News of the Month

January 10, 2004

It’s been a big news month – the enemies of liberty and the Constitution have been hard at it while you and I took a break for the winter holidays.

First, you’ve probably heard that the Texas Republican Gerrymander has been formally blessed by the courts. The Austin area no longer has a representative in the US Congress. Tom Delay’s plan to gather even more power to himself – oh, and the Republican Party, while he’s at it – will spread little salamander tails from Austin in four different directions, ensuring that Texas’ capital city will be represented in the US Congress by men (and yeah, they’ll probably be men) elected by the people of the rural counties between here and the border. Delay actually told people that he wouldn’t approve any re-map that didn’t get rid of the “liberal” representatives of four districts, including Austin.

Tom, you see, has ambitions to become the next Reichsfuehrer after George II. Well, I’ve got news for you, Tommy boy, the neo-con men who really run the government, along with their Project for the New American Century, aren’t going to let anyone as ornery and ambitious as you anywhere near the Republican nomination. Hmmm; does that phrase “new American century” remind anyone else of the last empire that said it was going to be around for a long time? I guess a century isn’t quite as egomaniacal as a “thousand year Reich,” but … does anybody besides me get nervous about that whole idea?

And speaking of Tom Delay, the Los Angeles Times reported on January 3 that:

“Authorities are conducting a criminal investigation into whether corporate money, including hundreds of thousands of dollars linked to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay, improperly financed the Republican Party’s takeover of the Texas Capitol. … At issue is whether the organizations improperly used corporate contributions to help finance the campaigns of more than 20 Republican candidates for the Texas House of Representatives in 2002, according to documents and interviews with prosecutors and government investigators.

“Investigators said they suspected that the Texas group (Texans for a Republican Majority) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on telephone banks and other initiatives during the election – projects, they said, that went beyond the administrative costs corporations are allowed to fund in Texas elections. The money, in effect, represented a direct contribution to Republican candidates ….

“Sources close to the investigation said that as many as 20 people, including several of Austin’s power brokers, have appeared before two grand juries as prosecutors push for indictments. Most, including Hammond, have retained criminal lawyers. The sources said at least two people, including the former director of Texans for a Republican Majority, John Colyandro, have been granted limited immunity in exchange for testimony.”

Next, I guess you all remember the story about the heroic capture by US forces of Saddam Hussein, in his “hiding place” near his home town of Tikrit? Well, that’s a lie – surprise, surprise. US forces didn’t capture him – they … no, listen to this report about the event. It’s by the AFP News Service, reporting on a story in the Daily Express of London on December 20. The title gives it away: “Saddam was held by Kurdish forces, drugged, and left for US troops.” Here’s the story:

“Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged, and abandoned, ready for American soldiers to recover him ….

“Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam’s son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

“The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president’s capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq, ‘exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete.’

“A former Iraqi intelligence officer … told the paper that Saddam was held prisoner by a leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside US forces during the Iraq war, until he (the leader) negotiated a deal.

“The deal apparently involved the group gaining political advantage in the region.”

And, speaking of our illegal, immoral, and stupid war in Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief neo-con men and currently Undersecretary of Defense, has finally come clean about why we attacked that hapless nation. From an article in On-Line Journal by Jason Leopold, we learn:

“Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main architects for the invasion of Iraq, admitted for the first time that Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 ‘terrorist’ attacks, contradicting public statements made by the Bush Administration whose attempt to link Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda as one of the main reasons for launching a preemptive strike in March against Iraq.

“In an interview with conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham, Wolfowitz was asked when he first came to believe that Iraq was behind the 9–11 ‘terrorist’ attacks.

“ ‘I’m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it,’ Wolfowitz said in the interview ….

“Wolfowitz’s answer confirms doubts long held by critics of the Iraq invasion that the Bush administration had no evidence linking Iraq to 9–11 or al-Qaeda, but simply used the horrific ‘terrorist’ attacks as a reason to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime.

… “Since Bush declared in May an end to major combat in Iraq, Wolfowitz has given numerous interviews contradicting the administration’s rationale for starting the war. Most notably, Wolfowitz told a reporter for Vanity Fair … that the decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for bureaucratic reasons.“

What he said in Vanity Fair was:

“… for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction.”

Then, an article in The Guardian of Britain reported:

“Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war. The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz – who has already undermined Tony Blair’s position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a ‘bureaucratic’ excuse for war – has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is ‘swimming’ in oil.

“Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: ‘Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.’ “

Why don’t you tell us something we didn’t know?

My next follow-up report is in the area of genetic modification of life. I’ve talked about genetic modification of food a lot, but here’s one that really scares me. This article is from BBC News, on December 26, 2003:

“A virulent form of tuberculosis was created in the laboratory by experts trying to alter its genetic structure. The mutant form of the bug multiplied more quickly, and was more lethal, than its natural counterpart. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, US, had actually been trying to disable genes and make the bacterium less deadly. ‘This is one of the very few hyper-virulent organisms ever created,’ said scientist Dr Lisa Morici.

“Tuberculosis is one of the world’s biggest killers, and scientists are probing its genetic structure in a bid to find weaknesses that might be exploited by new treatments. The Berkeley study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concentrated on a particular collection of genes thought to give TB some of its virulence – its ability to infect.

“They disabled these genes, and expected to find a weakened form of TB as a result. Instead, the organism grew in virulence. Further investigations suggested that the genetic changes had the unexpected effect of undermining the body’s own immune response against TB.

“Professor Lee Riley, who led the study, said: ‘These findings came as a complete surprise to us. We thought we had made a mistake, so we repeated the test several times, and we always got the same result.’ “

They keep telling us that genetic modification is safe – that they know what they’re doing. Hah! They’ve screwed around with our food (there are now no un-genetically modified soybeans or corn available anywhere outside organic crops); now they’re screwing around with the diseases that have been killing us – that we thought we’d conquered. Well, we had – until they started trying to “help.” But this report does point out one thing – no matter what they try to tell us, no matter how much they bleat that they are working for our good, this technology is dangerous! It’s being investigated without the kind of controls that will protect us from their little mistakes. “Oh, gee! We didn’t mean to turn that loose – and even if we did, we didn’t realize it was going to poison half the population of the country. Gee, we’re really sorry.”

Another thing we’ve discussed on past shows is the medical use of marijuana. The Libertarian Party’s position on this issue is that all control of drug use should be removed from the law entirely; and nearly everyone agrees that where there is a valid medical use for the drug, physicians ought to be allowed to prescribe it, just like any other medically useful drug. Well, everyone except our moral guardians led by that prissy little Nazi, John Ashcroft. However, good news! The courts have struck down his vendetta against people with glaucoma and intractable pain – listen to this report from the Marijuana Policy Project:

“(On December 17), the largest federal appeals court in the country ruled that federal laws against marijuana may not apply to sick people who use medical marijuana with the approval of their physicians in states where medical marijuana is legal.

“As a result, Angel Raich and Diane Monson – the two California patients who originally sued the U.S. Justice Department on October 9, 2002 – are now legally allowed to use, possess, and grow their own marijuana. The DEA and John Ashcroft’s thugs are now prohibited from arresting or harassing Raich and Monson unless a future court ruling overturns yesterday’s court victory.

“Yesterday’s ruling falls on the heels of (the) October 14 victory with the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided not to hear the U.S. Justice Department’s appeal to criminalize physicians who recommend the medical use of marijuana.”

The ruling was based on the Court’s interpretation of the Interstate Commerce clause of the US Constitution, which Ashcroft and his thugs deliberately mis-read to make it conform to their intent. It says that the US government has authority over the sale of goods and services between states. Since these two people grew their own, and purchased all their supplies in-state, the court found that the US government had no jurisdiction in the matter, especially since the state of California had already granted permission to medical patients to use the drug as prescribed.

There was another victory for liberty in the courts last month, too – two in one month. (Do you remember when victories for liberty were the rule, rather than the exception? It’s getting bad out there, friends.) Here’s an excerpt of a report about it from the Austin American-Statesman of December 19:

“Two federal appeals court rulings Thursday (December 18) struck blows to the Bush administration’s war against terrorists, challenging the way the government has detained Americans and foreigners outside the criminal justice system.

“In a 2-1 decision, the 2^nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that President Bush does not have the authority to hold American citizen Jose Padilla incommunicado ….

“The court said that Padilla, who was arrested on US soil, is entitled to full constitutional protections, including access to his lawyers, whom he has not seen while being detained in a military brig in South Carolina for the past 18 months.

“And the 9^th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that hundreds of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba should have access to legal counsel and the American court system.

