Jonestown, Harvey Milk, and George Moscone

CAVEAT: Some of the particulars in this article are false due not to authorial oversights, but media misreporting. Larry Layton led a death squad at the airstrip in Guyana - but he wasn't a "scapegoat" as the author believes. Layton was a member of the military family that actually controlled Jones and the People's Temple. He was in a glassy-eyed state and completely disoriented at the airstrip, and it's likely that Larry was - LIKE DAN WHITE BACK IN SAN FRANCISCO - mind controlled. The People's Temple parishioners did NOT commit "suicide," despite widespread belief to the contrary. Most took forced injections under the shoulderblade, and some 30 percent were shot. There wasn't enough cyanide in a glassful of the punch to kill an adult. It killed children. The adults had to be murdered at the People's Concentration Camp by Jones's death squads.

Jones was a Nazi with a KKK father. At the age of five, little Jimmy combed his hair in Hitler's style, and he delivered "funeral orations" over the dead pets of his friends - animals he'd murdered. Jones was Nazi, not "left-wing" (the charade is an echo of the National "Socialist" front used by the far-right Nazis to co-opt and kill off Germany's communist agitators in the wake of WW I).

And it was not Jones's corpse found at Jonestown, but a double - CIA agents and Nazis do that (look into Heinrich Mueller's "death" at the close of WW II for the classic example. CIA recruit Joseph Mengele kept getting found in South America and had to "die" five times).

Jones survived the carnage. (If the world believes otherwise, it should have a good talk with the CIA/military media. ... )

- AC

Also see: "Jim Jones, the Guyana "Suicides" & Harvey Milk's Premonitions of Death," and "Jonestown, the CIA & Mind Control"

http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/

... One of the most discussed modern mass suicides occurred in the unique setting of Jonestown, Guyana.

Jonestown in the early 1970s was little more than a nine‑hundred acre island cut out of the thick South American rainforest. It was there that the Reverend James Warren “Jim” Jones relocated his People's Temple from the San Francisco area. Allegations were first published in the Guyana Daily Mirror that Jonestown was a “concentration camp” in which Jones’s flock were given psychotropic drugs, sexually abused, sleep deprived, and forced to work 18 hour days. Former members told of drills, called “white nights,” in which middle-of-the-night sirens called members to a line up where they were told they were going to have to take a poison.

Jonestown residents became pre-conditioned into expecting a coming invasion of the camp by Russians, the CIA, or other imagined “enemies” by the delusional Jones. In the wake of these claims, the pressure mounted for San Francisco officials to look into the Jonestown “cult.”

On July 26, 1977, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone announced that he would not hold an investigation of Jones. In a letter to President Jimmy Carter, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk defended Jones as a friend to minority communities. But soon, San Francisco family members asked their congressional representative to fly to Jonestown to look into the situation (and hopefully rescue their relatives). This finally occurred with a one-day delegation headed by Congressman Leo Ryan.

On November 18, 1978, supposedly frightened by the investigative visit of Ryan, cult leader Jim Jones ordered Larry Schact, a medical school graduate and designated camp doctor, to prepare a huge cyanide‑laced vat of grape Flavor‑aide.

At the Guyanese airstrip near Jonestown, Jones sent gunmen to ambush Ryan and about 30 newsmen, government aides, and relatives of People's Temple members before they could board their plane for a return to the United States. Ryan, three reporters, and a Jonestown defector were killed, and among the wounded were the area’s alleged CIA's Chief of Station Richard Dwyer, and Ryan aide, Jackie Speier. Later Jones, with armed guards at his side, had his followers drink the potion and kill themselves. Those that refused to take the poison were machine-gunned to death by guards who apparently escaped. Thus some of the Jonestown deaths were indeed murders.

By most counts, the death toll was 913. Initially, the general public could not believe that the news accounts were true, despite widespread press and broadcast attention bringing the details into American living rooms. Media reports about the People’s Temple suicides would drag on for years. (It was not until 1986 that one of Jim Jones's assistants, Larry Layton, the only person prosecuted for any of the events in and around Jonestown, was convicted for his involvement in the Jonestown incidents and Ryan’s death. Layton was released from custody in April 2002, on parole, after 18 years in prison. Many believed he was an innocent scapegoat.)

As often happens after well-publicized suicides and mass suicides, the copycat effect took the form of follow-up murders. This happened quickly and in spectacular fashion in San Francisco.

Nine days after the Jonestown events, on November 27, 1978, San Francisco Bay Area residents would learn of the assassinations of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk. Law enforcement officials repeated the local rumors that some Bay Area residents believed that Moscone and Milk were murdered by the hauntingly named "White Night" hit squads said to have been sent by the Peoples Temple to avenge Jim Jones. As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Richard Rapaport observed, “When authorities went through the personal effects left behind in San Francisco by Jones, they found a hit list with the names of erstwhile political friends and allies like George Moscone and Willie Brown.”

The Moscone-Milk murders were carried out by a recently resigned former supervisor, Dan White, and were not directly linked to Jim Jones. White had impulsively retired from his position one year after his election and a mere two days after the Jonestown event. A former Vietnam vet, former police officer, and former firefighter, White would often go into trances during supervisors’ meetings and then impulsively goose-step around the room. His past was filled with mystery, including an enigmatic “missing year” of 1972. White’s murderous instability appeared to have been set off by the Jonestown murder-suicides and their link to San Francisco. The Chronicle’s Rapaport noted in 2003: “Part of the connection between the events came through media coverage. Each day between Saturday, Nov. 18, and Monday, Nov. 27, new and terrible video, photos and revelations emanated from the jungle retreat where many former San Franciscans had chosen, been coerced or programmed to join the man they called ‘Father.’”

In 1979 Dan White was found guilty of “manslaughter by diminished capacity,” despite opening arguments by attorney Doug Schmidt that linked Jonestown to the assassinations. Many still believe that the reason White was not convicted of first degree murder was because of what most of the media reported as the “Twinkie defense” – a phrase coined by well-known satirist Paul Krassner - that junk food had made White do it. While it was in reality HoHos and Ding Dongs, White’s defense claimed that his love of junk food was the result of his depression, not the cause of it.

The night the verdict was handed down, on May 21, 1979, the streets around San Francisco, especially near City Hall, erupted in violent protests. They became known, ironically, as the “White Night Riots.” Dan White would only serve five of his seven-year sentence. He was paroled in January 1984, tried exile in Ireland, and then returned to San Francisco despite requests from Mayor Dianne Feinstein (who had succeeded Moscone) not to do so.

On the morning of October 21, 1985, Dan White attached a garden hose to the exhaust pipe of his car, a yellow 1970 Buick Le Sabre, and died by suicide at his San Francisco home. Tom, his brother, discovered the body just before 2 p.m. White had died as an Irish ballad, “The Town I Loved So Well,” played from a cassette player inside the car as it filled with deadly carbon monoxide.

Milk’s less than a month old will requested that his body be cremated, and by his direction, the ashes were enshrined with a mixture of bubble bath (to denote his gay lifestyle) and Kool Aid (to signify the People’s Temple victims). On the 25th anniversary of the assassinations, Milk was remembered as the world’s first openly gay politician to hold office, the subject of the Oscar-winning film, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, and the focus of operas, plays, and museum exhibits. An elementary school, a civic plaza, a restaurant, a gay cultural institute and a library in San Francisco bear his name, as does a one-of-a-kind high school in New York for gay students who were tormented in mainstream schools.

Milk and Moscone were not the only persons killed in the wake of the People’s Temple suicides and murder-suicides.

In 1980, news accounts told of an alleged People Temple “hit squad,” which were suspected of killing, on February 26, a family of three who had defected in 1975 and testified against the cult. Elmer Mertle (identified in early news accounts under the alias Al Mills), was found shot in the head, lying face down in his bedroom in the family's Berkeley home. The body of his 40-year-old wife Deanna Mertle (also known as Jeannie Mills, author of Six Years with God), also shot in the head with a small-caliber weapon, was discovered on her back in an adjacent bathroom. The couple's 15-year-old daughter, Daphene, was taken to Alta Bates Hospital with two gunshots in the head, and died there later. The Mertles were the founders of Concerned Relatives, and the principal organizers of Ryan's attempt to intervene in the Jonestown cult. Jones called them “white devils.”

Less than a month later, the ripples from the San Francisco murders reached civil rights worker Dennis Sweeney. On March 14, 1980, Sweeney shot seven bullets point-blank into his former friend, Congressman Allard K. Lowenstein, at Lowenstein’s New York City law offices. Activist Lowenstein had marched in the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi, campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy, authored the "Dump Johnson" movement, and ran the National Student Association, which was later revealed to be CIA-subsidized. After the shooting, Sweeney sat down, smoked a cigarette, seemed to be in a trance state, and calmly waited for the police to arrive.

During his trial, Sweeny testified that the CIA (with Lowenstein's help) had implanted a chip in his head 15 years earlier, and he could hear voices transmitted through his dental work. Sweeny blamed CIA “controllers” for his uncle's heart attack and the assassination of San Francisco mayor George Moscone. Sweeney was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and in 2000, was released from a mental hospital in upstate New York. (The media loved the Sweeney-Lowenstein story. Teresa Carpenter even won a Pultizer Prize for her Village Voice exclusive, quoting Sweeney saying that the shooting was a gay lovers’ quarrel. The only trouble was that Carpenter never interviewed Sweeney; she had made the whole thing up.)

Other deaths followed. Joe Mazor, the private detective hired by the Concerned Relatives to persuade people to leave Jonestown, was shot dead a few years after the Mertles/Mills deaths. Walter Rodney, an intellectual and renowned Caribbean scholar born and raised in Guyana, was assassinated there on December 13, 1980, via a bomb-implanted walkie-talkie. Paula Neustel Adams, Jim Jones's top liaison in the upper echelons of the Guyanese government, was murdered in suburban Bethesda, Maryland in October 1983. Her longtime companion, Laurence Mann, Guyana's ambassador to the United States from 1975-81, apparently killed her, their child and then himself, in a murder-suicide. Members of the Jonestown Institute and author Garrett Lambrev have written that many questions remain unanswered about the true extent of all the copycat suicides, murder-suicides, and murders that occurred since the Jonestown massacre.

The specter of Jonestown filled the newspapers for years and produced a made‑for‑television movie called Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), starring the then-new and unknown actor Powers Boothe in a highly acclaimed performance as Jones. The Jonestown event had other broad cultural outcomes besides creating a model for mass suicides. For example, despite the actual use of Flavor-aide, the media had quickly mislabeled what was used as “Kool Aid,” and worldwide sales of Kool Aid crashed. Another lasting linguistic legacy of the People’s Temple tragedy is the expression, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” This has come to mean, “Don’t trust any group you find to be a little on the fanatical side.”

© Loren Coleman 2004 ~ from The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Co-opting Intellectual Aggressors - The "Progressive" Face of the CIA

" ... In an attempt to develop a more nuanced understanding of the CIA's role in contemporary society this essay will explore their long-term involvement in utilising ostensibly progressive dissent in the service of imperialism. ... It should not be surprising that the same elites who worked within the upper echelons of both the CIA and the world of liberal philanthropy would ensure that the CIA (which was created in 1947) would play an important role in manipulating progressive social movements globally. ... "

by Michael Barker
Swans Commentary
November 17, 2008

"The CIA offers exciting career opportunities and a dynamic environment. We're on the forefront of world-altering events -- as they happen. So working here isn't just a job, it's a mindset and a lifestyle." — Central Intelligence Agency -- 2008.

"Those who hold power in the society retain control, though they may grant support to dissidents when it suits their immediate purposes... [T]hose in power know precisely why their support is rendered, even if the recipients know neither the reason nor the source." — Dan Schechter, Michael Ansara, and David Kolodney -- 1982. (1)

(Swans - November 17, 2008) Mention the CIA to most historically-informed people and the immediate images that spring to mind are those of assassinations, coups d'état, drug running, and covert wars. On the other hand, those individuals whose understanding of the CIA's work has been stunted, primarily though exposure to the mass media, are more inclined to associate the CIA with bungling over-resourced spies, rogue elephants, or perhaps, in the case of conservatives, as patriotic warriors protecting homeland security. (2) Yet another side to the CIA that is rarely mentioned by progressives, let alone the mainstream media, is their commitment to public activism. By commitment I do not refer to their dedication to infiltrating progressive social movements with informants or agent provocateurs, although this is of course an important aspect of the subterfuge undertaken by the Agency. Instead I refer to the CIA's ongoing efforts to channelling popular dissatisfaction with political processes -- on both a theoretical and grassroots level -- towards support for counterrevolutionary causes. (3) Key organizations that have historically played an important role in helping the CIA's democracy manipulators include the most influential liberal foundations, two prominent examples being the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. (4) So in an attempt to develop a more nuanced understanding of the CIA's role in contemporary society this essay will explore their long-term involvement in utilising ostensibly progressive dissent in the service of imperialism.

Like most class-conscious institutions, the CIA is not stupid, although a useful PR purpose is served by presenting their activities as such. Instead the elites managing the upper echelons of the CIA have long understood the power of grassroots activism, and have demonstrated their longstanding fear of the public by industriously working to undermine our ability to effectively cooperate with one another to promote our own best interests. One simple elite method of attacking popular social movements that challenge capitalist interests is to destroy their leaders, firstly by attempting to weaken their legitimacy in the cultural sphere, and when this fails, by resorting to the literal termination of their lives. However, another more proactive, and arguably more effective, strategy to undermine the revolutionary potential of dissent is to co-opt it: a tactic that if taken to its logical extreme involves the manufacture of dissident groups, which pre-empt organic (more radical) grassroots responses to capitalist-driven injustices. This form of political warfare is as old as politics itself; yet as a result of significant plutocratic advances in the early twentieth century, and the ensuing public resistance to these developments, such co-optive strategies were institutionalized within capitalist states in the form of liberal foundations. As Edward Berman notes in his important book The Ideology of Philanthropy: The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy (State University of New York Press, 1983), the goals of such foundations...

It should not be surprising that the same elites who worked within the upper echelons of both the CIA and the world of liberal philanthropy would ensure that the CIA (which was created in 1947) would play an important role in manipulating progressive social movements globally. In this regard it is clear that the leading US-based liberal foundations were not the CIA's unwitting dupes. (8) However, given the progressive image that these liberal philanthropists wish to project to the public, revelations in the late 1960s of their ties to the much maligned CIA led to "reforms" of the CIA's funding relations. In truth these reforms merely catalysed a chain of events that would ensure that the CIA's soft-power politics (philanthropic manipulation) were institutionally isolated from their hard-power politics (which includes their covert military operations). ...

STORY CONTINUES

http://www.swans.com/library/art14/barker08.html

UN Adopts Russia’s Anti-Nazi Resolution

Moscow News
№46 2008
21/11/2008 |

UN (RIA Novosti) - The UN General Assembly on social and humanitarian issues has adopted a draft resolution proposed by Russia on tackling a rise in the glorification of Nazism and the desecration of WWII monuments.

The draft resolution on "combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," is aimed at tackling the practice in the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Estonia of honoring SS veterans who fought for Nazi Germany during WWII.

"Nazi monuments are unveiled in a ceremonial atmosphere and the dates of liberation from the Nazis are proclaimed as days of mourning," Russia's UN representative, Grigory Lykyantsev, told the UN, adding that "this attitude towards anti-fascist veterans plays into the hands of those who call for ‘a pure race.'"

The resolution was passed with 122 countries voting in favor, while 54 delegations abstained, including Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia. Only the U.S. voted against. The resolution is now practically guaranteed to be adopted at the next UN General Assembly session in December.

Parades in honor of Waffen-SS veterans, involving veterans from the Latvian Legion and the 20th Esto­nian SS Division and their supporters, are held annually in Latvia and Estonia. Russia has repeatedly criticized the Baltic States for allowing these parades to take place.

Another former Soviet republic, Ukraine, announced plans in July to erect a statue in Lutsk, western Ukraine, honor of Stepan Bandera, a leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that fought against the Soviets during WWII.

The resolution also raises Russian concerns over the dismantling and desecration of Soviet-era WWII monuments and the "unlawful exhu mation" or transfer of the remains of those killed in the fight against fascism.

The dismantling in Tallinn of the Soviet war memorial, the Bronze Soldier, just before the May 9, 2007 Victory Day celebrations in Russia led to street protests in which over 1,000 people were arrested and one Russian national was killed.

Relations between Russia and Latvia and Estonia have also been strained over what Moscow calls the two states' unequal treatment of ethnic Russians, the alleged persecution of Soviet WWII veterans, and the apparent revival of nationalism and fascism.

http://mnweekly.ru/news/20081121/55357975.html

Washington State: What is it about Bellvue and Nazis?

What is it about Bellevue and Nazis?
By Knute Berger
November 26, 2008
http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/18683/

First it was a Bellevue retiree who turned out to be a former member of a notorious SS unit charged with exterminating Jews, Gypsies, and others in Yugoslavia during World War II. Think of it as the Nazi version of "meals on wheels." Instead of hauling victims to death camps for extermination, the Einsatzgruppen brought mobile gas chambers to their victims.

The Bellevue man, Peter Egner, 86, is alleged to have been a member of this death squad In Belgrade from 1941 to 1943. He may have been involved in the deaths of thousands of people. The ailing Egner denies the allegation of the U.S. government which is seeking to strip him of his U.S. citizenship. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the case against Egner can go forward. If Egner's citizenship is revoked, Serbia could extradite him and try him for war crimes.

Now there's a report that a man was arrested this week at a Bellevue Starbucks for trying to sell a golden bookmark that belonged to Adolph Hitler. According to the Seattle Times, federal agents ran a sting operation and recovered the artifact which is believed to have been stolen in Spain in 2002. The bookmark was reportedly a gift to Hitler from his mistress, Eva Braun, to cheer him up after the German defeat at Stalingrad. The seller was allegedly a Romanian national who lives in Kenmore. He was asking $100,000 for the bookmark which is engraved with a portrait of the Nazi leader.

Knute Berger is Mossback, Crosscut's chief Northwest native. He also writes the monthly Gray Matters column for Seattle magazine and is a weekly Friday guest on Weekday on KUOW-FM (94.9). You can e-mail him at mossback@crosscut.com.

Vatican to keep Hitler’s Pope papers secret

by Marcus Papadopoulos
www.tribunemagazine.co.uk
November 6, 2008

ARCHIVAL material pertaining to the pontificate of Pius XII – the man known as “Hitler’s Pope” – will not be disclosed to the public within the next six or seven years, the Vatican has announced.

In response to a request by Rabbi David Rosen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Department for Interreligious Affairs, who was received last weekend at the Vatican by Pope Benedict XVI, the Reverend Federico Lombardi said that while requests to make the wartime archive available were “understandable” it would take “six or seven years” to prepare the 16 million documents.

But Rabbi Rosen added that Benedict XVI would give “serious consideration” to his request not to proceed with the beatification of Pius XII, the penultimate step to canonisation, until the archives have been opened.

The papacy of Pius XII from 1939 to 1958 was extremely controversial and continues to plague the Vatican today.

The charge is that, in the view of historians of the Holocaust and in the words of one book on the subject, he turned a blind eye to murder by failing to speak out against or trying to prevent the Nazis exterminating millions of Jews, communists, homosexuals and gypsies.

Some Jewish human rights groups go further and say that Pius XII was anti-Semitic and the Roman Catholic church was complicit in the rounding up of victims.

Hitler’s Pope also enjoyed close relations with the Ustase regime in Croatia, a Nazi puppet state established after the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, and its leader Ante Pavelic.

He was responsible for the murder of more than 500,000 Serbs, many at the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp.

The accusation against the Pope is that, again, he did nothing to stop the killing.

Despite these allegations Benedict XVI, who as Joseph Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth in 1941, last month marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Pius XII with a pontifical mass commemorating his papacy.

http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2008/11/06/vatican-to-keep-hitler’s-pope-papers-secret/

Research Center Tied to Drug Company

By GARDINER HARRIS
NYT/November 25, 2008

When a Congressional investigation revealed in June that Dr. Joseph Biederman, a world-renowned child psychiatrist, had earned far more money from drug makers than he had reported to his university, he said that his interests were “solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study.”

But e-mail messages and internal documents from Johnson & Johnson made public in a court filing reveal that Dr. Biederman pushed the company to finance a research center at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, with a goal to “move forward the commercial goals of J.& J.” The documents also show that the company prepared a draft summary of a study that Dr. Biederman, of Harvard, was said to have written.

Dr. Biederman’s work helped to fuel a fortyfold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder and a rapid rise in the use of powerful, risky and expensive antipsychotic medicines in children.

Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, Dr. Biederman has had a vast influence on the field largely because of his position at one of the most prestigious medical institutions.

Massachusetts General said in a statement Monday that it took the accusations related to the research center “very seriously” and intended “to investigate these issues thoroughly.”

Johnson & Johnson makes a popular antipsychotic medicine called Risperdal, or risperidone. More than a quarter of its use is in children and adolescents.

Last week, a panel of federal drug experts said that medicines like Risperdal were being used too cavalierly in children and that regulators must do more to warn doctors of their substantial risks. Other popular antipsychotic medicines, also referred to as neuroleptics, are Zyprexa, made by Eli Lilly; Seroquel, made by AstraZeneca; Geodon, made by Pfizer; and Abilify, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Thousands of parents have sued AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson, claiming that their children were injured after taking the medicines; they also claim that the companies minimized the risks of the drugs.

As part of the lawsuits, plaintiffs’ lawyers have demanded millions of documents from the companies. Nearly all have been provided under judicial seals, but a select few that mentioned Dr. Biederman became public after plaintiffs’ lawyers sought a judge’s order to require Dr. Biederman to be interviewed by them under oath.

In a motion filed two weeks ago, lawyers for the families argued that they should be allowed to interview Dr. Biederman under oath because his work had been crucial to the widespread acceptance of pediatric uses of antipsychotic medicines. To support this contention, the lawyers included more than two dozen documents, among them e-mail messages from Johnson & Johnson that mentioned Dr. Biederman. A judge has yet to rule on the request.

The documents offer an unusual glimpse into the delicate relationship that drug makers have with influential doctors.

In a November 1999 e-mail message, John Bruins, a Johnson & Johnson marketing executive, begs his supervisors to approve a $3,000 check to Dr. Biederman as payment for a lecture he gave at the University of Connecticut.

“Dr. Biederman is not someone to jerk around,” Mr. Bruins wrote. “He is a very proud national figure in child psych and has a very short fuse.”

Mr. Bruins wrote that Dr. Biederman was furious after Johnson & Johnson rejected a request that Dr. Biederman had made for a $280,000 research grant. “I have never seen someone so angry,” Mr. Bruins wrote. “Since that time, our business became non-existant (sic) within his area of control.”

Mr. Bruins concluded that unless Dr. Biederman received a check soon, “I am truly afraid of the consequences.”

A series of documents described the goals behind establishing the Johnson & Johnson Center for the study of pediatric psychopathology, where Dr. Biederman serves as chief.

A 2002 annual report for the center said its research must satisfy three criteria: improve psychiatric care for children, have high standards and “move forward the commercial goals of J.& J.,” court documents said.

“We strongly believe,” the report stated, “that the center’s systematic scientific inquiry will enhance the clinical and research foundation of child psychiatry and lead to the safer, more appropriate and more widespread use of medications in children.

“Without such data, many clinicians question the wisdom of aggressively treating children with medications, especially those like neuroleptics, which expose children to potentially serious adverse events.”

A February 2002 e-mail message from Georges Gharabawi, a Johnson & Johnson executive, said Dr. Biederman approached the company “multiple times to propose the creation” of the center. “The rationale of this center,” the message stated, “is to generate and disseminate data supporting the use of risperidone in” children and adolescents.

Documents show that Johnson & Johnson gave the center $700,000 in 2002 alone. Massachusetts General said in its statement on Monday that grant agreements indicated the center “was for scientific and educational purposes only and not for purposes of promoting, directly or indirectly, the products of Johnson & Johnson and its affiliates.”

A statement Monday from Janssen Pharmaceutica, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, said it helped finance the research center in 2002 “with an objective to conduct rigorous clinical trials to clarify appropriate use and dosing of Risperdal in children.”

A June 2002 e-mail message to Dr. Biederman from Dr. Gahan Pandina, a Johnson & Johnson executive, included a brief abstract of a study of Risperdal in children with disruptive behavior disorder. The message said the study was intended to be presented at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

“We have generated a review abstract,” Dr. Pandina wrote, “but I must review this longer abstract before passing this along.”

One problem with the study, Dr. Pandina wrote, is that the children given placebos and those given Risperdal both improved significantly. “So, if you could,” Dr. Pandina added, “please give some thought to how to handle this issue if it occurs.”

The draft abstract that Dr. Pandina put in the e-mail message, however, stated that only the children given Risperdal improved, while those given placebos did not. Dr. Pandina asked Dr. Biederman to sign a form listing himself as the author so the company could present the study to the conference, according to the message.

“I will review this morning,” responded Dr. Biederman, according to the documents. “I will be happy to sign the forms if you could kindly send them to me.” The documents do not make clear whether he approved the final summary of the brief abstract in similar form or asked to read the longer report on the study.

