. It's going to surprise some folks. We have representation from all over this country." Saturday morning's opening convention session was broadcast live on WVON-AM, a black-oriented talk radio station. LeGrand Cleggh, city attorney for Compton, Calif., said he and Chicago attorney Lewis Meyers were doing legal research on every aspect of reparations. "Large numbers of white men impregnated black women during slavery and abandoned their children. Now that's child support," said Cleggh, "whole generations who were never cared for." Compton last year passed a reparations resolution patterned after Chicago's. About 80 organizers from around the nation met in closed session Sunday to develop plans to mobilize black communities and to forge a common reparations agenda. Advocates, notably NCOBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, the National Black United Front and the Republic of New Afrika, want trillions of dollars for the hundreds of years of free labor the ir ancestors provided and degradation they suffered. Some favor a lump-sum, while others say reparations are about more than money and should be part of initiatives to improve education, economic development, employment a nd housing. "Reparations have got to mean we take responsibility for ourselves," Finney said. Tillman did not discuss what form reparations should take or put a dollar figure on the cost. "We have every region represented here," Tillman said. "We think we will be able to present to this government, to this country, a plan for reparations. "There several schools of thought out here. There are people like [historian] Dr. Lerone Bennett who think we should have a Marshall Plan and there others who think maybe we need money, others who think land, others say education, others who say 'give us a ticket out of here.' So there's all kind of thought. When you deal with a Marshall Plan you almost deal with all those things people are talking about." Gen. George Marshall became U.S. secretary of state and in 1947 put together an economic plan to rebuild a Europe devastated by World War II. The United States sent about $13 billion in development aid, food and machinery to Europe before the plan ended in 1952. Tillman said the free labor of blacks had built America. "Had it not been for slaves, had it not been for my ancestors, people would not be coming to America," she said. "Black labor, white wealth." She said the conference also discussed the whole psychological effect of slavery "post-traumatic slavery syndrome" affecting both blacks and whites. "We can move this issue of reparations to the forefront," said Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., a former Black Panther leader and now a Baptist minister and U.S. congressman. "The reparations movement is a campaign for African-Am ericans that emerged 100 years ago when the newly freed slaves cried out for restitution for centuries of stolen labor, cultural degradation and dehumanization." Rush said there are precedents for reparations, citing Germany's restitution to Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust and to slave laborers, and Australia's land grants to indigenous aborigines in
[CTRL] Jammed
-Caveat Lector- From www.wsws.org WSWS : Arts Review : Film Reviews The official version Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Stephen Gaghan By Joanne Laurier 8 February 2001 Back to screen version| Send this link by email Steven Soderbergh's latest film, Traffic, inspired by a British television miniseries, is set in the world of drug trafficking. There are three intertwined strands to the narrative. In a Mexican border town, two slightly jaded policemen (Benicio Del Toro and Jacob Vargas) are pursuing drug smugglers. The bust brings the street cops, whose normal activities involve small-time schemes to rip off American tourists, inexplicably into a confrontation with the military. A leading general, who is aggressively hunting down members of the Obregon drug cartel, subsequently induces one of the policeman to join his team. The general, in fact, turns out to be connected to a rival cartel. In San Diego two Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) undercover agents (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) have apprehended a mid-level trafficker of the Obregon cartel (Miguel Ferrer), who has agreed to testify against his Mexican-born boss (Steven Bauer), a respectable businessman living in a wealthy suburb. The cartel penetrates DEA security and kills the witness. The drug baron and his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), once innocent but now complicit in her husband's dirty business, are again free to oversee the all-powerful drug empire. Meanwhile, the Ohio State Supreme Court Justice Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) has just been named by the president to head up the anti-drug offensive. As the dedicated, uncompromising Wakefield prepares to supervise the country's anti-drug task force, he is oblivious to his 16-year-old daughter's (Erika Christensen) increasing heroin addiction. In the end, Wakefield walks away from his new position to support his daughter's rehabilitation efforts. The film is not uninteresting to watch. Soderbergh, who shot the film himself, has an undeniable flair. And some of the interconnections and transformationsfor example, the Zeta-Jones characterhave a certain dramatic appeal. So too the upper middle class ennui of Wakefield's daughter and her friends. (Although the film unpleasantly implies that while the addiction of wealthy teenagers is a terrible shame, nothing can be done about the wretched fate of poor kids. The black neighborhood portrayed is virtually nothing more than a drug distribution center.) The performances in general and Del Toro in particular are convincing. As is almost inevitable in a work that is the product of investigative reporting, however, the characters tend to be the mere fleshing out of certain recognizable types: the crusading reformer, the hard-working, rough-edged street cop, the sleazy drug lord. At times the characterizations teeter on the verge of ethnic stereotype. All in all, the drama is muted and flat. The Douglas character embodies the Hollywood fantasy of modern-day liberalism; the only problem is that such figures hardly exist today, if they ever did. His Olympian incorruptibility never rings true. The issue of drugs is not a small one in the US today, and in many countries. It impacts on the lives of millions and millions of peoplethose addicted, those in prison on drug charges, those in neighborhoods where drug dealers operate and so forth. It contributes to the social and psychological misery of many. Soderbergh points out the extent of the problem, noting that everyone knows someone who has been touched by it, whether it's a friend or family member. If the problem is so pervasive in society, if drugs, as the director suggests, is one of the key social issues in our culture today, then it would appear to follow logically that one should examine the society that produces such a plague in order to locate the latter's causes. For all its pyrotechnics and for all the fanfare that has surrounded the movie, Traffic, disappointingly, doesn't carry out any such investigation. The viewer may know more about the details of police work and the operations of drug cartels by the end of the film, but is he or she any closer to grasping the essence of the social problem? Taking on such an indisputably critical issue and dealing with it honestly would require a different approach than the one taken by the filmmakers. Is it in fact possible, in the first place, to deal honestly with the drug issue if one accepts wholly and uncritically the official version, i.e., more or less, the policeman's view of things? Traffic is a breathtakingly establishment work. In the production notes, screenwriter Stephen Gaghan declares: I went all over the country to research the story. In Washington, D.C., meeting with the policymakersthe Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the head of the Association of Police Chiefs, the DEA, members of think tanks from the right and the left, journalists at The Washington Post
[CTRL] Cleanliness is ...
-Caveat Lector- Go to this site and get some perspective on the American paradigm for solving internal strife: http://www.fff.org/freedom/1099d.htm Ethnic Cleansing, American-Style by James Bovard, October 1999 AER Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] End of the Beginning
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Middle_East/2001-02/fisk060201.shtml
}}Beginning of the end of the article
With power, of course, comes respect. CNN now calls Sharon "a barrel-framed veteran
general who has built a reputation for flattening obstacles and reshaping Israel's
landscape", while the BBC World Service on Sunday managed to avoid the fateful words
Sabra and Chatila by referring only to his "chequered military career". As for Nadia
Salameh, "Sharon's role here shows what he is capable of. If Sharon is elected, the
whole peace process falls by the wayside because he doesn't want peace." It's a
relief to recall that up to a million Israelis demonstrated their moral integrity in
1982 by protesting in Tel Aviv against the massacre. And equally chilling to reflect
that some of those one million if the polls are accurate may well be voting for
Mr Sharon today.
End of the ending{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
[CTRL] DUm-DUm
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/519/re4.htm }}Begin Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 1 - 7 February 2001 Issue No.519 Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 Current issue | Previous issue | Site map A cancerous web of deception By Ashraf El-Bayoumi* Efforts over recent years by human rights activists to expose the disastrous health consequences of using depleted uranium (DU) weapons were for the most part unsuccessful. Weapons containing DU made their debut in combat during the 1991 Gulf war, when more than 300 tons were used -- substantially more than the 12 tons subsequently dropped on Kosovo and Bosnia. Large areas of southern Iraq, and parts of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, have as a consequence been contaminated. Thousands of Iraqi civilians and soldiers were exposed to DU. An unprecedented number of deadly cancers and unusual deformities has since been documented amongst them. Babies born to these victims are more likely to be severely deformed than is statistically normal. Thousands of Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian civilians were also likely to have been exposed to DU dust, as were thousands of US, UK and Arab soldiers who participated in the war. Egyptians were undoubtedly exposed as well. DU weapons were used in Bosnia in 1994 and then Yugoslavia in 1999. Reports of widespread outbreaks of cancer related to radioactive DU among Iraqi civilians and soldiers were met with repeated denials. Ailments among thousands of US and UK soldiers who participated in the Gulf war, known as Gulf War Syndrome, received a persistent "lack of evidence" argument, as did initial reports of "the Balkan Syndrome" among NATO soldiers and civilians. However, when 15 European peace keepers who served in the Balkans suddenly died from leukaemia, the catastrophic effects of DU weapons became front-page news. Several European leaders expressed their alarm and called for the identification and clean-up of areas targeted by DU weapons and for medical screening of those who were exposed to it. So the wall of silence and denials has slowly begun to crumble. Previously concealed official reports that clearly warned in advance of potential health hazards are now being openly written about in the media. One example is a confidential paper issued by the UK Atomic Energy Commission that warned of radioactive contamination as a result of the use of DU. Another is a letter issued by the US Army Surgeon General's Office requiring more d etails about DU, "because the effects on soldiers from exposure to DU dust include a possible increased risk of cancer (lung and bone) and kidney damage." Shells tipped with DU are highly effective in piercing armour due to uranium's high density (1.7 times that of lead) and inflammable properties that make it ignite instantly and, therefore, roast alive anyone inside the a rmoured vehicle it penetrates. DU is the byproduct of the enrichment process to produce weapons-grade nuclear material and nuclear fuel. As a result of 50 years of nuclear weapon and nuclear fuel production in the US, there are now in excess of one million tons of DU in existence. Storing large amounts of radioactive and poisonous material presents a probl em for the US government, which, therefore, provides it free to arms manufacturers -- who reap huge profits as a result. Despite its name, the percentage of fissionable (and more radioactive) uranium isotopes in DU is roughly fifty per cent of that present in natural uranium. The name "depleted" is deceiving, since DU remains radioactive. M oreover, as a heavy metal, DU is highly toxic. Upon impact, it burns and produces tiny aerosolised particles of oxidised uranium that become airborne and can spread for 40 kilometres or more. This radioactive toxic dust e nters humans by inhalation and by the ingestion of contaminated animals, water and plants. There is, for obvious reasons, tremendous resistance at the Pentagon to the release of any information that may eventually lead to a ban on those effective "wonder" weapons. The Pentagon wants to protect DU weapons for fu ture wars. A main concern is the possibility that compensation amounting to billions of dollars would be paid to hundreds of thousands of victims, along with billions more to finance clean-up operations. Admission that th ere is a link between DU weapons and cancer would also have damaging political fallout, since several scholars have already determined that DU weapons are illegal according to international law. All these considerations help explain the official denial campaign aided by a general blackout by the Western media on the subject. One can compare this to the years of effort undertaken by many activists to expose the us e of the highly toxic Agent Orange in Vietnam. Last week it was reported that traces of Uranium-236 have been found in spent DU shells retrieved from the battlefields of Kosovo. This has resulted in alarm and anxiety in Europe,
[CTRL] Memory Dump
-Caveat Lector-
Beginning of article from
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/02/04/stinwenws01005.html
And this was the problem stated for MaryJane's ganja weed use, too. AER
}}Begin
February 4 2001
BRITAIN
Computer-mad generation has a memory crash
Cherry Norton and Adam Nathan
GROWING numbers of people in their twenties and thirties are suffering from severe
memory loss because of increasing reliance on computer technology, according to new
research.
Sufferers complain they are unable to recall names, written words or appointments,
and in some cases have had to give up their jobs.
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
[CTRL] For From Whom the Buck Is Tithed
-Caveat Lector-
Extracted from an articel @
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/jess04.html
O'Reilly at Fox news has been creating an issue out of JJ's "charities" and other
sources of income. I suggest JJ go back and read at least the part about camels and
eyes of needles. But you can read the article and its companion at the linque
above. AER
}}Begin
Jackson's finances and those of his $15 million-a-year national network of charities
have come under scrutiny since revelations two weeks ago that Jackson's Citizenship
Education Fund has paid $35,000 or more to a former staffer who bore Jackson an out-
of-wedlock child. Rainbow/PUSH officials have offered differing accounts of what the
money was for.
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
[CTRL] Is Not Is
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.lewrockwell.com/yates/yates26.html }}Begin The Great Struggle: Republic Or Empire? by Steven Yates I smell fear. Teddy Chappaquid I mean Teddy Kennedy, of course didnt like John Ashcroft at all. Not long after the hearings were under way, it was revealed that Ashcroft had once made some highly politically incorrect remarks about the threat of "tyrannical central government," and also expressed sympathy toward issues of state sovereignty and even Southern heritage. He has spent his career opposing the centralization Kennedy and his ilk have been building up. Ashcroft got confirmed by a vote of 58-42 in the U.S. Senate. But Kennedys leftist buddies have put the Bushies on notice: you have your token "right winger" dont try this again! Kennedy, who has never worked outside of government in his life, illustrates as well as any one person how the dominant philosophy of government in Americas centers of power has reversed since the countrys founding. Ive no doubt that the Framers would be horrified by the kind of career politician Kennedy exemplifies. And they would have been right. Career politicians spend their lives (and millions of taxpayer dollars) betraying this countrys founding document, which was intended as a permanent and absolute (not a "living, evolving") limitation on central power. So again, I smell fear in the liberals attacks on Ashcroft. They tried unsuccessfully to get him because they fear he will not enforce laws that are unconstitutional and should never have been passed in the first place. He has said otherwise. He has promised to uphold the laws of the land regardless of his beliefs. It is too bad that he doesnt go further in the direction of freedom the liberals fear. But then again, if he did, he would have had no chance at all. The Ashcroft hearings offer just one more roadmap toward the Great Struggle currently underway the struggle to define this country. Newly minted President Bush Jr., whether he knows it or not (and Im not sure he does) is caught right in the middle. Here is the question of our historical moment: Do we want to live in a federation of sovereign states where the locus of control is, indeed, local, and in which law-abiding adult citizens have sovereignty their lives, personal resources, businesses and communities? Or do we want to live in a centralized, bureaucratized empire, where what isnt micromanaged by the central government is controlled by government-favored international megaconglomerates, all paid for through ever-higher rates of taxation? When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, it was a declaration that the original 13 colonies were seceding from an empire, that of the British. The Framers, when they wrote the U.S. Constitution, attempted to give us a federation of sovereign states: as Benjamin Franklin put it, "a republic, if you can keep it." The authors of the Bill of Rights then purposefully gave us the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to keep the power of the central government in check. A Republic. A federation of sovereign states. But with apologies to George Lucas, Empire keeps striking back. Thomas Jefferson spent the rest of his life issuing warnings about how centralized government tends to increase its power. He issued warnings about the need for a vigilant public. It is possible to show (as Charles Adams does in his brilliant tract When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession) that the war 140 years ago boils down to a contest between Republic and Empire. I am aware, of course, that it is now politically correct to say that that war was fought over slavery because, after all, when Lincolns minions defeated Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee, Empire won its first major battle on U.S. soil. Secession was not merely rejected as a viable means of checking its growth, but the numerous discussions of the topic and even threats to carry it out that arose between 1787 and 1860 were literally purged from the history books. Not noticed was how the issue had been decided not legally or Constitutionally but by brute force. Empire has been
[CTRL] Tora, Tora, Tora ? ? ?
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.newsmax.com/cgi-bin/printer_friendly.pl
So: is an alive 2nd Amendment contributory to deterrence? AER
}}Begin
U.S. Facing 'Catastrophic Attack'
NewsMax.com
Thursday, Feb. 1, 2001
National security experts Congress commissioned to examine America's vulnerabilities
in a changing, hostile world warn of a crippling assault upon its homeland within 25
years.
According to the Associated Press, the United States Commission on National
Security/21st Century, chaired by former Sens. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., and Gary Hart,
D-Colo., reported Wednesday that:
"Weapons proliferation [and] the persistence of international terrorism will end the
relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack.
"A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next
quarter century."
The 14-member panel listed as a close-second threat what it described as the
nation's inadequate scientific research and education.
The nation's entire education system, it said, is "in serious crisis."
It warned that this actually poses "a greater threat to U.S. national security ...
than any potential conventional war that we might imagine."
One commission member, Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of
Representatives, said:
"We put science, and science and math education, second ... because we believe it's
second only to the threat of a weapon of mass destruction [hitting] one of our cities."
The panel concluded the United States is not prepared adequately to meet either of
those challenges:
"The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could
undermine [America's] global leadership.
"In the face of this threat, our nation has no coherent or integrated governmental
structures."
It offered these steps the United States should take:
Assign the National Guard primary responsibility for domestic security and
reorganize, train and equip it to undertake that mission.
Overhaul the Defense Department, where excessive laws have hobbled weapons
acquisition and the failure to privatize some support activities "wastes huge sums of
money."