The Constitution still takes precedence in some places, despite the best efforts of the CheneyBushCorp’s pet Nazi, John Ashcroft, to dispose of it. And, lest you think these decisions somehow benefit terrorists, listen to this report from the American-Statesman of December 30 about just how artificial and ludicrous the current “war on terrorism” is:

“The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.

“In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs ‘to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.’

“It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.”

The Farmer’s Almanac – the next weapon of international terrorism. What are they going to do? Stop up the Vice Presidential toilet with it?

Speaking of terrorism, let’s look again at the “terrorist” event that the CheneyBushCorp is using to justify nearly every one of its assaults – from its assault on our freedoms to its assault on the nation of Iraq – the demolition of the World Trade Center and the collapse of one section of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that, even if this truly were a terrorist event, the neo-con men surrounding the ruling junta knew it was going to happen ahead of time, and at minimum took positive actions to permit it to happen.

In a story filed on January 6, reporter Tom Flocco said:

“On Friday (January 2), Philip J. Berg, attorney for 9-11 widow Ellen Mariani in her Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit seeking to hold President Bush and various government officials accountable for the September 11 attacks, served Bush and top officials in his Administration with a personal summons, the original complaint and the first amended complaint via a federal process server, as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

“Berg told TomFlocco.com ‘the multiple summonses and complaints were filed last week in Philadelphia; and they require an answer within 60 days,’ adding ‘we feel confident that we’ll be successful, and that the evidence in this case is so strong, it will lead to the end of the Bush presidency.’

“Berg also told us ‘we’re currently preparing written interrogatories and subpoenas so that we’ll be able to keep the discovery of evidence and multiple investigations moving forward at a reasonable pace.’

“For her part, plaintiff Ellen Mariani told us last night that ‘There was ample warning of these attacks; and now I hear from news reports that Condoleezza Rice doesn’t want to testify publicly under oath about all the intelligence briefings which warned about planes flying into buildings. What does she have to hide?”

“The widow continued, “Our Congress created new laws to protect themselves, the White House and the insurance corporations. Insurance lobbyists even talked to representatives and senators on the afternoon of the attacks.’ “

For what it’s worth, the suit was originally filed on November 26 of last year. Mrs. Mariani, wife of Louis Mariani, one of the people who died in the World Trade Center that day, also issued a press release on that same November day. How many of you heard about it on our corporate media? Then or any time after that? No? Here’s another example – a domestic terrorist, who really had “weapons of mass destruction” hidden away, was the subject of a Christian Science Monitor article back in December. The Austin American-Statesman just got around to reporting it this past Thursday. (To tell the truth, I’m surprised they reported it at all.) Briefly, investigators found a sodium cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands, more than a hundred explosives, half a million rounds of ammunition, dozens of illegal weapons, and a mound of white-supremacist and antigovernment literature in his house.

Maybe 50% of what you see on public access TV is junk, but 100% of what you see on the corporate-controlled media is junk; no, not just junk – deliberate disinformation, designed to keep your attention away from the attacks, both violent and non-, on our constitutional liberties.

Those attacks run from the dangerous to the downright ridiculous. At the ridiculous end, for example, take the case of Joanne Webb, a Cleburne, Texas, fifth-grade teacher, executive board member of the local Chamber of Commerce, and mother of three, who was arrested for violating the Texas obscenity law. After an anonymous complaint, undercover drug officers, posing as a dysfunctional married couple in search of sex aids, entrapped the saleswoman for Passion Parties. If convicted, she faces a year in prison and a $4,000 fine.

Mrs. Webb said: “What I did was not obscene. What’s obscene is that the government is taking action about what we do in our bedrooms.” Pat Davis, the president of Passion Parties, said the company was outraged by the charges, and stood behind Mrs. Webb. Mrs. Webb added that she was amazed that drug agents were used to entrap her. “We have a real problem with drugs in our schools, and they’re using our narcotics officers to entrap me for selling a vibrator,” she said.

At the dangerous end, did you know that the Congress has approved, and King George II has signed, that PATRIOT Act II that we warned you about on this show a year or so ago? You didn’t? That’s because his handlers took great pains to make sure he signed the bill in a total blackout. From an article by David Martin in the San Antonio Current, we learn that:

“On December 13, (the day that) U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing – on a Saturday – as ‘the President signs bills seven days a week.’ But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago – on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shutting down the federal government the following Monday.

“By signing the bill on the day of Hussein’s capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA PATRIOT Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don’t suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.