Drug makers have long hired professional writers to compose scientific papers and then recruited well-known doctors to list themselves as the author. The practice, known as ghostwriting, has come under intense criticism recently, and medical societies, schools and journals have condemned it.

In June, a Congressional investigation revealed that Dr. Biederman had failed to report to Harvard at least $1.4 million in outside income from Johnson & Johnson and other makers of antipsychotic medicines.

In one example, Dr. Biederman reported no income from Johnson & Johnson for 2001 in a disclosure report filed with the university. When asked by Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is leading the Congressional inquiry, to check again, Dr. Biederman said he had received $3,500. But Johnson & Johnson told Mr. Grassley that it paid $58,169 to Dr. Biederman in 2001.

A Harvard spokesman, David J. Cameron, said Monday that the university was still reviewing Mr. Grassley’s accusations against Dr. Biederman. Mr. Cameron added that the university had not seen the drug company documents in question and that it was not directly involved in the child psychiatry center at Massachusetts General.

Calls to Dr. Biederman were not returned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/health/25psych.html?bl&ex=1227762000&en=ab700f6adb9c70e5&ei=5087%0A

Warren Buffett & Wealth Transfer

" ... the stock price of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has soared 14.4% in the less than a month since Mr. Paulson set in motion a global financial crisis. ... Berkshire owns Geico, a major insurance company; the government has crippled a Geico competitor, American International Group, by taking it over without the vote that AIG had promised shareholders in its initial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. ... " - The New York Sun Editorial | September 29, 2008

As members of Congress prepare to vote on the Bush administration's plan to take troubled assets off bank balance sheets and put them in custody of the United States Treasury, here are two points to remember. First, the congressmen at least get a vote on the plan, which is more than the shareholders of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or AIG got before the government seized 80% of their companies.

And second, while the administration from the president on down is full of scare talk about a huge recession — "falls of 3,000 or 4,000 points on the Dow," one "Republican" "close to" the secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, quoted predicting over the weekend in the Telegraph — as we speak there are those making billions of dollars.

Not that there is anything wrong with making billions of dollars, the Bush bailout plan's new strictures on executive pay notwithstanding. It is far preferable to the alternative of losing billions of dollars. What's troubling in this case, though, is that the billions are being made and lost not necessarily as a result of any great business skill or foresight but as the consequence of arbitrary government decisions.

For all the talk about how the economy is taking a nosedive, the stock price of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has soared 14.4% in the less than a month since Mr. Paulson set in motion a global financial crisis by announcing the seizure of Fannie and Freddie. Berkshire owns Geico, a major insurance company; the government has crippled a Geico competitor, American International Group, by taking it over without the vote that AIG had promised shareholders in its initial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Bloomberg news service reported over the weekend that the New York Stock Exchange had waived its normal requirement of a shareholder vote because taking the time to complete a vote would "jeopardize the financial viability" of the insurer. Seems to us that having the government offer on the table is more than enough to backstop the company's financial viability. For an administration that is so determined to promote elections in un-free countries abroad, it sure seems to have discovered a sudden aversion to elections for shareholders here at home.

Mr. Buffett benefits not only from the changes in the insurance competitive landscape but also from the chance to invest in Goldman Sachs at bargain basement prices. No one is denying that Mr. Buffett is a financial whiz, but the sage of Omaha got quite a helping hand from Washington. Somehow we don't think those caps on executive pay that are part of the Paulson-Pelosi bailout plan are going to curb his windfall on the Goldman deal or on Geico's new advantage versus AIG.

Another company that has weathered the storm on Wall Street handily is Allianz, the parent of the bond firm Pimco. It closed at about $15 a share on Friday, about the same level as on the Friday before the Fannie rescue. Pimco's funds made a reported $2 billion the day after the Fannie and Freddie seizure was announced. We're betting the Paulson-Pelosi pay curbs don't apply to Pimco's Bill Gross. The New York Post's Terry Keenan reported yesterday that Alan Greenspan has joined the board of John Paulson's fund that has made billions shorting the housing market.

Again, there's nothing wrong with making money. But as Washington cries "crisis" and "recession" and seizes private property without shareholder votes while imposing new restrictions on executive pay at companies that participate, it's worth remembering that what is going on here is less wealth creation than a wealth transfer. It is a taking of property from private shareholders and mortgage holders and a transfer of wealth to bondholders, the federal government, and certain competing firms.

Political risk is an investment uncertainty that comes with the territory, but one normally hears about it more often in war-torn third-world countries or corrupt dictatorships than in America, which is supposed to have a predictable rule of law with protections for private property from arbitrary government decisions. Mark this danger. If the political risks in America are severe enough, global capital will flow elsewhere.

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/wealth-transfer/86787/

Terrorist "Linked to Al Qaeda" Killed in Pakistan Missile Strike was a CIA-ISI Cutout

By Alex Constantine

"According to officials ... "

The headline: "Rashid Rauf was linked to al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri" (Telegraph, 23 Nov 2008)

"A British al-Qaeda suspect reportedly killed by a US missile strike in a Pakistani tribal area was linked to the group's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to officials.

"Rashid Rauf and a Saudi militant called Abu Zubair al-Masri were among five killed in a missile attack in North Waziristan on Saturday. Rauf, a British national, was alleged to have been the mastermind of an al-Qaeda plot to blow up passenger aircraft in mid-air after they left London bound for the United States. ... "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3507104/Rashid-Rauf-was-linked-to-al-Qaedas-number-two-Ayman-al-Zawahiri.html
•••••••
Re Rashid Rauf, the Supposed Al Quaeda "Connection" to bomb plot:

Families of those supposedly involved in the "plot" were paid off:

British Papers Paid Hundreds Of Thousands To Families Of Alleged Liquid Bombers: Why?
http://peroxideplotters.blogspot.com/

... Rashid Rauf, who was arrested in Pakistan, was the alleged al Qaeda connection to the alleged plot. But Rashid Rauf has played no role in the trial, because he's missing. He supposedly slipped away from a police escort last December while on his way to a court appearance. And he hasn't been seen since, although five policemen were arrested after his "escape" and nine have been sacked in its wake.

Where would the "Liquid Bomb" plot be without Rashid Rauf and Assad Sarwar? There would be no al Qaeda connection, no bomb-making expert, no bomb-making chemicals, nothing! So these are bad guys of the highest order: indispensable bad guys who allegedly meant us great harm. ...
•••••••
Rauf was Allowed to Escape from Prison

The "terrorist groups" that Rauf belonged to are "protected by the Pakistani intelligence service ISI, which itself cooperates closely with Britain's MI6, as befits a virtual branch of the CIA":

From: Inadequate Deception: The Impossible Plots Of The Terror War
winterpatriot.blogspot.com

... There are many ways to eliminate a cutout. Rashid Rauf supposedly "escaped" from the Pakistani police, even though it's fairly clear that he was deliberately released. And we may never see him again.

Thus the cutout has been removed, and the trail from the knuckleheads to the planners has been cut. But if you could follow it, where would the severed trail lead? To J-e-M? L-e-T? al Qaeda? More than one of the above -- or even all three?

Here we can get profoundly confused, especially if we forget that J-e-M is tolerated and L-e-T openly supported by the military government of Pakistan, which itself doesn't like India very much.

Both these banned terrorist groups are apparently protected by the Pakistani intelligence service ISI, which itself cooperates closely with Britain's MI6, as befits a virtual branch of the CIA.

You may recall Major General (Retired) Tanvir Hussain, who in the previous session served as Parliamentary Defense Secretary. Major Hussain raised a few eyebrows in a parliamentary debate when he said he had been a member of L-e-T. When he was asked for clarification, he didn't distance himself from the terrorists, nor did he claim that his association with them had ended. Instead the Parliamentary Defense Secretary of America's leading Asian ally in the Global War On Terror said that he speaks at L-e-T's conventions and admitted that he gives them other forms of assistance, too.

Don't be surprised if you haven't heard of this. Tanvir Hussain's statements were reported matter-of-factly in the Pakistani press, mentioned in a quizzical way by an Australian daily, and howled over by the Indian papers. But they were never reported anywhere else; no Western "news" outlet breathed a word of the story.

http://winterpatriot.blogspot.com/2008/01/inadequate-deception-impossible-plots.html
•••••••
Pakistani officials allowed Rauf to escape from prison, pt. II - awaiting extradition ...

US Kills Al Qaeda Mastermind of Airline Liquid Bomb Plot
Rashid Rauf Was Target of CIA Predator Attack, Pakistan Officials Say
By HABIBULLAH KHAN, NICHOLAS SCHIFRIN and BRIAN ROSS

November 22, 2008—Rashid Rauf was arrested in Pakistan and was remanded to Adiala prison which, according to human rights campaigners, has been the scene of physical abuse and torture of terrorism suspects.

In December 2006 he resurfaced in court. A judge dismissed terrorism charges but said he should still face explosives and false identity allegations.

The UK pressed for his extradition over the 2002 murder of his uncle. That application was progressing when he escaped in December 2007.

According to the official version of events, he managed to unlock his own handcuffs and escaped while being allowed to pray alone at a mosque near the courthouse. The mosque in question is said to have high walls leading to open fields.

It's not clear to this day whether that is genuinely what happened, the suspicion being that pro-Islamist intelligence officials in Pakistan helped the Briton to quietly flee. ...

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6312852&page=1

Extradition to the UK would have been a critical priority if Rauf was, as officials maintain, an "Al Qaeda link":

THE CURIOUS CASE OF RASHID RAUF - INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO. 161, By B. Raman: " ... Since Rashid Rauf was projected by the Pakistani authorities as the most important player in the plot and as the man, whose arrest led to the unearthing of the planned terrorist conpiracy in the UK, one would have thought that his being handed-over to the British for interrogation would have been of the highest priority to the British investigating authorities. But, no action has been taken so far. ... "
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers21%5Cpaper2052.html

Top British terror suspect escapes

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday December 16, 2007
The Observer

" ... Rashid Rauf's escape now threatens to spark a major diplomatic row by reigniting questions about why Pakistan's authorities had not approved his extradition, despite repeated requests from Britain dating back more than a year. ... The fact Rauf was able to escape so easily will raise questions about the security status given to him by the Pakistani authorities. ... "

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3103358
•••••••
Rauf was a British Citizen
November 23, 2008

MPs question killing of terror suspect
www.timesonline.co.uk

... Rauf is believed to have been one of five militants killed in Pakistan yesterday.

Critics of the action include Andrew Dismore, who chairs parliament’s human rights committee, and Patrick Mercer, former shadow security minister, who said: 'This raises the question of how much cooperation the British intelligence agencies provided in what is ultimately the execution of a British subject. The government must explain its involvement.' ... ”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5213583.ece
••••••
Also see: "Fade to Black: Another Terror Plot Unravels," By Chris Floyd, informationclearinghouse.info, 08/21/06.

http://collectioncf72.blogspot.com/2005/04/into-dark-pentagon-plan-to-foment.html

Imperialism and International Migration in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1961-1966

Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Publication Date: 01-JAN-04
Author: Hoffnung-Garskof, Jesse

Abstract. This article re-examines the relationship between United States imperialism in Santo Domingo and the advent of mass Dominican migration to the United States in the early 1960s. There was no coherent imperial plan to displace Dominicans from their homeland. The United States relied on a combination of brutal domination and negotiated consent in its attempts to control politics in Santo Domingo. Knowingly or not, Dominicans capitalized on Washington's desire to present the US as a friend of the Dominican people to wedge their way from the periphery to the centre of the imperial system. However, the rise of migration did not signal the beginning of a new, more egalitarian alternative to imperialism in hemispheric relations. More research is needed about the new system of international inequality that emerged as Dominican migrants moved back and forth between a perpetually reeling Dominican economy and the bleak urban spaces of the United States.
**********

In 1968 an anthropologist studying rural to urban migration in the Dominican Republic found, to her surprise, that reaching Santo Domingo was not the ultimate goal of the campesinos she interviewed. As she expected, the rural population was mobilizing in response to shifting economic conditions and rumours of distant urban comforts. And the largest number of those who left their villages did end up in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo. But peasants' notion of progress, she found, was shaped around the eventual prospect of reaching New York (Gonzalez 1970).

That Dominicans might imagine a world in which movement from rural backwardness to urban modernity had its logical conclusion in the United States is, in retrospect, no surprise. From the middle of the nineteenth century, relations between the United States and the Dominican Republic were both intimate and brutally lopsided. Representatives of the United States government sought to purchase a portion of the Dominican Republic shortly after it achieved independence from Haiti, and later President Ulysses S. Grant nearly succeeded in a project to annex the entire country. In the 1890s a group of Wall Street chiselers, with connections in Washington, purchased the Dominican national debt. In collaboration with Dominican dictator Ulises Hereaux, they drove the country into bankruptcy. In the wake of that disaster, the United States government, declaring itself the arbiter of civilized economic behaviour in the hemisphere, took control of the Dominican customs house. In 1916, the United States military occupied and ruled the country by force for eight years, then supplied a 30-year dictatorship with legitimacy and aid, then invaded and occupied a second time in 1965. United States movies, music, and consumer products also leaked into the small national market. Representatives of the United States occasionally made earnest, if self-serving, attempts to alleviate poverty, build a modern state, and establish a democratic polity in the Dominican Republic. A strident rhetoric of friendship and tutorship, and an open assumption of the superiority of North American society, accompanied these wildly asymmetrical arrangements. The image of the United States as the epitome of modern life overshadowed the projects of economic extraction and national modernization begun under its condescending tutelage (Atkins and Wilson 1998; Gleijeses 1978; Moya Pons 1995; Roorda 1998; Veeser 2002).

In short, the Dominican Republic was a primary target of United States imperialism as it evolved in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a result, the United States held a powerfully ambivalent grip on the imaginations of Dominican elites, who both admired and deplored the neighbour that so dominated them. And as popular sectors began to incorporate the idea of progress into their own lives in the middle of the twentieth century, it is little wonder that the United States lured them as well. The United States was in many ways a more convincing symbol of power, modernity, and well-being than the intrusive Dominican state. The image of New York was widely diffused in Dominican popular culture, offering a more convincing icon of progress than Santo Domingo. This deep historical influence of United States imperialism on Dominican imaginations makes peasants' unexpected desire to travel to the United States in 1968 wholly understandable.

What was surprising, after the early 1960s, was that the prospect of reaching the most famous city in the heart of the imperial system suddenly came within reach for many thousands of Dominicans. As in much of Latin America, the middle twentieth century had seen a gradual increase in Dominican travel to the United States. In the 1930s, 1,150 Dominicans immigrated to the United States. In the 1940s, another 5,627 joined them, followed by 9,897 in the 1950s. But between the death of Rafael Trujillo in 1961 and the United States invasion of Santo Domingo in the spring of 1965, the number of immigrant visas granted to Dominicans jumped to nearly 10,000 a year. With slight fluctuations, immigrant visas averaged about 10,000 a year for the next decade, then grew steadily for the rest of the century (Immigration and Naturalization Service 1999). By 1970, about 100,000 Dominicans lived legally in New York City (Graham 1996). Also, beginning in the period between 1961 and 1965, 20,000-30,000 Dominican tourists and students received permission to travel to the United States each year (Graham 1996; Immigration and Naturalization Service 1999; Mitchell 1992). This increase in tourism persisted throughout subsequent decades, providing still more opportunities for migration, as many Dominicans overstayed their non-immigrant visas in order to work. Starting from almost zero, in the span of a decade Dominicans became one of the largest new immigrant groups in New York, and New York became one of the largest Dominican cities.

The accepted wisdom in United States history holds that the boom in new immigration from the Third World in the 1960s resulted from the passage of the Immigration Reform Act in 1965 (Foner 2000). The 1965 act is usually seen primarily as its liberal sponsors intended: as a repeal of national origins restrictions originally put in place in the 1920s to keep out undesirable races. The reform granted a set number of immigrant visas to the eastern and western hemispheres, without discriminatory national origins quotas. This change in policy spurred transformation of New York into an archipelago of new ethnic neighbourhoods, home to hundreds of thousands of new migrants from the Third World. New York's largest group of newcomers after 1965, Dominican migrants led this remarkable ethnic explosion. But the Immigration Reform Act does not help to explain the sudden jump in Dominican migration. The Dominican Republic, like all the republics of the western hemisphere, had been exempted from the immigration restrictions of the 1920s. While often imagined as a removal of restrictions, the 1965 reform actually placed the first numerical restriction on the number of visas that could be granted to Dominicans and other Latin Americans. In any event, the legislation passed in 1965 could not have been a condition for the explosion in Dominican migration. By the time the reforms were enacted in 1968, Dominicans' colonization of New York was already well underway (Reimers 1985).

A shift in international politics, not the reform of immigration laws, produced the sudden opportunity for migration and a massive displacement of Dominicans to New York. In the early 1960s, immediately after the fall of the Trujillo dictatorship in Santo Domingo, politicians in Washington scurried to prevent what they feared might become a second Cuban Revolution, sending aid, advisors, and eventually tens of thousands of United States Marines to Santo Domingo. As its meddling in Dominican affairs increased in the early 1960s, the United States government built a large visa office in Santo Domingo and a second in Santiago, greatly increasing the number of visas it granted. United States officials also sometimes provided visas to help the local government deport troublesome members of the Dominican opposition, pushing them into exile in New York or Puerto Rico. Five years before immigration politics in Washington placed a limit on the number of Dominicans who could acquire visas, United States foreign policy created an infrastructure capable of processing tens of thousands of visa applicants per year.

To historians of the Dominican Republic, and perhaps to a majority of Dominican citizens, the argument that US foreign policy concerns, or imperialism, helped to form a Dominican colony in New York will seem painfully obvious. It has been decades since scholars first argued that Washington opened up migration as a "safety valve" to help stabilize the complicated politics in Santo Domingo after Trujillo's death (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Levitt 2001). Sherri Grasmuck and Patricia Pessar, in their essential work on Dominican migration, also observed that emigration to the United States served as a stabilizing force in the 12-year regime of Joaquin Balaguer (1966-1978), providing an exit for political actors excluded by its authoritarianism and social classes impoverished by its development model. This could be seen as a goal of United States foreign policy, since bolstering Balaguer eventually became a crucial part of Washington's meddling in the Dominican Republic. Grasmuck and Pessar were careful to point out that at the time the consulates were constructed "it was not possible to foresee the longer term consequences of a growing community of Dominicans living abroad" (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991, 33). Silvio Torres-Saillant and Ramona Hernandez have likewise distinguished Washington's short-term goals from what they take to be Balaguer's long-term goals (Hernandez 2002; Torres-Saillant and Hernandez 1998). (1) Others have been less circumspect. In Santo Domingo it has become common wisdom to imagine that Washington carefully designed the tearful separation of Dominicans from their native soil. Frank Canelo, writing a series on international migration in the Dominican news weekly !Ahora! in 1977, suggested, albeit in the form of a rhetorical question, that Dominicans had been "manipulated to immigrate to the United States exactly as Puerto Ricans had been" (Canelo 1982, 66). Two decades later many Dominican intellectuals presume that the reason the United States built new embassies in the early 1960s and flexibilizo (that is, eased) the granting of visas was to empty the Dominican Republic of surplus population. (2)

This essay returns to the crucial years between the death of Rafael Trujillo and the second United States military intervention in Santo Domingo. While it confirms much of the detail first uncovered by Christopher Mitchell in his excellent analysis of United States foreign policy and Dominican immigration (1992), it offers a new interpretive perspective. With the exception of a small number of deportations, the idea that Washington conceived of migration as a political "safety valve" in the early 1960s probably overstates the intentions of United States representatives. The evidence suggests that Dominicans themselves made use of the crisis in the early 1960s to put massive pressure on the United States consular offices in Santo Domingo. Consular construction was a response to pressure by angry Dominican visa seekers. Representatives of the United States government, who had few scruples, but neither the intelligence nor the forethought to manipulate the Dominican masses, were forced to accept Dominican migration as a quid pro quo for their claims to be the sole friend and ally of the Dominican people. The sudden jump in Dominican migration to the United States is an example of just how difficult the prospect of imperial control proved to be. And it is an example of how short-term crisis management on the periphery of an imperial system can create profound, unanticipated, long-term transformations at the core.

From the middle of the nineteenth century, during the United States occupation of 1916-1924, and again after the United States invasion of 1965, Dominicans engaged with imperialism by means of a pervasive and often quite astute nationalism. But calling for national sovereignty, with or without social revolution, was only one way to engage empire in the early 1960s. The events that led to the construction of new consulates in the Dominican Republic show how many Dominicans, whether conscious of the choice or not, chose instead to find space for survival within the architecture of international inequality and imperial self-justification. Instead of seeking to dismantle the empire, many sought to move from point to point within it. The pervasive notion of progress, the shape that popular aspirations took in a context of inter-national inequality, made this movement seem natural. Caught unawares by a great surge in demand--perhaps convinced of their own rhetoric about the openness and friendship of the US toward Dominicans, perhaps simply trapped by it--US policy-makers responded by making room for unprecedented mobility. Still, if the steady stream of Dominicans escaping to the United States was an alternative form of Dominican agency within the limits of the international system, to many nationalists (including many who found themselves boarding airliners to New York) it was also one of the most ironic and infuriating aspects of the United States' presence in Santo Domingo. The empire had insinuated itself into the available solutions to the very problems it helped to create (Hoffnung-Garskof 2002).

Nor did the aggregate effects of migration do much to level the terrible inequalities of power and wealth between the United States and the Dominican Republic, as some modernization theorists predicted (Georges 1990; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Piore 1979). Despite the very real space for economic mobility and democracy opened by the construction of the visa offices, widespread movement to New York did not erode the broader architecture of empire in the Dominican Republic. Rather, as United States imperialism evolved along new lines in the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between the United States and the Dominican Republic revolved increasingly around an exchange between a reeling national economy and an embattled ethnic enclave in post-industrial New York City. This essay confines itself to the early opening of Dominican international migration during the high water mark of Washington liberals' Cold War imperialism. Yet it fits into a broader attempt to rethink the relationship between imperialism and migration in the Dominican Republic and beyond. The events analyzed here should lead us to ponder not only how imperial policies, ideologies, or institutions contributed to international migration, but also how the tug of war between imperialism and nationalism formed the cultural and intellectual context within which Dominicans made sense of their newfound mobility. Finally, we should ask how migration and imperialism evolved together through the 1980s and beyond the Cold War. How did new regimes of national and international inequality reshape the meanings of migration, and how did migration help to form these newer systems of hemispheric exchange (Hoffnung-Garskof forthcoming)?

The Death of the Goat: Dictatorship and Hemispheric Crisis in Santo Domingo

To understand how imperialism helped open the doors to migration in the Dominican Republic in the early 1960s it is first necessary to construct a basic narrative of the political history of the Republic at the time. Most important, the death of the Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in 1961 and the sudden crisis it produced in local and international affairs are an essential backdrop for Washington's intense intervention in Santo Domingo in the early 1960s and for Dominican settlement in New York.

For 31 years Rafael Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic, skillfully balancing the vicious impunity with which he conducted local affairs against the need for friendship from the United States. Trujillo was fully a product of the classical era of United States imperialism in the Dominican Republic. A watchman in a sugar enclave east of Santo Domingo, he was trained as a soldier by the US Marines. He rose to prominence through the national army created by the United States military government during its tenure from 1916 to 1924. Close friendships with important figures in the Marines and the War Department in Washington helped to assure recognition, aid, technical assistance, and military supplies when he took power in Santo Domingo a mere six years after the United States military government departed. Trujillo then grew up under the Good Neighbour Policy. Washington, proclaiming an end to its interventionism in the hemisphere, willfully ignored the cruelty and illegitimacy of regimes like his. In the 1950s Trujillo integrated himself into the security build-up of the early Cold War. The United States installed a guided missile base in the Dominican Republic and helped Trujillo to beef up his weaponry, passing him off as a bulwark against international communism. Trujillo's tyranny was therefore, in the strange calculus of United States foreign policy, part of the fortress that protected "freedom" in the hemisphere (Atkins and Wilson 1972; Roorda 1998; Vega 1990, 1991, 1992).

Trujillo served the purposes of the United States in exchange for a free hand in ruling the Dominican Republic. But Trujillo took much of the initiative in defining his relationship with Washington. He was a manipulator, not a puppet. He kept United States congressmen and lobbyists on his payroll, and set up newspapers and radio stations in the United States to broadcast favourable accounts of his regime. In Santo Domingo, too, Trujillo made the United States serve his purposes, sometimes as an ally, and sometimes as a foil for his nationalism. He paraded military hardware and representatives from the United States in the banquets, parades, and other elaborate displays of power that constituted the public culture of the regime. At the same time he used well-orchestrated defiance of the United States as an extraordinarily powerful tool for garnering local support (Derby 1997; Marrero Aristy 1998; Vega 1990).

Despite this undercurrent of anti-imperialism, Trujillo's alliance with the United States, especially the United States military, persisted into the late 1950s. In 1959 and 1960 the regime in Santo Domingo began to implode in the face of a growing internal resistance, the disastrous economic effects of Trujillo's venal policies, and widespread capital flight. As the Organization of American States pushed the United States to cut Trujillo loose, politicians in Washington waffled over whether to support a coup. Some argued that toppling the dictator might lead to unrest and provide a foothold for communism. Others argued that supporting him might build up resentment of the United States and provide a foothold for communism (Atkins and Wilson 1998). Finally, in May of 1961, a mere six weeks after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, an anti-Trujillo conspiracy succeeded in killing the dictator. Armed by the CIA, and likely given encouragement by United States businessmen in Santo Domingo, a group of disgruntled military and political figures waylaid and killed Trujillo on the Sanchez Highway, west of the capital (Diederich 1978; Wiarda 1980).