Reduce by up to 15 percent the staffs of the defense secretary, Joint Chiefs of
Staff and regional commands, where growth has "created mounting confusion and delay."
Create an independent National Homeland Security Agency.
Pattern it along the lines of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Assign it responsibility to protect American lives and infrastructure, such as the
highway system and information technology, and to plan, coordinate and integrate
domestic security activities.
Reorganize the State Department, a "crippled institution that is starved for
resources by Congress" and weakened further by many of its core functions, such as
foreign assistance, being parceled out to other agencies.
Double spending on scientific research and development over the next seven to
eight years.
Related Products:
Express your opinion about this to top leaders, Congress and the media send a
PriorityGram. It's easy and powerful! Click Here now.
Return to Main News Page
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed.
[CTRL] UN Outrageous
-Caveat Lector-
From
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2001/tst010801.htm
}}Begin
Return to the
Texas Straight Talk directory
Project FREEDOM
Opening Page
January 8, 2001
International Criminal Court is the Latest U.N. Outrage
The Clinton administration, working overtime during the eleventh hour to consolidate
its pitiful "legacy," has taken another step toward imposing global government on
U.S. citizens. On New Year's Eve, only hours before a United Nations midnight
deadline, the President ordered a U.S. ambassador to sign the 1998 U.N. Rome treaty.
This treaty purports to establish a worldwide U.N. criminal court, demonstrating the
brazen willingness of global-government proponents to move forward with their plans.
Once created, the international court will give the U.N. the mechanism it needs to
enforce its global "laws" against American citizens. The legal apparatus represents
the logical next step for ever-expanding U.N. power: first the phony "international
laws" were created, and now a court system is needed to give teeth to the laws.
International prisons in Geneva or Brussels cannot be far behind. All Americans
concerned with our sovereignty as a nation should be very alarmed by this latest
development. In fact, U.N. expert Henry Lamb recently stated that Clinton's
endorsement of this treaty "may be the most egregious act of his entire tenure."
The proposed court will be made up of 18 "judges," elected by an Assembly of member
nations ratifying the Rome treaty. Should the U.S. Senate ultimately ratify the
treaty, America will have only one vote among hundreds of nations vying to decide
which global visionaries will be anointed to judge us (perhaps Kofi Annon? Bill
Clinton??). The court will claim international jurisdiction over "crimes against
humanity" and the "crime of aggression."
The Assembly, of course, is left to define such crimes and aggression. Undoubtedly,
leftist political correctness, socialist economic philosophy, and environmentalist
falsehoods will decide the definition of a crime with
the new court. It clearly is no stretch to predict that the court will attempt to
continually expand its jurisdiction in both the civil and criminal realms. 20 years
hence, will we see U.S. corporations dragged before
the court to answer for "environmental crimes?" Or will U.S. soldiers be prosecuted
for their actions in wartime? What about rights guaranteed to all U.S. citizens by
the Constitution, such as due process, jury trials, t
he right against self-incrimination, and the prohibition against unreasonable searches?
The clear conflict between American life under our Constitution and life under a U.N.
world government is intensifying. Although the Rome treaty perhaps is unlikely to be
ratified by the Senate, the creation of the inter
national tribunal undoubtedly will move forward regardless of our participation. Once
the court is in place, there is every reason to believe it will attempt to assert its
jurisdiction over all nations, even those that ha
ve not ratified the Rome treaty. The U.N. never has hesitated to exert its authority,
militarily or otherwise, over non-member nations; surely the international court will
follow suit. Remember, precedents set by the U.N
. 40 and 50 years ago, such as engaging in "peacekeeping" wars across the globe,
were controversial at the time. Today those precedents have become commonplace U.N.
practice, despite the objections of many Americans.
The Clinton administration has set a terrible new precedent. Even if the Rome
treaty ultimately is not ratified by the U.S., Clinton's signing it further
demonstrates our acquiescence to the global-government planners. Many Americans,
rightfully concerned by this trend, have begun to question our participation in the
U.N. They have begun to question the influence of global elites. The Clinton
administration has used secrecy, stealth, and misinformation to thwart the will of
the majority of Americans, who still wish to live in a free sovereign nation. In
response, I will reintroduce the American Sovereignty Restoration Act in the new
107th Congress. This bill will end U.S. taxpayer support of the U.N., remove the
organization from U.S. soil, and guarantee that no U.S. soldier ever serves under
U.N. command. I urge all Americans opposed to world government to ask their
Representatives to support my bill, while also asking their Senators to vote against
ratification of the U.N. Rome treaty.
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus
[CTRL] Dialing for Dollars
-Caveat Lector-
This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?21521
Tuesday, January 30, 2001
Courting the presidential con
By Anne Williamson
2001 WorldNetDaily.com
It's over a week since Bill Clinton copped a plea before relinquishing the White
House to George W. Bush, and yet the stench of his occupancy still lingers.
Certainly the former president's interminable farewell, meant to upstage the new
president on his inauguration day, will long be remembered as the ne plus ultra of
boorish political leave-taking. But other facts emerged last week that justify the
investigation by Chairman of the House Government Reform Committee Dan Burton into
Clinton's last presidential deeds.
The whirlwind of revelations regarding the Clintons' final, self-serving days
include a hefty haul of presidential gifts the Clintons themselves selected for
wealthy supporters to donate before Jan. 3 when Hillary Clinton's lust to have
others furnish her newly-purchased mansions would become severely constricted by
Senate ethics rules.
The next assault upon citizens' sensitivities involved the former president's
questionable pardons of some mighty curious folks in contradiction to the wishes of
prosecutors from their own Justice Department, and who were largely bypassed in the
process.
And, finally, taxpayers learned of one last mugging when reports emerged detailing
the Clinton entourage's looting aboard a presidential aircraft for the Saturday
flight to New York from D.C., and their underlings' extensive vandalism in both the
White House's West Wing and the vice president's offices in the Old Executive Office
Building.
The thefts and the vandalism speak to the character of a group of people who did not
believe that they served at the people's pleasure, but rather thought of their
political power as an entitlement. The other revelations speak not only to the ways
in which both Clintons and their minions intend to reclaim that imagined
entitlement, but also how they intend to cover up while enjoying the fruits of their
many felonies.
Felonies? Yes, felonies.
Trillions are missing from federal agencies. That's right, gone. Poof! As in,
"Nowhere to be found." People familiar with government accounts have charged off the
record that in 1996 a concerted and intentional effort began with the support of the
Office of Management and Budget and Treasury to strip agencies of honest officials
and internal financial controls.
Allegedly, the reports of missing money at the various agencies started rising
exponentially in 1998 and 1999, but the actual problem began with Al Gore's
"Reinventing Government" initiative. It was in the Clinton administration's first
term that inspector generals and their staffs (each federal agency is assigned an
inspector general who audits and monitors each agency's accounts and activities)
were instructed to begin collaborating with their agencies -- a most peculiar
instruction. As one frustrated inspector general remarked, "How can I collaborate
with the very people I am meant to police?"
Unsurprisingly, during the Clintons' time in office the ranks of the inspector
generals were demoralized, and, in some cases, corrupted.
This background is what made Robert Pear's Jan. 18 New York Times article, "Financial
Problems in Government Are Rife, Nation's Top Auditor Says," so very timely. The
comptroller general, David M. Walker, reported that "
the Pentagon's financial statements are in such poor condition they cannot be audited,
and that most other agencies do not comply with federal accounting standards." The
result is that the comptroller general "cannot cer
tify the accuracy of consolidated financial statements for the government as a whole."
The report added, "Federal auditors have been complaining about this problem for
several years."
In other words, the Clintonista's looting did not begin or end with the purloining of
cutlery, china, linen and other items bearing the presidential seal aboard the Boeing
747 President Bush made available to the Clintons
and their guests for their departure from Washington on Inauguration Day. It began
on the 20th of January, 1993, continued throughout their administration in a
bewildering number of financial games involving domestic ag
encies, foreign-aid agencies, development agencies and multilateral lenders, and has
not yet ended.
The presidential looting has not ended, because the pardons of Patty Hearst, insider
trader Salim ("Sandy") Lewis, commodities outlaw Marc Rich and his partner Pincus
Green, money-launderer Harvey Weinig, and questionable
others all speak to the future, not the past. Sandy Lewis, Patty Hearst, Marc Rich
and his former wife, Denise Rich, will all be expected to play a significant support
role in Hillary Clinton's political future. And tha
t means moola. Piles of it.
I am not
[CTRL] New World Mish-Mosh
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0127/wor9.htm }}Begin Saturday, January 27, 2001 A world order designed to serve economic imperatives By Finian Cunningham WORLD VIEW: We are entering a dangerous topsyturvy world where language is subverted in a way that would have abashed even George Orwell: danger is presented as security, violence as peace, and the poachers have become the gamekeepers. Ireland, with its temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council, should be using its influence to debate world security and raise concern over what appears to be a new arms race. Unfortunately, as a conference organised by the peace group Afri will hear today, the evidence suggests this State is meekly going with the destructive flow of powerful interests. First, let's go back 10 years. We were then promised a "new world order" in which democracy and the rule of international law would be cherished and protected. Western leaders galvanised the nations of the world to supposedly defend democracy and national sovereignty as the first instalment of their noble vision. No matter that the Butcher of Baghdad was an erstwhile Western ally and Kuwait was, and still is, an oil-rich petty fiefdom. Western ideologues were cranking up a propaganda charm offensive, proclaiming a fresh start to international relations supposedly founded on noble values of mutual respect and cooperation - the realisation of the UN Charter, no less. With the Cold War out of the way, so it was argued, the nations would now be free to act in unison to defend the foundations of democracy, even if it meant bombing miscreants back to the Stone Age. Ten years on it is clear that the so-called new world order and its grandiose claims lie in ruins as sure as the cancer-eaten bodies of children in Iraq and former Yugoslavia. World security and the promise of a peace div idend have been shelved, although Western leaders still cynically use the language of human rights and democracy to justify their actions. What is truly startling is how quickly the moral veil of the UN has been jettisoned. At the dawn of the new world order, enunciated by President George Bush snr, the moral authority of the UN was deemed to be a necessary illusion. Now the Western powers, primarily the US and the UK, are apparently emboldened enough to go it alone. The UN-sanctioned Operation Desert Storm against Iraq was quickly followed by Operation Restore Hope in which the US unilaterally sent its troops and gunships into Somalia. Less than a decade later NATO would launch a war in Europe with the UN not even consulted. Some observers did note that NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia with radioactive depleted uranium shells was an illegal war, but by this stage President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair were past caring about such cens ure. OMINOUSLY, the American dissident Noam Chomsky says the NATO action in former Yugoslavia signals a contempt for international law not seen since the 1930s. He notes that the real agenda behind the cynical use of this gratuitous aggression, dressed up in the language of human rights and defence of democracy, is the stamping of authority in a world order designed to serve West ern economic imperatives of so-called free markets. In this way the new world order is not much different from the old. One difference, however, was that the Mutually Assured Destruction of the Cold War served to curb Western aggression. That check is no longer there, and the Western powers increasingly feel free to wield the doctrine of Might is Right. It is somehow fitting that one of the architects of the new world order, George Bush, is now succeeded by his son. Even before taking office, Bush jnr signalled a more aggressive military policy, primarily in his backing of the National Missile Defence (Star Wars) programme. Concerns among Western allies, notably France and Germany, are brushed aside in a manner which confirms the adage of absolute power corrupting absolutely. This together with his tougher diplomatic stance towards Russia is predictably leading to a deteriorating international climate, fuelling insecurity and a new phase of the arms race. Russia was reported earlier this month to have reintroduced nuclear weapons into the Baltic region, after having removed them from eastern Europe when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Observers note that due to the dilapidated state of its conventional armed forces, Russia is now relying even more on its huge nuclear arsenal as a deterrent. President Vladimir Putin is also making overtures to China for a new military alliance as a counterweight to the Star Wars initiative and the expansion of NATO in Europe. The joining of the NATO-inspired Partnership for Peace (another example of Orwellian doublespeak) by Ireland only serves to reinforce this negative dynamic. It's all a far cry from what was heroically promised in the hea dy days of the new world
[CTRL] Ghosts of Xmas
-Caveat Lector-
The remainder complete study can be found @
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7276/1547
and an analytical article is @
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jan2001/pov-j29.shtml
}}Begin extract
Objectives: To compare the extent to which late 20th century patterns of mortality
in London are predicted by contemporary patterns of poverty and by late 19th century
patterns of poverty. To test the hypothesis that the pattern of mortality from
causes known to be related to deprivation in early life can be better predicted by
the distribution of poverty in the late 19th century than by that in the late 20th
century.
Design: Data from Charles Booth's survey of inner London in 1896 were digitised and
matched to contemporary local government wards. Ward level indices of relative
poverty were derived from Booth's survey and the 1991 UK census of population. All
deaths which took place within the surveyed area between 1991 and 1995 were
identified and assigned to contemporary local government wards. Standardised
mortality ratios for various causes of death were calculated for each ward for all
ages, under age 65, and over age 65. Simple correlation and partial correlation
analysis were used to estimate the contribution of the indices of poverty from
1896 and 1991 in predicting ward level mortality ratios in the early 1990s.
Setting: Inner London.
Results: For many causes of death in London, measures of deprivation made around
1896 and 1991 both contributed strongly to predicting the current spatial
distribution. Contemporary mortality from diseases which are known to be related to
deprivation in early life (stomach cancer, stroke, lung cancer) is predicted more
strongly by the distribution of poverty in 1896 than that in 1991. In addition, all
cause mortality among people aged over 65 was slightly more strongly related to the
geography of poverty in the late 19th century than to its contemporary distribution.
Conclusions: Contemporary patterns of some diseases have their roots in the past.
The fundamental relation between spatial patterns of social deprivation and spatial
patterns of mortality is so robust that a century of change in inner London has
failed to disrupt it.