“Congress passed the legislation around Thanksgiving.”

Oh? You didn’t know that? Take a guess why. To continue:

“Except for U.S. Representative Charlie Gonzalez, all San Antonio’s House members voted for the act. The Senate passed it with a voice vote to avoid individual accountability. While broadening the definition of ‘financial institution,’ the Bush administration is ramping up provisions within the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which granted the FBI the authority to obtain client records from banks by merely requesting the records in a ‘National Security Letter.’ To get the records, the FBI doesn’t have to appear before a judge, nor demonstrate ‘probable cause’ – reason to believe that the targeted client is involved in criminal or terrorist activity. Moreover, the National Security Letters are attached with a gag order, preventing any financial institution from informing its clients that their records have been surrendered to the FBI. If a financial institution breaches the gag order, it faces criminal penalties.”

The definition of “financial institution” referred to above once just meant banks, S & Ls, and Credit Unions. Now it also means stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business “whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.” Can you think of any other “financial institutions”? Maybe … grocery stores?

The September 11 attacks – the event that our rulers are using as an excuse for everything from the systematic violation of our rights to their murderous invasion of Iraq – get us into a pile of rotten worms so thick and fat I’d need a whole show to discuss it. And I will probably do just that, sometime soon. For now, understand that the US Air Force had to have been told to stand down, by none less than the National Command Authority (NCA), meaning the President, in order for them not to have been right on those airliners’ wings on that day.

Also understand that the physical evidence of the Twin Towers’ demolition was cut up, hauled away – overseas – and destroyed so precipitously that if any of us had done that, we’d be in prison right now for obstruction of justice. Understand that the physical evidence that does remain, the photographs and movies of the towers’ collapse, irrefutably shows that they were destroyed by a deliberate, controlled demolition. Physics also shows that the way the towers were engineered, it was impossible for any fire caused by airplane fuel to have caused that much, or that kind of, destruction.

Finally, understand that … no, wait. How many of you have heard of Trade Center Building 7? No? Well, it was also destroyed on that day, along with the two towers. It housed several things in its 47 stories, but the two most important things were the New York mayor’s emergency command bunker, the New York station of the CIA, the New York office of the Secret Service (whose members, by the way, were told not to come into work that day), and the office of the US Securities and Exchange Commission that was investigating the way investment banks divvied up hot shares of initial public offerings during the high-tech boom. But the really interesting things about Building 7 were (1) that no other building at its distance out from the towers had the total destruction that it suffered, and (2) that it didn’t collapse until seven hours after the attacks, for reasons that are still unknown.

And then there’s building 6, which stood between Building 7 and the nearest tower. Its occupants were, among others, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms and the US Customs Office. If you look at pictures of Building 6 after the destruction, there is a vertical crater, several stories deep, where it used to stand. Not the kind of rounded crater that would be caused by an explosion, but a vertical crater, as if it, too, had been deliberately demolished.

If you’re interested, there’s a lot of information, with movies and pictures to back it up, at the web site www.geocities.com/streakingobject. (The “streaking object” is a shadow that shows up on several different pictures and videos shot at roughly the time the second airliner hit the towers, with a trajectory aimed straight toward Buildings 6 and/or 7.

Even Thomas Kean, the chairman of the “independent” commission studying the disaster, is saying something’s wrong. Here’s an excerpt from a CBS News report of December 17 by correspondent Randall Pinkston:

“ ‘This is a very, very important part of history and we’ve got to tell it right,’ said Thomas Kean. ‘As you read the report, you’re going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn’t done and what should have been done,’ he said. ‘This was not something that had to happen.’

“Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame. ‘There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed,’ Kean said.

“To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president's top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on one of the most controversial assertions of the Bush administration – that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists might fly an airplane into a building.

“ ‘I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,’ said national security adviser Condoleeza Rice on May 16, 2002.”

This, by the way, is what Mrs. Mariani was talking about earlier. Nobody could have predicted it – except the FBI did, several foreign intelligence agencies did, the teenager who flew his two-seater onto the White House grounds a few years ago did, and even Tom Clancy did, in Debt of Honor, one of his famous international intrigue novels. The article continues:

“ ‘How is it possible we have a national security advisor coming out and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had FBI records from 1991 stating that this is a possibility," said Kristen Breitweiser, one of four New Jersey widows who lobbied Congress and the president to appoint the commission.”