The assassination resulted in exactly the kind of unrest that some in Washington had feared. Trujillo's brothers and sons, still in control of the military, quickly unleashed a reign of vengeful terror on the capital. Meanwhile, large crowds began to assemble in the Parque Colon, along the Conde, and into the Parque Independencia, the main artery and public spaces in the capital's Colonial District. They demanded an answer to their hunger and poverty, and the departure of the surviving Trujillos and Joaquin Balaguer, who was the dictator's handpicked president at the time of the assassination. They tore down statues of the dictator, and clashed with police, armed forces, and paleros, bands of thugs armed by the government. Even after Balaguer and the Trujillos fled the country in early 1962, and a civilian-military Council of State began planning new elections, the confrontations did not subside. Newly elected, and still smarting from the unmitigated disaster of the Bay of Pigs invasion, John F. Kennedy saw the Dominican Republic as a major crisis that might swing the Caribbean toward Cuba, and further damage his reputation as a Cold Warrior. The Dominican Republic could not be allowed to go communist (Martin 1966).

President Kennedy and the Washington liberals who surrounded him were a new brand of imperialist. They espoused the theory that the problem in Latin America was one of instability caused by backwardness and poverty. Communists, according to this view, were cunningly able to take advantage of instability to take over national politics. The answer was to use the power of Washington to alleviate poverty in the region, to breed positive public regard for the United States, and to provide the military might to crack down heavily on any sign of communism. Liberals, steeped in a New Deal ideology of social peace, hoped that moderate reform could be used to outflank revolution (Schoultz 1998). The Dominican Republic, which seemed to resemble Cuba in many ways, would be the crucial first test of this new strategy. Kennedy sent John Bartlow Martin, a journalist and speechwriter, to Santo Domingo as ambassador to coddle "moderate" anti-communists, create a Dominican equivalent of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and generally manage the situation. Washington also hurriedly put a novel array of tools at Martin's disposal: the newly created Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps (Martin 1966).

Despite the great burst of energy invested in this new Latin America strategy, the Dominican Republic would become one of the first places where the initial idealism of the Alliance for Progress would boil down to its cynical core of meddling and repression (LaFeber 1983). Helping the country to create a just social order or a democratic government was, in the end, a secondary consideration. At heart Martin's mission was to achieve stability and to avoid the political catastrophe that appearing "soft" on communism would inflict on Democrats if they made a second mistake in the wake of the Bay of Pigs. Washington would show its fundamental commitment to stable anti-Cuban governments in Santo Domingo, even at the expense of democracy, through its eventual support for the junta installed in a 1963 coup, its invasion of Santo Domingo in 1965, and its support for the authoritarian rule of Joaquin Balaguer from 1966 to 1978 (Gleijeses 1978).

These were the political and economic circumstances that gave birth to the colonization of New York City by thousands of Dominican citizens. From the moment of Trujillo's death, through the United States invasion of 1965, and into the early years of the Balaguer regime, the United States grew ever more inextricably involved in the politics, the economy, and the local workings of Dominican society. With the high visibility of Marines, investors, advisors, and tourists, the 1960s seemed, as historian Frank Moya Pons has written, to be a period of rapid "North Americanization" on the island (Kryzanek and Wiarda 1988; Moya Pons 1975, 1986). Not only did this mean that the fingerprints of the United States were evident on the economic and political system from which migrants began to flee, it also meant that the process of Americanization, a central challenge for Dominicans who moved to New York, was already a hotly contested topic in Santo Domingo when the first settlers boarded planes to the United States. Washington's attempts to remake the Dominican Republic, beginning with the customs receivership in 1904 and now reaching renewed heights in the 1960s, meant that assimilation was a central problem for Dominican identity with or without migration. But, most crucially for the present discussion, the political crises of the 1960s also provided the sudden opportunity for Dominicans to flee the country through a new, highly politicized portal: the United States Visa Office.

Politics at the Visa Office: 1961-1965

Because Trujillo had strictly controlled the international travel of his subjects, the dictator's death was a decisive moment for Dominican settlement in New York. In the 1950s, wealthy families in many Latin American countries began flying to the United States to vacation, to shop, and to form middle-class immigrant enclaves. Cuban elites moved comfortably across the border in both directions between Havana and Miami, and South Americans began their own settlements of professionals, students, and exiles in Queens. Dominicans also felt this pull. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s the average number of Dominicans migrating to the United States each year rose from 110, to 560, to 980 (Immigration and Naturalization Service 1999). Still Dominicans lagged behind Argentines, Colombians, and especially Cubans, because getting out of Santo Domingo was not easy. In the first place, the high cost of passport applications and the severe penalties for crossing the border without a passport prevented most Dominicans from traveling internationally. But even for those who could afford the application, the Dominican government presented great obstacles. According to one report, in 1959 the dictatorship received 19,631 passport applications but granted only 1,805 passports (Canelo 1982). Historians have offered several explanations for Trujillo's stinginess with passports. Trujillo's economic advisors believed the Dominican Republic to be underpopulated and sought to encourage both fertility and immigration. The restriction of any outward flow of Dominicans was owed, in part, to this conviction that population growth was crucial to modernization and national consolidation. But restricting the availability of passports also had a political purpose. Preventing the escape of possible dissidents was one way of ensuring loyalty to the regime. If an enemy crossed the dictator, or an ally passed out of favour, he or she had to endure the consequences from inside the country. By preventing his opponents' escape Trujillo may also have intended to prevent the flow of information between disaffected Dominicans and opponents on the world stage (Hernandez 2002). This was in contrast with the experience in Cuba after the 1959 revolution, where the government allowed, even encouraged, dissenters to emigrate as a way to diffuse organized opposition. Though his strategy was different, like Fidel Castro, Trujillo sought to control the terms, transactions, and symbolism of emigration, deploying his power over national borders to consolidate his political power (Garcia 1996; Immigration and Naturalization Service 1999). Trujillo's model of control over travel was perhaps workable only because of the relatively weak opposition inside the Dominican Republic.

Trujillo's death, however, brought a sudden relaxation of Dominican controls on international travel. In the winter of 1961 and the spring of 1962, the Council of State periodically stepped up the number of passports it issued. (3) It is impossible to know the exact reason for the change in passport policy, but the context provides some clues. The Dominican Congress announced a new guarantee of freedom of travel just before the Council of State took power. This act was likely an attempt to convince the Organization of American States that progress was being made on human rights (New York Times 1961; Bianchi Gundian 1967; Mitchell 1992). The United States frankly opposed the measure, favouring forcible deportation of any political actors who could not be controlled. (4) Freedom of travel, especially the right of return from exile, was important to Latin American sensibilities, however, and the United States was likelier to relax economic sanctions if the OAS went along. It seems likely, then, that the Council of State began dispensing passports as part of a broader attempt to please Latin American observers.

Quite possibly the change in policy also reflected the importance of travel for many powerful sectors of Dominican society, including the families of many of those working in the government. Trujillo had used travel restrictions to prevent many of his collaborators from defecting. This meant not only that middle-class and elite Dominicans had pent-up desires to travel, study, and shop in the United States (17,000 had been denied passports only two years earlier). They were also keenly aware that they needed a way to escape as Dominican politics swayed uneasily between neo-Trujillismo and social revolt. President Joaquin Balaguer was only the most prominent member of the old regime who fled to New York City in the early 1960s in order to save his skin. As political tides ebbed and flowed, no one could be sure that he or she would not be the next in line to need to flee the country.

What is more, after the departure of the Trujillo brothers and sons, no one in power had much reason to prevent opponents from escaping. To the contrary, now that Trujillo's clear monopoly on power had been broken, it seemed ideal to switch strategies and adopt the more established model of encouraging exit to diminish the number of dissenting voices in Santo Domingo. Making it easy for political opponents to leave might help to secure power in a political crowded landscape, and it would surely help present a positive face to the international community. It seems likely that this shift in strategy occurred to the members of the Council of State without prompting. But if it did not, Ambassadors Hill and Martin were on hand to point it out to them. Martin recalled providing visas for these deportations at the request of the Council of State, despite some personal misgivings. Yet secret documents suggest that United States policy-makers were active advocates of political deportations throughout the early 1960s, seeing this as a strategy for getting rid of remnants of the Trujillo military or, more frequently, young nationalists and leftists (Martin 1966). (5) Issuing passports more freely might, then, have been a way to satisfy Latin American calls for freedom of travel, pent-up Dominican desires for exit, and United States pressure to push certain Dominicans into exile.

Finally, Dominican officials may have quickly discovered a potential for income, both licit and illicit, in passport transactions. When tens of thousands of middle- and working-class Dominicans began lining up alongside elites and political refugees, it was surely a windfall for the officials who collected the application fees and the bribes that were required to speed their processing (Hendricks 1974).

Whatever the exact combination of reasons behind it, the change in passport policy abruptly loosened the reins on Dominican international travel. Just as quickly, it passed them into the hands of United States visa officers. Each time the Council of State increased the number of passports granted, the US delegation saw a sudden surge in visa applications. (6) The United States, it appears, is where almost all Dominicans with passports wished to travel.

The fact that more passports automatically translated into more visa applications, while it seemed perfectly natural at the time, deserves some consideration. It is a pattern that continued long after the crisis of the early 1960s passed. The United States was the destination, for instance, of some 80% of Dominican tourists (many of whom were in fact clandestine migrants) between 1965 and 1975. (7)

Among the reasons for this choice of destination was, as has already been suggested, the way the dominating presence of the United States in Dominican life, and the widespread assumption of United States superiority, modernity, and power, shaped Dominican aspirations. The United States controlled marvellous symbols of power: warships, airplanes, tanks, dollars, and rocket ships. New York was a fantastic city of skyscrapers and underground trains. If progress was what Dominicans were after, it was clear that New York was preferable to both the campo (countryside) and the capital. But the imperial system provided more than an ideology supporting travel to the United States, it created a transportation infrastructure that enforced that ideology. In practice, San Juan, Miami, and New York were the necessary portals between Santo Domingo and the rest of the world. Airline routes out of Santo Domingo nearly all required at least a stopover in United States territory. In the web of trade and travel routes that crossed the hemisphere, the Dominican Republic was a tiny spoke off the giant hub of the United States (Oficina Nacional de Estadistica 1959-1965).

Airplane routes were only one of the sinews connecting the two societies culturally, economically, religiously, and personally. Dominican business and political elites had ties to North American companies or directly to the embassy. In San Pedro de Macoris, local Protestants, whose parents had been brought from the West Indies to work in sugar factories built with US investments, used ties with various Episcopalian dioceses in the US to get to New York (Graham 1996; Yolanda Richardson, author interview, 2001). The descendants of Puerto Rican migrants, also brought to the island to work in the sugar industry and in administrative posts during the US occupation in the 1920s, could claim US citizenship and settle, along with their close relatives, in New York (Juan D. Balcacer and Luis Simo, author interviews, 2000).

Perhaps just as important, however, was the way that representatives from the United States imagined and publicized that country's role in managing Dominican internal affairs. As anti-Yankee sentiment began to spread in Santo Domingo, the representatives of the United States saw themselves forced to respond carefully to Dominican public opinion. Earlier in the century Washington had dressed even its dictatorial military government over the Dominican Republic in an ideology of sovereignty, equality, and mutual friendship between the two nations (Derby 1998). Now as students and workers across Latin America began turning their ardent nationalism against the imperial meddling of the United States, it became all the more important to Washington's aims to put a friendly face on such meddling, even while intensifying the meddling itself. Claims of friendship and attempts to project the US as eminently able to solve the development problems of its weaker allies were the new justification for empire. It was only natural that Dominicans would turn to the United States for help in solving their need to escape the country. The pressure on the United States visa office in Santo Domingo in 1962 was not unlike that in Havana in 1960, Saigon in 1975, or Tehran in 1979.

Once the Dominican state relinquished control over travel as a political tool, it fell to Washington, actively seeking impose its own order in Santo Domingo, to take charge of the border. Washington's desire to manage Dominican public opinion gave Dominican visa seekers considerable leverage. In early 1962, as Democrats in Washington grew increasingly jittery about the constant unrest in Santo Domingo and the growing visa backlog, Ambassador John Bartlow Martin worried, "the situation has taken on political importance, and the public image of the United States is being impaired." (8) The long lines at the visa office undermined his attempt to present the United States as the unconditional and generous ally of the Dominican people.

The political geography of Santo Domingo aggravated the problem of the "visa mess." Between the death of Trujillo and the election of Juan Bosch, varied opposition forces gathered huge crowds of students and, most shockingly to the representatives of the United States, youths from the poor barrios north of the city. Smaller spontaneous disturbances, or turbas, broke out periodically in the capital as barrio residents hunted down calies, the thugs and spies who had long patrolled on behalf of the dictator, and crowds tore down the many statues of Trujillo erected about the city (Fortunato 1998). Though the interior of the country and most of the capital remained peaceful, these demonstrations had disproportionate symbolic power because they took place in the old Colonial Zone. Usually they began at the Parque de Colon, proceeded down the Conde, and ended at the Parque de Independencia or the Presidential Palace several blocks farther on. This sliver of Santo Domingo was home to banks, government offices, stores, nightclubs, and other social spaces that had been explicitly reserved for the powerful when Trujillo rebuilt the capital after the San Zenon hurricane in 1930 (Derby 1998).

The central avenue of the Colonial Zone was also home to the United States visa office, where, by 1962, the sudden increase in applications was much more than the small staff could manage. Lines had grown to more than 500 applicants daily, clogging the stairway and stretching around the corner on the hot pavement of the Conde. The wait for an application to be processed stretched to as long as 64 weeks. As groups of young demonstrators marched along the Conde, they invariably met an angry queue, suffocating on the hot pavement and ready to vent its frustrations. The mingling of visa applicants and protesters, Ambassador Martin later wrote, produced frequent "full-fledged anti-American riots" in front of the consulate. "On some days it almost seemed that the young vice consuls spent more time throwing tear gas out the windows than issuing visas"(Martin 1966, 98).

Perhaps the rioters perceived that demonstrations against the United States were an effective way to force the embassy into solving the visa backlog. Members of the Council of State, after all, spent their lives warning and threatening that unless the United States delegation met one set of conditions or another, the country was sure to go communist. This was standard political rhetoric used throughout Latin America--an attempt to manipulate the fears and ignorance of United States officials and to turn the rhetoric of tutelage and friendship back on itself. One member of the Council of State threatened Ambassador Martin that he personally would seek to create a public relations catastrophe for the United States if the visa backlog was not quickly resolved (Martin 1966). These kinds of threats continued well into the 1970s, when Dominicans politicians and journalists frequently complained of ill treatment at the hands of United States visa officers, and, in one instance, responded to rumours of widespread crackdowns on undocumented migrants with the intimation that this would lead to disaffection with the United States and a Cuban-style revolution (El Nacional, 1971).

Maybe the riots were a way for the crowds outside the consulate similarly to twist the arm of the ambassador. But whether the rioters in Santo Domingo understood themselves to be pressuring the United States to grant more visas, or were simply expressing their immediate outrage at the long lines, the turbas outside the visa office did inspire Kennedy and Martin to quick action. By April of 1962, Martin, Kennedy, and the State Department agreed to contract two Mexican-American officers from the Los Angeles Police Department to advise Dominican police on riot control. They appointed a Puerto Rican public relations firm to work on improving the image of the Council of State and the United States. And they agreed to "take immediate steps to reduce Embassy Santo Domingo's visa backlog to the point where it is no longer a political liability." (9) By September, they built a new and larger consulate in the western suburbs far from the troubled city centre. They built a second consulate in the city of Santiago, which handled 20% of non-immigrant visa applications in the Dominican Republic from 1963 to 1970, when it closed (Mitchell 1992). The Santiago consulate also served as a base for monitoring the political situation in the north. (10) Kennedy and Martin increased the consular personnel, sending in a "planeload of visa experts" and hiring more local staff. And for a brief time, they considered accepting visa applications by mail, thereby reducing the possibility of large crowds at the embassy. (11) Also in 1962, Dominican protests prevented the United States from shutting down two temporary processing centres that received applications for visas in Manzanillo and La Romana. (12)

The United States responded to the turbas, in short, by making it much easier for large numbers of Dominicans to get quickly into the United States. The resolution of the visa crisis created an active border between the Dominican Republic and the United States where none had existed before. Washington built an infrastructure capable of processing tens of thousands of immigrant visa requests and scores of thousands of tourist visa applications each year. The number of United States immigrant visas issued in the Dominican Republic rose quickly, from 464 in 1960, to 1,789 in 1961, to 3,680 in 1962, to 9,857 in 1963, when the new consulates were fully functioning. With some fluctuations, the number of immigrant visas granted would remain at this level, averaging just over 10,000 a year over the next decade (Immigration and Naturalization Service 1999). Employers in New York undoubtedly enjoyed the influx of a new, vulnerable workforce. But, unlike most previous instances of migration, employers did not need to send labour recruiters to round up new workers. Dominicans took hold of the opportunity created in 1962 and quickly laid the foundations of what would become the largest immigrant enclave in the city of New York over the following 25 years, as well as smaller settlements in San Juan, Boston, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

Ambassador Martin did not, however, change the rules governing visa eligibility as has sometimes been supposed. In fact, according to United States immigration law, there was already no theoretical limit to the number of visas that could be granted to Dominicans deemed deserving by consular officials. In accordance with existing immigration law, visa applicants had to pass literacy tests, convince consular officials that they would not become public charges, and satisfy basic health requirements. Also they could not be polygamists, prostitutes, homosexuals, or communists. Local officials may have enjoyed considerable leeway in interpreting these rules, tightening or loosening them in response to political considerations or individual whim. But since there had never been anything resembling the flood of applications that reached the visa office in the early 1960s, there is no way to compare the way officers interpreted the regulations before and after the death of Trujillo. Nonetheless, according to confidential reports, the visa office rejected close to 40% of applicants even as it sought a way to resolve the problem of angry crowds. (13) This suggests that Martin's goal was improving public perception without lowering the bar for immigration. As Christopher Mitchell has argued, Martin's solution was to apply, effectively and expeditiously, the existing US immigration laws to all who requested visas. His hope was that by increasing bureaucratic efficiency he could take the politics out of the visa process (Mitchell 1992). Of course this was, in itself, a political objective.

To call this policy of consular construction a strategy to create a safety valve suggests that Washington hoped to solve an unrelated political or social crisis by dispensing visas and encouraging migration. In fact the pressure Washington hoped to release was rising precisely because of Dominican anger over the availability of visas. Washington did see visas and deportation of key political figures as important political tools, but a policy of targeted exile would not have required new visa offices. Overall, the evidence suggests that Washington in the 1960s had anything but a coherent policy designed to bring Dominicans to the United States. As the administration struggled to resolve one set of political concerns in Santo Domingo, at home the mood in Congress turned darkly against Latin American immigrants. As the new consulates were being built in the Dominican Republic and the first trickle of Dominican migration began to flow into Washington Heights, a neighbourhood at the northern tip of Manhattan, Latin American demand for visas ran up against the stern limits of United States hospitality. By the middle of the 1960s, powerful voices in Congress began warning that the US was becoming a "dumping ground" for surplus Latin American populations. The passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, touted by its sponsors as opening up old national origins restrictions, in fact had just the opposite result for Latin Americans. In the same year as he authorized the invasion of Santo Domingo, President Lyndon Johnson approved a fixed limit of 120,000 immigrant visas for the Western Hemisphere. While he did not favour the measure, he accepted it in exchange for the elimination of old national origins quotas for Europe, Asia and Africa (Reimers 1985).

Dominicans, with their large new consulates, were in a prime position to apply for these 120,000 visas. Then, in the late 1970s, when limits of 20,000 visas per country were extended from the eastern to the western hemisphere, the Dominican Republic was partially shielded from the blow by the simultaneous extension of the family preferences provisions. Dominicans, who already had a strong foothold in New York, used family unification to keep the flow of visas open. But this loophole had little to do with United States policy toward the Dominican Republic. In Washington, the idea of the family unification preference was introduced in 1965 to assure anti-immigrant groups and organized labour that the new migration to the United States would mirror the existing ethnic makeup of the country. In essence it had an identical purpose to the original national origins quota system. Italians and Poles would be favoured over Africans, since they already had families in the United States lining up to request visas for them. Congress justified the extension of per-country limits and family preferences to the western hemisphere in the 1970s as the creation of a uniform, rational policy. The change unintentionally reinforced the head start given Dominicans by the turbas and the construction of new consulates in the early 1960s (Reimers 1985).

Conclusions

How are we to make sense of the crucial moments in 1962 when Dominicans, self-consciously or not, pressured Washington into opening the gates to migration? It was ironic, surely, that applicants looking for permission to move to the United States would join with crowds chanting "Fuera Yanqui" [Yankee go home] and other anti-imperialist slogans. And, Martin wrote with some relish, it was odd when he and other embassy representatives appeared at one of the anti-Yankee turbas and were instantly besieged by youths clamouring for visas (Martin 1966). The irony of the Dominican predicament in the 1960s offers a new wrinkle in the theoretical relationship Albert Hirschman has proposed between exit and voice (Hirschman 1970). What happens if disaffection from a political and economic regime leads to exit, but the only place to go is a nation that is deeply implicated in the sustenance of that regime and complicit in the repression of dissent? The irony is expressed by a famous bit of graffiti that appeared in Santo Domingo in these years. To the typical slogan "Fuera Yanqui," someone added the phrase "y llevame contigo!" ["Yankee go home ... and take me with you!"] (14)

Ambassador Martin did not see this as irony, but rather as a form of hypocrisy and a mark of the shallowness of anti-Yankee feelings. Likewise, US embassy officials weathering the storm of anti-Yankee protests during the long summer of 1965 found comfort in the lines of applicants outside the visa office. The embassy wrote triumphantly in a cable to Washington that the revolution in April seemed to have no impact on the views of visa applicants: "USA still 'land of promise' here." (15) In a sense, the embassy officials were right; the stream of hopeful migrants reflected Washington's astounding success in tying the ambitions of everyday Dominicans to the attractions of the American system. This admitted goal of US foreign policy had been accomplished as much by political imposition as by shining example. Perhaps it never would have occurred to Dominicans to migrate to the Soviet Union, but the fact that there was no Soviet embassy in Santo Domingo to which Dominicans could turn was the result of the hard-line alliance between Washington and Ciudad Trujillo in the 1950s. Still, given the difficulty of bare survival in Santo Domingo in the early 1960s, and the opportunities for work in the United States, there was nothing hypocritical about feeling both anger at the United States and desperation to get there. One could angrily blame the United States for its contribution to the crisis in the Dominican Republic, and still understand that moving to the United States was an opportunity for salvation. Faced with the reluctance of the United States to provide visas and aware of the power that any threat of anti-Americanism leant to a demand, one could lead a riot against the very nation one wished to join. This tension explains much about Dominican immigrant identities and politics in the United States.

Beyond this fundamental irony, in its simplest terms this story shows how historical contingencies and complex interactions between colonizers and colonized are as important as central planning and economic interest in shaping imperial histories. The history of empire in the Dominican Republic was more than a back-and-forth between coherent and calculated politics in Washington (or among collaborators in Santo Domingo) and a heroic nationalist resistance in the Dominican Republic. The success of the demonstrations outside the visa office show the susceptibility of a United States imperial regime, predicated on the ideology of friendship, to certain kinds of demands. Just as oppressed citizens of the United States have often used the idea of citizenship to demand redress, oppressed subjects of the United States used the theories of United States global leadership to demand other forms of redress. Ironically, the United States, no historic friend of social advancement or political power for the Dominican poor, became a place for unprecedented social mobility and for a measure of democracy. Attempts by Washington to control Dominican politics were fundamental to the origins of a Dominican enclave in New York. But, if anything, this story shows how difficult the prospect of orderly imperial control was in the Dominican Republic.

Understanding Dominicans' own agency in this encounter, and investigating the meanings that Dominicans themselves invested in their mobility, should not lead to any easy conclusion that the United States practiced a beneficent or democratic brand of imperialism. The evidence suggests rather that United States hegemony in the Caribbean, usually taken to mean unchecked domination, actually shared some attributes with the kind of negotiated consent Antonio Gramsci and his followers have posited to explain the political hegemony of the capitalist class in the industrial world (Williams 1977). That the complex regime of international inequality known as empire was not unilateral, rigid, or closed helps to explain not only how Dominicans began to migrate to the United States, but also how international asymmetries persisted and reproduced themselves even as movement from the periphery to the core swelled. The urban world that Dominican peasants imagined in 1968 evolved into something quite new, and quite bleak, as Dominican peasants, workers, and middle classes began arriving there. Dominicans escaped to New York only to be drawn into a broad history of urban neglect, racial segregation, and social inequality since the 1960s. Even as the unifying justifications of the Cold War faded, empire remained; even as migrants to the United States transferred some wealth to the island, migrants inhabited an evolving system of international inequality, now inextricably intertwined with the history of social, racial, and special injustice in the urban centres of the United States. Migration was a response to empire, but despite the claim by some that transnationalism had supplanted imperialism, it merely added fascinating new texture to the resilient transnational fabric of inequality (Atkins and Wilson 1998).