End extract{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory
[CTRL] Frayed Ends
-Caveat Lector- From http://128.121.216.19/justin/pf/p-j012901.html Embedded linques at site }Begin Behind the Headlines by Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com January 29, 2000 Lying About Kosovo The Kosovo war is over or is it? yet the battle for the hearts and minds of world opinion on the matter rages anew. As the West begins to confront the monster it created in Kosovo as well as the rising horror of the "depleted" uranium mass poisoning in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia the UN's International Criminal Tribunal on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia (ICTFY) has launched a ferocious campaign to drag Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague, preferably in chains, to be put on trial for war crimes. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, circling the fabled city of Oz on her broomstick shrieking "Surrender Dorothy!," ICTFY chief inquisitor Carla Del Ponte is demanding that the Yugoslav government extradite the former Yugoslav strongman and her amen corner in the West, including the US State Department and the American and European media, are baying for old Slobo's scalp. But is it really his scalp they're after? THE WITCH REBUFFED The real objective of all this caterwauling is the ritual humiliation and political marginalization of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica. For the demand to surrender Miloevic is sure to cause fissures in the fragile pro-government coalition, and pose a direct challenge to the authority of the new President, who has always spoken out against the Tribunal as a "political instrument." If the NATO-crats thought Kostunica was going to cave, they were bound to be sorely disappointed: as Antiwar.com columnist Nebojsa Malic pointed out in his last "Balkan Express" column, the occupiers of Kosovo don't seem to realize whom they're up against. Kostunica turned the Spanish harridan out on her ear, to the applause of his own people and the horrified exclamations of the "international community." Retaliation was not long in coming. THE WITCHING HOUR After she picked herself up off the floor, the Witch was alternately whining and threatening, averring that President Kostunica was "not properly informed" about her kangaroo court and saying that "dialogue [with him] was not possible. I tried for half-an-hour to explain about the tribunal. I had to sit and listen to his long complaints." The imperious Del Ponte usually does not have to listen to anybody, and she clearly did not like it one bit, quickly reverting to threat mode: "He can and must change his mind," she hissed. "Full cooperation with my office cannot be avoided if Yugoslavia wants full membership in the international community. If there is no cooperation, new sanctions can be imposed." Yes, but not without the cooperation of the United States. Will Dubya, who campaigned on a promise to get us out of the Balkans and burbled about "humility" as a guiding principle of our foreign policy go along with the Witch's sanctions? SURPRISE, SURPRISE Unfortunately, the answer appears to be yes. I'm not surprised, and if you were reading this column during the recent election campaign, you won't be too taken aback by the news either. As I pointed out at the time Bush was flat-out lying to our faces: Dubya's Kosovo deception was a ploy to lull conservative opponents of globalism into believing that, on Election Day 2000, they could safely vote Republican without having to worry about the foreign policy consequences all that much. The Bushies made vague noises about getting out of Kosovo, and even now is sending signals that Republicans have reason to hope for a less activist foreign policy: the spinners never sleep and the lies never stop. For now that the ICTFY and its media allies are launching a major propaganda blitz designed to re-demonize the Serb and, perhaps, set them up for another drubbing-Team Bush is playing right along. NPR.GOV A recent documdrama staged by the US government-owned-and-operated National Public Radio alleges that the Serbs, in order to cover up their alleged war crimes during the Kosovo civil war, had burned thousands of bodies in the Trepca mines. The OSCE immediately denied that this was even a possibility, but that didn't stop a spokesman for Bush's State Department from endorsing NPR's unsourced and highly propagandistic report. The NPR piece had barely hit the airwaves when US government spokesman Richard Boucher told the Associated Press that "information obtained by the US government beginning in 1999 confirms there were massive killings 'and there were attempts to burn bodies and otherwise cover up evidence at places throughout Kosovo.'" NOT A TRACE But OSCE spokeswoman Claire Trevana was quite clear about the unreliability of the NPR story: "Our people have
[CTRL] Citizenship
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=594month=28title=What+is+Citizenship%3 Fid=28 }}Begin What is Citizenship? by William Anderson [January 23, 2001] In his inauguration address, President George W. Bush exhorted Americans to act as "citizens" and to demonstrate the virtues necessary for good citizenship. Of course, the usual crowd thought that was great, especially following the narcissistic presidency of Bill Clinton. However, maybe it is time to look again at these demands made by the political classes that productive people work even harder in order to support them. Books and speeches by politicians demanding virtue from the citizenry are legion. From Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" to John F. Kennedy's famous "Ask Not" line to Jimmy Carter's "Moral Equivalence of War" (MEOW) speech given from the comfort of the White House, individuals are called upon to sacrifice and give support to the state. This latest inaugural address, while sounding good to the ears of some pundits, carries on the fiction that collectivism is the highest duty of American citizens. First, and most important, it is not as though many of us citizens do not already work hard to support government at all levels. While I do not earn enough to fall into the highest tax brackets, a quick examination of my W-2 forms shows that I have had a huge portion of my income confiscated to feed the revenue beasts of Washington, D.C., and the State of South Carolina. When one throws in sales taxes, gasoline taxes, and the like, the picture becomes even more clear: I work for nearly half a year just to support the political classes who then demand more. That I should work to support my own family must be subordinated to my "duty" to support the political classes and their allies. I hardly fall into a singular class. Millions of Americans like myself pay exorbitant amounts of taxes, and then are forced to hear politicians and some economists say that cutting taxes is "risky." Furthermore, any call by citizens to cut taxes and government spending is immediately shouted down by politicians and their supporters as "irresponsible" and quite incompatible with Good Citizenship. For all the ballyhoo from Washington and Wall Street about the dangers of President Bush's proposed tax cut, most of us - including that mysterious wealthy one percent - will hardly notice anything even if Congress approves the whole thing. Second, politicians are forever pushing the idea that people only "work together" when exhorted to do so by their political masters. The billions of acts of cooperation that occur each day within the various private marketplaces are declared to be nothing more than wicked selfishness, an impediment to Real Social Cooperation. Like Thomas Hobbes, they believe that only a Leviathan State can force people to jointly seek the True Interests of society. Unfortunately for politicians, reality has a way of clouding their speech. Last week, my wife was forced to sit for hours at the local Social Security office just to be able to apply for an SS card for my recently adopted daughter. (It used to be that we could wait until we took our first job before receiving our SS numbers, but now the government insists that infants also be numbered.) My wife had no real option but to "cooperate" with her political masters, who insisted she take a number and wait her turn. Later that day, she shopped at one of the many grocery stores in this area. No one there put her through the third degree, and the workers there willingly helped her when she needed assistance. Yet, in political speak, the SS office was a paragon of people "working together" while the grocery store was a nest of selfishness. Indeed, no one at a private pension office would have abused my wife the day the Social Security Administration did that day, but according to our political classes, pensions often are characterized as legalized theft while SS is compassion in action. Third, what the political classes constitute to be the "duties of a citizen" and what seems to be real public service often are at odds. For example, individuals who vote are lauded as "participating in democracy," yet it is clear that large blocs of voters are doing nothing more than electing politicians who promise to loot the belongings of others. Just because theft is legalized at the ballot box does not mean that it is not stealing. Likewise, working for the government does not constitute "public service." As my wife discovered at the SS office, she was the servant, not those who were supposed to "serve" her. Of course, Bush also lauds efforts by private citizens to engage in relief work, building homes for poor people through organizations like Habitat for Humanity, and working with homeless people. Those volunteers who do such things are often said to be "giving back to the community," as though they had taken something not rightfully theirs in the first place. I
[CTRL] The Gods Among Us
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/chico?tf=RT/fullstory _print.htmlcf=RT/config-neutralslug=wvalpydate=20010127archive=RTGAMsite=Front }}Begin POSTED AT 1:42 PM ESTSaturday, January 27 Perfection but at what price? By MICHAEL VALPY From Saturday's Globe Scientists in Britain received parliamentary approval this week to create human embryos for research into treating disease. In two words: therapeutic cloning. It is the first legal green light given to the Western world's biomedical community to actually create human life. The terms are stringent: The embryos must be destroyed after 14 days; they must never be allowed to grow into human beings; a select parliamentary committee is to come up with detailed regulatory controls before the first research licences are granted. Now, from the moral principles of Westminster's lawmakers, let's travel to this month's issue of Wired magazine, the widely read periodical of the North American software industry, a sort of New England Journal of Medicine for computer nerds. The cover story is about the Creator and the Client. It is not fiction. The Creator is described by writer Brian Alexander as "an intense dark-haired man in his thirties [who] looks a little like Peter Lorre in The Beast With Five Fingers." He has a PhD in molecular biology, a list of peer-reviewed publications, a research job at a major U.S. university, an entrepreneurial spirit and a shortage of ethical scruples. He has "just enough skill to make human clo ning work," Mr. Alexander writes. And he has attracted a customer the Client a businessman living in Western Europe whose son died from disease a year ago. The Client found him by cruising the underworld of the Internet. The Client wants the Creator to clone his dead son. He has consulted experts and keeps tissue samples from the body stored in liquid nitrogen and paraffin blocks. The Creator has found an in vitro fertilization laboratory that can do the work, with a compliant director skilled in the handling of human eggs and the IVF embryo manipulations that closely resemble the techniques used in cloning. At last report, Mr. Alexander writes, the Creator and the Client had fallen to bickering over whether the Creator could guarantee success. Then there is the story of the Quebec-based New Age cult, the UFO-worshipping Raelians, and their project, Clonaid. They announced last year, through much salacious press coverage around the world, that they had found a U .S. couple ready to pay $500,000 to have their dead baby cloned from saved tissue. The cult said it has the medical know-how to do the job. It, too, may have found the Creator and his lab. "The Creator's spirit," Mr. Alexander writes, "has been awakened by the historical moment we're in right now, a convergence of under-the-radar pro-cloning agitation, falling taboos, and the inexorable march of science." Or, as Dr. Joseph Martin, the Alberta-born dean of Harvard University's school of medicine, explains: "The technology isn't that difficult and it will happen probably before we'd like it to." Cloning of the monkey has already been done. So the possibility of reproducing ourselves, humankind, within the next few years is really not a question of 'whether' or 'if you can,' but a question of 'who does it.' " And so here we have the chills travelling up the world's spine. Hidden from view in corporate-financed research laboratories, human-cloning experiments already may be well under way, Dr. Martin told a recent breakfast gathering attended by some of the world's outstanding clinical and basic-science researchers in genetics, immunology and molecular biology. The Globe and Mail had invited the scientists to talk about the morals and ethics required to frame the relentless advance of biomedical research. Britain has now taken the step to the leading edge. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has just begun to finance research using surplus human embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics (manufacturing embryos remains prohibited), which the new Bush administration is being strongly lobbied to halt. The Canadian government, wishy-washy to a fault, twice has backed away from regulatory legislation of any kind, relying on a voluntary moratorium by the biomedical community that may well have served to drive research und erground. In any event, Canadian scientists have described human embryo-cell research in the country as having gone nowhere. The publicly funded Canadian Institutes of Health Research (the reincarnated Medical Research Council) has a committee working on research guidelines. A Health Canada discussion paper given media attention this week says the government may permit therapeutic cloning similar to the British model when it finally gets around to making laws to govern human reproductive technology. Religious groups, with the Roman Catholic Church in the forefront, immediately announced
[CTRL] BeefEaters
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplhArticleId=3596 }}Begin Copyright 2000 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Untangling the Deadly 'Mad Cow' Mystery Barry James International Herald Tribune Thursday, December 7, 2000 PARIS Nobody knows how it started. Nobody knows how it will end. Nobody knows how many people eventually will die from it. Those are among the frightening mysteries scientists are discovering about "mad cow" disease, or BSE, the bovine form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. The disease can arise out of nowhere and lie dormant for years, which the official British BSE Inquiry believes is how it started in England. Perhaps only one cow spontaneously developed the disease at first. To become an epidemic it needed an amplifier, which in Britain was the practice of feeding grazing animals the ground- up remains of others of their species. In Europe, 91 people are known to have contracted variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, the fatal neurodegenerative affliction that humans can develop when exposed to infected meat. Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, which leads to dementia and eventually leaves the brain pitted with holes and resembling a sponge, was first identified independently by two German doctors in the 1920s, but until recently it was a condition of the elderly. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease also attacks younger people, some of them in their teens. The human toll might seem small when compared with diseases like malaria, which kills millions of people every year. But the prospect of turning loose a stealthy, deadly and largely unknown pathogen is what most concerns scientists across Europe. The mad cow scare has touched off a panicky reaction against eating beef, but the worrisome fact is that many people already may be infected, perhaps because proteins known as prions that had somehow become aberrant were lurking in their baby food or hamburger many years ago. The danger to humanity, scientists say, is that the general level of potential infection will rise, making it easier for the disease to emerge in future generations. This threat is illustrated by the speed at which bovine spongiform encephalopathy amplified among cattle in Britain in just a few years. There have now been more than 180,000 cases, with many others doubtlessly undiscovered among the 4.8 million cows culled and destroyed sinc e 1996 in an attempt to check the disease. An article in the science journal Nature estimated that 975,000 infected cows entered the food supply. Here is a chilling catalogue, drawn from two dozen interviews with experts and a review of scores of scientific documents, including Britain's recent 16-volume official BSE report, which illustrates why scientists are so concerned about BSE and related spongiform diseases that can affect most species of mammals and birds: The pathogen that wipes out memory, personality and physical functions is extraordinarily tenacious. It resists heat, alcohol, boiling, ultraviolet light and ionizing radiation. Surgical instruments that come in contact with it can remain contaminated after normal sterilization procedures, and researchers don body protection before handling it. The pathogen can survive years of being buried in the soil, which is worrisome given that cattle remains often end up in landfills. Iceland in the 1950s slaughtered all its sheep to eliminate a related disease called scra pie. When it brought in healthy animals, scrapie soon reappeared. Some scientists believe that scrapie can mask low levels of BSE in sheep. While they take time to emerge, perhaps over many decades in humans, the spongiform diseases are highly infectious. According to British scientists, a cow can get BSE by eating one gram of infected material - a speck the size of a peppercorn - from another cow. Even a minute trace of the material in meat and bone meal, the protein supplement produced from rendered animal remains, can infect a cow. The European Union's Standing Scientific Committee says that "the minimal infective dose considered to be valid for animals should also be applied for humans." Nobody knows what a minimal dose is, but British scientists d iscovered that a piece of wire that had been in contact with the pathogen for five minutes became as infectious as a solution made from infected brain. Although the spongiform diseases are most infectious among members of the same species, they can jump the barrier to other species with varying levels of ease. Much has still to be learned about this species barrier, par ticularly so far as humans are concerned. Scrapie, for example, is believed not to infect humans. But in the United States, doctors identified several cases of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease among people who had eaten squirrel brains, and scientists warn that a spongiform encephalopathy called chronic wasting disease, found among deer and elk in the United
[CTRL] Blessings
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2001/0119/opt4.htm }}Begin Friday, January 19, 2001 Why the US still believes it has God on its side Americans will ask God to bless their country and its new president tomorrow. Bill McSweeney wonders why Why is the United States so moralistic, invoking God at every turn of the political roundabout? And why are its people so famously indifferent to international affairs? A nation which squabbles so much about government spending at home allows billions of tax dollars to be spent on foreign policy, yet takes little interest in where it is spent. This is God's country, "the great idealistic force of history," as Woodrow Wilson saw it. For Ronald Reagan, it was an "anointed land set apart in an uncommon way". Madeleine Al bright's view is that: "We are the indispensable nation . . . we stand tall." It is hard to credit that anyone takes this seriously. Yet there is reason to suspect that most US citizens - rich and poor - suspend their critical faculties at key junctures of national significance and ritually extol t heir nation as God's emissary on earth. The contrast with Europe is striking. National pride is never absent from European hustings but the habit of attributing its source to the deity has long vanished. The French have a distaste for the intrusion of moralisin g into their actions and pronouncements on foreign policy. British, German and Scandinavian modes of self-aggrandisement are also checked by the facts of history and show some restraint in recruiting God's purpose to human achievements. Europeans have good reason to be self-critical. The US is not exempt from the corruption of power, but reality blurs when the nation compares itself with the rest of the world. Yet no western society has developed such a deeprooted suspicion of government. American moralism and insularity from world affairs both owe their origins to the theological contradiction in Calvinism on which the Founding Fathers drew to shape the republican expe riment in the late 18th century. They learned that the righteous are the elect of God, the new Israel, set apart from the rest of humanity like a city on the hill. But it was not this upbeat Calvin who spoke loudest to the early republic. Calvinism also taught a deeply pessimistic view of the frailty and sinfulness of all human endeavour, especially in earthly politics, and this str and impressed Franklin, Jefferson, Washington and their fellows. For the first half century, any American temptation to vainglory was overwhelmed by pious apprehension about the frailty of government, their rulers' sinfulness and by a holy fear that their republic might fail as others had. As power corrupted Rome so, it was thought, power would corrupt the new world. Thomas Jefferson articulated that fear in a memorable phrase which today would cause stupefaction or riot on Capitol Hill: "I tremble for my c ountry when I reflect that God is just". Time healed the trembling as the new republic survived and prospered, and its political theologians looked for new inspiration to the sanctimonious line of the Calvinist tradition. Thomas Paine's dictum, "We have it withi n our power to begin the world over again", took on a new meaning for later Americans, impatient with history and chafing at the bit of Calvinist self-doubt. How did the US manage to incorporate the notion that it was "the new Israel", the "indispensable nation" into a political culture steeped in paranoid suspicion of government? The answer is simple. Self-criticism is reserved for domestic politics and moralism for the rest of the world. The mistrust of government which afflicts attitudes to the exercise of power at home is never allowed to infec t the standing of the American government in the international arena. This is facilitated by the unique separation of powers which gives the president almost total authority in the conduct of foreign policy and reserves for congressional and public scrutiny the domestic policies and arrange ments which directly impinge on the everyday lives of the people. Moralism abroad fosters insularity at home. Who needs to read about the complexities of the world when they believe their nation is in charge because of God's mandate? Ever since Washington and Jefferson, Americans have a holy fear of cohabiting with other nations in "permanent" or "entangling" alliances. Isolationism was originally a prudent injunction in the light of the unsavoury all iances available at the time. Today it is just a pious code of the conservative right for the doctrine of unilateralism - global intervention without the restraints of international institutions. Early indications from the new administration suggest that unilateralism is the new agenda. God will not be slow to endorse it. Dr Bill McSweeney lectures in international politics at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. He is author of Security,
[CTRL] Uber Alles
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.scotsman.com/cfm/home/text_only.cfm?articleid=41403domain=www%2Ethescotsm an%2Eco%2Eukpathinfo=%2Fworld%2Ecfmqstring=id%3D41403navlevel2= First the superhighway, then the VolksWagen (I know quasi-oxymoronic), then the Marshall Plan (antidote to Versailles), reunification, and now "There was one thing people there had not heard before; the clarity with which Germany intends to draw the lines of future development, thereby incidentally laying down direction, pace and content for its French neighbour. His comments will send a shudder through his partners in London and Paris." Patience is a virtue? AER }}Begin Schrder launches Brussels offensive GERMANY, ploughing ahead with plans to strip EU members of sovereign decision- making, will throw its weight behind federalist plans at the Strasbourg summit with France in a weeks time. Berlin is expressing confidence and flexing new-found muscle as its economy perks up and the status of its post-war relationship with France is redefined. Its new drive for a Europe governed from Brussels shows scant regard for Britain and other countries that continue to voice fears of national sovereignty being subsumed beneath a rising tide of Eurocracy. The chancellor, Gerhard Schrder, a year away from a general election, knows that the eyes are off the ball in both Britain and France, where national concerns are on domestic polling this year. Until now he had left most of the European-sculpting to his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, but at a weekend think-tank in Berlin the chancellor outlined his vision for a Europe where decisions on tax, defence, health, insurance and a plethora of other issues were defined by the EU and not national governments. One German newspaper said his comments would "send a shudder through London and Paris". Those shudders will be addressed tomorrow when Mr Fischer meets Robin Cook in London, particularly as Mr Fischer will try to sell Britain a timetable for agreeing to a common European constitution to be agreed upon at another conference in 2004. The weekend think-tank in Berlin was hosted by the Bertelsmann Foundation. Other participants included the Spanish prime minister, the French foreign minister and Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission. "I urge support for the Commission and the institutions that do integrationalist thinking," said the chancellor. For Britain, which still widely views the EU as a trading bloc with opportunities for British businesses, the notion of surrendering sovereign powers over a wide range of policies and issues is abhorrent. France, too, has begun to worry. The Nice summit in December clearly illustrated the oil-and-water content of the EU patchwork quilt when the 15 member states barely made an accord after marathon sessions that left no doubt that unity is a four letter word for many. Mr Schrder, according to close government sources, saw Nice as a failure of the policy of inter-governmental co-operation which is why he now wants full steam ahead for the EU to take the decisions and make the laws of the community of over 300 million people. German thinking is that the EU is "wobbling" on eastwards expansion, the enlargement that will effect Germany the most, with its borders with Poland and Czech Republic. "Germany has come to regard France as having an anti-European Commission attitude," said a government source. "It believes it must stand up for itself." Romano Prodi is fully behind the German initiative. He declared intergovernmental co- operation as "a recipe for mutual mistrust between member states in the absence of an honest broker" - the honest broker being his Commission. At Nice Germany tried, and failed, to win more power for Germany in the so-called "vote re-weighting" to reflect the greater population of Germany over other states. Now it wants to put that issue on the back burner, while forging ahead with plans to delegate national powers to European decision makers. Germanys bold new posturing at the weekend was summed up by the countrys influential Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper which said: "There was one thing people there had not heard before; the clarity with which Germany intends to draw the lines of future development, thereby incidentally laying down direction, pace and content for its French neighbour. His comments will send a shudder through his partners in London and Paris." Those comments included Mr Schrder saying: "We need a simplification and a redesign of treaties, a clear division of authority between the Brussels institutions and, above all, a clear sharing-out of responsibilities between the EU, its member states and the regions." As to the Franco-German relationship, Mr Schrder admitted: "Undoubtedly it needs redefining." There was little pleasure across the Rhine at his comments, or of those of Mr Fischer. who also spoke stridently of German efforts to build the Federalist Utopia that has long been at the heart of his
[CTRL] Good Neighbour Sam
-Caveat Lector-
From NEWSMAX.COM
}}Begin
America, The Good Neighbor
Gordon Sinclair
Sunday, Jan. 21, 2001
Widespread but only partial news coverage was given
recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a
Canadian television
commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in
the Congressional
Record:
This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the
Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all
the Earth.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and
Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the
Americans, who poured in billions of dollars and
forgave other billions in debts. None of these
countries is today paying even the interest on its
remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956,
it was the Americans who propped it up, and their
reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets
of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the
United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59
American communities were flattened by tornadoes.
Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped
billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries
are writing about the
decadent, warmongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that
is gloating over the erosion of the United States
dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country
in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo
Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC-10?
If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the
international lines except Russia fly American planes?
Why does no other land on Earth even consider putting
a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese
technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German
technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you
find
men on the moon not once, but several times
and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs
right in the store window for everybody to look at.
Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded.
They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless
they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American
dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India
were breaking down through age, it was the Americans
who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and
the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are
still broke.
I can name you 5,000 times when the Americans raced
to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone
else raced to the
Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside
help even during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one
Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get
kicked around. They will come out of this thing with
their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled
to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating
over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of
those.
Stand proud, America!
Wear it proudly!!
Related Products:
Get your Web site listed on NewsMax.com reach millions for pennies!
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
[CTRL] Reversal of Fortune
-Caveat Lector- From www.wsws.org WSWS : News Analysis : Middle East Zionism's legacy of ethnic cleansing Part 1Israel and the Palestinian right of return By Jean Shaoul 22 January 2001 Back to screen version At the heart of the breakdown of the Middle East talks lies the refusal of the Zionist state to accept the right of return for the Palestinians who lost their homes and country after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The following is the first of a two-part article on this subject. The second and concluding partIsraeli expansion creates more Palestinian refugeswill appear tomorrow. According to the United Nations, there are presently some 3.5 million Palestinian refugees. They are comprised of those expelled, or their descendants, following the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49 and the 1967 Six-Day War, as well as countless others who have since been expelled from the Occupied Territories or Israel. The majority have lived their lives in wretched conditions in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Many now live elsewhere in the Middle East, while others have moved to the West. Israel adamantly refuses to acknowledge the principle of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants because this would be tantamount to accepting responsibility for what happened to them. Moreover, since it would end the Jewish majority in Israel, it has been repeatedly denounced as a threat to the very survival of the Zionist state. Outgoing President Bill Clinton tried to find a face-saving formula that could accommodate the Israelis and enable Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian Authority chairman, to sell a framework for a final agreement to his people. Clinton has proposed that Israel accept the return of 100,000 refugees as part of a policy of reuniting families; that the Palestine Authority accept several hundred thousand; and that an international fund be set up to provide compensation for the rest. While the final numbers would be subject to negotiation, the deal on offer does not address the fundamental issue of Palestinian rights. Even this proposal is unacceptable to the Israeli political elite, which refuses to accept more than a handful of refugees back into Israel. Neither would a Palestinian state with a population substantially enlarged by a massive influx of refugees be tolerated on its borders. The origins of the Israeli state The state of Israel was founded in 1948, following the catastrophe that overtook European Jewry in the 1930s and 1940s, and which culminated in the extermination of 6 million Jews in the Nazi concentration camps. The Zionist movement was able to channel the despondency felt by Jews at what had happened behind a perspective for creating a separate Jewish state through the partition of Palestine, which had been controlled by Britain since 1917. A Jewish state would build, it was claimed, a just and democratic haven for a people who had faced discrimination and oppression for centuries. It would be a state defined uniquely, not in geopolitical terms, but by religion. Its doors would be open to all who subscribed to Judaism. The formation of such a state inside Palestine, a country where Jews were in the minority, inevitably led to what today would be called ethnic cleansing. Zionism's central slogan was: A land without people for a people without land. Thus the very foundation of the state was based on profoundly undemocratic principles: the denial of the rights of non-Jews already living there. It would also sanction control by religious authorities, something that modern states had rejected and overthrown centuries ago. The sympathy felt throughout the world for the plight of the Jews following World War Two lent support for the creation of such a state. In addition, the major powers, and particularly the United States, saw the establishment of Israel as a means of enhancing their own strategic interests in the region, or at least blocking those of Britain, which was then the dominant power in the Middle East. As a result, in November 1947, the Zionists were successful in persuading the United Nations General Assemblyto the fury of the Arab worldto vote for the partition of Palestine into two states: one Palestinian and one Jewish. In May 1948, Ben Gurion (who was to become Israel's first prime minister) proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel. War immediately broke out between the Jews and the Palestinians, who were supported by neighbouring Arab countries. The fighting was to last until January 1949. The 1948-49 war and the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians The take-over of Palestinian land was the essential prerequisite for the founding of the state of Israel. Although the UN had expected London would help implement the partition plan, Britain hastily pulled out its administrative and military forces from Palestine, wanting no part in implementing the proposals. This was not
[CTRL] Mad Mythe
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.westonaprice.org/myths_truths_mad.html }}Begin Animal Pharm by Mark Purdey As an organic farmer, Mark Purdey resisted the order to spray his cattle with organophosphates for warble fly and went to court for a judicial review; he won and was exempted from using the spray. No cows born in his herd developed BSE (mad cow disease). He has contributed numerous articles on the subject of BSE to scientific journals. He farms in Somerset, UK. This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2000 As the first snowstorm of winter hit the isolated hill where I farm, I pitched out the last forkfuls of hay to my cattle before nightfall. Much like the whirlwinds of snow surging all around me, my brain was turning over and over the catalogue of injustices that successive governments had levied onto the farming community over BSE. I felt paralysed and powerless in the encroaching snowstorm. My confidence to carry on was battered to pieces by the recent ban on beef-on-the-bone. The announcementbased on the whims of a mere handful of government expertsrenders my hard graft over the last twenty years in far ming into pathetic insignificance. But how can there be any true experts from academia when the most basic facets of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE) disease process remain a total mystery? One would have though t that all of those farmers and independent vets living and working in the front line with BSE cattle would have been the first to be consulted. But strangely, their observations have been completely ignored by officaldom . Cows frequently partake in the bizarre habit of eating their colleagues afterbirths after calving, and I was particularly intrigued to watch my own home-reared, BSE-free cows positively relishing the delicacies of afterb irth tissues derived from a group of pedigree cows that I purchased into my farm in 1989. As the majority of these imported cows went on to develop BSE, it is interesting that BSE has not surfaced in my home-reared cows, despite their overzealous exposure to the allegedly infectious blood and lymph found in the afterbirths of the BSE cows. Other farmers sharing the same experience report the same outcome. Another anecdote hails from the farming community of Shetland, where the island folk are free of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (the human form of BSE), despite their ancient custom of eating potted sheeps brain. Interesting ly, the equivalent of BSE in sheep, called scrapie, has been rife in the sheep flock on Shetland for centuries. The anecdotes are ever-flowing, and all point to a hypothesis based upon some environmental causal factor that falls a long way short of the current governments nightmare infectious ingestion scenario. If the spongifor m agent is as infectious as the authorities would have us believe, why has chronic wasting disease (the BSE equivalent in deer) remained uniquely confined to a small cluster zone in the Rocky Mountains for thirty years no w, without spreading across to the neighboring deer herds roaming the rest of the Rockies? Why has no spongiform developed in the various predators of those affected deer? From the very beginning of the crisis, the farming community has been the unfortunate victim of the whole BSE campaign. Yet, ironically, the same presiding authorities who are responsible for foisting off the burden of BS E are, no doubt, totally oblivious to the fact that more farmers have committed suicide as a result of official BSE blunderings than people have died of new variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (nvCJD). A body of government experts was quick to take exclusive control of BSE research, and very rapidly the cause of the disease was attributed to the feeding of scrapie-diseased sheep brains to cattle. In other words, scrapie was said to jump from sheep to cattle by virtue of some sort of infectious agent. And it naturally followed that this same assumption of disease cause was extrapolated into the human CJD contextthe presumed microorgani sm had now jumped from cows into humans. But this was no more than unproven hypothesis, and it still remains that way today. Not surprisingly, only a handful of folk had insight into the unsavory world of the meat and bone meal (MBM) rendering business. But for anyone who had scratched the mere surface of the global distribution of British MBM products, it became strikingly obvious that the very mainstay of the official hypothesis was radically flawed. For instance, during the 1980s thousands of tons of this very same incriminated MBM was exported to cattle far ms in BSE-free countries such as the Middle East, Malta and South Africa. Officials have always brushed this challenge aside, arguing that the cattle in these countries did not receive sufficiently large doses of scrapie to contract BSE. But this
[CTRL] Violence in America
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.calendarlive.com/top/1,1419,L-LATimes-Print-X!ArticleDetail- 16301,00.html? }}Begin Sunday, January 7, 2001 As American as Apple Pie VIOLENCE IN AMERICA, An Encyclopedia; Edited by Ronald Gottesman and Richard Maxwell Brown; Charles Scribner's Sons: three volumes, 1,952 pp., $375 By KEVIN STARR Is America more violent than any other nation? The fact is that the United States is a violent place. As a nation, it was brought into being by violence as much as by statecraft, suppressed an entire people through slavery, re-earned its nationhood through a terrible civil war, then celebrated that unification through the systematic, genocidal decimation of its Native American peoples. And it hasn't stopped there. Consider the rampage of Howard Unruh in September 1949, in Camden, N.J., which resulted in the killing of 13 men, women and children; the nurses systematically butchered by Richard Speck in Chicago; Charles Whitman atop his Texas tower; John Oliver Huberty opening fire at the San Ysidro McDonald's in 1984 or the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999. Deliberate terrorism, in other words, is not a new American category, although Unabomber Theodore John Kaczynski has given it a semi-crazed Luddite edge, and Timothy McVeigh, the worst terrorist in American history, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City, is at either the end or the beginning of an epoch. And now, the encyclopedia format has allowed USC English professor Ronald Gottesman and consulting editor Richard Maxwell Brown to organize the efforts of nearly 500 academics and other experts to tackle the infinitely complex issue of violence in the United States. The result of this enterprise, assiduously pursued across a decade, is a well-written, profusely illustrated and generously referenced three-volume encyclopedia that allows us, simultaneously, to access numerous aspects of the subject in alphabetical order and to approach, however tentatively, a systematic understanding of a field as unwieldy as violence. Putting down these three volumes after days of fascinated reading, I found myself grateful to Gottesman, Brown and their colleagues for assembling signed entries that, cumulatively, bring us closer to the tantalizing--and always impossible--prospect of apprehending America through an understanding of one of its most persistent traits. To read "Violence in America" as I did--completely, page by page--is to encounter a labyrinth of traits running through both the consciousness and subconsciousness of American culture. Are we as distinctively gun-goofy, for example, as some six entries--gun violence, gun control, militarism, the National Rifle Assn., the right to bear arms and weapons: handguns--would make us seem? It was a bourgeois American, after all, Richard Jordan Gatling, who in the mid-19th century perfected the art of killing with a gun by industrializing its manufacture, just as Henry Ford would later industrialize the manufacture of automobiles. Thanks to the Gatling gun and its successor, the machine gun, millions of humans have met untimely ends with increased efficiency. One cannot help but entertain the thought that there might be a special affinity, a special connection, a foundational relationship between violence in all its forms and the American experience. Why, for example, are so many of our memories of major figures--Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.-- so profoundly determined by the violence that destroyed them? Why are so many of our epochs defined by dominating instances of violence--the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (four related entries for this incident alone), the trials of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, the Scottsboro case, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the Lindbergh case, the My Lai massacre--or their aftermaths? * * * Why have so many violent but otherwise marginal figures from the frontier-- James Bowie and his knife, the Indian-killing Kit Carson, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, John Henry "Doc" Holliday, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Calamity Jane, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid--entered into American folklore and been celebrated in numerous films, even musical comedies, while the governors, the senators, the entrepreneurs, the founders of cities and towns from the same time lie in their graves forgotten? How can we make a heroine of Lizzie Borden of Fall River, Mass., who most likely gave her mother 40 whacks and walked, thanks to shaky evidence and a sympathetic jury? Why do we remember the 1920s and 1930s in terms of Al Capone, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Bonnie and Clyde, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Ma Barker, Dutch Schultz and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel when we would be hard-pressed to name a roster of brain trusters from the New Deal? Why do some cities of America--New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit, Kansas City,
[CTRL] Black Blood
-Caveat Lector-
From NEWSMAX.COM
Well ... "Western Europe" ... since 1980 ... so much for the American
Expeditionary Forces ... and how many MILLIONs of them are there that spent time in
some part of the Old World? Eating and drinking and drinking and eating and ...
should we be alert to a new syndrome? AER
}}Begin
Red Cross Takes 'Mad Cow' Precautions
NewsMax.com Wires
Thursday, Jan. 18, 2001
WASHINGTON (UPI) - The American Red Cross intends to ban blood donations from people
who have lived anywhere in Western Europe since 1980 in an effort to shield the
blood supply from the human form of "mad cow" disease, USA Today reported Wednesday.
"This will have a very serious impact," Red Cross President Bernadine Healy told the
newspaper. She estimated a loss of about 6 percent of donors, or 360,000 people.
The Red Cross, which collects about half of the nation's blood supply, said it would
urge a federal panel this week to make the restrictions apply to all blood-
collection agencies.
America's Blood Centers, which collects the other half, said the proposal would be
devastating.
"We would lose 25 percent of New York City's blood supply," said spokeswoman Melissa
McMillan.
But after watching HIV spread through the blood supply in the 1980s, Red Cross
officials would rather err on the side of safety.
The brain-destroying disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD, has
killed 88 people in England, one in Ireland and three in France since the mid-1990s.
The disease is a human form of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy,
which began in the United Kingdom and has spread throughout Europe. Scientists
believe that people get vCJD by eating BSE-tainted meat.