Understanding the origins of migration from the Dominican Republic (and perhaps much of the Third World) in the particulars of Cold War imperialism should serve as a useful corrective to theorists who imagine globalization or transnationalism as uniquely contemporary phenomena. But much research and thinking remains to be done about how exactly the rise of migration relates to the shifting nature of imperialism after the fall of the Soviet Union. More conversation about the evolution of the relationship between empire and migration after the Cold War may prove especially useful in anticipating the consequences of the self-consciously unilateral, developmentalist, and militarized imperialism now practiced in Washington.

Notes

(1.) Hernandez claims that that the Dominican government, with an unspecified degree of independence from US backers, secretly planned the expulsion of Dominican workers while expertly covering its tracks. The key, I would argue, is to understand how migrants' choices produced a result that was congenial to capitalism (national and international), without attributing to capitalism a coherence of intention that it does not deserve. See, for instance, Mitchell (2002).

(2.) This overall impression is drawn from my fieldwork in Santo Domingo in 1999 and 2000.

(3.) Department of State. Secret. Report from the Embassy in Santo Domingo. n.d. Declassified Documents Retrieval System-United States (hereafter DDRS-US) Fiche#: 1991-135.

(4.) "Text of a background paper for President John F. Kennedy's 8/28/61 meeting concerning the Dominican Republic and ways in which the US could relieve tension in that country along with improving US-Dominican relations." Cable. Department of State. Secret. 12 October 1961. DDRS-US. "Our Consulate in Ciudad Trujillo would continue to urge that Communists and Pro-Castro elements be deported ... another agency ... has forwarded to Ciudad Trujillo a list of such undesireable persons, which, after local checking, the Consulate is to transmit to the Balaguer Government."

(5.) Ibid.

(6.) Department of State. Secret. Report from the Embassy in Santo Domingo. n.d. DDRS-U.S. Fiche#: 1991-135.

(7.) This statistic is an estimate derived from the ratio of Dominican tourist departures from the island, recorded by Dominican authorities, and the number of Dominican non-immigrant admissions recorded by the INS. See annual reports of Infotur (Banco Central de la Republica Dominicana).

(8.) Report. Department of State. Secret. "Program of Action for the Dominican Republic." 30 April 1962. DRSS-US.

(9.) "National Security Action Memorandum to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the CIA, the Director of the USIA. Subject: Policy Statement on Dominican Republic." DDRS-US. See also "Program of Action for the Dominican Republic." Report. Department of State. Secret. 30 April 1962. DDRS-US.

(10.) The Embassy Dispatch, "Dominican Republic: Status of Plan of Action Approved by the President as of July 17, 1962," DDRS-US, noted the opening of the Santiago Consulate on 1 September 1962 and indicated that "Political reporting will begin at the end of October" when a new officer was scheduled to arrive there.

(11.) Department of State. Secret. Report from the Embassy in Santo Domingo. n.d. DDRS-U.S. Fiche#: 1991-135.

(12.) "Dominican Republic: Status of Plan of Action Approved by the President as of July 17, 1962." DDRS-US.

(13.) The refusal rates are combined from January and July 1962, as reported in "Dominican Republic: Status of Plan of Action Approved by the President as of July 17, 1962." DDRS-US.

(14.) The story of this graffiti was told to me by Dr. Frank Moya Pons in a personal communication, Santo Domingo, 1999.

(15.) Cable. Department of State. Secret. 5 June 1965. DDRS-US.

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JESSE HOFFNUNG-GARSKOF

University of Michigan

Original title: "'Yankee, go home ... and take me with you!' imperialism and international migration in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1961-1966"

Monzer Al-Kassar & Iran Contra/Kassar OK'd Terror Arms, Feds Charge

Also see: "U.S. Senate Investigation Into the Bank for Credit and Commerce International"

"Mr. Kassar would get a 'pass' by the US on his narcotics trafficking in the region ..."

Excerpt: "Monzer al-Kassar and Transnational Terrorism"
ajacksonian.blogspot.com
10 JUNE 2007

... A lovely snippet on the ability of Mr. Kassar to influence folks that should be arresting him is described with this:

The primary example here is Al Kassar who, for example, closed a deal with the French government. While being sentenced to eight years in Paris, he negotiated without any problem with the French authorities and several opportunities to arrest Al Kassar were ignored.

So much for this 'rule of law' concept! Yes he could, indeed, influence people and he could help the French... if they would just ship some arms to Iran. Such a good deal! How could the CIA pass that up? Well, from what we see in the Iran/Contra business, it didn't.

Thus comes in Ollie North, Richard Secord and a lively crew of folks looking to purloin some weapons, get some cash, free some hostages and get arms to the Contras all in a few easy steps. They would set up a business they called the 'Enterprise' and it would work with an international arms dealer who had a direct line to Iran: Mr. Monzer al-Kassar. Mr. Kassar had moved offices to Poland so as to avail himself of Soviet bloc arms, which were a bit cheaper and easier to sell than Western ones. So the 'Enterprise' would look to get a ship to do the go between work, owned by a Portugese company: Defex.

So now a bit from Chapter 8 of the Walsh Report on Iran/Contra:

Phases V-VII of the Contra Arms Sales (March-June 1986)

Between February 27 and May 23, 1986, the Enterprise paid Defex Portugal about $860,000 for contra weapons. Weapons were delivered to Central America in March, April and May in three shipments. CSF books show profit distributions between April and June, numbered Phases V through VII, totaling $550,471. In addition, there was an unnumbered distribution of $37,277 on June 20, 1986, resulting from the Phase VII shipment.

The Undelivered Shipment and Distribution (July-September 1986)

In July 1986, the Enterprise paid Defex (Portugal) $2.6 million and $500,000 to another dealer, Monzer Al Kassar, for contra weapons. In late July, a shipment of arms left Portugal for Central America aboard the recently acquired Enterprise freighter, the Erria.8 According to Thomas Parlow, the Erria's Danish shipping agent, the freighter was carrying arms picked up in Poland and Portugal.9

8 Clines, Hakim and William Haskell, an associate of North, traveled to Copenhagen in April 1986 to purchase for approximately $320,000 the Erria, which the Enterprise had leased a year earlier for a weapons shipment to the contras. The ship was purchased by the Enterprise in the name of Dolmy Business Inc., a Panamanian shell company. Thomas Parlow became the Erria's Danish shipping agent. According to Parlow, Hakim would telephone Parlow to direct movement of the ship, and Parlow would communicate those directions to the ship's captain. (Parlow, FBI 302, 3/5/87, pp. 2-3.)

9 Ibid., p. 3.

As the Erria was nearing Bermuda, Parlow, acting on instructions from Hakim, ordered it to slow its speed and await further instructions. Clines then directed the ship to work its way slowly back to Portugal.10 When it arrived in Portugal it could not obtain permission to enter the port. In this mid- to late-August 1986 period, Secord ordered Clines to try to sell the cargo or dump it at sea, according to Parlow. The vessel headed for Spain, where it remained anchored for two weeks.

10 The ship apparently was ordered back to Europe because it was to be used in an impending U.S.-Israeli venture involving Iran.

As the Erria made its circuitous journey, the CIA through a series of commercial entities arranged to buy the weapons aboard. According to CIA officials, they did not learn the identity of either the owner of the ship or its cargo until January 1987, when a newspaper article named the Secord-Hakim Enterprise as the owner of the ship and the weapons.

The CIA paid $2.1 million for the arms shipment, including shipping and handling costs.11 According to the private arms dealer who bought the arms for the CIA, he paid $1.6 million for the weapons. Of that, the Enterprise received $1.2 million, and the remainder went to Parlow or Defex, who worked together to re-sell the weapons.

And a bit further on we get a look at some of the cash amounts involved:

The Iran/Contra Diversion

Because of the commingling of Enterprise funds, it was not possible to determine precisely how much money was diverted from the Iran arms sales proceeds to the contras. After direct U.S. sales of arms to Iran began in February 1986, the amount of proceeds diverted to the contras that could have been proved at trial was $3.6 million. It probably was at least $1.1 million more.51

51 The $3.6 million diversion estimate does not include expenditures OIC could not provide evidence for at trial but were, in fact, contra-related, including: the purchase of a $200,000 Jetstar by the Enterprise for contra-related travel; a $500,000 weapons purchase from Monzer Al Kassar, who was not available to testify; and about $535,000 that was used to purchase, operate and insure the Danish freighter, the Erria, which was not used exclusively for contra operations.

Independent Counsel arrived at the diversion figure of $3.6 million by calculating the Enterprise's total contra-related expenses following the first direct U.S. shipment of arms to Iran in February 1986, less the amount of funds in Enterprise accounts specifically deposited on behalf of the contras. The Enterprise's contra-related expenses after February were conservatively estimated at $6.7 million. The amount deposited for the contras was $3.1 million. Thus, the amount that was clearly diverted from the arms sales was $3.6 million.

North, in his testimony, attributed to Nir and Ghorbanifar the idea for a diversion of arms sales funds to the contras. In the Poindexter trial, although uncertain, he fixed the date in December 1985 or January or February of 1986.52 As early as November 14, 1985, North's notebooks show that he discussed with Nir a plan to obtain the release of the hostages by payments to certain Middle Eastern factions. The questions they discussed included: "How to pay for; how to raise $,'' and a possible solution was to set up a "joint'' Israeli-U.S. "covert op.'' According to the Israelis, North apparently told Israeli defense officials in a meeting in New York on December 6, 1985, that he intended to divert funds from the arms sales to the contras.

And, of course, Mr. Kassar was unavailable for testimony! Even more amazing is that he went from working for someone else to being his own operation just as this was going on. In exchange for doing this, Mr. Tijhuis cites a report that Mr. Kassar would get a 'pass' by the US on his narcotics trafficking in the region, thus allowing him to continue getting benefit for the deal above and beyond arms payments. ...

http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2007/06/monzer-al-kassar-and-transnational.html
••••••
That wouldn't be all. Far from it, Mr. Kassar would *also* be getting in good with BCCI and its ability to launder and transfer funds for illicit deals on a global basis. ...

Kassar OK'd Terror Arms, Feds Charge
BY THOMAS ZAMBITO
NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
November 5, 2008

A Syrian arms dealer agreed to funnel high-powered weapons to a terror group so it could slaughter American agents fighting the Colombian drug trade, prosecutors charged Wednesday.

Monzer Al-Kassar, 62, and accused accomplice Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy, 59, went on trial yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court for conspiring to supply Colombian guerrillas with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, surface-to-air missiles and thousands of machine guns.

Kassar "without hesitation agreed to supply them with everything they asked for and more," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan McGuire told jurors.

Prosecutors say they'll show jurors videotapes of overseas sitdowns between the defendants and "cooperators" working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Kassar lawyer Ike Sorkin says his client is a legitimate businessman.
"There's nothing illegal about being an international arms merchant," Sorkin said.

Godoy lawyer Roger Stavis asked his client to stand and face the jury.
"He's not a killer and he's not a terrorist," Stavis said, his hand on Godoy's shoulder.

Stavis said the men intended to double-cross the cooperators by turning them in to Spanish police because they believed they were terrorists.
"It was a game of cat and mouse, but it was a game of cat and mouse by both sides," Stavis said.

In 1995, Kassar was acquitted of charges that he conspired to supply assault rifles to Palestinian militants who hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro.

tzambito@nydailynews.com

Okla.: Birch Society (a Nazi Front) Boasts of Members Charles Key & other Legislators/JBS & the Reactionary Right (Alex Jones, too)

" ... Sen. Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso, and state Rep. Charles Key, R-Oklahoma City, [are] members of the society. ... "

John Birch Society Sees New Interest
By DENVER NICKS World Staff Writer
11/21/2008

An icon of the 1960s culture wars, the John Birch Society might have become a distant memory for people who believe that it has long faded into nonexistence, relegated to the dust bin of history.

Observers of the recent for Tulsa County Commission election know that it has not.

At an informational session Thursday, attended by about 20 people, members of the John Birch Society in Oklahoma gathered to spread their gospel of anti-totalitarianism and organize to resist the looming "New World Order."

"The local newspaper absolutely tore me to shreds," said Sally Bell, a member of the group and recent County Commission candidate.

Bell was criticized by the Tulsa World in an editorial that called the society a "lunatic right wing group."

"I went through a whole lot of stuff to get our message out," said Bell, who says she has become a de facto spokeswoman for the group.

Don Crosson, a section leader for the society, said, "If we'd had a full operation section or two in Tulsa, we'd have won her that campaign."

Crosson also identified state Sen. Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso, and state Rep. Charles Key, R-Oklahoma City, as members of the society. .,..

The society supports a traditionally conservative and isolationist agenda. It cautions that there is a plan to dissolve the borders between the U.S., Canada and Mexico; opposes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on constitutional grounds; and calls for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations.

Crosson spoke of what the group perceives as the mounting threat of one-world government and the prospect of a Chinese invasion using a coming pan-American superhighway.

Although prominent in public life at one time, the organization fell out of favor with mainstream conservatives in the 1960s and '70s who reacted to accusations by the society that the American political establishment was controlled by a centuries-old international conspiracy, the group's Web site states. ...

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20081121_11_A16_Anicon320630
•••••••
JBS

JBS and the Council for National Policy together are tied to reactionary politics, Reinhard Gehlen (Nazi SS), the "commie international" Council on Foreign Relations, tax cuts plus govt subsidies for the rich, Charter Schools, all the "Christian Right" which is mostly Dominionist/Reconstructionist/Calvinist totalitarianism like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Focus on the Family, Dr. Dobson, Mises Institute, Moral Majority, Operation Rescue AND Planned Parenthood, the Reagan Revoution and Bush, Paul Weyrich, Ralph Reed, Jack Kemp, Irving Kristol, Milton Friedman, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife (Whitewater, the Arkansas Project), William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (Moonies), New Age, Scientology, Gospel Outreach Verbo Ministries a.k.a. the "Jesus Movement" (a church created by a CIA psych warfare expert used to undermine Christianity in Latin Am), Heritage Foundation, W.R. Grace, Hudson Institute, Cato Institute and other anti-tax orgs, Ollie North, MK-ULTRA, Operation CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD, global death squad operations in Latin America, Asia, and the US, using fetuses for Bio-Med testing, and various other right wing scams which claim Patriotism.

The Santa Fe Document, which was a sequel to The Rockefeller Report, was originally titled Inter-American Relations, Shield of the New Order and Sword of the U.S. Ascent to World Power. This document set forth plans to create religious sects on a worldwide scale, whose mission was to corrupt the collective conscience of Christians to willingly accept the Rockefeller agenda. A portion of a book, La Mafia Sects (The Sect Mafia) by Burn Fouchereau, describes the planned use of Evangelical organizations, such as Rios Montt's Church of the Word, as fronts for the CIA to "take charge of the initiative of ideological struggle" in Latin America through religious phenomena, i.e., psychological warfare operations for inculcating Anglo-Saxon ideology.

It's a network of Nazis, Intelligence, Propaganda, and death squad activities.

Remember also that Alex Jones has long said that his father was a Birchite and that he has "a soft spot" for their reactionary ideology. ...

http://www.takeoverworld.info/nazi-history.html

Use of Antipsychotics in Children is Criticized

By Gardiner Harris
www.iht.com
November 20, 2008

WASHINGTON: Powerful antipsychotic medicines are being used far too cavalierly in children, and U.S. drug regulators must do more to warn doctors of their substantial risks, a panel of U.S. government drug experts said Tuesday.

More than 389,000 children and teenagers were treated last year with Risperdal, one of five popular medicines known as atypical antipsychotics. Of those patients, 240,000 were 12 or younger, according to data presented to the committee. In many cases, the drug was prescribed to treat attention deficit disorders.

But Risperdal is not approved for attention deficit problems, and its risks — which include substantial weight gain, metabolic disorders and muscular tics that can be permanent — are too profound to justify its use in treating such disorders, panel members said.

"This committee is frustrated," said Leon Dure, a pediatric neurologist from the University of Alabama School of Medicine who was on the panel. "And we need to find a way to accommodate this concern of ours."

The meeting on Tuesday was scheduled to be a routine review of the pediatric safety of Risperdal and Zyprexa, popular antipsychotic medicines made, respectively, by Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly & Company. Food and Drug Administration officials proposed that the committee endorse the agency's routine monitoring of the safety of the medicines in children and support its previous efforts to highlight the drugs' risk.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/20/healthscience/19fda.php

USDA Rushing Through Dangerous New Rules on GE and Pharmaceutical Crops

From: GE_News
Subject: USDA Rushing Through Dangerous New Rules
To: congress4us@yahoo.com
Date: Friday, November 21, 2008, 1:35 PM

This alert is from the True Food Network.

Greetings!

In the waning months of the Bush administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has joined the ranks of federal agencies rushing through new regulations that weaken protections for human health and the environment. USDA has released a proposed rule that would significantly weaken oversight of all genetically engineered crops, and which continue to allow companies to grow food crops engineered to produce drugs and industrial chemicals.

The USDA began this process over four years ago by promising stricter oversight. Unfortunately, improvements considered early on have been dismissed, and the proposed rule now has the same gaping holes as the policy it is replacing, and creates a few new ones, as well. For instance:

USDA has created a huge loophole allowing biotech companies to assess their own crops to determine whether USDA should regulate them. And the criteria are open-ended, very subjective, and will certainly reduce USDA's oversight of GE crops.

The proposed rules could also allow companies to grow untested GE crops with no oversight whatsoever: "Over time, the range of GE organisms subject to oversight is expected to decrease...," a move which USDA itself admits will make contamination of conventional/organic crops with untested GE material more likely.

To add insult to injury, USDA has proposed to write into law its "Low Level Presence" policy, which excuses it from taking any action to remove untested GE crops from conventional or organic food, feed and seed. This contamination often occurs through cross-pollination or seed dispersal, and has cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales and lowered profits.

USDA rejected options that would have banned outdoor cultivation of pharmaceutical-producing GE (food) crops, the only way to ensure that untested drugs don't end up in our food, despite strong support from citizens and the food industry.

USDA has refused to propose any controls on pesticide-promoting GE crops, despite increasing pesticide use and an epidemic of resistant weeds that have been fostered by these crops.

Finally, USDA snuck in a last-minute "correction" that bars state or local regulation of GE crops more protective than its own weak rule. CFS strongly opposes such preemptive language that would bar local or state authorities from putting meaningful regulations or restrictions on GE crops in place that best suit their communities. This last-minute change should be cause to extend the public comment period.

The USDA is treading dangerous new ground here. The structure of the new proposal opens loopholes that can be exploited by biotech companies and expose consumers to more untested and unlabeled genetically engineered foods.

After denying requests for an extension to the short comment period given for the proposed rules, USDA's comment period closes on Monday.

The ACORN Mess: A scandal Grows

www.pittsburghlive.com
November 16, 2008

They're dispensing big dollops of hand sanitizer at ACORN these days. But it's doubtful that any anti-bacterial agent can kill the infection that's raging through the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

... ACORN had a giant internal scandal: Founder Wade Rathke kept from the group's board the fact that his brother, Dale, had embezzled more than $1 million from ACORN a decade ago.

Once revealed, ACORN named an interim management committee to investigate. But when accountants refused to open the books, several board members on that committee sued. Now, CNN reports that two board members -- Karen Inman and Marcel Reid -- have been fired.

ACORN says the pair was speaking untruths and had no authority to go to court. Ms. Inman bluntly says "the sheriff's coming."

The ACORN mess is so serious that a prominent benefactor has balked at supporting the group. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which has given ACORN more than $7 million in the last decade, froze contributions in June, CNN reports. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last week severed all ties because of the growing scandals.

Alleged fraud. Hidden embezzlement. Firing those impaneled to investigate. It's time for the feds to step up their probe of ACORN.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/archive/s_598499.html

C.I.A. Withheld Data in Peru Plane Crash Inquiry

By MARK MAZZETTI
NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/world/americas/21inquire.html?ref=americas
November 21, 2008

WASHINGTON — An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has found that the agency withheld crucial information from federal investigators who spent years trying to determine whether C.I.A. officers committed crimes related to the accidental downing of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.

The August 2008 report by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, could lead the Justice Department to reopen its investigation into the shooting, examining in particular whether senior C.I.A. officers obstructed justice or lied to Congress by burying details about the episode and the C.I.A.’s broader counternarcotics program.

A C.I.A. surveillance aircraft mistakenly identified the plane as a drug-smuggling aircraft, and a Peruvian military jet shot it down, killing an American missionary and her 7-month-old daughter. The Justice Department closed its investigation into the matter in 2005, declining to prosecute agency officers for any actions related to the episode.

But Mr. Helgerson’s report, parts of which were made public on Thursday, said that the Justice Department investigators and Congress were never allowed access to internal C.I.A. reviews that portrayed the downing as one mistake among many in the agency’s counternarcotics program in Peru. The report said the agency routinely authorized interceptions of suspected drug planes “without adequate safeguards to protect against the loss of innocent life.”

The counternarcotics program was begun under President Clinton in 1994. The report said it had operated for years outside legal boundaries set by the White House.

In releasing unclassified parts of the report on Thursday, Representative Peter J. Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said he was asking the Justice Department to consider whether the C.I.A.’s actions after the incident amounted to obstruction of justice. “This is about as ugly as it gets,” said Mr. Hoekstra, who added that the Justice Department had closed its investigation based on a review of “incomplete information.”

The missionary family that was aboard the aircraft when it was shot down came from Mr. Hoekstra’s district in Michigan.

Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman, said that Mr. Helgerson’s report had been delivered to the Justice Department, and that Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, had yet to decide what internal actions to take.

“C.I.A. takes very seriously questions of responsibility and accountability,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “The only accountability process worthy of this agency is one conducted with care, candor and common sense. That’s the single goal here.” A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The fatal episode occurred in April 2001 over the remote Amazon forest of Peru. The C.I.A. had been operating in the region as part of a joint counternarcotics mission with the Peruvian Air Force, which had the authority to intercept or shoot down planes that did not comply with orders to land. Government reports after the shooting attributed the accident in part to language barriers that prevented the pilot from understanding the orders.

The plane was carrying two missionaries, Veronica Bowers and her husband, James Bowers, their two children, and a pilot. Ms. Bowers’ husband and the couple’s son survived the crash, along with the pilot. Any decision to re-examine the matter could be an early test for the Justice Department under an Obama administration. If the Justice Department determines there was wrongdoing, it may have no choice about whether to pursue a prosecution. At the same time, a lengthy investigation into C.I.A. wrongdoing could immediately chill the relationship between the White House and the spy agency at a time when the C.I.A. is central to the American campaign against terrorism.

According to Mr. Helgerson’s report, C.I.A. officials “within hours” of the downing explained the accident as a one-time mistake in an otherwise sound counternarcotics program.

“In fact, this was not the case,” the report said. It said that the C.I.A. repeatedly misled the White House and Congress between 1995 and 2001 about the Peru operation.

The inspector general’s report said that after the downing of the missionaries’ plane, the C.I.A. had conducted internal reviews “that documented sustained and significant violations of required intercept procedures.” But it said that the agency had denied Congress, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council access to these findings.

Mr. Hoekstra said Thursday that the inspector general’s investigation specifically named C.I.A. officials responsible for the alleged cover-up, but he declined to name those officers. The Justice Department and the C.I.A. inspector general had been investigating the roles played in the incident by the agency’s field officers in Latin America as well as senior officials at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia.

It is also possible that C.I.A. lawyers could face scrutiny if the Justice Department decides to reopen the Peru investigation. The report by Mr. Helgerson says that C.I.A. lawyers from the office of the general counsel “advised agency managers to avoid written products lest they be subject to legal scrutiny” in connection with the downing of the plane.

The intensity of Mr. Helgerson’s investigations of this and other C.I.A. programs rankled many in the C.I.A.’s clandestine branch, as those officers under suspicion saw legal bills mount.

Earlier this year, Mr. Helgerson agreed to a series of changes to inspector general investigations, including the creation of an ombudsman position to hear complaints from C.I.A. officers being scrutinized by the inspector general.

Before the Justice Department decides whether to reopen a criminal investigation, prosecutors are likely to carefully review the inspector general’s report to determine whether the allegations are credible.

If the criminal inquiry into possible obstruction of justice is reopened, the case would probably be handled by the office of the United States attorney in the District of Colombia, which conducted the initial criminal investigation.

Asked Thursday why he waited until now to release the report, Mr. Hoekstra explained that it took several weeks for the document to make its way to Capitol Hill and that this was the first week members were back in session since it arrived.

David Johnston contributed reporting.