See more articles about mad cow disease.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
[CTRL] RPL 101
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/commentprint011501a.html }}Begin 1/15/01 9:00 a.m. Religious Pluralism For Liberals, 101 Against religious bigotry. By Michael Novak, fellow, American Enterprise Institute NRO contributing editor n their rancor toward the admirable John Ashcroft, soon to be the flinty-eyed, square-jawed attorney general from the Western Plains, the extremists of the Left are day by day adding fine detail to their own self-portrait. They say, for instance, that they don't see how he can enforce laws that he personally opposes or even thinks immoral. The reason they think this is they couldn't do it. Extremists of the Left feel obliged to write their own morality into law. They often feel obliged to disobey (or void) laws out of tune with their own morality. Liberal extremists don't seem to know that conservatives, drawing on a long tradition of their own, have a very different theory of law and morality. John Ashcroft told the Economics Club of Detroit in 1998, "It would be against my religion to impose my religion on others." That's an old tradition in the dissident Christian churches opposed to state-established religion. If liberals knew religious history, they would know that. Even John Locke, drawing on these traditions (cautiously, for fear of his head) pointed out in his Letter on Toleration that to respect the liberty of the consciences of others is the true teaching of Jesus Christ, and that tolerance is another name for Christian charity. This same point is picked up in the last provision of the Virginia Declaration of Religious Rights. Liberal extremists don't seem to remember that the primary energy behind the First Amendment came from the Baptists and other dissident churches of Virginia, Jerry Falwell's ancestors, who suffered grievous punishments public whippings, jail, heavy fines for the "crime" of preaching without a licence from the state. They held the state had no power to licence preachers of the gospel, only the gospel did. When James Madison was opposed to writing amendments into the new Constitution, the Baptists of Orange County reminded him vigorously that they had elected him to office, and they wanted religious liberty put down in writing. "No establishment free exercise" turned out to be the perfect formula in their eyes. Baptists and other evangelical Christians need no lectures from secular liberals about the meaning of the First Amendment. In 1791, it was their idea. John Ashcroft is a true son of that tradition of liberty. Another thing extremists of the left don't understand. They think that the "mainstream" of America passes through big cities, university towns, and Indian reservations that is to say, the few hundred counties in the U.S. that the Democratic party's candidate won in 2000, those little isles of blue on that vast sea of red representing the 2,494 counties won by the Republican candidate. Most extremist liberals don't seem to know anybody who voted Republican. That's how insular, isolated, and out of the mainstream they are. Third, most extremist liberals don't seem to have the foggiest understanding of religion, let alone the variety of Christian traditions. They demand a religious test for public office, and the test they propose is simple: No one in public office is allowed to take religion seriously, or to apply it to reality, or to allow it to shape their views. The upshot of this test is that all officers of the government of the United States ought to be effective or practical atheists. John Ashcroft in particular must never, ever, be guided by his faith in public. Extremist liberals seem to have a special hostility to evangelical Christians, such as John Ashcroft. They do not propose similar assaults on any other religious group. They give every outward indication of indulging in religious bigotry. This demand may be a fruit of their own ignorance about religion, an ignorance they allow themselves in religion as nowhere else. Even the redoubtable New York Times tolerates egregious errors in this domain, as when it has (more than once) referred to "the St. James version" of the Bible. The religious bigotry among the extremist liberals assaulting John Ashcroft is now visible to all, their lack of respect for his faith tradition, their desire to shackle the conscience of John Ashcroft as they would not tolerate the shackling of their own. In the hope that it may be useful to liberals, then, allow me then to propose four brief lessons from Religious Pluralism For Liberals, 101: 1.
[CTRL] An Imperfect Storm
-Caveat Lector- From http://128.121.216.19/justin/pf/p-j011501.html Go to the site where there are umteen linques. And of course, this is revisiting our "won" war, the one that was supposed to be not like VietNam (9 years) but has taken on a death of its own in the course of ten (10) years and counting. No Agent Orange; just DU. And, again, the shame of it all, is the Britlanders' use of us, the US, as a warmonging proxy in its post-imperial period. April's shennanigans have been well documented all over the place, almost as well as the Britlanders' since the Mandate was inked. Gotta remember the Iron Matron urging on GHWB; gotta recall Tiny Blur doing the same with Bill Jeff when the prospect of sending American soldiers into Kosovariraqia arose. Kinda makes you wonder who's the CinC ... AER }}Begin Behind the Headlines by Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com January 15, 2001 The Gulf War In Retrospect: the "Isolationists" Were Right Ten years ago, George Herbert Walker Bush unleashed the mightiest military machine on earth against a poor, Third World country whose only "crime" consisted of redrawing the map of the Middle East as originally drawn by the British Foreign Office. Iraq has always claimed Kuwait as its "nineteenth province," an assertion that history in the main supports. In the aftermath of World War I, having promised their Arab allies independence, the British went back on their word, and, in signing the Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916, implemented the chief axiom of politics: to the victor goes the spoils, which the Brits naturally reserved for themselves and the French. It was left to Sir Percy Cox to draw the first line in the sand (literally) at the 1922 conference of Uqair, creating the state of Iraq but severing Kuwait, previously an adjunct of Basra, which was made an official British protectorate, and narrowing Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf. So the Iraqi "invasion" or reclamation, depending on your viewpoint came as no surprise to students of Middle East history, and should have come as no surprise to US policymakers, who had advance notice that Saddam was on the march and did everything to encourage him. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO APRIL GLASPIE? Eight days before the outbreak of the Gulf war, Saddam summoned April Glaspie, then the American ambassador to Iraq, and launched into a tirade. He railed about the pernicious role of the British in the region, reminded her that without Iraq the Iranians would not be stopped from taking over the whole region by anything short of nuclear weapons, and complained about the "economic aggression" of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in agitating for lower oil prices. He made it all too clear that he intended to use force to stop what he claimed were Kuwaiti incursions onto Iraqi territory in the so-called Neutral Zone. Glaspie replied that the Americans, too, had experience with "the colonialists," which indeed seems odd given that the US and these very "colonialists" would be jointly bombing the hell out of Iraq is a little over a week's time. As for the price of oil, Ms. Glaspie opined that "We have many Americans who would like to see the price go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states." At a time when the US secretary of state was none other than James Baker, a Texan who virtually personifies Big Oil, the implications of what the US Ambassador was telling Saddam were inescapable. Glaspie went on to say: "I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods . . ." YELLOW AND GREEN If that was a diplomatic yellow light in response to Saddam's stated intent to use force, then the President's message to Saddam was a green light for the invasion. As Elaine Sciolino has pointed out in an interview with CSPAN, Dubya's daddy didn't even mention the tens of thousands of Iraqi troops poised to strike at Kuwait, and never raised the issue of Kuwaiti sovereignty or declared his intent to defend
[CTRL] Sugar in the Tank
-Caveat Lector- From www.wsws.org WSWS : News Analysis : North America : US Economy Mass layoffs hit US auto industry By Larry Roberts 16 January 2001 Back to screen version With analysts debating whether or not the American economy is already in a recession, the Big Three automakers in the USGeneral Motors, Ford and DaimlerChryslerhave sharply scaled back production and announced plans for the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs and the possible closure of a half dozen or more North American factories. The production cutbacks take place as DaimlerChrysler executives are about to announce a major restructuring plan that will involve wiping out between 20,000 and 40,000 jobs and the possible sale of all or part its cash-strapped US Chrysler division. According Challenger, Gray Christmas, December job cuts were the highest since the job outplacement firm began tracking layoffs in 1993, with US employers announcing plans to cut 133,713 jobs. The auto industry led the way in job cutting, announcing 85,231 layoffs last month. We shouldn't debate too long on whether the slowdown is hereit is, said John Devine, GM's vice chairman. The issue for me is much more of duration. US auto production accounts for 4 percent of the nation's economic output and is responsible for a quarter of the output for the major states in the Midwest, including Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. The job cuts by the Big Three have already impacted auto suppliers and related industries, including steel companies, which are already facing a crisis as seen in the recent bankruptcy announcement by LTV Steel. In addition to the thousands of layoffs it has already announced in the US and Mexico, Delphi Automotive Systems announced that another 1,100 workers in eight plants located in the Dayton, Ohio area would be laid off indefinitely because of the fall in production by GM. On January 4, 300 more workers at its compressor plant in Moraine, Ohio were laid off permanently. The crisis in the US auto industry erupted as American carmakers were enjoying a record sales year. In 2000 the Big Three sold 17.4 million vehicles, surpassing their previous record of 16.93 million in 1999. But sales declined sharply in the last two months of 2000, with December sales falling 18 percent for GM, 14 percent for Ford and 15 percent for DaimlerChrysler's US-Chrysler division. In an effort to maintain sales the auto companies offered discounts and incentives after the slowdown began during the summer of 2000 and continued similar levels of production at their factories through the autumn. In the last two months, however, the auto companies scaled back output and temporarily closed factories that only a few weeks earlier were running overtime production. The slowdown in sales is happening faster than anybody thought it would, stated Jamie Jameson, Chrysler vice-president for sales and marketing, echoing other auto analysts who compared the unexpected drop in demand to running into a wall. Analysts expect that sales in 2001 will not surpass 16 million or 16.5 million units. The automakers have decided on sharp production cuts for 2001, including a 26 percent reduction for Chrysler, 17 percent for Ford and 21 percent for GM. After temporarily idling 16 plants last month, GM, Ford and Chrysler have already furloughed over 100,000 workers thus far in January. Chrysler has announced plans to idle 30,000 workers, with the shutdown of five factories during the weeks beginning January 8 and January 29, and smaller cuts during the intervening two weeks. Ford plans to close 16 factories during the month, with 13 plant closures during the week of January 15, affecting 33,000 workers. GM announced plans to close 12 facilities during the month involving another 25,600 workers. Spokesmen for all three car companies have made it clear that job cuts will continue in February and March, with the possibility of further cuts depending on market conditions. I am not going to stand here and say there won't be additional cuts, warned Ron Zarella, a top GM sales executive. There is a downward momentum in the market. The move by the Fed [to cut interest rates] helps. But it's going to take a lot more than that to reverse the downward momentum, he said. The sharp downturn in demand for vehicles in the US has been widely attributed to last year's increases in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, the rise in fuel costs, which jumped 50 percent over last year, the fall in the stock market and the general loss of consumer confidence. But the problems in the US auto industry are part of a much wider crisis. The global auto industry is plagued by such a level of overproduction that analysts say even if all US auto plants were closed there would still be more cars produced than the world's markets could absorb. Thus over the last several years a series of mergers, global alliances and other consolidation measures have taken place, resulting in the destruction of hundreds of
[CTRL] Implosion
-Caveat Lector- @ http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/516/op3.htm }}Begin Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 11 - 17 January 2001 Issue No.516 Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 Current issue | Previous issue | Site map Samson and the temple By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed An increasingly beleaguered Barak seems to be haunted by the story of Samson, the Herculean hero of Jewish lore, who was betrayed to the Philistines by his mistress, Delilah. Shorn of the long hair in which lay the secret of his strength, he was blinded by his captors and taken to their temple, there to be dis played for the amusement of the populace. But the fallen hero avenged himself by bringing the temple crashing down on the heads of his tormentors -- and on his own head. This cautionary tale about the perils of mixing with gentiles is seen in Zionist writings as a forerunner of another parabolic legend, the siege of the Masada fortress, in which 1,000 Jewish defenders committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans. A contemporary version of these legends is Israel's xenophobic obsession with its racial purity that it is ready to defend at any cost, even, if need be, with a nuclear cataclysm that will destroy both its enemies and itself. In his desperation to extricate himself from the ever deeper political morass in which he is sinking, Barak might be tempted to resort to a Samsonian solution to his problem. The Israeli prime minister had high hopes that Clinton, driven by his all-consuming passion to be remembered as the peacemaker who managed to solve one of the most implacable conflicts in recent history, would bring his considerable powers of persuasion into play at the Camp David summit held last July to ensure that the parties signed some sort of agreement that would pave the way to a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. His hopes did not materialise and the summit ended in failure, with the parties unable to agree on some of the most important -- and intractable -- aspects of the problem, namely, Jerusalem, the refugees and the settlements. It was precisely because these issues were the most difficult to solve that they had been deferred to the final stage of the negotiations. And, despite the fact that the two parties made what they considered the maximum concessions possible at the time, these highly volatile issues remained as resistant to solution as ever. Although Barak went home empty-handed, the mere fact that he had dared discuss such hitherto taboo subjects as Jerusalem earned him the ire of the Israeli right and allowed them to challenge his very legitimacy. The anti-Barak campaign was spearheaded by the current leader of the Likud party, Ariel Sharon, and its former leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, who is back in the political arena following his acquittal of the charges brought against him after the downfall of his government. As he became embroiled in an increasingly bitter feud on the home front, and with the end of Clinton's presidency fast approaching, Barak realised that no agreement could be reached within the short time-frame left. He then tried to form a coalition government with the right, hoping that this would give him a new lease of life. Sharon tested Barak's intentions by proposing the Haram Al-Sharif visit and Barak accommodated the Likud leader by providing him with a force of over a thousand soldiers to protect him during the visit. It can thus be said that Barak, whose active collusion emboldened Sharon to proceed with the provocative visit that sparked off the Intifada, must assume a major share of responsibility for placing the entire Middle East on the brink of war. The popular uprising of the Palestinian people exposed the bankruptcy of the peace process and the failure of the tripartite formula (American/Israeli/Palestinian) to respond to their national aspirations. The Intifada was a rebellion against that formula, a message to all concerned that an alternative mechanism had to be devised. The message was not lost on Barak, who chose to deal with the crisis by resigning as prime minister to preempt the Knesset's initiative to disband in order to depose him and force the resignation of his entire government. He hoped in this way to limit the competition to present Knesset members, i.e. Sharon, and disqualify Netanyahu from entering the race. The former prime minister, whose popularity rating is even higher than Sharon's, was forced to resign from parliament at the time of his resignation. The message was not lost on Clinton either, who realised that the Intifada was an expression of the failure of the tripartite formula and of his responsibility for that failure. And so he hurriedly came forward with an alternative formula, a personal initiative in the form of concrete proposals that he euphemistically called "ideas," which were intended to serve as a basis for a final agreement between the two sides. The proposals come as a package deal, a trade-off in which
[CTRL] Bumper to Bumper
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.lewrockwell.com/healy/healy11.html }}Begin "Traffic": This Is Your Government on Drugs Reviewed by Gene Healy A Hollywood blockbuster with a laudable political message? Is it possible? Believe it or not, it is. The movie is Steven Soderbergs "Traffic," and its message is that the war on drugs is a hideous failure. Libertarian cinema buffs will want to know the answer to two questions: (1) Is "Traffic" a good film? (2) Is it effective anti-drug-war propaganda? The answer to both is a qualified yes. "Traffic" tracks the lives of various combatants and civilians in the drug war, some of whose paths intersect only tangentially, if at all. Michael Douglas plays the newly appointed U.S. Drug Czar, whose prep-school daughter descends into crack addiction as dad tries to adjust to his new job. Catherine Zeta-Jones (too pregnant during the filming to play Douglass daughter, apparently) is a young woman whose husband, unbeknownst to her, has been running much of the Southern California drug trade. Benecio Del Toro plays an honest Mexican cop (yeah, yeah, but its a movie) trying to stay alive and do a little good as he feeds a corrupt Mexican general to the DEA. The film shifts rapidly from subplot to subplot throughout. At times, this moves the story along briskly; other times, it seems a little too brisk as if designed for a stoners attention span. The jagged, hand-held-camerawork is unsettling intentionally and effectively so. But the use of a yellow filter to shoot the Mexican scenes was pretty unsubtle: "Look: were in Mexico now. See how everything looks dingy?" Happily, whatever weaknesses the film has are largely redeemed by the performance of Benecio Del Toro as Javier Rodriguez, the Mexican cop. Who knew that Del Toro, heretofore largely a B-movie bottom-dweller (see this years straight-to-video Way of the Gun. Or dont.), had the stuff of greatness in him? With his bleary eyes, his hangdog face, and his air of infinite weariness, Del Toro makes the perfect noir antihero. So "Traffic" is well worth seeing, independent of its message. How does it play as agitprop? How many of the key decriminalization arguments appear here, and how effectively are they presented? The film is at its best demonstrating the futility of the drug war. Its often been said that the drug warriors are doomed to failure because theyre socialists battling entrepreneurs; but its never been illustrated as dramatically as it is in "Traffic." Early on, a drug magnate turned government witness describes how he and his Mexican counterparts performed sophisticated statistical analyses on the likelihood of any individual courier getting caught, and simply flooded the system with enough mules to make the losses profitable. Later, another character displays the latest in high-tech smuggling: a childs doll that appears to be plastic, but is actually made out of pressurized, impacted cocaine. The dolls are to be sent over by the truckload, and reconverted to powder stateside. Shortly after that scene, as the camera pans back, showing the vast line of cars waiting to pass through the customs station and enter the U.S., the absurdity of federal interdiction efforts becomes manifest. In its portrayal of addiction, however, the film stumbles, and unintentionally undermines its decriminalizationist message. Its one thing and entirely believable for Caroline Wakefield (Erika Christensen), the Drug Czars teenage daughter, to be a drug user. Jim Bovards Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years has a three-page list of prominent politicians kids whove been busted for possession and/or dealing in the last several years, and let off scot-free (pp. 103-105). But does Caroline have to become a full-fledged crack whore? Thats not a figure of speech: in the space of a few weeks, the 16-year-old Caroline goes from booze and bong hits with her plaid-wearing, country-day-school friends, to turning tricks in a Cincinnati hot-pillow joint. What is this, an after-school special? Is it too much to expect a movie thats honest about the drug war to
[CTRL] Silver Ado
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/4131995?view=printversion=1
}}Begin
WILLS' SEXY E-MAILS
PRINCE William and the beautiful niece of US President-Elect George W. Bush have
been sending each other a stream of sexy e-mails and letters.
The friendship with Lauren started as harmless teenage flirting but a friend of hers
said: They became very close pals and it was clear they had a serious crush on each
other.
The Bush family are favourites of the Windsors so William was completely relaxed
about it. He and Lauren felt they could be very open with each other.
Stunning Lauren Bush left her photo just where she knew Prince William would find
it...on the luxury yacht that he and Prince Charles would use to sail the Aegean
Sea.
The sleek vessel may have Alexander on its prow, but royal aides know it better as
The Love Boat.
For it was beneath her sails that Charles and Diana tried to patch up their
marriage. Now Lauren was struck by the romance of the occasion.
The blonde Vogue model, whose dad Neil is President-Elect George W Bushs younger
brother, was holidaying aboard the ship owned by Greek shipping tycoon John Latsis.
But when Lauren discovered that William and Prince Charles were due to be the
tycoon's next guests, she insisted on leaving a modelling portrait behind.
The moment Wills found it he sensed the opportunity for a bit of teenage fun. He
found Laurens address and, in return, sent a picture of himself to her in America.
Since that day, a unique friendship has blossomed between the President-Elects
niece and the most eligible bachelor in the world.
Pals of Lauren say they tried to meet up on her visits to London but never managed
it because Wills was at Eton. Still, they regularly write each other letters and
exchange flirty e-mails.
Shes the most glamorous member of America's most powerful political family and he
is from the oldest ruling monarchy in the world, the future king, said a delighted
Bush family friend.
If you were writing a romantic novel, you couldn't make up that sort of plotline
and be believed.
A friend of Laurens in Texas, added: The e-mails were very flirty and quite sexy
and the letters quite intimate. It would be fair to say they got a bit carried away
with the fun of it all.
This week 18-year-old William is expected to announce plans for the next stage of
his gap year between school and college. One of the options is a period in New York
working in fine art and antiques.
Its almost certain that theyll meet in some way when hes out there, said the
family friend.
Lauren is one of the most sought-after young models in America and has already
featured in Vogue magazine.
She is expected to dazzle at her uncle George Ws inauguration ball in Washington
later this month.
Texan Lauren, 16, well understands the world of power and influence that Wills has
also inherited. Some of her earliest memories are of her grandpa George Bush Snr
when he was president of the US.
I can remember sliding down the banisters at the White House when I was a kid
rolling up carpets with my 14 cousins and generally going on the rampage, she
smiled.
Friends of the Bush family are delighted that the pair made contact.
Prince William must have been about 16 when the first letters were exchanged, said
one. It was sweet. Theyre two kids having fun.
Her father Neil runs a computer software company and dotes on his daughters
success.
The Bush family friend added: If William comes over to the States Im sure Neils
brother George would be happy to meet him informally.
The Windsors and the Bushes are already firm friends from the time that Laurens
grandfather was President. The Queen feels quite at home with Americas new first
family.
George Bush Snr has a special affection for the British royals and always enjoyed
his time with them, said the Bush family pal.
He was always made very welcome by the Queen. Im sure the rest of Laurens family
will feel the same way.
Williams father Prince Charles will be among the first to meet the new President
Bush when he comes to Britain.
It would be just great if Lauren could come with the family, added the pal, but
its early days yet.
By CLIVE GOODMAN
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
[CTRL] Holocaust / Museum of Communism
-Caveat Lector- @ http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi/museum1.cgi There's a real test at the site ... AER Holocausts of Communism Test by Bryan Caplan Western awareness of mass murders and other major atrocities committed by Communist regimes remains exceedingly low. How does your knowledge compare? Take this test to find out. I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor rememberered it all, for not having divined all of it. --Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago @ http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/musframe.htm "Never again." The tyranny and atrocities of Nazi Germany have been justly condemned by world opinion for over 50 years. But it is only recently that Communist despotism has begun to receive remotely similar attention. It would be a great tragedy if Communism disappeared from the earth without leaving behind an indelible memory of its horrors. Communism was not essentially about espionage, or power politics, or irreligion. Rather it was a grand theoretical synthesis of totalitarianism... a theory which millions of people experienced as the practice of murder and slavery. The roots of Communism lie squarely in the works of the philosopher Karl Marx. But at the same time, as we shall see, the tradition of Czarist absolutism also became an important source of Communist inspiration. The first exhibit to open explores the Marxist and Czarist origins of the Communist movement. AER Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Mad Poultry Unease
-Caveat Lector- Beware! If you are at all chicken to read unsavoury articles, you don't have to feel like a turkey by ducking this one. And they thought all they had to worry about were holey cows! AER From www.wsws.org WSWS : News Analysis : Europe : Britain Tons of contaminated poultry sold for human consumption in Britain By Richard Tyler 4 January 2001 Back to screen version At the end of December, a Hull court sentenced five men to over 24 years imprisonment for supplying potentially lethal condemned poultry for human consumption. In 1996, Environmental Health Service staff in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham first uncovered the scandal, which involved recycling more than 1,300 tonnes of condemned chicken and turkey meat that had been declared unfit for human consumption. The gang had organized a secret operation hidden away in factory sheds on anonymous industrial estates. They used chemicals to prepare an illegal product, which they moved in the dead of night in unmarked vans up and down the country. Payment was often by cash in pub car parks. To cover their tracks and try and launder more than £3 million in profits the scam netted, they created a false paper trail with mountains of forged invoices and other documents. The gang established a secret de-boning operation, in a factory shed running for up to 20 hours a day involving 12 staff. The stinking meat, often covered in slime, mould or faeces was hosed down, soaked in brine to remove the stench, then sliced up to remove whatever scraps of pink meat that could be recovered and re-sold. To further cover their dirty trade, they mixed the tainted meat with good supplies and the potentially lethal mixture was supplied to butchers' shops, market traders, restaurants and supermarkets across the country. More than a dozen raids were conducted nationwide and a complex operation uncovered, which produced half a million pages of documentation that had to be sifted through in preparing the case against the gang. The five convicted of conspiracy to supply unfit meat to the human food chain were former meat factory manager Andrew Boid; assistant factory manager Darren Bibby; Peter Tantram, who ran Cliff Top Pet Foods; John McGinty and Arnold Smith, both food brokers. Another member of the gang, Clive Boid (Andrew Boid's father) was found guilty on a separate charge of selling pet food meat as fit for human consumption and is awaiting sentencing. Three other food brokers were acquitted, although the prosecution claimed they had full knowledge of the illegal activity. On passing sentence, Judge Peter Heppel QC said, It is difficult to find words sufficient to describe the appalling nature of the main fraud in this case. Fraud of this type on this scale is unprecedented in this country. Those at the centre of the illegal operation have longstanding connections with the multi-billion food processing and meat industry. Boid Snr. is a former director of Prosper DeMulder, the UK's biggest meat rendering operation. Together with his son Andrew and Bibby, they ran Wells By-Products, one of Britain's largest poultry rendering firms. The company had at one time processed 85 percent of the condemned poultry from the slaughterhouses and food manufacturers. To provide a cover story for the huge quantities of condemned meat they bought, the gang involved Tantram, who ran Cliff Top Pet Foods, with the tainted meat ostensibly destined for pet food. The scam was carefully planned and prepared. Prosecutor Ben Nolan QC told the court that the gang had first tried out their system in a smaller operation nicknamed the Preston Sausage Fraud. This had involved 7, 910 packets of frozen sausages being offered for sale up to a year-and-a-half after their sell-by date. The facilities and systems used to offload the spoiled sausages were then employed on a bigger scale with the condemned poultry that was reintroduced to the human food chain. Nolan described Sheffield meat broker John McGinty's position in the fraud as pivotal. It was through his energies and activities that the product changed its identity from pet food to food which was ostensibly wholesome and marketable to the human food chain. According to Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, which footed the £500,000 bill for the investigation, Food brokers, the middle men and women who buy and sell meat products over the phone, are largely uncontrolled and the responsibility is left with the trader to register with the local authority. Unscrupulous traders can avoid monitoring by exploiting the weakness of the system. The four-year investigation to bring the gang to court was headed by Lewis Coates, an Environmental Health Officer for Rotherham council with the support of two colleagues. Speaking after the successful prosecution, he said, It is difficult to assess the risk to public health from food poisoning, carcinogens and chemical contamination as a result of eating this condemned meat. This
[CTRL] Mountaineers
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a5296aa72e3.htm
}}Begin
FreeRepublic.com
"A Conservative News Forum"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and
do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All
materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair
use of copyrighted works.
Finally, A registration scheme that makes sense
Constitution/Conservatism Miscellaneous Keywords: SENSIBLE GUN REGISTRATION VERMONT
Source: America 1st Freedom magazine
Published: Jan 2001
Posted on 01/02/2001 19:04:10 PST by prophetic
Vermont State Rep. Fred Maslack has read the Second Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution as well as Vermont's own Constitution very carefully, and his strict
interpretion of these documents is popping some eyeballs in New England and
elsewhere.
Maslack recently proposed a bill to register non-gunowners and require them to pay a
$500 fee to the state. Thus Vermont would become the first state to require a permit
for the luxury of going about unarmed and assess a fee of $500 for the previlige of
not owning a gun.
Maslack read the "militia" phrase of the Second Amendment as not only affirming the
right of the individual citizen to bear arms, but as a clear mandate to do so. He
believes that universal gun ownership was advocated by the Framers of the
Constitution as an antidote to a "monopoly of force" by the government as well as
criminals.
Vermont's constitution states explicitly that "the people have a right to bear arms
for the defence of themselves and the State" and those perssons who "conscientiously
scrupulous of bearing arms" shall be required to "pay such equivalent." Clearly,
says Maslack, Vermonters have a constitutional obligation to arm themselves so that
they are capable of responding to "any situation that may arise".
Under the bill, adults who choose not to own a firearm would be required to register
their name, address, Social Security Number, and driver's license number with the
state. "There is a legitimate government intrest in knowning who is prepared to
defend the state should they be asked to do so," Maslack says.
Vermont already boasts a high rate of gun ownership along with the least restrictive
laws of any state - it's currently the only state that allows a citizen to carry a
concealed firearm without a permit. This combination of plenty of guns and few laws
regulating them has resulted in a crime rate that is the third lowest in the
nation.
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
[CTRL] Wakefield Awakening
-Caveat Lector-
From NewsMax.com
}}Begin
Gun Laws Offer No Protection
Dr. Michael S. Brown
Jan. 2, 2001
The recent mass murder in Wakefield, Massachusetts is providing a
number of valuable lessons in media coverage, the behavior of the
anti-gun lobby, and most important, the effectiveness of gun laws.
Turn on any news channel and you will see all the usual suspects. Talking heads
debate the effect on proposed gun laws in Congress.
Breathless reporters spend long minutes of precious air time examining
every possible detail of the weapons involved in the murders. Of
course they make all the usual errors like calling a pistol a
semi-automatic revolver and inventing other amazing misnomers.
You might think that people who call themselves journalists would make
an effort to become more familiar with a subject that they love so
much. Unfortunately, journalists as a group have demonstrated time
after time that they know little about guns and do not want to learn.
They don't want any inconvenient facts getting in the way of a good
story that casts the cold eye of suspicion on gun owners.
The anti-gun lobby is already dancing in the blood of the innocent victims. The gun
haters see another opportunity to force their vision
of a gun free utopia a little bit farther down the slippery slope.
They conveniently ignore the fact that Massachusetts already has some
of the toughest gun laws in the nation. New restrictions added in the
last few years have made life extremely difficult for law abiding gun
owners in that state, but the killer, as usual, simply ignored the
laws. If these laws are supposed to be so good for us, why don't they
provide any protection?
The dirty little secret of the anti-gun lobby is that gun laws have never been an
effective way to reduce violence. In fact, the reverse
may be true, since studies by John Lott and others have proven that
mass shootings, as well as rapes and assaults, are less likely in
states that have issued a large number of concealed weapon permits.
The statistics are in and gun control doesn't work. Passing
additional laws that make self defense more difficult will never
reduce mass murders or any other kind of crime.
Insane persons intent on carrying out an act of mass revenge invariably choose a
location where their victims are certain to be unarmed. This is one reason why
these attacks always occur in places
like schools or office buildings where weapons for self defense are
prohibited.
Early reports from Wakefield indicate that the killer expected no resistance. He
took plenty of time to calmly reload his weapon while
the unarmed victims dialed 911 in vain. The laws and the anti-gun
culture of Massachusetts guaranteed his success. Things would have
turned out much differently if someone in the ill-fated office had
been armed with a handgun and a cool head. Perhaps the attack would
never have occurred if the killer feared for his own life.
Regardless of how you feel about guns or self defense, you must admit
that murderers will always be able to find a weapon suitable for their
deranged purpose. If not a gun, then an automobile, a homemade bomb
or a simple can of gasoline are just as lethal and even more dangerous
to bystanders.
Anti-gun laws only deprive good people of the right to self defense
and distract society from the real causes of violence. If we truly
wish to reduce violence, we must turn away from the mean-spirited
cultural war against gun owners and open our minds to new ideas.
Dr. Michael S. Brown is a member of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, on the web at
http://keepandbeararms.com/DSGL
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in
[CTRL] WODs
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilkerson/wilkerson27.html
}}Begin
The
War on Drugs Is a War on Liberty
by
Scott Wilkerson
William
S. Burroughs, the visionary novelist and social critic, warned that
the United States governments war on drugs was nothing more than
the pretext for establishing in our culture a vast police apparatus
that would forever supercede all our claims to privacy and property.
Nowhere is this nightmarish scenario more visibly prescient than
in the case of actor Robert Downey Jr.
We all remember the details. The ghastly spectacle of Al Gores
Thanksgiving voting piracy was briefly punctuated by news of how
the police stormed into Downeys Palm Springs hotel room on an
anonymous
tip that he was inside with illegal narcotics and a gun, two things
the government would love to keep from all citizens.
Indeed, they found him with cocaine, his drug of choice, and some
other neuro-morphic delights. His mug shot was, of course, splayed
endlessly across the entertainment news, but quickly coopted by
the "important" news segments as evidence of the increasing
dissolution of Hollywood and further proof that white males are,
after all, the real problem in America.
The prosecutor from the District Attorneys office in his case now
reports that it is very likely a deal between the "authorities"
and Downeys defense will result in another engagement with a
rehabilitation
center instead of prison. Even the system recognizes that it is
absurd to pursue non-violent drug offenders as though they were
rapists or murderers or secessionists.
Strangely, the same Hollywood Left that loves Downeys oblique sexuality
and his campy wit, that has given him a splendid guest starring
spot on Ally McBoring, that has recognized his comic genius with
a Golden Globe nomination, and has rightly ignored the "authorities"
hysterical demands for his head did not publicly condemn the gratuitous
invasion of his civil liberties when he was arrested because someone
made a phone call! What in the world is going on here? Just more
confusion because of loose equivocation on the meaning of words
like "laws" and "rights."
The government does seem intuitively to understand that Downey is
more useful to society than some wacked out crack-fiend robber gangsta
from South Central and, therefore, extends to him a modicum of
indulgence.
But rather than re-examine the entire construction of its narcotics
policies, the government merely renegotiates, every ninety days,
the terms of Downeys case. And the same Hollywood, that threatens
to relocate to Europe every time a conservative dares to utter a
discouraging word about some groups victimological drivel, remains
silent when one of its own becomes the poster boy for Federal Usurpation
of Individual Liberty because it cannot discern whether Downeys
"right" to privacy is more or less fundamental than the
states "laws" against doing to your own body whatever you like
Let us celebrate Robert Downey Jr.s drug habit and his heroic serial
returns to the front lines of this central debate. Burroughs correctly
perceived that the government secretly resents those liberties it
presumes to protect. We are complicit in the delusion that we are
safe as long as we play it straight. But the war on drugs is a war
on the individual. And each of us is a soldier in that battle.
December
30, 2000
Scott
Wilkerson is curator of the Ward Library at the Mises
Institute.
End{{
From
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/steinreich3.html
}}Begin
Leave
Robert Downey Jr. Alone
by
Dale Steinreich
Last
Wednesday actor Robert Downey Jr. pleaded innocent to charges of
drug possession and being under the influence of a controlled
substance
during Thanksgiving weekend in Palm Springs, California. An anonymous
phone tip had led police on November 25 to Downeys room at a resort
where he was found with cocaine and diazepam. For possessing both
substances Downey could face up to 6 years in prison.