Nazi "Pro-Life" Laws/Nov 21, 1938 Newspaper Report - "Nazis allege Germany victim of world plot"

Contemporary American "conservatives" frequently argue that abortion is tantamount to Nazi mass murder. As it actually was under the Nazi Party:

" ... The district court of Lueneburg, in the province of Hanover, has made a ruling in a case in which a Jewish woman was concerned, which will doubtless provide a precedent for similar cases. The woman was accused of procuring an abortion on herself, thus infringing Paragraph 218 of the German penal code. ... " The right has agitated for decades to revive the Nazi policy of criminalization - but abortion is a matter of personal choice, not a fascist atrocity. Mandatory childbirth law, complete with sentencing guidelines - even the death sentence during the most stringent period of Nazi rule - was the atrocity.

- AC
•••••••
The campaign to convince the citizens of the Reich that world Jewry is combining with the democracies in a vast anti-German conspiracy continued unabated during the weekend.

Nazis allege Germany victim of world plot
www.telegraph.co.uk
Nov 21, 1938

New measures against the German Jews have been taken. Comparatively unimportant in themselves, they are intended to show that the Jew is no longer considered capable of possessing honourable feelings.

The troubles in Palestine are still furnishing copious material for anti-British tirades throughout the Press.

A new order, issued by Herr Hitler personally, forbids those Jews who retired as officers from the Austrian Imperial or Republican armies to wear the uniforms fo their units. The right to wear these uniforms on ceremonial occasions was conferred on officers who retired after loyal and honourable service with the Austrian colours. The order is countersigned by Gen Keitel, chief of the German High Command.

JEWISH BIRTH LAW

The district court of Lueneburg, in the province of Hanover, has made a ruling in a case in which a Jewish woman was concerned, which will doubtless provide a precedent for similar cases. The woman was accused of procuring an abortion on herself, thus infringing Paragraph 218 of the German penal code.

The court ruled that the woman must be discharged since the father of the child was also a Jew and the paragraph in question was intended for the protection of the German Aryan race. Since the paragraph was not intended for the protection of the Jews, who were in opposition to the Aryan race, abortion could not be punished where a Jewish mother was concerned.

It is understood that the chief producer responsible for the production of plays under the auspices of the Jewish cultural organisation has been released from the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen and instructed to produce a play for Tuesday evening. This is intended to prove to the world that Jewish cultural activities can now proceed unhampered in the Reich.

The Juedische Rundschau, the leading Jewish newspaper, which in common with all Jewish publications has been completely banned, is to be permitted to appear again for the purpose of announcing such occasions at this stage production. It will, however, not be permitted to carry any news or advertisements.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/britainatwar/3472854/Nazis-allege-Germany-victim-of-world-plot---Nov-21-1938.html

Mississippi: Trent Lott's Brother-in-Law Embroiled in Bribery Scandal/Update on Medgar Evers Murder Trial

Richard "Dickie" Scruggs

" ... Langston is now aiding the government in its investigation of another alleged scheme, this one involving Scruggs and Hinds County Judge Bobby DeLaughter, according to court records. ... They allegedly tried to influence DeLaughter by promising that Scruggs' brother-in-law, former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, would help the judge get appointed to the federal bench if he ruled in Scruggs' favor. ... DeLaughter is well-known for prosecuting Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the NAACP. ... "

Record Reveals Bribery Investigation Continues
By HOLBROOK MOHR
Nov. 13, 2008

A wealthy attorney who helped put legendary trial lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs behind bars has testified before a federal grand jury in a bribery investigation, court records briefly posted on the Internet revealed.

Booneville attorney Joey Langston was representing Scruggs when Scruggs became entangled in a high-profile bribery scandal last year. But it wasn't long before the FBI raided Langston's office and pressured him to turn on his client.
Scruggs was one of the nation's most powerful attorneys before being receiving a five-year prison sentence on a conspiracy conviction. He was accused of conspiring to pay a judge $50,000 for a favorable ruling in a case involving $26.5 million in legal fees from Hurricane Katrina cases.

Scruggs had gained national prominence, and hundreds of millions of dollars, by leading the charge against tobacco companies in the 1990s that led to a multibillion-dollar settlement. His efforts were portrayed in the 1999 film "The Insider" starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.

Langston is now aiding the government in its investigation of another alleged scheme, this one involving Scruggs and Hinds County Judge Bobby DeLaughter, according to court records. Langston testified before a federal grand jury Oct. 23, the records show.

Prosecutors have indicated they believe Scruggs and Langston enlisted the help of former Hinds County District Attorney Ed Peters. They allegedly tried to influence DeLaughter by promising that Scruggs' brother-in-law, former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, would help the judge get appointed to the federal bench if he ruled in Scruggs' favor. DeLaughter used to work for Peters.

Lott called DeLaughter and several other people about an open seat on the federal bench, but he recommended someone else for the job, Brett Boyles, the former senator's chief of staff, has said. Lott has not been accused of wrongdoing.

The revelation about a grand jury hearing came in a six-page document that was briefly - and apparently accidentally - posted on a federal court Web site. The document, since removed from the Web site and sealed, was provided to The Associated Press by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal newspaper in Tupelo.

The Tupelo daily reported on the document on its Web site Thursday.
In the document, prosecutors ask a federal judge to give Langston a reduced sentence for his help in the investigations.

"It is anticipated that his cooperation will continue through the prosecution of subsequent defendants now under investigation," the document says. "His cooperation has been exhaustive and has resulted in some risk to Mr. Langston and his family."

An individual in a van that appeared to be "packed with electronic equipment" was discovered on Langston's property Oct. 3, according to the document. It also said Langston has had a heart attack since he began working with the government.

Langston met with investigators several times, "admitting and detailing his role in Dickie Scruggs' legal team's efforts to influence Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter," according to court records.

DeLaughter has insisted he did nothing wrong, and Langston is the only one who has been charged in the case. Langston pleaded guilty to conspiracy to corruptly influence an elected official; his sentencing is pending. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of three years.

DeLaughter is well-known for prosecuting Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the NAACP. The trial was made into the 1996 movie "Ghosts of Mississippi," with Alec Baldwin playing DeLaughter.

A message left Thursday with the U.S. attorney's office was not immediately returned. Tony Farese, Langston's lawyer, said Thursday that he could not comment. Messages left for DeLaughter and Peters were not immediately returned.

In the case involving Katrina legal fees, Scruggs was sentenced in June and is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Kentucky for low- and minimum-security inmates.

http://www.sunherald.com/306/story/953659.html

What's driving the BNP?

" ... Barnbrook and his eager leafleteers have reason to be cocky. ... "

Brendan O'Neill
New Statesman
01 May 2008

The rapid growth in support at the ballot box for a nationalist party of the right has gone hand in hand with voter cynicism and disillusion with the main parties

On a sunny day in Stanmore, north London, a motley crew of people gathers at the Tube station. An elderly man leans on a walking stick, a faded blue, white and red tattoo saying "Proud to be British" just about visible on his forearm. The tattoo might be older than I am. Bert, a sixty-something retired heavy-machine worker, is inappropriately dressed in a woollen jumper and beige overcoat. He lets out a yelp of approval when a truck with a Union Jack on its side - carrying "British Meat" - hurtles by.

Housewives in jeans and short-sleeved tops talk animatedly about the beautiful weather. Charlotte Lewis, a 35-year-old unemployed woman from Croydon, is wearing a loud gold lamé jacket and black jeans. She speaks with a south London twang: "Sometimes I get on a bus and I'm the only white person on there," she complains. "It's a bit distressing."

A white van swerves into view, beeping at the group of 15 men and women to move out of the way. Out steps Richard Barnbrook, dressed in a khaki suit and with a roll-up between his fingers. He has the look and swagger of an old colonialist. I can picture him leaping out of a jeep in white-ruled Rhodesia in the same manner he leaps out of his white van in multi-ethnic Stanmore. His two helpers, big men in T-shirts, unload boxes of leaflets headlined "The Changing Face of London". They show a group of smiling white women at a street party in the 1940s (the good old days) next to a picture of three women wearing burqas, one of whom is giving a two-fingered salute to the camera (the bad new days).

This is the London wing of the British National Party. Five days before the local and London mayoral elections, it has come to Stanmore and Edgware in north London - which have large Indian and Jewish communities - for some last-minute electioneering. Its members are confident, even cocky, about their chances of a seat on the London Assembly. "We'll definitely get one, maybe two," says Barnbrook, who is the BNP's mayoral candidate.

Barnbrook is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, who worked with the gay film-maker Derek Jarman in the 1980s ("Me and Derek and Tilda [Swinton] hung out together, and there was never a problem," he says). His fiancée is Simone Clarke, former prima ballerina of the English National Ballet and a fellow BNP member, who has a mixed-race child. "How can I be racist when I adore that child?" he says, when I ask if the BNP is anything more than a Johnny Foreigner-baiting party. Barnbrook, who leads the BNP's 12 councillors in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, insists the BNP is "concerned about lots of things".

"If I had to put our concerns in order of importance, I would say: housing, transport, health, education, the environment and law and order." So immigration isn't a concern at all? "Well, immigration impacts on all of those things," he says. "It causes overcrowding in housing, strain on the transport system, more pollution in the environment and it disrupts law and order."
I see. Behind Barnbrook's "respectable issues" there lurks the odious far-right idea that immigrants are the root cause of every social ill.

Cocky leafleteers

Barnbrook and his eager leafleteers have reason to be cocky. At the time of writing, many predict that the BNP will make important gains in the local and London mayoral elections. In London, parties must win 5 per cent of the vote in order to get a seat on the 25-member Assembly. That threshold was introduced by the government to allow minor parties such as the Greens to be represented, while keeping out the far right. In the last London elections in 2004, the BNP won 4.7 per cent of the vote - only 6,000 votes short of the threshold for gaining a seat. This time it is expected to win bigger, especially since the UK Independence Party (which won 8 per cent in 2004) is in disarray.

Around the country, the BNP has grown in local electoral strength over the past ten years. Under its founder, John Tyndall, the party was a racist menace but electorally insignificant, only ever winning handfuls of votes.

That began to change with the election of the slick Nick Griffin as party chairman in 1999. He set about trying to improve the BNP's image. The party had won its first-ever council seat in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets in 1993. After the local elections of May 2006, it had over 50 council seats: 12 in Barking and Dagenham, and a smattering of seats in the north of England: mainly in Stoke-on-Trent, Burnley and West Yorkshire.

"The BNP has tended to prosper in segregated poor, white communities in the north, and in parts of the south-east where there have been unexpected infusions of new immigrants," says Tony Travers, an expert in local government at the London School of Economics. The party's vote has grown exponentially at general elections, too. In 1992, it won 7,005 votes; in 1997 it won 35,832; in 2001 it won 47,129; in 2005 it won 192,746. What is behind the growth of the BNP? How has it managed to gain a toehold in local politics?

Many would argue that the party's recent success represents the re-emergence of flick-knife racism, even that "neo-fascism" is on the march. In fact, the expansion of the BNP can be seen as a product of mainstream political failure. The party - a ragbag of ageing skinheads, slick wannabe politicians and ditzy women with chips on their shoulders - thrives on disillusionment with the three main parties.

"There is research evidence that a lot of people who vote for the BNP are not aggressive neo-fascists, but rather are cheesed off with mainstream politics," says Travers. "The rise of the BNP can be seen as a grim indicator of the failure of the Labour and Conservative parties. If the parties functioned properly, then probably the BNP could be contained. Its supporters would be tempted away by old-fashioned Labour values or by the legitimate, centre-right nationalism of the Tories."

But today, Travers says, there is a "clustering in the centre" in mainstream politics, and a "collapse of the ability of the mainstream parties to win new members and supporters". The effect has been to allow the BNP to proliferate.

"If the other parties were doing their job properly, we wouldn't be here having this conversation right now," says Barnbrook. "I know we win votes because people are angry with the other parties."

Far from being a clear-headed neo-fascist party, the BNP comes across as a mess of contradictions opportunistically trying to pick up the votes of the disillusioned. For example, Barnbrook tells me the BNP has "no problem with black people". Someone clearly forgot to brief Bert, an older member of the BNP, who says "mixed marriages are just wrong because both races become denigrated". Bert has "no comment" on the question of whether six million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust, yet Charlotte from Croydon tells me she was "really, really moved" when she visited Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam a few years ago. Barnbrook says the BNP has "nothing in common with the thugs of the NF"; Bert tells me the NF "are decent blokes".

Most strikingly, where Barnbrook tried to convince me that "millions of Britons empathise and support our message", Charlotte reveals that a party stalwart advised her to walk to the top of a cul-de-sac and leaflet outwards. "It's safer that way," she says. "You can run away if people get angry."

With them for a day, I noticed two things about the BNP: its reliance on mainstream fear about immigration and its opportunistic exploitation of people's disdain for Labour, Tories and Lib Dems. BNP doorsteppers talk about Britain being "overcrowded" and claim immigrants are polluting our environment; they argue that Poles lower British wages. These are thoroughly mainstream ideas. They tell voters, in the words of Bert: "If you're pissed off with the rest, vote for the best!"

All parties should be concerned that the growth of the BNP over the past 15 years - from 7,005 votes in the 1992 general election to 192,746 in 2005 - has coincided with political malaise and cynicism across the UK.

Perhaps the best way to smash the BNP is to challenge the mainstream fear of immigration that it feasts upon and give voters something inspiring to vote for in its place.

http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2008/05/bnp-party-parties-london-hand

EUROPE: Far Right on the March

Brittany Peats
New Statesman
19 November 2008

In the wake of the publication of BNP members list we focus on the rise of the far right in Europe particularly in Italy where racism has penetrated the public discourse

Xenophobia seems to be part and parcel of modern Italian politics
The publication of the British National Party's 10,000-strong membership list has once again shone the spotlight on the far right in the UK.

But it is in Europe that such organisations are causing gravest concern. A far-right Czech group tried to attack a Roma camp on Monday and Austria's two far-right groups together won almost a third of the vote in September's national election. And then there's Italy.

In April, the country gave the far-right party Lega Nord (the Northern League) an electoral shot in the arm. Romans chose a mayor who had once led a Neo-Fascist youth movement.

Immigrants are routinely scapegoated for rising crime - incorrectly blamed on a recent influx of people from the former Yugoslavia and northern Africa.

This fear is increased as “the media amplifies crime when there are immigrants involved,” says Anna Bull, professor of Italian history at the University of Bath.

The government has been slow to respond to the changing ethnic make-up of the country. “There has been little discussion of multiculturalism” says her colleague, Professor Roger Eatwell, who adds and xenophobia is still rampant.

The Italian discrimination against the Roma people has a growing notoriety not least because it often continues with the backing, tacit or otherwise, of the government and legal system.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose campaign promised a clampdown on "Roma, clandestine immigrants and criminals," supports the mandatory fingerprinting of all Roma, including minors.

In March Italy's highest court found a mayor who believed that "all Gypsies were thieves" not guilty of racial discrimination. Many Roma camps outside of Rome and Naples have been razed.

Italy's state-sanctioned xenophobia – over half of Italians would like to see the Romas expelled from the country - was demonstrated by shocking photographs of Italians sunbathing just a few feet from the dead bodies of two drowned Roma girls.

Rome's far right mayor Gianni Alemanno made a promise to crack down on immigrants central to his campaign. At his inauguration, skinheads reportedly chanted “Duce. Duce,” in a direct link to Italy's dictator Fascist dictator Mussolini.

Upon entering office Alemanno instituted a 'Pact for Rome' which included the following directives: “Immediately activate procedure for the expulsion of 20,000 nomads and immigrants who have broken the law in Rome” and “Closure of illegal nomad camps, rigorous and effective checks on legal ones and their progressive elimination.” He also has said that it would be simplistic to consider fascism an "absolute evil".

Meanwhile, the Lega Nord, is playing its part. One of their leaders, Roberto Maroni - who serves as the interior minister - authored the Roma fingerprinting proposal and last week the party announced a plan to place a two-year ban on immigration.

The lack of long-established parties may make Italy more susceptible to extreme parties. “In most countries there are the same parties as there were 20, 30, 40 years ago. In Italy there are completely new parties since the 1990s” says Eatwell. “Personal identity with parties is very weak which leaves the country open to the possibility of radical change.”

The National Alliance party is generally acknowledged to be in position to take power after Berlusconi and his Forza Italia party. The Alliance party is the successor to the Italian Social Movement which grew out of Mussolini's fascist party.

The party has “made great strides in renouncing and denouncing fascism and the leader Gianfranco Fini has made the party more mainstream, centre-right though there are still elements of neo-fascists,” said Bull. Any moderate sentiments are generally absent in the rank and file members however.

The party differs from the Lega Nord in significant ways but they are united over their stance on immigration leading to speculation that the two parties could form a coalition.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano spoke out last week against the anti-immigration sentiments embodied by the increasingly powerful extreme right. He said, "We need a climate of openness and appreciation towards foreigners who are Italian.” Maybe this indicates a turning point away from the support of the anti-immigrant far-right and instead towards the embrace of multiculturalism in Italy.

There doesn't seem to be much evidence of it elsewhere sadly.

http://www.newstatesman.com/

UK: Neo-Nazi BNP Leader Produced a Gay Porn Film as a Student

Richard Barnbrook, London leader of the BNP. Barnbrook's student film, A Love Story, "contains scenes of flagellation, men undressing and frolicking in a river and a naked man apparently performing a sex act on another. While this may be hard for supporters of a party opposed to the "promotion" of homosexuality to swallow, Mr Barnbrook's transgressions get worse: the 58-minute film, made in 1989, is described as 'Marxist' by one film website. ... "

POLITICAL PROFILE - BBC, 3 May 2008: " ... Richard Barnbrook's election to the London Assembly for the British National Party makes him the far right party's highest profile elected politician.Thanks to the version of proportional representation used in London, the party gained one of the 25 London Assembly seats after winning 5.3% of the vote. And Mr Barnbrook, who came fifth in the race to be mayor and is leader of the party's group on Barking and Dagenham Council, was top of the BNP's list. His election came despite all the main political parties uniting to urge people not to back 'hatred, violence and stupidity.' ... "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7219747.stm

'Gay Porn' Movie Raises Ripples on Far Right
Patrick Barkham
guardian.co.uk
May 11 2006

He is the poster boy of the BNP, an articulate former teacher whose blue eyes and easy charm helped win the far-right party 11 council seats in Barking, east London. But now Richard Barnbrook, London leader of the BNP, has been forced to deny that an erotic movie he produced and directed as a student was a gay porn film.

HMS Discovery: A Love Story contains scenes of flagellation, men undressing and frolicking in a river and a naked man apparently performing a sex act on another. While this may be hard for supporters of a party opposed to the "promotion" of homosexuality to swallow, Mr Barnbrook's transgressions get worse: the 58-minute film, made in 1989, is described as "Marxist" by one film website.

"It was an art film, end of story. It was not a bloody porn film," said Mr Barnbrook, now leader of the opposition on Barking council. "The only nudity in it is a couple of guys running in a river. It is not about homosexuality. It is about sexuality. Anything to do with my past politics or my past work, I am not interested in commenting on."

The existence of the film was first revealed in the Guardian before last year's general election, when Mr Barnbrook stood as a candidate in Barking. According to one cinema listing, Mr Barnbrook also starred in and co-wrote the film.

But yesterday he denied penning erotic poetry set to the footage, which includes the lines: "It bares you like a foreskin's folds" and "Open-mouthed, I shall dream of altar boys."

Mr Barnbrook was a painter, conceptual artist and art teacher before turning to rightwing politics. Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, has suggested he was also a Labour party member at one stage.

Fellow extremists appear to take a dim view of Mr Barnbrook's colourful past. On one rightwing website, a poll has been created next to a picture of the BNP man asking: "Is this a poofter or what?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/may/11/uk.filmnews

Also in the news: "Union: 'Ban teachers who are BNP supporters,'" /www.independent.co.uk, 20 November 2008

"The Conservative Voice" Blog Claims that Obama is an ARAB, NOT AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN/Profile of Nathan Tabor, Founder of "Conservative Voice"

Brain-damaged "conservatives" with no character - lying, jingoistic mediocrities and religious hypocrites who believe themselves to be of some importance in the world despite their perennial mental and moral lapses - ply perception management punditry to revise historical events as they happen ... flying simians unite - God save the master race! - AC

Arab Obama and is Arab Friends [incl. Rashid Khalidi]

by Linda Cowan
The Conservative Voice
July 24, 2008
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/5409

"The revelation that Barak Obama is 43.75% Arab goes a long way to explain his political and business connections to Antoin 'Tony' Rezko, Nadhmi Auchi, Joseph Aramanda, Louis Farrahkan, and other characters he relies on as contacts, advisors, campaign organizers and political contributors. Obama needed the black vote, so he wrote a book and created a fictional African-American profile for himself. His real dealings are with his true heritage, anti-Israel Arabs. ... "

Ms. Cowan and her fellow wingnuts at Conservative Voice must have missed:

"His father was born in Africa, which (I believe) makes him 1/2 African. His mother was born in Kansas, which (I believe) makes him 1/2 American. If ANYONE can literally use the term African-American, it truly is Obama."

http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:No5E5VD_fncJ:community.comcast.net/comcastportal/board/message%3Fboard.id%3Dcityhall%26thread.id%3D361008+obama+is+an+arab&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us

and:

YouTube - McCain Supporter: "Obama is an Arab"
Oct 10, 2008 ... A supporter at the McCain town hall-style forum in Lakeville, MN said "Obama is an Arab," which McCain quickly corrected.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YIq5Q15L1o

and:

Media Matters - Limbaugh repeats baseless smear that Obama is an Arab
Sep 22, 2008.

Summary: Rush Limbaugh baselessly asserted of Sen. Barack Obama: "Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?" Limbaugh continued: "He's Arab. You know, he's from Africa. He's from Arab parts of Africa. ... [H]e's not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American."

The founder of TheConservativeVoice is "intelligent design" advocate Nathan Tabor:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200809220015

Nathan Tabor: Columnist, Candidate, and True Conservative
By John T. Plecnik
(01/05/06)

Who is Nathan Tabor? Nationally, Nathan is known for his conservative political commentary and radio broadcasts. The Washington Times, Townhall.com, Human Events, and NewsMax have all published his work. And courtesy of American Family Radio part of the American Family Association, the radio spots from Nathan's aConservativeMoment.com are heard on over 250 stations nationwide.

In his home state of North Carolina, Nathan is known as a self-made, small businessman who ran for congress. In an eight-way primary, one of the most expensive in American history, Nathan raised over $850,000 and received over 7,500 votes.

Great reputation? Yes. But who is Nathan Tabor? Not satisfied with taking advantage of existing venues for conservative speech and activism, Nathan founded TheConservativeVoice.com. The site has been noted by Rush Limbaugh and features up-to-the-minute news and opinion from more than 100 popular columnists. It boasts a listing of 150,000 e-mails. And after less than a year, TheConservativeVoice.com gets over 250,000 unique visitors per month.

Technologically savvy, Nathan recognizes the growing importance of the internet. MoveOn.org and its ilk must be countered by a stronger, grassroots movement on the Right. To facilitate the campaigns of his fellow conservative columnists, candidates and activists, Nathan provides free websites via ActMediaInc.com. ...

http://www.americandaily.com/article/11077

- AC

Waffen SS Official Otto von Bolschwing and the Creation of Israel, Connections to Iran Contra & Place in San Francisco Politics

Edited by Alex Constantine
(Dedicated to Benyamin Solomon of the flag-waving Friends of Republican National Socialists and Pedophiles at CONSERVATIVE VOICE, a website that promotes George Bush, Rupert Murdoch, and good, old-fashioned fascist American values.)

From: "The CIA Names File on Adolf Eichmann"
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 150

The CIA was surprised by Israeli agents' capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, and a subsequent CIA file review uncovered extensive ties between Eichmann and men who served as CIA assets and allies (like Franz Alfred Six and Otto Von Bolschwing), according to the CIA's three-volume Directorate of Operations file and their Directorate of Intelligence file on Eichmann. ...

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/ciaeich.html
•••••••
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Brunner_B_CS.html

... Von Bolschwing was deeply involved in intelligence work-and in the persecution of innocent people-for most of his adult life.

He had joined the Nazi party at the age of twenty-three, in 1932, and had become an SD (party security service) informer almost immediately. In the years leading up to 1939, von Bolschwing became a leading Nazi intelligence agent in the Middle East, where he worked under cover as an importer in Jerusalem.

One of his first brushes with Nazi espionage work, according to captured SS records, was a role in creating a covert agreement between the Nazis and Fieval Polkes, a commander of the militant Zionist organization Haganah, whom von Bolschwing had met through business associates in the Mideast.

Under the arrangement the Haganah was permitted to run recruiting and training camps for Jewish youth inside Germany. These young people, as well as certain other Jews driven out of Germany by the Nazis, were encouraged to emigrate to Palestine. Polkes and the Haganah, in return, agreed to provide the SS with intelligence about British affairs in Palestine.

Captured German records claim that Polkes believed the increasingly brutal Nazi persecution of the Jews could be turned to Zionist advantage-at least temporarily-by compelling Jewish immigration to Palestine, and that the Haganah commander's sole source of income, moreover, was secret funds from the SS.
•••••••
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/ftp.py?people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts//Exhibits/List-of-Exhibits
T/37(302)

Report by von Bolschwing on a meeting in Vienna between Eichmann and representatives of the Reichsbank and Economics Ministry from Berlin concerning the emigration of the Jews from Austria; Berlin, 20.6.38. Submitted during the course of the trial and marked T/149 (BO6-1176, Vol. I, p. 290)
•••••••
From: "Why Israel's Capture of Eichmann Caused Panic at the CIA"

Information that could have led to Nazi war criminal was kept under wraps.
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-7-2006-98574.asp

... An urgent memo was sent to CIA investigators urging caution and pointing out that if Moscow discovered these ex-Nazis had been working for the Americans that would make those agents "very vulnerable".

Meanwhile, some of the CIA's German agents were beginning to panic. One of them, Otto Albrecht von Bolschwing - who also had worked with Eichmann in the Jewish affairs department and was later Heinrich Himmler's representative in Romania - frantically asked his old CIA case officer for help.

After the war Bolschwing had been recruited by the Gehlen Organisation, the prototype German intelligence agency set up by the Americans under Reinhard Gehlen, who had run military intelligence on the eastern front under the Nazis. "US army intelligence accepted Reinhard Gehlen's offer to furnish alleged expertise on the Red army - and was bilked by the many mass murderers he hired," said Robert Wolfe, a historian at the US national archives.

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-7-2006-98574.asp
•••••••
Zepezauer’s “The CIA’s Greatest Hits”

“The notion that they [CIA, Army Counterintelligence Corp, Gehlen organization] employed only a few bad apples will not stand up to the new documentation. Some American intelligence officials could not or did not want to see how many German intelligence officials, SS officers, police, or non-German collaborators with the Nazis were compromised or incriminated by their past service [...] Hindsight allows us to see that American use of actual or alleged war criminals was a blunder in several respects [...] there was no compelling reason to begin the postwar era with the assistance of some of those associated with the worst crimes of the war. Lack of sufficient attention to history-and, on a personal level, to character and morality-established a bad precedent, especially for new intelligence agencies. It also brought into intelligence organizations men and women previously incapable of distinguishing between their political/ideological beliefs and reality. As a result, such individuals could not and did not deliver good intelligence. Finally, because their new, professed ‘democratic convictions’ were at best insecure and their pasts could be used against them (some could be blackmailed), these recruits represented a potential security problem.”

Zepezauer mentions Klaus Barbie and others in the final paragraph. Surely a darker part of the story and I wonder why he doesn’t make more of it. (Ditto when it comes to von Bolschwing).

http://exmypar.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/bad-apples-of-the-gehlen-organisation/
•••••••
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome's father, Judge William Newsome, was a business partner of Nazi Otto von Bolschwing, the SS officer who settled in the U.S. after the war.

Mae Brussell traced the connections in 1987: "Adolf Hitler's Reinhard Gehlen, OTTO ALBRECHT von BOLSCHWING, to the Iran-Contragate evidence. TCI, Stanford Technology. John Paul Getty, Rumanian Iron Guard ... "

Gordon Getty, fourth son of J. Paul, is Gavin Newsome's financial angel. Wikipedia: "Getty is one of the nation's leading venture capitalists and philanthropists. ... Though a Republican, he is a major fundraiser for local and national Democratic Party candidates, and has contributed to the campaigns of NANCY PELOSI, Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, and John Kerry."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Getty

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1D71539F936A35753C1A967948260

AROUND THE NATION; Screening of Evidence Sought in Nazi Case
October 5, 1981

AP - Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to screen for government secrets any evidence submitted by Otto von Bolschwing, 71 years old, who is accused of serving as an adviser to Adolf Eichmann in persecuting Jews.

Rodney Smith, an attorney for the United States Department of Justice, said he made the request Friday to prevent the possible disclosure of classified information by Mr. von Bolschwing.

The Government is attempting to strip Mr. von Bolschwing of his United States citizenship and deport him. He is accused of concealing wartime Nazi affiliations when he applied for citizenship in New York in 1959.

Mr. Von Bolschwing contends that he was an undercover agent for the American Office of Strategic Services and denies ever having served in the SS or Gestapo. ...
•••••••
World Watchers International Tape #520 November 22, 1981

OTTO ALBRECHT ALFRED VON BOLSCHWING

THINGS PICK UP FOR OTTO. FROM SS GESTAPO, HIMMLER, HITLER, TO UNITED STATES.

DECEMBER, 1953, Otto V. B. applied to emigrate to United States.
FEBRUARY, 1954, Otto arrived in the USA. Already with CIA six years.

U.S. CITIZEN 1959, SAME YEAR JFK TO RUN AGAINST RICHARD NIXON.
"Suddenly his career took a sudden upward turn."

"Developed close ties with ELMER BOBST, President of Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical. (Bobst, Warner-Lambert, the God Father to Nixon Presidency.")

Otto became DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING AT "WARNER LAMBERT".

Developed CLOSE TIES TO ALFRED DRISCOLL, HONORARY BOARD CHAIRMAN of Warner Lambert, former New Jersey Gov.

"Now his national, international contacts were WAY OUT OF PROPORTION WITH HIS JOB"

"BY MID-SIXTIES OTTO VON B. BECAME AN EXECUTIVE WITH CABOT MANUFACTURING"

Missing here the JFK, MLK, RFK assassinations. More to fill in. If he is in charge of Gehlen-Permindex Operation, 1960-1969 were busy years.

BY MID-SIXTIES OTTO BECAME CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER FOR CABOT MANUFACTURING

German Subsidiary Advisor for $50,000,000. "Carbon factory."

Thomas Franzioli, Senior Vice-President of FIRST NATIONAL BANK , BOSTON financed deal, worked with Albrecht Alfred Otto Von B.

"STARTED A BUSINESS IMPORTING WINE FROM ARGENTINA"

MARCH, 1969, JUMPS TO CALIFORNIA, SACRAMENTO, SILICON VALLEY, TCE. DEFENSE DEPT.

TCI, TRANS INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER INVESTMENT CORPORATION.
AIS, Advanced Information Systems, subsidiary of TCI.
IIS, International Imaging Systems, subsidiary of TCI.
TCI used to monitor 1967 Arab-Israeli War, now hired Von B., 1969.
Planned to "commercialize technology" sent him abroad, most impt. contacts.

Became part of Defense Dept., needed security clearances.

1969, Otto's contacts of value in "Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Antilles, South America." (They lump all S. America together)

BOARD OF TCI [not the cell phone company], OTTO VON BECOMES PRESIDENT IN 1970

J. Paul Getty Jr., Emanuel Fthnenakis...Greek with direct contacts to Aristotle Onassis, heads of Europe Walter F. Leverton, Judge William A. Newsom. Fthenakis also associated with Ford Aerospace, Philco, past Vice-President of ITT, and former Vice-President of Fairchild.

HELEN VON DAMM, CURRENT SECRETARY OF RONALD REAGAN, FORMERLY FROM TCI, VON BOLSCHWING.

NewsMakingNews moves Mae Brussell's links all forward....

HOW TCI BECAME STANFORD TECHNOLOGY TRADING GROUP AND WORKED WITH OLLIE NORTH AND HAKIM TO FUND IRAN-CONTRA.

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/mbtape11,22,81,520.htm
•••••••
http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_index.asp?id=22014

Gavin Newsom, 42nd Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco

Brief Profile

Gavin Newsom was elected the 42nd Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco on December 9, 2003. He was sworn into office on January 8, 2004 by his father, the Honorable William Newsom.

http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_index.asp?id=22014

Yet Another Response to Benyamin Solomon at "Conservative Voice"- I am Drug-Free and Quite Sane, Thank You

Benyamin: Anyone who seeks to discredit my research on fascism quotes the decade-old bunk you are citing.

You latched ahold of "information" about me posted by a demonstrably psychotic (see hammer episode below) shill named Martin Cannon. I exposed him over ten years ago, and he hasn't been back. But his defamatory posts are still on the Net.

Cannon's own source regarding myself, Sandy Munro, posted a statement at the KPFK message board five years ago stating that Mr. Cannon grossly misrepresented statements Munro had made. What else do you want? Does a public denial from Cannon's source satisfy you that the statements you have repeated are defamatory and false?

Your trusted "source" also claims that all MKULTRA victims are "liars."

But you wrote about me. First, I am a near vegan (I do wear leather sometimes, but my diet is completely vegetarian). I am very careful about everything I eat. No aspirins, no antibiotics, and certainly not drugs.

"According to a former associate of Alex Constantine," you write, "[Constantine] is a kook who took a lot of drugs." False. I do not touch drugs. You are the kook here, as well as Cannon, and you are in his league (wrong-headed, pathological).

A kook is as a kook does: I have a tape of Cannon beating up a woman. Would you like to hear it? I have a deposition from someone your valued source attacked with a hammer. I have a photo of a door he smashed in with that hammer in an attempt to beat up his roommate. Police reports, too.

Explanation: Some reasearchers are aware of Martin Cannon, and you will find old posts on him at NewsMakingNews - he is dismissed as a "psychopath" for harassing victims of mind control experimentation and trying to discredit them. Cannon tried to discredit me by posting a lot of BS about me on the Net. It backlashed on him - when you were ten years old - and he's discredited.

All this began after he was accused by victims of trying to discredit them, and I came to their defense. This riled him, so he posted a few stupid smears on the Net as payback. But you don't know that because you never sought the truth - you want to smear me for correcting your fascist commentaries.

Now, by citing Cannon, you have discredited yourself, too - as if your love letters to GW Bush haven't already accomplished that.

I am drug-free, healthy and very sane, thanks. My work speaks for itself. So does yours. You are a Bush-loving, libelous crackpot who is incapable of checking facts - not that a fulminating, right-wing wanker like you cares about that.

- Alex Constantine

PS: My name is Alex. You've been deceived, but accuracy isn't your forté. Your name isn't "Benyamin," is it?

Al Franken's vote-tally appeal blunted

Al Franken wants erroneously rejected absentee ballots to be counted in the state's official tally. The recount is scheduled to begin Wednesday

The eleventh-hour maneuvering occurred as the five-member state Canvassing Board prepared to meet at 1 p.m. today in St. Paul to review results showing Republican Sen. Norm Coleman with a lead of 215 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast. ...

Story at http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/34607244.html

CALIFORNIA ARSON UPDATE: Suspected Arsonist Arrested in Malibu

AP - 11/16/2008

MALIBU, Calif.—Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies have arrested a 39-year-old man suspected of starting a fire near Malibu Creek State Park. Sheriff's deputy Byron Ward said Suren Sahakyan was taken into custody around 5 p.m. Saturday by deputies responding to a call that someone had started a fire on the shoulder of a road. A witness who reported seeing the incident quickly put out the fire. Ward said Sahakyan was arrested not far from where the fire was ignited. He was booked for investigation of arson and held on $75,000 bail.

ALSO SEE: "DOCUMENTED: SIEGE OF ARSON FIRES IN CALIFORNIA"

PROPOSITION 8: Time Magazine and Alison Stateman Pour Gasoline on a Fire

" ... Fortunately, the response of outraged citizens to such journalistic malpractice is also exempt from government intervention, thus we are free to excoriate this meretricious writing for the shame it brings to Time Magazine and its author. ... "

STORY

Jim Jones, the Guyana "Suicides" & Harvey Milk's Premonitions of Death

By Alex Constantine

"After Milk's body was cremated, the ashes were enshrined at his prior direction with bubble bath...and several packets of Kool-Aid, a clue that Milk left behind, per the will he'd revised a week before the shootings, to signify Jim Jones of the People's Temple..." - Michael Meiers

The murders of Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk had all the earmarks of mind control. Dan White, their assassin, had been a paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne Division, in which capacity he served in Vietnam. He was discharged from Fort Bragg in 1967, returned to San Francisco and joined the police department. He lived in Sausolito, drove a Porsche and generally lived far beyond his means. In 1972 he gave it all up and took a vacation since known as White's "missing year."

Back in San Francisco, he joined the fire department. His temper tantrums were an embarrassment to co-workers, though his work record was without blemish. In his run for the Board of Supervisors, White spoke as if he was "programmed," according to Stan Smith, a local labor leader. During Board sessions, White was known to slip into lapses of silence punctuated by goose-stepping walks around the chambers.

White used illegal hollow-point bullets. After Milk's body was cremated, the ashes were enshrined at his prior direction with bubble bath, signifying his homosexuality, and several packets of Kool-Aid, a clue that Milk left behind, per the will he'd revised a week before the shootings, to signify Jim Jones of the People's Temple, a CIA mind control experiment that ended with the destruction of 1200 subjects.

"I can be killed with ease," Milk noted in a poem written the month he died, "I can be cut right down." In his new will, he wrote: "Let the bullets that rip through my brain smash every closet door in the country."

Also see - Death of dreams: in November 1978, Harvey Milk''s murder and the mass suicides at Jonestown nearly broke San Francisco''s spirit. Eerily, Milk knew and worked with Jonestown founder Jim Jones.(Harvey Milk & Jonestown: 25 years later)

Publication Date: 25-NOV-03
Publication Title: The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)
Format: Online - approximately 1942 words
Author: VanDecarr, Paul

Click to enlarge.

CITY HALL SLAYINGS: 25 Years Later
Revisiting the horror of that day of death
For those who are old enough, the memory is searing
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer
November 26, 2003

When University of San Francisco Professor Peter Novak proposed to his students that they produce a series of events commemorating the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, he got a shock -- most of his students had not heard of Moscone or Milk.

They are 18, 19 and 20, young people from a newer time. To them, Moscone is the Moscone Center, Harvey Milk is the name of a plaza in the Castro. "They didn't know the story at all,'' Novak said.

Those who have no memory of that day -- Nov. 27, 1978 -- are the lucky ones. Many of those who were at San Francisco City Hall when Dan White killed the two men can never forget it. The slayings happened 25 years ago Thursday, and the memory is searing.

Rudy Nothenberg was a deputy mayor. He can still see Moscone's body lying on the floor of his private office, can still see the smoke from the mayor's cigarette curling up. "It was awful,'' he said. "It was shock and panic. You don't know what you can do for him. You scream for the cops, which is what I did.''

Dianne Feinstein was president of the Board of Supervisors. Her office was on the other side of City Hall. She heard a door slam in Milk's office, heard shots, saw the killer run out, went in herself and found Harvey Milk's body. "I put my finger to see if there was any pulse, and it went in a bullet hole in his chest,'' she said the other day. "I think of it as if it were yesterday. I remember Harvey's body, his blood on me. I see it all.''

Christopher Moscone was then a high school student. Even now, a quarter of a century later, the son can see his father as he was, his sleeves rolled up, working. "The family remembers him -- good memories, good stories, at Christmas, holidays, birthdays,'' the younger Moscone said. "Sometimes I dream of him, and when I do, I can talk to him.

"I love the city,'' he said, "and I hate the city for that.''

That autumn was a terrible time anyway in San Francisco, the worst of times.

The years when people wore flowers in their hair were long gone.

There were serial slayings -- a killer named Zodiac who taunted the police, another named Zebra who shot down people on the street. Ten days before Moscone and Milk were killed, a mad San Francisco preacher named Jim Jones and 914 of his followers perished in a South American jungle. The city was rocked to its roots. "What a bizarre period,'' Feinstein said.

And then, out of the blue on a beautiful Monday morning, the mayor of San Francisco was killed in his own office, and the killer then walked through the classic City Hall and shot down the most important gay political figure in the country. The killer was not a stranger, either. He was San Francisco born and bred, a former cop, former fireman, former member of the Board of Supervisors.

And that wasn't all. White was tried a few months later and in May was found guilty, not of murder but only of voluntary manslaughter. A peaceful march to protest the verdict turned into a riot, and the mob attacked City Hall. "The hatred in the city was just enormous," Feinstein said. "It was a terrible, terrible time.''

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/11/26/MNGF33B0R31.DTL
--
"Research on Harvey Milk Renews Calls for Reappraisal of Peoples Temple"
by Michael Bellefountaine

Harvey Milk’s name appears throughout San Francisco. A municipal railway station and plaza, a park and recreation building and one of the city’s most influential political clubs are all named in his memory. A local elementary school is known as the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, and the Eureka Valley Library is now called the Harvey Milk Branch. The theme for this year’s gay pride parade was “give them hope,” Milk’s inspirational rallying cry from gays and lesbians in San Francisco to their brothers and sisters living in rural America. The International Gay and Lesbian Historical Society is producing an extensive exhibit of Milk memorabilia which includes the blood-stained suit he was wearing when he and Mayor George Moscone were gunned down in San Francisco City Hall on November 27, 1978. Twenty-five years after his murder, Harvey Milk has been catapulted to the level of gay martyr. Without question, he has left his mark on San Francisco.

Despite all the exhibits and memorials of Harvey Milk throughout San Francisco, though, none of them acknowledges Milk’s relationship with Jim Jones and Peoples Temple.

Harvey Milk was able to draw large, diverse crowds during his campaigns, which evolved over time from focusing on the needs of small business owners to championing the politics of senior, poor and other disenfranchised people. As the first openly gay man elected in California, and one of the most prominent gay men in America, Milk’s murder galvanized a politically fractured and fledgling queer community. Longtime political opponents of Milk – and there were many – suppressed their deep-seated negativity, joined with Milk supporters and, over time, fashioned a deified image of him, as is evidenced by the Gay Historical Society’s exhibit which is titled “Saint Harvey.”

When Milk and Moscone were killed, San Franciscans were still reeling from the murder of Representative Leo Ryan and the news that hundreds of Jonestown residents, previously thought to have saved themselves by running into the jungle, were apparently willing participants in a suicide ritual. In the aftermath of their murders all mention of connections between Milk, Moscone and Jones were intentionally obscured. Out of respect for the politicians, their followers took all necessary steps to sever Milk and Moscone from the pariah Jones. It was not the only mass exodus of political support in the wake of the Jonestown tragedy. Politicians who once enjoyed volunteers, donations and votes from Peoples Temple, could not distance themselves from Jim Jones fast enough. Many of these people are still in politics today.

Because Milk and Moscone were murdered so soon after the Jonestown tragedy, there was immediate speculation that Peoples Temple was somehow involved. Ann Kronenberg, Milk’s hand- picked successor, told Milk biographer Randy Shilts, that when she first heard Milk was murdered, she thought Jim Jones was responsible. Rumors began to circulate (and some persist today) of obscure connections between Jim Jones and Milk’s murderer, Dan White. Vague rumors of a falling out between Milk and Jones also surfaced. One story has it that Milk asked Peoples Temple to remove his name from the church’s list of supporters when reports of violence and theft first came to light, and that he was outraged when the Temple failed to comply with his demand. Eventually, history settled on an official story: Jim Jones was a master manipulator who used unwitting local politicians to gain power for himself. The politicians, including Milk and Moscone, used Jones for volunteers and votes, while remaining personally distant and blissfully unaware of rumors of Temple violence, abuse, theft and even murder. The timing of Dan White’s murderous rampage was deemed coincidental.

However, upon closer inspection, it is clear that Harvey Milk was a strong advocate for Peoples Temple and Jim Jones during his political career, including the tumultuous year leading up to the Jonestown tragedy. Milk spoke at the Temple often, wrote personal letters to Jim Jones, contacted other elected officials on the Temple’s behalf, and used space in his weekly column to support the works of the Temple, even after the negative New West article went to press. Milk appeared in the pages of the Peoples Forum, the Temple newspaper, and received over fifty letters of sympathy from the residents of Jonestown when his lover, Jack Lira, killed himself in September 1978.

It is readily apparent from the letters and historical memorabilia that Milk and the Temple enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship until their concurrent deaths. Why then is the relationship such a secret, even taboo to discuss? The only biography of Milk to date, The Mayor of Castro Street, by Randy Shilts, downplays the Milk/Temple relationship, even going so far as to paint Milk as one of the countless people who cruelly ridiculed and ostracized the surviving Temple members and their supporters. Like most historians, Shilts opted for an image of an expedient politician, instead of truthfully portraying how Milk worked with Peoples Temple until the end of his life.

Enough time has passed since Milk’s brutal murder to reanalyze this relationship, to explore how and why Harvey Milk supported Peoples Temple. As people who hold Milk in high esteem, we should honestly and openly explore and reevaluate what we know about Peoples Temple, to see what it was about the church that appealed to Milk. Whether it was its pro-gay public persona, its support for embattled gay teachers, its opposition to anti-gay ballot measures, its active opposition to racism and sexism, the multiple stories throughout the pages of the Peoples Forum denouncing violence against gays and lesbians, or simply its acceptance of him and its continued support for his political campaigns – whatever the reason – Harvey Milk irrefutably supported Peoples Temple.

It may be understandable why in November 1978 the supporters of Milk would attempt to distance the newly martyred supervisor from the still-unfolding horrors of Jonestown. However, we as witnesses, historians, researchers and writers have an obligation to tell future generations the whole truth, as we understand it, to record as much documentation as possible and let the biases and subsequent interpretations transform over time. As Dr. Susan Stryker states in the curator’s statement of the Milk exhibit, “While I wanted to respect Harvey Milk’s legacy, I also wanted to suggest that in venerating him, we risk obscuring a great deal of other equally compelling gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender history.”

If Milk supported Peoples Temple, now is the pivotal time for us to unveil the truth. What we cannot do is let our animosity toward Jim Jones and our horror of Jonestown taint our understanding of the individuals who made up Peoples Temple, including their incredible community based work as well as their relationships with prominent people like Harvey Milk. We should challenge the image of Temple members as mindless, uneducated zombies, and instead, portray them as the passionate, loyal and committed people who inspired Harvey Milk. It is most important that we not participate in or settle for the revisionism and obfuscation that has passed for the historical account of this relationship to date.

The extent of Milk’s relationship with Peoples Temple may never be fully known. Certainly his murder, along with that of Mayor Moscone, was yet another blow to Temple survivors. Milk and Moscone were the two most powerful San Francisco politicians who maintained close ties to Jim Jones and Peoples Temple; they could have demanded an investigation into the murder of Leo Ryan and the Jonestown tragedy. When Jones tells the residents of Jonestown in the community’s last hours that the “folks in San Francisco won’t be idle over this,” he could have been referring, in part, to Milk and Moscone. Indeed, recently-uncovered research refutes the supposition that Jones ordered Dan White to execute Milk and Moscone; to the contrary, if there were any connection between the City Hall murders and Peoples Temple, it would clearly have been because Milk and Moscone were too closely tied to Jones and the Temple.

A Lavender Look at the Temple, scheduled to be published in early 2004, examines the connections between Harvey Milk and Peoples Temple as part of its consideration of the church’s internal and external relationship with gay men and lesbians. Reviewing letters from Milk, news clippings and first hand accounts, A Lavender Look not only pieces together this complex and obscured relationship, it also includes accounts from gay and lesbian Temple members and Jonestown survivors.

We are still conducting research for this project, and are still seeking gay or lesbian members of the church who are willing to be interviewed for their perspective. As gay men and lesbians ourselves, we understand and appreciate the difficulty of coming forward with information, and will abide by whatever conditions you stipulate before such an interview takes place. We ask you to contact Michael Bellefountaine at 415-864-6686 or ACTUPSF@hotmail.com.

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Articles/bellefountaine.htm

Government Says No to Banks Wanting to Forgive Credit Card Debt

www.shortnews.com

Financial Services Roundtable and the Consumer Federation of America had their request of a special program forgiving the credit card debt of those failing to qualify for repayment plans rejected by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The program would’ve involved some 50,000 people struggling with credit card debt and allowed up to of 40% of debt to be forgiven on an individual basis based on their financial situation with the remainder of debt being paid back over several years.

The government objected to the plan which would've allowed banks to defer losses for years on the forgiven debt. Timothy Long, senior deputy comptroller for bank supervision policy, said that "any such proposal cannot be viewed favorably by us."

news.yahoo.com via http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=74827

Kentucky: Millions Awarded to Teen Beaten by KKK

www.shortnews.com
11/16/2008

In a case that drew large media attention Friday, the jury has awarded $2.5 million to a teen who was severely beat by the Klan after they incorrectly identified him as an illegal immigrant.

In a serious blow to the terrorist organization, the law center responsible for the lawsuit could seize the Klan's assets, including the headquarters, a 15-acre compound in Dawson Springs, Kentucky.

"All I could see was a bunch of feet," Gruver, now 19, testified. "As they were kicking me, I prayed to myself."

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=74872
The incident left Gruver with several broken bones, cuts and bruises.

Election Spurs 'Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes

North Carolina college students express "conservative" principles on the wall of a "free speech" tunnel: 'Let's shoot that nigger in the head.' ... Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted 'assassinate Obama' ... At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: 'Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.' ... " God-fearin', freedom-lovin', flag-wavin' patriots all. - AC

By JESSE WASHINGTON/AP

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.

She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear. ...

Incidents:

• At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."

• Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

• Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

• University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.

• Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

MORE

The Return of U. S. Death Squads

From Afghanistan to Africa
September 10, 2008

By CONN HALLINAN

United Nations officials charge that secret “international intelligence services” are conducting raids to kill Afghan civilians, then hiding the perpetuators behind an “impenetrable” wall of bureaucracy.

Philip Alston of the UN Human Rights Council said that “heavily armed internationals” leading local militias have killed scores of Afghan civilians. Coalition forces have killed more than 200 Afghan civilians since January.

He called the raids, which operate independent of the US and NATO military commands, “unacceptable.” Alston pointed to a specific incident last January in which two brothers were killed during a raid in the southern city of Kandahar, an area where the Taliban have a strong presence.