Downeys
struggle with drug addiction is anything but new. His run-ins with
the law began on June 23, 1996, when he was stopped for speeding
and police found cocaine and heroin in his vehicle. A month later
[CTRL] FOT - WTO
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.focusweb.org/focus/pd/apec/fot/fot43.htm }}Begin Saturday, Dec. 30, 2000 Number 43, January 2000 IN THIS ISSUE: Post Seattle, there has been a lot of talk about how to reform the WTO. In this issue, Walden Bello argues that in the case of both the IMF and the WTO, NGOs must be aware of the pitfalls of the reform agenda. Why Reform of the WTO is the Wrong Agenda By Walden Bello* In the wake of the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial, there has emerged the opinion that reform of the WTO is now the program that NGOs, governments, and citizens must embrace. The collapse of the WTO Ministerial is said to provide a unique window of opportunity for a reform agenda. Cited by some as a positive sign is United States Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky's comment, immediately after the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial, that "the WTO has outgrown the processes appropriate to an earlier time." An increasing and necessary view, generally shared among the members, was that we needed a process which had a greater degree of internal transparency and inclusion to accommodate a larger and more diverse membership." (1) Also seen as an encouraging gesture is UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Stephen Byers' recent statement to Commonwealth Trade Ministers in New Delhi that the "WTO will not be able to continue in its present form. There has to be fundamental and radical change in order for it to meet the needs and aspirations of all 134 of its members." (2) These are, in our view, damage control statements and provide little indication of the seriousness about reform of the two governments that were, pre-Seattle, the stoutest defenders of the inequalities built into the structure, dynamics, and objectives of the WTO. It is unfortunate that they are now being cited to convince developing countries and NGOs to take up an agenda of reform that could lead precisely to the strengthening of an organization that is very fundamentally flawed. What civil society, North and South, should instead be doing at this point is radically cutting down the power of the institution and reducing it to simply another institution in a pluralistic world trading system with multiple systems of governance. Is the WTO Necessary? This is the fundamental question on which the question of reform hinges. World trade did not need the WTO to expand 17-fold between 1948 and 1997, from $124 billion to $10,772 billion. (3) This expansion took place under the flexible GATT trade regime. The WTO's founding in 1995 did not respond to a collapse or crisis of world trade such as happened in the 1930's. It was not necessary for global peace, since no world war or trade-related war had taken place during that period. In the seven major inter-state wars that took place in that period-the Korean War of 1950-53, the Vietnam War of 1945-75, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1982 Falklands War, and the Gulf War of 1990-trade conflict did not figure even remotely as a cause. GATT was, in fact, functioning reasonably well as a framework for liberalizing world trade. Its dispute- settlement system was flexible and with its recognition of the "special and differential status" of developing countries, it provided the space in a global economy for Third World countries to use trade policy for development and industrialization. Why was the WTO established following the Uruguay Round of 1986-94? Of the major trading powers, Japan was very ambivalent, concerned as it was to protect its agriculture as well as its particular system of industrial production that, through formal and informal mechanisms, gave its local producers primary right to exploit the domestic market. The EU, well on the way of becoming a self-sufficient trading bloc, was likewise ambivalent, knowing that its highly subsidized system in agriculture would come under attack. Though demanding greater access to their manufactured and agricultural products in the Northern economies, the developing countries did not see this as being accomplished through a comprehensive agreement enforced by a powerful trade bureaucracy but through discrete negotiations and agreements in the model of the Integrated Program for Commodities (IPCs) and Commodity Stabilization Fund agreed upon under the aegis of UNCTAD in the late seventies. The founding of the WTO served primarily the interest of the United States. Just as it was the US which blocked the founding of the International Trade Organization (ITO) in 1948, when it felt that this would not serve its position of overwhelming economic dominance in the post-war world, so it was the US that became the dominant lobbyist for the comprehensive Uruguay Round and the founding of the WTO in late eighties and early nineties, when it felt that more competitive global conditions had created a situation where its
[CTRL] Return of the Plagues?
-Caveat Lector-
From Wash DC Post
via http://www.cleveland.com/news/index.ssf?/news/pd/w28resis.html
This is reminiscent of the problems the comfort ladies in the Philippines (and
other locales) had with taking forty pills over ten days' time and being abstinent.
The developed a bunch of resistant cooties, too. When the natural defenses are put
into atrophy, morality notwithstanding, the cooties usually win. Another good one
is TB, on the comeback trail. AER
}}Begin
Disease-causing bacteria growing more immune to 'wonder drugs
Thursday, December 28, 2000
By GUY GUGLIOTTA
WASHINGTON POST
Health Fitness
Ohio to extend Medicaid coverage
Inhaled steroids can ease symptoms but do not arrest respiratory ailments
Disease-causing bacteria growing more immune to 'wonder drugs
Visit the Health Finess section
Talk in our Health Forum
Talk in our Fitness Forum
One of natures most common - and dangerous - disease-causing bacteria is developing
antibiotic-resistant strains at an increasing rate, the latest evidence that overuse
of these "wonder drugs" is causing them to lose their effectiveness.
A report in todays issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that the rate
of multidrug resistance for the microbe Streptococcus pneumoniae had increased from
9 percent to 14 percent between 1995 and 1998. Streptococcus pneumoniae is the most
common cause of bacterial meningitis, pneumonia and inner ear infections in the
United States.
"The emergence of S. pneumoniae with anti-microbial resistance is a matter of great
concern," said the research team, led by Cynthia Whitney of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. "Multidrug-resistant pneumococci are common and are
increasing."
As recently as the 1930s, the fatality rate from pneumonia in the United States
stood at 35 percent. With the introduction of antibiotics, the rate began to drop in
sharp increments until it reached 5 percent to 8 percent with the introduction of
penicillin.
The CDC team collected 12,045 samples of Streptococcus pneumoniae between 1995 and
1998 from a population of 16.5 million spread throughout the country. During the
period, the rate of resistance to penicillin rose from 21 percent to 25 percent, the
report said, but the rate of resistance to three or more classes of drugs rose much
more sharply - from 9 percent to 14 percent.
The study found a higher proportion of penicillin-resistant bacteria among children
and white Americans than among adults and black Americans, statistics the team said
probably reflected whites easier access to antibiotics and parents greater
likelihood of dosing their children with drugs.
Furthermore, the report said, although bacterial strains "that are susceptible to
penicillin are rarely resistant to another agent," strains "that are resistant to
penicillin are likely to be resistant to multiple other agents."
The chief culprit in microbial resistance is overuse of antibiotics, the team said,
and in an editorial accompanying the study, Richard Wenzel and Michael Edmond of
Virginia Commonwealth University noted that approximately 25,000 tons of antibiotics
are consumed each year in the United States, about half by humans and the rest by
livestock and agriculture.
©2000 THE PLAIN DEALER. Used with permission.
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A
[CTRL] Pet Mines
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://commondreams.org/headlines/122600-02.htm
}}Begin
Wednesday December 27, 2000
NewsCenter | NewsWire
Share This Article With A Friend
Headlines
Published on Tuesday, December 26, 2000 by Agence France Presse
Activists Urge Americans To 'Adopt-a-Minefield'
WASHINGTON - It is a tried and true fundraising method that for decades has helped
communities across the United States maintain thousands of kilometers of highways.
Roads are being offered to companies, organizations and wealthy individuals for
"adoption."
Now, two leading US disarmament groups are trying the same approach on the
international stage by urging US groups and individuals to "adopt" minefields in
countries like Afghanistan or Cambodia to held raise the money for clearing them.
"The idea behind Adopt-A-Minefield is both powerful and simple," explained the
United Nations Association of the United States, one of the campaign organizers.
"Designed to move the political and policy debates typically associated with banning
the use of landmines, the Campaign provides a practical solution to the tens of
millions of mines that contaminate the world," the group said in a statement.
The Better World Fund, created two years ago by activist entrepreneur Ted Turner,
the founder of CNN television, promised to make sure that every dollar raised
through "adoptions" of minefields was "forwarded to the United Nations for mine
clearance operations."
An estimated 100 million landmines have been planted around the world during various
recent conflicts, according to the United Nations. They kill or maim more than
20,000 people a year, most often in Cambodia, Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Afghanistan.
But identifying minefields is only part of the problem, according to disarmament
activists.
They say that while a modern landmine costs as little as three dollars to produce,
removing it could cost up to 1,000 dollars, which often makes the whole undertaking
too expensive for rural communities.
That's where the Adopt-A-Minefield campaign is expected to lend a hand.
William Luers, chairman of the UN Association of the United States, says the ideas
appears to have captured people's imagination.
"It's something you can pay for that gets done and helps save lives -- direct," he
told The New York Times.
So far, the groups have managed to arrange for the "adoption" of 53 minefields in
Bosnia, Croatia, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Mozambique.
The sponsors include disarmament and religious groups, companies as well as several
individuals.
Amy Newmark of Greenwich, Connecticut, has "adopted" a section of a minefield in
Matutuine, in southern Mozambique, while Josh and Judy Weston from Montclair, New
Jersey, are taking care of a minefield in Reaksmei Suengha, in Battambang province,
in Cambodia.
"Their donation will be used to clear land that will enable the villagers of
Reaksmei Suengha to safely use their school, pagoda, and surrounding agricultural
land," campaign organizers said in a statement.
The two groups, whose "adoption" initiative enjoys the backing of the Clinton
administration, expect to raise more than 2.5 million dollars by the end of the
year.
Meanwhile the US government plans to spend 100 million dollars to support demining
efforts around the world in 2001, according to the State Department.
Copyright © 2000 AFP
###
Common Dreams NewsCenter is a non-profit news service
providing breaking news and views for the Progressive Community.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such
material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental,
political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues,
etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those
who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted
material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must
obtain permission from the copyright owner.
NewsCenter
| NewsWire
Search | Contacting Us | Sign-Up | Privacy
Tell Us What You Think:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Making News?: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
© Copyrighted 1997-2000
All Rights Reserved. Common Dreams. www.commondreams.org
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ +
[CTRL] Extra! Extra!
-Caveat Lector- From www.wsws.org WSWS : News Analysis : North America : US Media The US media: a critical component of the conspiracy against democratic rightsPart 5 Media ownership and concentration By David Walsh 27 December 2000 Back to screen version This is the fifth in a series of articles on the ideological and political role of the American media. Part one appeared on December 5, part two on December 7, part three on December 16 and part four on December 19. The growth of anti-democratic tendencies among leading media personalities is linked to the increasing wealth of the social layer to which they belong and its distance from the concerns of ordinary people. These well-heeled individuals for the most part feel that society is a mechanism that exists to satisfy their narrow interests, so it is not surprising that they should adopt an indifferent or hostile attitude toward the efforts of working people to vote in a presidential election and have their votes counted. They sense, moreover, that if wide layers of the population did enter into political life and began advancing their own social demands, the lives of those at the top would be dangerously and irretrievably altered. The process by which media figures have been bribed and corrupted is bound up with changes in the composition of the industry itself. More and more television news personalities, in particular, are little more than sales representatives for giant conglomerates. Their essential responsibility is to sell the conglomerates' products. The degree to which the ownership of the media is concentrated in the hands of a few mega-corporations is astonishing. But nearly as astonishing is the lack of outcry from the journalistic community (and the erstwhile liberal intelligentsia, in general). It seems to trouble almost no one in these circles that they are writing and reporting on behalf of a relative handful of corporate behemoths whose clear interest lies in suppressing material detrimental to their drive for profit both at home and abroad. The overwhelming majority of journalists see no conflict of interest in this circumstance, because they share the same general dedication to the status quo as the directors of the corporations who employ them. Nine giant companies now dominate the US media landscape, providing most television programs, films, videos and DVDs, radio shows, CDs, books and other leisure-time products and activities. They are Disney (ABC), AOL-Time Warner (CNN), Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (Fox TV), Viacom (CBS), General Electric (NBC), Sony (the former CBS records and Columbia Pictures), Seagram (Universal film and television studios), ATT (cable television systems, including former MediaOne), and Bertelsmann (a German firm that controls the publication of one out of ten adult trade books in the world). (Some analysts put the number at six in the mass media field, excluding Sony, Seagram and ATT.) Their media revenues range from $8 to $30 billion a year. According to Robert McChesney and John Nichols, the authors of It's the Media, Stupid, Another twelve to fifteen firms, which do from $2 or $3 billion to $8 billion per year in business, round out the system. (p. 28) These include Comcast, Hearst, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Cox, Advance, Tribune Company and Gannett. The concentration in the industry is extraordinary. The top six, in order of annual revenuesAOL-Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corp., Bertelsmann and GEhave more annual revenues than the next 20 firms combined. Time Warner, before its alliance with AOL, was some 50 times larger in terms of sales than the world's fiftieth- largest media firm. AOL-Time Warner is valued at $350 billion. It is, according to media critic Ben Bagdikian, a communications cartel of a magnitude and power the world has never seen. ( The Media Monopoly, preface to the sixth edition, p. xi.) The nine giants have holdings in almost every media sector. Without inflicting too many facts and figures on the reader, it might be useful to look briefly at the anatomies of some of these conglomerates. Time Warner (considering the company before its alliance with AOL) was formed in 1989 through the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. In 1992 Time Warner split off its entertainment group; it regained its position as the world's largest media firm in 1996 when it purchased Turner Broadcasting. In 1998 the company had revenues of $28 billion. It is a global firm, with over 200 subsidiaries; its income increasingly comes from outside the US. Time Warner makes 20 percent of its money from the music business, another 20 percent from the news division (magazine and book publishing and cable television news), 10 percent from its US cable systems and the rest from its film, video and television holdings. As one commentator notes, Time Warner is a major force in virtually every medium and on every continent. The company is one of the largest cinema owners,
[CTRL] Advisory: Kubby Mistrial
-Caveat Lector- -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- = ADVISORY FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY News from the National LP headquarters for members supporters of the Libertarian Party = Watergate Office Building 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100 Washington DC 20037 Website: www.LP.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For information about the party: (800) ELECT-US = December 22, 2000 = Hung jury ends Kubby medical marijuana trial WASHINGTON, DC -- The medical marijuana trial of Steve and Michele Kubby has ended in a mistrial after a "hopelessly deadlocked" jury voted 11-1 in favor of acquitting the former Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate and his wife. After deliberating for 21 hours over five days, the eight- woman, four-man jury in Auburn, California said on Thursday it could not reach a verdict on the most significant charges against the Kubbys -- conspiracy, cultivation, and possession of marijuana with intent to sell. After the trial, a jury spokesman said even though there was overwhelming consensus that the Kubbys were not guilty of the marijuana charges, one lone juror refused to agree, and "there was no way she could be convinced." However, Steve Kubby was convicted of what a local newspaper called "comparably minor" drug charges of possession of a controlled substance, psilocyn and peyote. Michele Kubby was acquitted of those charges. During the four-month trial, the Kubbys had argued they were legitimate medical marijuana patients who took the drug under doctor's orders, and were protected by Proposition 215, the state law that legalized medical marijuana. "We stood and fought and defended the rights of sick people," said Steve Kubby after the trial. "We hope this [decision] creates a bright line for law enforcement." Steve Kubby was the LP's gubernatorial candidate in California in 1998, and sought the party's vice presidential nomination in 2000. He also played a key role in Proposition 215, which was passed by voters in 1996. The 11 members of the jury who voted to acquit were apparently swayed by the so-called Oakland Guidelines. Written by the city of Oakland, the guidelines allow patients to grow up to 144 marijuana plants for medical reasons. "The important thing is the jury upheld the Oakland Guidelines," said Steve Kubby. "Everything else is really superfluous." Other California counties have more restrictive medical marijuana guidelines, and the failure to convict the Kubbys could convince them to reconsider those policies, said the Kubbys' lawyer, J. Tony Serra. The mistrial decision was "mostly good news" for the medical marijuana movement, said Libertarian Party National Director Steve Dasbach. "It's great news that 11 of 12 jurors voted in favor of medical marijuana, and voted against the government's effort to put sick people in jail," he said. "It's bad news that the 12th juror didn't have the good sense or compassion to agree, and refused to acquit the Kubbys of all charges. "But after spending two years attacking the Kubbys, and hundreds of thousands of dollars on the trial, the hung jury will make prosecutors leery about arresting and charging future medical marijuana patients." California Libertarians have a "mixture of elation, disappointment, and caution" after the Kubby mistrial, said LP State Chair Mark Hinkle. "We extend congratulations to Michele for her acquittal, but today's outcome is a mixed blessing," he said. "We share outrage with thousands of others over Steve's conviction on two senseless charges. "We are very pleased and encouraged that in a county as politically conservative as Placer -- where Proposition 215 was rejected by 52% of voters -- 11 jurors would vote to follow the law approved by all Californians four years ago. The real tragedy is that countless other Americans continue suffering due to the government's failed drug policy." Hinkle also predicted that the Kubbys would be found innocent if the case went back to trial. "As far as we're concerned, Steve and Michele Kubby's use of medical marijuana has been vindicated," he said. "There is no doubt in our minds that Steve and Michele were using medical marijuana lawfully. "There is no doubt that Steve was targeted by law enforcement authorities following his high-profile gubernatorial campaign -- in which he openly testified that taking marijuana was the only thing keeping a rare form of cancer from killing him. And there is no doubt that he will eventually be completely exonerated." Prosecutors have not announced whether they will retry the case. "Considering [the] 11-1 outcome, they would be foolish to retry the case," said Hinkle. Steve Kubby is
[CTRL] Rx For Gun Control
-Caveat Lector- From NEWSMAX.COM http://www.newsmax.com/commentmax/print.shtml?a=2000/12/21/080830 }}Begin NewsMax.com The Strange Role of Doctors in the Gun Debate Dr. Michael S. Brown Dec. 21, 2000 If you were going to choose a team of experts to help resolve the question of gun rights versus gun control, who would you pick? Your first choice should be a good criminologist; then perhaps a police officer with extensive street experience. To analyze the cost of gun violence and the cost of gun control, you would choose an economist. An expert on the causes of suicide would be very helpful as would a skilled statistician to sort through the various studies. You would probably not choose a doctor, yet a small number of doctors have assumed a large role in the anti-gun lobby. Various trauma surgeons, in particular, have asserted that their experience in treating gunshot wounds makes them experts on gun control legislation. This is patently absurd. You wouldn't ask advice on traffic laws from someone who repairs damaged cars. There are experts who are trained to conduct scientific studies and recommend new traffic laws when needed. Most doctors are predisposed to anti-gun thinking by their urban liberal upbringing. Treating numerous gunshot victims may exaggerate this existing mindset. Most Americans will never see a gunshot wound, but some trauma surgeons see so many that they begin to view the world as overwhelmed with gun violence. This skewed world view can result in a very human emotional urge to "do something" about the problem of gun violence. This same motive is commonly found in family members of gun violence victims; since the real causes of human violence are so complex, they must lash out at something simple like the type of weapon used. Doctors who treat these victims may be responding in much the same way. Medical doctors who support political movements use their credibility as medical professionals to lend weight to a particular cause. This credibility comes from their training which teaches doctors to use the scientific method to diagnose and treat medical conditions. When physicians support a political cause, most people would assume that they are applying the same standards. Unfortunately for these social activist doctors, all reputable research shows that gun control laws simply don't work. To support the anti-gun lobby, they must turn their backs on their scientific training and give in to their personal bias. This awkward situation led some doctors to carry out public health studies designed to produce anti-gun statistics. This is known as "results-oriented research" or "junk science". These studies are distinguished by certain characteristics. The anti-gun researchers frequently choose small populations or geographic areas that they believe will produce the desired outcome. They ignore the fact that guns are often used to deter crime without shots being fired and they typically misrepresent the conclusions of earlier studies on which they are basing their own research. Their statistical analysis is always questionable and they sometimes refuse to make their raw data public to avoid close scrutiny. Perhaps the most striking characteristic is the way that the results are always turned into an anti-gun sound bite with an outlandish number representing the harm done by firearms. The most famous of these studies is the one that declared firearms to be 43 times more likely to kill someone in the home than to kill an intruder. Like all of the anti-gun studies, this one has been dissected by numerous people who delight in pointing out the way in which the data were tortured to produce the desired results. A classic discussion of these flawed studies is "Guns in the Medical Literature a Failure of Peer Review" by Edgar A. Suter, MD. This wave of criticism may be partly responsible for some improvement in the quality of published articles. The Journal of the American Medical Association, for example, recently published a study by Ludwig and Cook which found that the much touted Brady Act had no effect on the national homicide rate. Perhaps this marks a return to intellectual honesty that will convince anti-gun doctors to take a more logical look at the problem of gun violence. They should at least admit to the public and to their fellow doctors that their opinions on gun legislation have nothing to do with their medical credentials. Dr. Michael S. Brown is a board member of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, on the web at: http://keepandbeararms.com/dsgl References: Evaluating the "43 Times" Fallacy David K. Felbeck http://keepandbeararms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=viewarticleid=423 Guns in the Medical Literature A Failure of Peer Review - Edgar A. Suter, MD http://rkba.org/research/suter/med-lit.html?suter#first_hit How the CDC succumbed to the "Gun Epidemic" Kates, Shaffer, Waters Reason Magazine http://www.reason.com/9704/fe.cdc.html For Your Own Good
[CTRL] Black Noise
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.coastalpost.com/00/12/04.htm
}}Begin
December 2000
Low Frequency Active Sonar Killing Whales, Dolphins
Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS) is in the process of being deployed worldwide by
the US Navy and NATO to supposedly detect enemy submarines. Recently, the use of
high intensity sonars has been associated with massive strandings of cetacean in the
Bahamas.