“The [two] victims are widely acknowledged, even by well informed government officials, to have no connection to the Taliban, and the circumstance of their deaths is suspicious,” he said.

When Alston tried to investigate the murders, however, he hit a stonewall. “Not only was I unable to get any international military commander to provide their version of what took place, but I was unable to get any military commander to even admit that their soldiers were involved,” the UN official told the Financial Times.

Suspicion has fallen on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which led such teams into Afghanistan during the 1990s in an attempt to capture or kill Osama bin Ladin, and again during the 2001 invasion.

According to Alston, the shadow units work out of two bases: U.S. Camp Ghecko near Kandahar, and a base in the province of Nangarhar. “It is absolutely unacceptable for heavily armed internationals, accompanied by heavily armed Afghan forces, to be wondering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them,” he wrote in a recent UN report.

Something very similar may be going on in Iraq. In his latest book, “The War Within,” Bob Woodward writes that the U.S. military has a program to “locate, target and kill key individuals in extremist groups.” Last month U.S. Special Forces killed the son and nephew of the governor of Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad. Unlike the shootings at roadblocks by U.S. troops, a common occurrence, Iraqi investigators say the two men were essentially executed.

A U.S. spokesman said the raid was conducted to capture a “suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq operative,” and that the man was injured when he “charged” the American troops. The other “suspected terrorist” was wounded and arrested. “Both men were armed and presented hostile intent,” the spokesman said.

But according to a spokesman for Governor Hamed al-Qaisi, U.S. troops broke into the house at 3 AM and shot the governor’s 17-year old son to death while he slept. The nephew, hearing the commotion, tried to enter the room and was gunned down as well.

The killings are similar to one near Karbala in June, where a cousin of current Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was killed. In both cases, Iraqi authorities were kept in the dark about the impending raids.
The question is: are Special Forces in Iraq and CIA units in Afghanistan carrying out clandestine hits? In most places in the world, those groups are called “death squads.”
* * *
Mercenaries are on a roll. Last month’s Associated Press story that the infamous mercenary firm Blackwater Worldwide was getting out of the private army business was a mistake. A company spokesman said the reporter had misunderstood him. Indeed, as the Iraq war winds down, firms like Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp are finding new markets to exploit, many of them in Africa.

As conservative military analyst David Isenberg points out in his column, “Dogs of War,” mercenaries are, in a sense, returning to their modern roots. “The progenitor for many of today’s private security firms was the South-Africa-based Executive Outcomes, which fought in Angola and Sierra Leone,” says Isenberg.

Executive Outcomes and the South African Army were routed by Angolan and Cuban troops during Angola’s long and bloody civil war, a conflict that was fueled in large part by apartheid Pretoria and the US, along with help from Zaire and the People’s Republic of China.

But the defeat was hardly a major setback for the mercenary industry. It’s hard to keep jackals down.

Cold War conflicts created a growth market, and, coupled with the Reagan Administration’s passion for privatization, mercenary organizations like the U.S. Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) and DynCorp became players in Latin America and the Balkans conflict.

While Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s administrations generally get the credit for this privatization drive, as Tim Shorrock points out in his book, “Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing,” it was Bill Clinton who really brought private enterprise into the business of gathering intelligence and fighting wars.

According to Shorrock, Clinton “picked up the cudgel where the conservative Reagan left off,” and by the end of his last term, had cut 360,000 federal jobs, while spending on private contractors had jumped 44 percent over 1993.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation, a major force in the current Bush Administration, called Clinton’s 1996 budget the “boldest privatization agenda put forth by any president to date.”

One obvious advantage to hiring Blackwater, DynCorp, MPRI, and Triple Canopy was that it short circuits Congressional oversight, bypasses pesky obstacles like the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and hides the cost of the wars.

Now the mercenaries are returning to their old haunts in Africa to train “peacekeepers.” The problem is that today’s “peacekeeper” may become tomorrow’s thug. An examination of training programs by the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute found that “Every armed group that plundered Liberia over the past 25 years had at its core” U.S. trained soldiers.

Addressing the current training of Liberian soldiers by DynCorp, the study warns there is a definite downside “to creating an armed elite.” If the U.S. withdraws its training funds, “Liberia will be sitting on a time bomb; a well-trained and armed force of elite soldiers who are used to good pay and conditions of service, which may be impossible for the government of Liberia to sustain on its own.”

MPRI is training militaries in Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda and Senegal. DynCorp is doing the same in Darfur and Somalia. While the cover story is fighting terrorism and ensuring stability, U.S. military intervention—direct and through mercenaries and its client state, Ethiopia—has thoroughly destabilized Somalia, creating a crisis that rivals Darfur.

While the malnutrition rate in Darfur is 13 percent, in some areas of Somalia it is 19 percent. The UN considers 15 percent to be the “emergency threshold.

“The situation in Somalia is the worst on the continent,” says the UN’s top official in Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah.

According to Eric Laroche, the head of the UN’s humanitarian services in Somalia, conditions were much better under the Islamic Courts Union that the U.S-sponsored invasion overthrew. “It was much more peaceful and much easier for us to work. The Islamist s didn’t cause us any problems,” he said.

In spite of Blackwater’s reputation as trigger-happy cowboys who gunned down 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians last year, the company may soon see action in the Sudan. Actress and Darfur activist Mia Farrow recently met with the corporation’s owner, Erik Prince, to discuss using the company in a military role in the western Sudan.

According to a 2007 study by the industrial College of the Armed Forces, “Africa may do for the [mercenary] industry in the next 20 years what Iraq has done in the past four years, provide a significant growth engine.”

Behind that growth, says Nicole Lee of TransAfrica, “is nothing short of a sovereignty and resource grab.” The National Energy Policy Development Group estimates that by 2015, a quarter of U.S. oil imports will come from Africa. Most of these will come from the Gulf of Guinea and the western regions of North Africa, but Sudan has the second largest reserves on the continent.

The U.S. has established a military command for the region—Africom—but no nation has agreed to host it yet. While suspicions about U.S. goals in Africa run high, those doubts apparently don’t extend to U.S.-based mercenary organizations. While countries are holding Africom at arm’s length, those same countries are embracing Blackwater, DynCorp. Triple Canopy, and MPRI.

Mercenaries are not just an American phenomena. Israel has begun privatizing its security checkpoints using the Israeli mercenary company Modiin Ezrahi According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, “By the end of the year all the people [guards] at the checkpoints will be civilians.”

Israel claims it is replacing the army with mercenaries because it wants to demilitarize the checkpoints, but peace activists say that argument is nonsense. Hanna Barag of the human rights organization Machsom Watch says the civilian security guards are “Rambos” who behave no differently than Israeli soldiers.

The UN reports an increase in “significant difficulties” since the mercenaries took over.

Daniel Levy, a former advisor to current Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, says the real reason is that it walls off the Israeli population from the burdens of trying to control 2.5 million Palestinians. “It separates [the occupation] from Israeli society,” he told the Financial Times, “these guys [mercenaries] don’t go home and tell their mothers what they are doing.”
In the end, the bottom line is the bottom line. Private contractors in Iraq—190,000 strong—will cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $100 billion by the end of 2008.

Hitler & the Mormon Church

Note to Gays: Please support my cause as I've supported yours - because we have mutual interests and a mad mad mad mad nation that requires more than religious straightjackets and media meds to make well. - AC

http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/hitlertemplework.htm

The Mormon Church Attempts to Conceal Temple Records for Adolf Hitler
By Helen Radkey

On August 30, 1998, Don McAreavy, of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, wrote to the LDS Family History Library asking if LDS proxy temple work had been performed for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. McAreavy specifically wanted to know if temple ordinances had been performed for Hitler and Braun on September 28, 1993, in the Jordan River Temple, Utah.

A response to this inquiry was sent to McAreavy on September 8, 1998. Typed on an official letterhead of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the letter was signed by Mae Dean Ashton. The address of the sender was shown as: Family History Library, 35 North West Temple Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84150-3400.

Ashton's reply reads as follows:

DON McAREAVY

Dear Mr. McAreavy:

Thank you for your letter of Au gust 30th regarding temple ordinances for Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun.

We searched the International Genealogical Index TM Addendum and found no information listed for either. The enclosed printout is the closest we could find and you will note that birth dates are 1836 and 1838.

No additional information is available.

Sincerely,

Mae Dean Ashton
Team Leader
Photoduplication Unit

The printout Ashton sent McAreavy shows LDS proxy ordinances that have been performed for Alois Hiedler or Heidler (Hitler), the father of Adolf Hitler.

In October 1998, McAreavy was able to obtain copies of LDS temple ordinance records for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun from Philip Roberts of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. These IGI (International Genealogical Index) copies reveal that Adolf Hitler was "baptized" and "endowed" on December 10, 1993, and "sealed" to his parents on March 12, 1994. These events took place in the London Temple, England.

Roberts' copies also show that Hitler was "sealed" to Braun on September 28, 1993, in the Jordan River Temple, Utah and on June 14, 1994, in the Los Angeles Temple. Roberts sent copies of these records to Ashton.

McAreavy sent another mailing to Ashton on October 17, 1998, again asking her if she could locate information for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in LDS files. On November 17, 1998, McAreavy mailed a double registered letter to Ashton. He reminded her that Roberts had sent documentation to her that seemed to indicate that the Mormon Church had done temple ordinances for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

"Would you please be kind enough to verify if the information that Philip Roberts provided is both accurate and proof that temple ordinances were performed for Adolf Hitler," McAreavy wrote.

Ashton replied to McAreavy's November 17 letter on December 2, 1998. She again insisted that the (Alois Hitler) copies she had sent McAreavy with her September 8 letter were all that could be located in the IGI TM (Addendum). McAreavy was informed that he could soon expect to receive a reply from the (Family History) Department Director.

On December 29, 1998, McAreavy again wrote to Ashton. He requested the name and mailing address of the Department Director because he had received no communication from that person as promised by Ashton. When there was no response to this request, McAreavy wrote directly to the Department Director of the Photoduplication Department of the Family History Library on January 25, 1999. McAreavy again asked if the Mormon Church had done temple ordinances for Hitler and Braun.

The following reply, again typed on an official letterhead of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dated March 16, 1999, was sent to McAreavy from the Family History Library:

To Whom It May Concern:
Subject: Famous or Historical Figures

You recently wrote to inquire if temple ordinances have been performed for a famous or historical figure. As a matter of policy, we respond to such requests only when those making the request are directly related to the person about whom they seek information.

It might be helpful to know that, as an institution, we have no control over the names individuals submit to receive temple ordinances. However, we strongly counsel Church members to submit only the names of those persons to whom they are related. Furthermore, we believe that ordinances performed in behalf of any deceased individual are valid only if that person is worthy of and chooses to accept what has been done in his or her behalf.

The Church spends a great deal of time, effort, and money to make information available that helps not only its members, but all who are interested in family history pursuits. You are welcome to use the resources we provide. We hope you find satisfaction in doing so.

Sincerely,

Family History Department

In this impersonal communication to McAreavy, the LDS Family History Department clearly avoided taking responsibility for the discrepancy between Ashton's September 8 denial of LDS temple work for Hitler and Braun—and the IGI copies, supplied by Roberts, which seem to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt—that this notoriously well-known pair have, indeed, had proxy LDS ordinances performed on their behalf.

At the time McAreavy made his initial inquiry to the Family History Library on August 30, there were multiple entries in LDS temple ordinance files that showed that Mormons have performed various rituals on behalf of Hitler and Braun. These records can still be accessed. Ashton gave McAreavy incorrect information. Was this a deliberate evasion of truth? What are the facts?

Current IGI TM addendum temple ordinance entries for Mr. (Adolf) Hiedler (Hitler) show that Hitler was "baptized" by Mormons on September 30, 1993, and "endowed" on April 27, 1994, in the Jordan River Temple, Utah. This record was in the IGI TM Addendum at the time of Ashton's denial to McAreavy (of temple ordinance information for Adolf Hitler) on September 8. 1 obtained a copy of this particular record for Hitler from the LDS Family Search Center in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in downtown Salt Lake City on July 13, 1998—less than two months before Ashton stated that no such IGI record existed for Hitler!

If Ashton and her co-workers were not very efficient in their search for Adolf Hitler temple ordinance entries in the LDS genealogical computer system, the same could be said for their lack of thoroughness in locating the same type of records for Eva Braun.

Eva Anna Paula Braun, born in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, on February 7, 1912, was "baptized" by Mormons on October 16, 1964, and "endowed" on February 5, 1965, in the Los Angeles Temple. She had been "sealed" to her parents some time prior to 1970. This information is current and is easily accessible in the IGI TM Addendum, in which file Ashton stated that no information was available for either Hitler or Braun. Genuine seekers should have found these entries for Braun.

In this case, it seems these records may have been intentionally overlooked. Was it easier for McAreavy to be given inaccurate information rather than present him with any copies that he could possibly have used against the Mormon Church? Or, are the staff of the Family History Library so poorly skilled at accessing their own computer files that they missed the entries in question?

In addition to the IGI, which is a huge database of names and vital information for multi-millions of people, with an Ordinance Index attached, the other significant LDS genealogical file is the Ancestral File. In this family history archive, LDS ordinance records may be found attached to pedigree charts.

There are currently Ancestral File ordinance records that show that Adolf Hitler was "baptized" on September 4, 1993, "endowed" on October 12, 1993, and "sealed" to his parents and also Eva Braun on June 14, 1994 in the Los Angeles Temple. The June 14 sealing of Hitler and Braun is the same sealing of which Roberts sent copies to McAreavy and Ashton. These entries could once be found in the IGI. They have since been deleted, along with other entries for prominent Nazis. What is going on here? Prior to adding the 1997 edition to the IGI, it seems that the Mormon Church, intent on preserving its public image, attempted to remove the names of well-known Nazis from the IGI files. Most of the IGI entries for Adolf Hitler, Mrs. (Adolf Hitler), Adolf Eichmann, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, and Heinrich Himmler were quietly removed. Also erased were the records for Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Fascist Italy from 1922 to 1943 and an ally of Hitler and the Third Reich.

But the deletion effort was botched. Some entries were missed, such as the ones still current for Hitler and Braun in the IGI and Ancestral File. The IGI ordinance records for Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, which correctly showed his place of birth as Alexandria, Egypt, were deleted—yet other IGI ordinance entries still exist for Hess, wrongly listing his place of birth as Germany.

Also missed were LDS ordinance records, which still exist in the Ancestral File, for Paul Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering. These entries, which include baptisms for each of them, may have been intentionally removed from the IGI files.

Mormons apparently overlooked the LDS ordinance records of other well-known Nazis during their IGI purge. These records are currently accessible. Included in this liberal list are: Reinhard Heydrich, "The Father of The Final Solution"—Hitler's plan to exterminate all Jews in Europe; Alfred Rosenberg, hanged at Nuremberg for war crimes; Ernst Roehm, once the thuggish leader of Hitler's Storm Troopers; and Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, the Famous Desert Fox of World War II.

In May 1994 and March 1996, from LDS genealogical centers I obtained numerous Nazi IGI entries that have since been deleted. In this collection are copies of the LDS records for Hitler and Braun that Roberts sent to McAreavy and Ashton, with the additional sealing of Adolf Hitler to his parents on June 14, 1994.

I have IGI copies of all the LDS ordinance records for Hitler, which are currently in the Ancestral File—but no longer in the IGI. As well, my copies show another baptism for Hitler, almost identical to the one still in the IGI files under Heidler (Hitler) with the same ordinance dates. But the deleted entry is listed as Hitler (Hiedler) Adolf, showing a birth date of 1889. The Hiedler (Hitler) entry shows a birth date of 1891—so they are different records.

A mysterious record for a Mr. Hitler, of Vienna, Austria, with date of death 1900, and showing a proxy baptism date of April 15, 1924, in the Logan Temple, Utah, is also no longer in the IGI files. Other vanished IGI entries are a sealing of Adolf Hitler to Eva Braun on October 19, 1993, at the Jordan River Temple, and a baptism for Mrs. Hitler (Hiedler) on September 10, 1993, and an endowment for her on March 17, 1994, also in the Jordan River Temple.

The Mormon Church has attempted to deliberately conceal LDS temple ordinances for Adolf Hitler. This first occurred with the disappearance of many of the IGI records for Hitler and other publicly known evildoers of the Third Reich. Then—there was a second attempt to cover-up Nazi records when Ashton told McAreavy that no LDS temple ordinances had been performed for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

Even when confronted by Roberts with IGI temple records for Hitler and Braun, those in charge of the Family History Department at the Family History Library, representing the genealogical arm of the Mormon Church, did not want to take responsibility for these records. Their implausible excuse was that they have no control over the names individuals submit to receive temple ordinances.

Like a slippery snake in the grass, the Mormon Church may have tried to dodge public criticism by denying its questionable proxy recognition of Adolf Hitler—the amoral and evil Nazi genius who was responsible for the terror and barbarism of the Third Reich and the loss of millions of innocent lives before and during World War II. But LDS ordinance records speak for themselves—Mormons have repeatedly claimed the unpopular Hitler. Anything stated to the contrary cannot alter this conclusion.

Deception is not the hallmark of a church with integrity. As the Mormon Church will eventually find out—even the most artful serpent can be choked by its own coils!

UPDATE

PROXY BAPTISM OF JEWS: THE SPLASH GOES ON
By Helen Radkey

Behind closed temple doors, and unquestionably in defiance of the May 1995 agreement between Mormons and Jews, in which the LDS Church promised to cease temple ordinances for deceased Jews who are not direct ancestors of living Mormons, the practice never stopped. Since 1995, Mormons have performed proxy ordinances for most Jewish notables, including prominent Israeli political figures: Yitzhak Rabin, Moshe Sharett, Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion and Theodor Herzl—along with hundreds of thousands of other Jews, including multitudes of Jews in the arts, the sciences and in the entertainment field—such as Gilda Radner, the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. Even Jews on the Titanic, who went into the icy waters of the North Atlantic with the Jewish Shema prayer on their lips, spoken with their last breath, have been proxy baptized and proclaimed as members of the LDS Church.

There is no way to accurately count the number of Jews who have been subjected to proxy ordinances since the agreement was signed. The figure is probably staggering and over a million. In seven years of intensive research, I have amassed a sizeable collection of copies of post-1995 proxy ordinance entries for obvious Jews from the LDS Church's database of posthumous ordinances, the International Genealogical Index (IGI). Sources are usually not cited in the IGI, but I have found many entries that were taken from identifiable Jewish sources, such as Holocaust lists and synagogue records.

According to LDS belief, the only way to enter the highest "heaven" is by being baptized through Mormon rite. Mormons advise those who protest that proxy baptism does not necessarily make dead Jews into Mormons; it gives their souls, which retain free will, the ability to choose "the true Gospel of Jesus Christ" and thus the opportunity to enter the highest kingdom in the hereafter. However, the baptismal and confirmation prayers used by Mormons in their temples are explicit in their content. Deceased parties are baptized by proxy without the option to decline. They are then confirmed as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by proxy and supposedly given the gift of the Holy Ghost, again without the option to decline. If Mormons, in general, are so adamant that the dead always have the opportunity to accept or reject these posthumous ordinances—then why is this choice not reflected in the wording of their baptismal and confirmation prayers?

If Jews live their lives in the earthly domain as devout Jews, why would they want to deny their religious existence here and adopt some other faith in the world to come? What are some of the deeper implications of proxy baptism?

LDS rites for the dead are unbridled attempts to deny the legitimacy of the religious beliefs of lives already lived and to manipulate deceased parties into Mormonism, under the pretext of supposedly offering these voiceless and defenseless souls the highest degree of spiritual glory in the hereafter. The practice of proxy baptism is the ultimate in religious intolerance. Who are Mormons to say they carry the only "keys" to open heaven's gates—and then offer these "keys" to Jewish deceased who must either accept this offer or miss out on "celestial glory"?

What Mormons perceive as a service to humanity and not an offense to others is nothing more than self-delusion. Proxy baptism is a form of religious libel. Heartfelt as it may seem to Mormons, it ultimately casts doubt on the Jewish heritage of all Jews, including Jewish religious, philosophical, political and cultural leaders. Centuries from now, when people look to historical documentation about Jewish figures, they'll find that the LDS Church's public lists may show these deceased Jews as Mormons. The private lists of the LDS Church will most certainly show them as such. Mormons may have removed many names of Jews from their IGI records, currently available for public viewing, but the LDS Church maintains private ordinance lists. And, once performed, no LDS ordinance is ever undone, nor is there any procedure by which an ordinance can be reversed, despite vehement protest.

LDS Church members cross the line by collecting the names of multi-thousands of Jews murdered in the Holocaust and inflicting yet another injustice upon them in the form of posthumous ordinances. These innocents died for no other reason than because they were Jews. For the sake of collective Jewish memory, their religious identities must remain intact. Proxy baptisms help to whitewash the Holocaust by attempting to remove the Jewish identities of those who were murdered. And for the sake of historical accuracy, the religious identity of these victims of the Holocaust must remain unquestioned.

Jewish Holocaust victims, described by the Church as having been removed from the IGI database, are reappearing in the lists of the posthumously baptized, name after name, family after family. Some of these Holocaust victims, murdered as young teenagers, have no direct descendants, yet the Mormon faithful submit their names anyway, falsely claiming descendancy. Zealous Mormons are still pouring names of Jewish Holocaust victims into the LDS temple system. Some of these names are showing up in the IGI showing death camps, such as Auschwitz or Sobibor, on the entries.

Mormons are attempting to revise history through proxy baptisms. LDS proxy temple ordinances for Jews demonstrate total disrespect for Jews and Jewish feelings and should not be tolerated by any self-respecting Jew on the face of this Earth.

Even as Jewish leaders hold private negotiations with LDS officials on this long unresolved issue, after almost eleven years of continuous agreement breaches by Mormons, where is the outrage? Are these Jewish leaders quietly capitulating to reassurances from LDS officials that there will be new methods to curb the enthusiasm of overzealous Mormons and prevent them from submitting names of Jews from whom they are not directly descended into the LDS Church's temple system?

Why do Jewish leaders continue to overlook the huge number of deceased Jews subjected to proxy ordinances in violation of the 1995 agreement? Shouldn't they emphatically seek redress from the LDS Church that repeatedly gives, and then breaks its word to Jews, all the while shamefully denying wrongdoing? Don't the Jewish leaders who were involved in the signing of this legal agreement have a responsibility to the worldwide Jewish community to take decisive action against this group of religious revisionists who think they are the exclusive caretakers of salvation?

Representing the memory of every single deceased Jew subjected to posthumous ordinances by Mormons in blatant violation of the 1995 agreement should be the primary task of the Jews who signed this document. Why have these Jewish leaders collectively abdicated their moral and ethical responsibility to ensure that the provisions of the agreement are finally and firmly enforced?

Also see: Salt Lake Tribune Articles -

May 2, 2001: LDS Try to End Unauthorized Work for Jews
October 9, 1999: LDS Struggle to Keep Proxy Baptisms Appropriate

Salt Lake City Weekly Articles:

August 19, 1999: Amazing Grace: Anne Frank and Hitler Share LDS Baptisms
August 26, 1999: Frank Family Removed From LDS Records
August 3, 2000: Baptismal Blunders

Sacrificing the Jews for Christianity

" ... At the onset of the present discussion, the Vatican claimed that Pius XII did not know about the Nazis' mass murder of the Jews. When this was proved false, and it was shown that the Pope was well aware of the Jews' sufferings, the Vatican then claimed that the thousands of Jews who had been saved after being hidden in monasteries in Rome in 1943-44 could only have survived as a result of a direct order from Pius XII. But with the exception of a bishop in Assisi, no priest has ever claimed to have acted upon instructions from Pius XII. ... "

By Sergio I. Minerbi
www.haaretz.com/14/11/2008

The Catholic Church's decisions regarding the beatification of its saints should not concern the Jews. One exception to this rule is the case of Pope Pius XII, who headed the Church while the Holocaust was ravaging World War II Europe.

What is at stake here is the Catholic perception of the Shoah - the worst nightmare in Jewish history, during which six million of our people were murdered. For Catholics, according to Pius XII (who reigned 1939-1958), it was a period during which the Church was a victim of Nazism. In a blatant effort to Christianize the Holocaust, Pope John Paul II used the symbol of the "six million" to represent the number of Polish people allegedly killed during the war. Edith Stein, although killed in Auschwitz as a Jew, was canonized by the Church as one of its martyrs. Auschwitz was defined by the same pope as "the Golgotha of the modern world," yet another expression of the Church's appropriation of the Shoah.

Golgotha, of course, is the hill in Jerusalem where a Jew was crucified, giving birth to Christianity. Did Auschwitz, to the Pope's mind, represent the sacrifice of the Jews for a renewed strengthening of Christianity? The beatification of Pius XII follows such a line of thought, and may well be the last testament of John Paul II, who wanted to transform the Jewish Holocaust into a Polish Catholic event.

John Paul's successor, Pope Benedict XVI, repeated his predecessor's expression when he visited Auschwitz on May 28, 2006, although three days later, back at the Vatican, he corrected his own words, and said that it was six million Jews who were killed in Auschwitz.