Several species stranded and each of those who died were discovered through
necropsies to have experienced trauma which damaged their ears and eyes where
membranes had ruptured and there was bleeding. This tragic incident coincided with
acoustic testing in March of 2000. In direct contrast to these unnerving events, the
Stop LFAS Worldwide Network was involved in litigation in Federal Court. Stop LFAS
Worldwide Network filed the paperwork on February 29th along with 10 other
plaintiffs all represented by Attorney, Lanny Sinkin.
In the midst of the litigation efforts while trying to compile further information
about these latest strandings, the Stop LFAS Worldwide Network was recognized by the
Earth Society Foundation received an Earth Day Award; which is both a global honor
and responsibility.
While the US Navy has not disclosed actual sound levels, it is known through
published articles that NATO has been using sound applications called Time Reversed
Acoustics which use a playback method to make the underwater sound so focused and so
powerful that it can kill and maim whales, dolphins and sea life.
It would be useless to compare this sound to another man-made non-explosive noise in
another medium because the attenuation of this disruptive force continues many
hundreds of miles. And now with Time Reversed Mirroring techniques being employed,
the combined background chaos serves as a greater method of focusing the noise at a
distance. This is "sound" but it is most useful to think of it as "power."
Stop LFAS Worldwide is an organization to bring public awareness internationally to
save our oceans and our planet from this acoustic mayhem. Further information is
available at http://listen.to/lfas (viewpoints).
Coastal Post Home Page
End{{
AER
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL
[CTRL] CyberCops
-Caveat Lector- From http://128.121.216.19/justin/pf/p-j122000.html Embedded linques at site. AER }}Begin Behind the Headlines by Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com December 20, 2000 BIG GOVERNMENT INVADES THE INTERNET Just when you think that reality can't possibly get any more outrageous, the infinite capacity of human beings for folly continues to astonish. How else can we react to the recent Associated Press news story intriguingly headlined: "Cyberspace Head Warns of Digital War." Cyberspace has a "head"? This was news to me, at least, and, fascinated, I couldn't help but investigate further. HAIL TO THE CHIEF! It turns out that cyberspace that anarchic, freewheeling electronic frontier does indeed have a "head," in the form of Richard Clarke of the National Security Council: Clark is what the AP calls "the nation's top cyberspace official," kind of the President of Cyberspace although somehow I don't remember voting in that particular election. But never mind. On Friday, Clarke announced that we are in for a "digital Pearl Harbor" unless, of course, we take certain measures. Now we all have our own take on the unnaturally extended presidential election, but Clarke's perspective is distinctly odd: "What this presidential election year showed is that statistically improbable events can occur. It may be improbable that cyberspace can be seriously disrupted, it may be improbable that a war in cyberspace can occur, but it could happen." INTERNET THREAT? The anointed sovereign of cyberspace has spoken. But who or what is going to be doing all this disrupting? Energy shortages and threatened power blackouts in California and elsewhere? Will some kind of virus infect the world's computers, and bring down every website? Or will Al Gore, the inventor of the Internet, get snippy and pull out the rug from under us all? Clarke's explanation is far less credible than any of the above: he asserts, without getting specific, that several unidentified nations have developed "information warfare units." These mysterious "units," he claims, "are creating technology to bring down computer networks. Some are doing reconnaissance today on our networks, mapping them." THE MAP-MAKERS Gee, that sounds familiar. . . . Remember when Antiwar.com was monitored by CERT, the special military unit supposedly devoted to "protecting" America's cybernetic superstructure from electronic attack? Longtime readers will remember the [June 2, 2000] column wherein I described a sudden rise in the number of hits on our site numbers so large that they caused the counting software to crash: it turned out that they all emanated from the mysterious headquarters of the Army's Computer Emergency Response Team, set up under the rubric of the "war on terrorism." Say what? How come the feds were monitoring us, of all people, when they were supposed to be guarding the electronic doorway to the nation's air traffic control systems? What's up with that? I asked, and I believe a reporter from Counterpunch followed up on it, but there was never a satisfactory answer to my question. Now, it seems, Clarke has inadvertently provided us with a plausible scenario: could it be they were mapping us, setting us up, as it were, for the several hacking incidents that followed? INFO-WAR Now, Mr. Clarke is no doubt right that several nations have set up info-war units under military command: what he doesn't say is that the US government probably had first, and the best-funded program. President Clinton announced as much during the Kosovo war: in addition to dropping radioactive bombs from 30,000 feet, the US would attack the Serbs in cyberspace. Rumor had it that the CIA had trained a cadre of Kosovar hackers, and they were apparently let loose on the Serbs in a series of cyber-assaults, at one point commandeering the Yugoslav government site, Serbia-info. And so, yes, there is a threat to the peace and security of cyberspace coming not from some malevolent foreign power, but from malicious hackers probably based right here in the good ol' US of A. We were told by our Internet service provider that he had never in his life seen a site subjected to so many attempted hackings and the assault continues, even after moving to a more secure server and taking expensive precautions. OUR PEARL HARBOR Clarke conjures up visions of a "Pearl Harbor" in cyberspace, but we've already had our own little Pearl Harbor right here at Antiwar.com. Once such incident, as fans of this site will perhaps remember, had us down for nearly a week. An intruder gained entry to our system, and proceeded to wipe out everything. The FBI came into the case, and spoke to our webmaster, Eric Garris, but aside from this one contact we never heard from them
[CTRL] Roots of Terror
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=574month=27title=Intellectual+Roots+of
+Terrorid=27
}}Begin
Intellectual Roots of Terror
The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press, 1999)
Reviewed by James Ostrowski
{Posted December 19, 2000}
As zebras are fascinated by lions, libertarians are fascinated by communists, their
polar opposites and sworn enemies for the last 150 years. If one believes that
society should function with an absolute minimum of governmental coercion, one is
curious to know the results of a philosophy which places its faith in the maximum
possible use of governmental coercion, force, and violence, to achieve its goals. If
communism worked, we libertarians would be forced to check our premises and watch
our backs.
Can the laboratory of communism also shed light on the viability of a related
political philosophy, which also relies on centralized governmental coercion to
achieve its goals: modern liberalism? The communists did all at once what stealthy
liberals apparently intend to do piece by piece while we sleep. We just lived
through a century in which liberals enacted several recommendations of the Communist
Manifesto and transformed a night watchman state into a welfare/warfare state with a
continual flow of "progressive" legislation and various "Democrat wars" and crusades
with the result that no one in my law school class in 1983 could identify, in
response to Professor Henry Mark Holzer's query, any aspect of life that was not in
some way regulated or controlled by the state. Seventeen years later, are they
through?
Has liberalism closed up shop? Will they ever be through? Not until they have
established an egalitarian utopia where virtually all responsibility for living has
passed from the individual to the state. In the liberal utopia, if I may pilfer
Paddy Chayefsky's words, "all necessities [will be] provided, all anxieties
tranquilized, all boredom amused."
If you think I exaggerate, consider that liberals and communists share five critical
premises: egalitarianism, utopianism (the use of impossible "ideals" as a guide to
policy), the efficacy of force in accomplishing positive goals, hostility to civil
society (nonstate institutions, e.g., Boy Scouts, private schools), and the
individual's inability to govern himself.
In light of the recent attempted coup d'élection, I am tempted to add a sixth
similarity-willingness to win political fights at all costs. Further evidence of
some basic affinity between communism and modern liberalism is the latter's frequent
cover-ups and apologies for the former. Finally, communists and liberals share a
tendency to expressly support "mass democracy" while they in practice concentrate
power in secretive elite bodies such as politburos and appellate courts.
THE BLACK BOOK
In that spirit of fascination with the enemy, I recently read The Black Book of
Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1999), a
clinical and relentless dissection of the crimes of communism in the 20th century-
defined by "the natural laws of humanity"--written by several ex-fellow travelers
led by Stephane Courtois.
It is not a book to be read before, during or after a meal. You would not want to
spoil a good meal with the image of Bolshevik troops throwing live human beings into
a blast furnace. The Black Book is a story of mind-numbing and mindless
brutality. Mao Zedong, one of the stars of the book, said, "political power grows
out of the barrel of a gun."
One wonders, after reading this book, whether political power actually grows out of
the depraved minds of solipsistic, megalomaniacs like Lenin, Stalin and Mao. It
seems that if you hypnotize yourself into discarding all known ethics and morality,
and are willing to use any and all ruthless means to achieve power, then you can
have it. A Bolshevik newspaper wrote in 1919: "Our morality has no
precedent...everything is permitted...Let blood flow like water..." And it did.
THE RAP SHEET
When Khrushchev said, "We will bury you," he meant it. Communists buried eighty-
five million people in the 20th century, give or take the number of people who live
in New York State. What is really interesting, however, is not the sheer number of
victims. After all, as Stalin said, "A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths
is a statistic." And what a statistician Stalin proved to be.
But even more awesome is the incredible variety of their murderous means. In
pursuit of utopia, the communists were forced to outdo themselves in continually
discovering ever more ways to separate the bourgeoisie from their souls. They
murdered people by hanging them, whipping them, slitting their throats, carving them
up with axes, boiling them, crucifying them, beheading them, drawing and quartering
them, stoning them, forcing them to fight to the death against other prisoners,
massively drowning them, throwing them from helicopters, asphyxiating them, starving
[CTRL] TB
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.vdare.com/scott_mcconnell_TB.htm http://www.vdare.com/scott_mcconnell_TB_canadian.htm }}Begin Send us your TB carriers... Disease is the Achilles Heel of the open-borders crowd. Contrary to their apparent imagining, there was rigorous official screening of immigrants back in the Ellis Island era: 1-3 percent of them were turned back every year. With 1-3 million illegal border crossings every year, nothing like these safeguards exist now. This may be the unreported story of West Nile Disease. It is certainly the unreported story of Americas much touted but unhistorical commitment to refugees. By Scott McConnell Same story (but worse, of course) in Canada Someone is coughing in the subway, nearby. You can see a half dozen public service ads extolling safe sex, but underground neither morality nor prudence can protect from the germs of your fellow passengers. In a cab with a coughing driver, you can open the window wide, though its December, calculating the risk-reward ration of flu versus tuberculosis. TB is back. Ten years ago, on the heels of the AIDS epidemic, it was rising fast, but effective countermeasuresincluding directly observed therapy and even detention of patients stalled the diseases rise. But now the drugs are weaker, the strains more difficult-sometimes impossible-to cure. And rates are rising. Where is the disease coming from? Our immigration policy, that is courtesy of Bill Clinton, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, La Raza, George W. Bush and dozens other culprits. Listen to Dr. Lee Reichman of the Center for Disease Control. Were now at the level that to control TB anywhere we have to control it everywhere. Were doing a great job with native-born Americans. Were not doing a good job in keeping down the incidence among persons coming into the country. A CDC report notes that immigrants are six times more likely to have TB than Americans, and their rates are rising. VDARE notes that in all of Dr. Reichmans nuanced exposition of the difficulties in diagnosing and treating this long dread disease, he mentions not once the possibility of actually reducing the number of TB carriers who enter the country. December 17, 2000 Canada: The Disease Dimension Disease is the Achilles Heel of the open-borders crowd. Contrary to their apparent imagining, there was rigorous official screening of immigrants back in the Ellis Island era: 1-3 percent of them were turned back every year. With 1-3 million illegal border crossings every year, nothing like these safeguards exist now. This may be the unreported story of West Nile Disease. It is certainly the unreported story of Americas much touted but unhistorical commitment to refugees. By Michael Monastyrskyj Immigrants are bringing tuberculosis to Canada, infecting Canadians with the deadly disease and placing even more strain on the countrys overburdened healthcare system. Recently newspapers in southern Ontario reported that a Caribbean immigrant and his girlfriend had infected at least 14 Canadians with TB. It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to track down and test all the people the couple had contact with. Canadas immigration system broke down twice. First, the man, who suffered from one of the worst types of TB, should not have been let in. Even under the countrys lax immigration rules, would-be immigrants with active TB are barred until they have been adequately treated in their country of origin. Second, health authorities in Hamilton, Ontario, should have been notified about the mans presence, but say they werent. As a result, he was able to live undetected in the area for a year enough time for to make contact with 1,200 people across southern Ontario, all of whom have to be found, tested and re- tested at taxpayers expense. Hamilton isnt the only Canadian city forced to deal with tuberculosis. Last week in Montreal, a Peruvian refugee claimant with TB and a problem with authority barely avoided jail after repeatedly refusing to take treatment and infecting his ex-girlfriends five-year-old daughter. The man described as belligerent was often too hungover to show up for treatment and even in spat in the face of an ambulance attendant taking him to the hospital. Tuberculosis can be transmitted by saliva. A year ago, the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union complained that there is a definite health threat to its members and the Canadian public, because refugee claimants are not