At the onset of the present discussion, the Vatican claimed that Pius XII did not know about the Nazis' mass murder of the Jews. When this was proved false, and it was shown that the Pope was well aware of the Jews' sufferings, the Vatican then claimed that the thousands of Jews who had been saved after being hidden in monasteries in Rome in 1943-44 could only have survived as a result of a direct order from Pius XII. But with the exception of a bishop in Assisi, no priest has ever claimed to have acted upon instructions from Pius XII. We must therefore conclude that these churchmen sheltered the Jews mainly for religious or humanitarian reasons, which were dictated by their own consciences.

Pius XII was mainly a diplomat, and he had no pastoral experience. The professional approach of a diplomat is to believe that complicated issues can be solved by a "note verbale," a diplomatic letter. Hence, the Holy See sent a note to the Slovakian Legation deploring the regulations against people guilty only of belonging "to a particular race," but to no avail. No other action was taken, though, such as, for example, issuing a threat of excommunication against the Slovakian president, Monsignor Jozef Tiso. No public statement condemning the deportation of the Slovakian Jews was ever issued by the Vatican, and only such a statement could have impressed the leaders of some European countries.

We do not need to wait for the opening of Vatican archives to know that never, neither during World War II nor afterward, did Pius XII call the Jews by their name. They were generally described as those "poor people" who suffer because of their national origin or race.

A few years ago, in response to the initial announcement of the candidacy of Pius XII for sainthood, I published, in a professional journal in Italy, a historical essay on the Pope and the Jews of Rome. On October 16, 1943, the Nazis rounded up about 1,200 Jews from their apartments there, and sent 1,024 of them to Auschwitz. All but 15 of them were killed.

As I demonstrate in my study, an ongoing negotiation took place at the same time, between the Nazi government, through its ambassador to the Holy See, Ernst von Weizsacker, and the Pope. The German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, agreed to recognize "the neutrality of the Vatican," in exchange for a declaration from the Holy See regarding the "good behavior" of the German troops in Rome. On October 29-30, the Vatican's semi-official daily Osservatore Romano published a front page article stating that, "the German troops have respected the Roman Curia as well as the Vatican City." Was the deportation of the Jews the price for the liberty of the Vatican?

Three days after the deportation, on October 19, Pope Pius XII received the diplomatic representative of the United States, Harold H. Tittman, Jr. The only subject raised by the Pope was the defense of Rome against eventual communist attacks. Not only did the Vatican refrain from taking a public stand decrying the murder of the Jews during the war, but even after the end of hostilities, when the Nazi danger had disappeared, the Vatican saw fit to actively assist former war criminals, such as members of the Croatian units of Ustasha and their leader Ante Pavelic, in emigrating to safe haven in Argentina. After the war, the Jews asked Pius XII to return to their families Jewish children who had been hiding in Catholic institutions, even if their parents were dead. The Vatican's response to this demand was to send an order to Nuncio Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII), then in Paris, ordering him not to give back children who had been baptized during the war without their parents' knowledge or consent.

The Jesuit priest John F. Morley concluded his 1980 book, "Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust, 1939-1943," with the words: "It must be concluded that the Vatican diplomacy failed the Jews during the Holocaust by not doing all that was possible for it to do on their behalf. It also failed itself because in neglecting the needs of the Jews, and pursuing a goal of reserve rather than humanitarian concern, it betrayed the ideals that it had set for itself." I could not agree more.

Sergio I. Minerbi, a former Israeli ambassador, has been a visiting professor of political sciences at the University of Haifa.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037281.html

Obama to Fulfill Promise and Shut Guantanamo

" ...kangaroo courts ... " Mr Tribe said.

By Leonard Doyle in Washington
www.independent.co.uk
11 November 2008

As one of his first acts in the White House, Barack Obama is preparing to move hundreds of detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison to the US where they will be given legal hearings, trials or face yet-to-be-established special terrorist courts.

Mr Obama has a long-standing commitment to shut down Guantanamo, which has become a symbol of injustice for human rights campaigners, and a lightning rod for anti-US criticism since it opened eight years ago. Closing the prison, which is on a part of Cuba leased to the US, will bring to an end one of the most poisonous legacies of the Bush administration while sending a signal that the "war on terror" is under more enlightened management.

During his election campaign, Mr Obama described Guantanamo and the CIA's secret prisons around the world as a "sad chapter in American history". Other aspects of Mr Bush's "war on terror" will also demand Mr Obama's urgent attention such as yesterday's revelation by the New York Times that the US military has, during the past four years, conducted up to a dozen secret raids in Pakistan and other countries not at war with the US. Mr Obama has previously said he would approve such raids against enemies such as Osama bin Laden if there no other option was available.

Mr Obama's plans for Guantanamo inmates should see most detainees, against whom there is little or no evidence, being released to their home countries after years in legal limbo. Others will face prosecution in US criminal courts. One problem for those courts will face is deciding whether evidence from anonymous intelligence sources or obtained without any legal process can be taken into account. Some Guantanamo inmates suffered torture or other abusive treatment at the hands of CIA interrogators either at the prison or after they were picked up in security sweeps in Afghanistan or Pakistan. A few have been through the controversial military commissions process, from which even prosecutors have resigned. The US Supreme Court has several times rebuked the Bush administration for its handling of the detainees.

Kept in isolation in harsh conditions, a number of inmates have become mentally and physically ill. At least four men are believed to have committed suicide inside Guantanamo and others have endured force-feeding after going on hunger strike.

Of the estimated 255 inmates still held at the prison, fewer than 49 are acknowledged to be hardcore suspects and fewer than a dozen are believed to have had a role in attacks or plots against the US.

Mr Obama's legal advisers say the worst cases may be sent before a new court, which will handle the most sensitive national security cases.

His outline plan has the backing of many legal scholars but Republicans will strongly oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the US. Many Democrats oppose the creation of a new court system on US soil that will have fewer rights for suspects than at present.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who is acting as a legal adviser to the Obama team, said at the weekend that "theoretical" plans for Guantanamo would now become more focused because closing the prison is a top priority. But he also predicted that transferring suspected terrorists to US soil will be a cause of controversy.

"I think the answer is going to be, they can be as securely guarded on US soil as anywhere else," Mr Tribe said. "We can't put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there."

Mr Obama has already indicated that existing civilian and military court-martial systems provide "a framework for dealing with the terrorists" and the incoming administration is expected to consider those before setting up a completely new legal system.

"It would have to be some sort of hybrid that involves military commissions that actually administer justice rather than just serve as kangaroo courts," Mr Tribe said.

Lawyers representing clients at Guantanamo Bay such as Marc Falkoff point out that only a dozen or so detainees are known to be avowed terrorists and say that it would be wrong to set up an entirely new legal system to deal with suspects. Mr Falkoff described the proposals from the Obama team as "a solution in search of a problem".

"Most of the detainees are goat herders, or Arabs who volunteered to help the Taliban, but they are not hardcore terrorists. The real problem is getting their home countries to accept them back."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-to-fulfil-promise-and-shut-guantanamo-1009585.html

Henry Paulson, the Fascist Conspirator American Idiots Trust to Spend $700 Billion

" ... In 1970 ... Paulson entered the Nixon administration, working first as staff assistant to the assistant secretary of defense. In 1972-73, Paulson worked as office assistant to John Erlichman, assistant to the president for domestic affairs. Erlichman was one of the key figures involved in organizing President Richard Nixon’s notorious “plumbers” unit that carried out illegal covert operations against the president’s political opponents, including espionage, blackmail, and revenge. ... "


By Tom Eley
www.wsws.org
23 September 2008

The plan to rescue the US financial industry arrogates virtually unlimited money and power over the financial affairs of the state to the office of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Paulson is a figure with a long history of intimate connections to the political and financial elite.

In 1970, fresh from the Masters program of the Harvard Business School, Paulson entered the Nixon administration, working first as staff assistant to the assistant secretary of defense. In 1972-73, Paulson worked as office assistant to John Erlichman, assistant to the president for domestic affairs. Erlichman was one of the key figures involved in organizing President Richard Nixon’s notorious “plumbers” unit that carried out illegal covert operations against the president’s political opponents, including espionage, blackmail, and revenge. Ehlichman resigned in 1973, and in 1975 he was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy, and was imprisoned for 18 months.

Utilizing his connections, Paulson went to work for Goldman Sachs in 1974. In a 2007 feature, the British newspaper the Guardian wrote, “Not only was he well connected enough to get the job [in the Nixon White House], but well connected enough to resign in the thick of the Watergate scandal without ever getting caught up in the fallout. He went straight to Goldman back home in Illinois.”

Paulson rose through the ranks of Goldman Sachs, becoming a partner in 1982, co-head of investment banking in 1990, chief operating officer in 1994. In 1998 he forced out his co-chairman Jon Corzine “in what amounted to a coup,” according to New York Times economics correspondent Floyd Norris, and took over the post of CEO.

Goldman Sachs is perhaps the single best-connected Wall Street firm. Its executives routinely go in and out of top government posts. Corzine went on to become US senator from New Jersey and is now the state’s governor. Corzine’s predecessor, Stephen Friedman, served in the Bush administration as assistant to the president for economic policy and as chairman of the National Economic Council (NEC). Friedman’s predecessor as Goldman Sachs CEO, Robert Rubin, served as chairman of the NEC and later treasury secretary under Bill Clinton.

Agence France Press, in a 2006 article on Paulson’s appointment, “Has Goldman Sachs Taken Over the Bush Administration?” noted that, in addition to Paulson, “[t]he president’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Jeffery Reuben, are Goldman alumni.”

“But the flow goes both ways,” the article continued, “Goldman recently hired Robert Zoellick, who stepped down as the US deputy secretary of state, and Faryar Shirzad, who worked as one of Bush’s national security advisors.”

Prior to being selected as treasury secretary, Paulson was a major individual campaign contributor to Republican candidates, giving over $336,000 of his own money between 1998 and 2006.

Since taking office, Paulson has overseen the destruction of three of Goldman Sachs’ rivals. In March, Paulson helped arrange the fire sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase. Then, a little more than a week ago, he allowed Lehman Brothers to collapse, while simultaneously organizing the absorption of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America. This left only Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as major investment banks, both of which were converted on Sunday into bank holding companies, a move that effectively ended the existence of the investment bank as a distinct economic form.

In the months leading up to his proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Paulson had already used his office to dole out hundreds of billions of dollars. After his July 2008 proposal for $70 billion to resolve the insolvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, Paulson organized the government takeover of the two mortgage-lending giants for an immediate $200 billion price tag, while making the government potentially liable for hundreds of billions more in bad debt. He then organized a federal purchase of an 80 percent stake in the giant insurer American International Group (AIG) at a cost of $85 billion.

These bailouts have been designed to prevent a chain reaction collapse of the world economy, but more importantly they aimed to insulate and even reward the wealthy shareholders, like Paulson, primarily responsible for the financial collapse.

Paulson bears a considerable amount of personal responsibility for the crisis.

Paulson, according to a celebratory 2006 BusinessWeek article entitled “Mr. Risk Goes to Washington,” was “one of the key architects of a more daring Wall Street, where securities firms are taking greater and greater chances in their pursuit of profits.” Under Paulson’s watch, that meant “taking on more debt: $100 billion in long-term debt in 2005, compared with about $20 billion in 1999. It means placing big bets on all sorts of exotic derivatives and other securities.”

According to the International Herald Tribune, Paulson “was one of the first Wall Street leaders to recognize how drastically investment banks could enhance their profitability by betting with their own capital instead of acting as mere intermediaries.” Paulson “stubbornly assert[ed] Goldman’s right to invest in, advise on and finance deals, regardless of potential conflicts.”

Paulson then handsomely benefited from the speculative boom. This wealth was based on financial manipulation and did nothing to create real value in the economy. On the contrary, the extraordinary enrichment of individuals like Paulson was the corollary to the dismantling of the real economy, the bankrupting of the government, and the impoverishment of masses the world over.

Paulson was compensated to the tune of $30 million in 2004 and took home $37 million in 2005. In his career at Goldman Sachs he built up a personal net worth of over $700 million, according to estimates.

After Paulson’s ascension to the treasury, his colleagues at Goldman Sachs carried on the bonanza. At the end of 2006, Paulson’s successor Lloyd Blankfein was handed over a $53.4 million year-end bonus, while 11 other Goldman Sachs executives raked in $150 million in year-end bonuses combined. That year, the top investment firms Goldman Sacks, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns handed out $36 billion in bonuses. At the end of 2007, the executives of the same firms, excepting Merrill, were handed another $30 billion.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/paul-s23.shtml

Video: Rupert Murdoch had Ted Turner Tailed to Prove that he was Insane

(Look who's talking ... )

Why Rupert Murdoch Had Ted Turner Tailed
By Ryan Tate, 4:03 AM on Mon Nov 10 2008

Had Ted Turner's old rival Rupert Murdoch just issued an "autobiography" written by a former lieutenant, as Ted Turner has, one suspects it would not have been embraced so eagerly by sympathetic journalists at 60 Minutes, the Times, the Wall Street Journal and even AP, which meditated whimsically on the CNN founder's chapter titles. Maybe that's because the News Corporation chairman still enjoys the blood sport of media feuds in his old age, coordinating multi-outlet attacks on relative small fry like Keith Olbermann, while Turner is in the business of moving on — and making plenty of media friends in the process. He has forgiven Murdoch for what he suspects was the hiring of private investigators to prove him insane in the 1980s, as he explains in the attached 60 Minutes clip, and put behind him the loss of $7 billion, a devastating divorce and a bad prescription for Lithium.

Turner's relatives told 60 Minutes he contemplated suicide following his divorce from Jane Fonda, who had become a Christian without telling him about it before he found out via the media. And the mogul himself said he no longer thinks he is bipolar and should not have been on lithium for a few years.

It helps Turner's case, no doubt, that he is devoid of current media holdings, keeping any unwise deeds safely in the past, and is well into the philanthropic stage of his life. And by bringing his biographer as a contractor rather than an independent party, he has avoided the sort of messy controversy that dogged the sanctioned bio of Murdoch by Michael Wolff. Perhaps Murdoch should have paid more attention at his amend-making lunch with Turner — he might have learned a few things.

(The video up top ends with Turner proving himself not insane but instead a congenital mogul, possessing an affliction endemic to the breed: confusing large sums of money.)

http://gawker.com/5081730/why-rupert-murdoch-had-ted-turner-tailed

Video: Look into the Faces of Fear and Intolerance Behind Proposition Eight/17,000 Signatures Rejected

www.therandirhodesshow
November 11, 2008

... Want to look into the faces of fear and intolerance? I got VIDEO so you can!

October 8th, 2008 a satellite broadcast was transmitted to Mormon temples and conferences throughout California. Watch and you’ll see three stodgy old white guys sitting around a conference table like so many department heads at so many pointless office meetings. Three guys who look like they were born sometime just after Hoover's world collapsed and FDR hit his stride. In otherwords, fossils.

Unfortunately, these three executive fossil types aren't discussing widgets or production output or the stunning new product line of theraputic loafers that will guarantee the company higher profit margins in 2009. They are casually and methodically talking about the organized effort to rob Americans of their rights. From inside a nondescript, badly styled conference room, they sit their in their well tailored Brooks Brothers, smile into the camera and pontificate from on high on how to correctly destroy the pursuit of happiness for a large segment of Americans. 'Creepy' doesn't begin to describe it. Orwellian is nearer the mark. Frightening is almost a bullseye.

And watch the proponents of Prop 8 compare Gay Marriage to Hitler’s Germany? Seriously.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference brings 16,935 signatures to STOP Proposition 8. Almost 17,000 signatures REJECTED.

http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/

Austrian parliamentary leader calls for review of history linked with Nazis

www.chinaview.cn
2008-11-10

VIENNA, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- President of the Austrian parliament Barbara Prammer said Sunday that Austria should review its history of assisting Nazis in the persecution of Jews.

During the evening's commemoration of the 70th anniversary of "Crystal Night" held here, she said when Nazis were persecuting Jews, "many Austrians not only supported but also actively participated in the persecution."

Ariel Muzicant, President of the Israelite Cultural Organization of Vienna, also called on Austrians to "keep their distance from the right-wing extremists" in his speech.

On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazis killed at least 90 Jews both in Germany and Austria on the excuse that a German diplomat had been murdered by a Jewish refugee, arrested another 30,000, ransacked thousands of Jewish shops and institutions, and scattered broken glass everywhere. This bloody night was later called the "Crystal Night".

Since then, Nazis began a large-scale and systematic persecution of Jews in Europe.

On Sunday evening in Vienna, people paraded with candles spontaneously, assembling at Judenplatz, a square at the city center, putting their candles around the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial, on which writes in German, English and Hebrew, "In commemoration of more than 65000 Austrian Jews, who were killed by the Nazis between 1938-1945."

The participators said that this tragedy should be memorized forever and must not happen again. They said commemorating the horrible history was aimed at "not forgetting" it.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/10/content_10335029.htm

Fanta (Coca-Cola Product) was Developed for Nazis

From: Coke and Confiscation: On Passover, an Egyptian Jew Battles Coca-Cola in the USA for a Modern Day Injustice
Edwin Black
April 14th 2008


Coke in Egypt

Refael Bigio in Montreal remembers the moment that the regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser seized his family’s property. He was driving to the factory with his father that traumatic August day in 1962. Police cordons surrounded the buildings at 14 Aswan Street in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. As Bigio and his father nervously stepped up the stairs, a policeman barked that the government had nationalized the business. "Give me the keys," he demanded. Once inside the offices, policemen and soldiers demanded the keys to the vault as well.

The nightmare of dispossession suffered by approximately one million Jews throughout the Arab world had finally descended upon the Bigio family. Brutal jailings and intimidation against Bigio family members culminated in a forced penniless exodus from the nation. The Bigios, along with a million other Jews across the Arab world, were expelled with just a few dollars in their pockets. The family fled to Canada. But the Bigios never forgot the life they knew in Egypt—or their assets.

The Bigio assemblage of warehouses and manufacturing buildings sprawled across 10,000 square meters in the midst of bustling Heliopolis traces its main commercial life to the 1930s when Bigio’s grandfather first bought the land and built a shoe polish plant. Eventually, the family business added a tin container operation to hold the shoe polish, and from that expanded into general tin plating. Eventually they produced tin bottle caps for soda. In 1942, at the height of World War II, a Coca-Cola licensed bottler became the family’s tenant, bottling the world-famous cola. Later the fruity drink called Fanta that Coca-Cola originally developed for the Nazi military was added. ...

Story continues

The horror of U.S. depleted uranium in Iraq threatens the world

www.tehrantimes.com
November 1, 2008

American and British use of DU is a crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time. War vets who’ve returned from Iraq are sitting on DU death row. All this, a net result of the White House’s reaction to 9/11.

I’m horrified. The people out there — the Iraqis, the media and the troops — risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It’s going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car.

The speaker is not some alarmist doomsayer. He is Dr. Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world.

For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic radioactive particles in such abundance that — whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds — there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate — including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure and extreme birth defects — killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which main the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are no to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.

‘Depleted’ uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For ‘depleted’ sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production.

However* uraniuniis one of earth’s heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson’s punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive.

‘Crispy critters’ is what U.S. servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: “The children’s skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited.”

The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies in the womb — and do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn babies.

Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by 2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and leukemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993.

Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled with other cancers also increasing “at an alarming rate”. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin and stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the highest increases were in breast and bladder cancer, and non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

On hearing that DU had been used in the Persain Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defense a special report on the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years.

In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU — although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this war. The devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and is beyond imagining.

We must also count the many thousands of miscarried babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some had 100 times the so-called ‘safe limit’ of uranium in their urine.

The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU, but informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did not go there.

Since DU darkened the land, Iraq has seen birth defects which would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, intestines outside their bodies, huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.

Doctors report that many women no longer say “Is it a girl or a boy?” but simply, “Is it normal, doctor?” Moreover, this terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged forever, and the damaging DU dust is ever present.

What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of Iraq, they have also done to their own soldiers in both wars. And they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing.

Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination regime which violated normal protocols — experimental vaccines, nerve agent pills and organophosphate pesticides in their tents.

Yet, though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops were not warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough medical checks on their return — even though identifying it quickly might have made it possible to remove some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts in radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist.

Over 200,000 U.S. - troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalids with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq — that’s British government’s failure to assess fully the health of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how many have died or become gravely ill since their return.

However, Persian Gulf veterans’ associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be ill.

An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children and even their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are “on DU death row, waiting to die”.

Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust.

They too have fathered children with stunted arms and rare abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and leukemia.

Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where -DU was also used. Their leukemia rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested the use of DU.

Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only ‘low level’ radiation, DU is harmless. Award-winning scientist, Dr. Rosalie Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied ‘low-level’ radiation for 30 years. She has found that uranium oxide particles have more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of radiation as hitting surrounding cells ‘like flashes of lightning’ again and again in a single second.2

DU radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time,

Like many scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation, she has found that such ‘lightning strikes’ can damage DNA and cause cell mutations which lead to cancer.

Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that, Dr. Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation can cause the body’s communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since many veterans of the first Persian Gulf war suffer from innumerable, seemingly unrelated, ailments.

In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Hematology at Dundee University, and others, has shown two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought.

The first is that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root of cancer and birth defects.) This “radiation- induced genomic instability” is compounded by “the bystander effect” by which cells mutate in unison with others which have been damaged by radiation — rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU particle.

Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond to radiation — with some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the fact that some veterans of the first Persian Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others.

That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, as well as the research findings of such experts, has been ignored may be no accident.

A U.S. report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, the “potential for health effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed in perspective . . . the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive.”3

Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least a quarter of a million UK and U.S. troops seriously ill, huge disability claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain and America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be extremely close to the White House.

How close they are to Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales make a considerable contribution - to British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over the past 12 years, and the way that governments have failed to test returning troops — seemed to disbelieve them, and’ washed their hands of them — may be purely to save money.

The possibility that financial considerations have led the governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility for the harm they have done, not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops, may seem outlandish.

Yet DU weapons weren’t used by the other side and no other explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.4 One American study in 1990 said DU was “linked to cancer when exposures are internal,

[and to] chemical toxicity-causing kidney damage”. While another openly warned that exposure to these particles under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.5

In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as “weapons of mass destruction”, “incompatible with international humanitarian and human rights law”. Since then, following leukemia in European peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has twice called for DU weapons to be banned.

Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the first Persian Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkans and Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence.

In 1997, while citing experiments by others in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington, was quoted as saying, the “

[U.S. government’s] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body”. He concluded, “uranium does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and to all generations who follow”. Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his research was suddenly blocked.

During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims could have built up.

And, not content with the insult of suggesting the gravely disabling symptoms of Persian Gulf veterans are imaginary, they have refused full pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the current British House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says “it is judged that any radiation effects from possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced by some Persian Gulf war veterans”. Note how over a quarter of a million sick and dying U.S.: and UK vets are called some’.

Britain and America not only used DU in this year’s Iraq war, they dramatically increased its use — from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war (1991) to a minimum-of 1500 tons in this one (2003).

And this time the use of DU wasn’t limited to anti-tank weapons — as it had largely been in the previous Persian Gulf war — but was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and 2000-pound mega-bombs used in Iraq’s cities. This means that Iraq’s cities have been blanketed in lethal particles — any one of which can cause cancer or deform a child.

In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs, which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes of smoke, means that billions of deadly particles have been carried high into the air — again and again and again as the bombs rained down — ready to be swept worldwide by the winds.

The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water. How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which cannot be detected with a normal Geiger counter, are spread from border to border? And how can they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq, and indeed, the world?

So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the last Persian Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of history- along with slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this -crime against humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this war truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world.

Britain and America not only used DU in this year’s Iraq war, they dramatically increased its use — from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war (1991) to a minimum of 1500 tons in this one And this time the use of DU wasn’t limited to anti-tank weapons — as it had largely been in the previous Persian Gulf war — but was extended to-the guided missiles, large bunker busters and 2000 pound mega-bombs used in Iraq’s cities.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=181303

Did Shimon Peres Compare McCain and Republicans to Hitler and Nazis?

Israel Today Staff
November 10, 2008

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Monday made a remark in an interview with Israel Radio that appeared to some to draw a comparison between recently defeated US presidential candidate John McCain and Hitler, and between members of McCain's Republican Party and the Nazis.

When asked by the show's host what he thought of Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential election, Peres said that he saw the outcome of the election as a "moral victory" over racism, and the likes of "Hitler and the Nazis."

Peres was likely noting that Obama's victory was a major blow to the racism that had characterized much of the history of America and Western Europe over the past century.

However, observers said that at best Peres had chosen his words very poorly, and that some could take them to mean that the Israeli president views McCain and all Republicans as representatives of Nazi values.

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=17507

UK Police: Man Charged with having IEDs, Nazi Book

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER

LONDON (AP) — British police charged a 43-year-old man Thursday with plotting an act of terrorism and having two improvised explosive devices, chemicals, timers, and a Nazi-themed handbook.

Neil Christopher Lewington was first arrested last week after police discovered a suspected explosive device when they searched him at a railway station in Lowestoft, a coastal city in eastern England.

He was originally charged with possessing an item to cause criminal damage and was released on bail Saturday. But he was immediately re-arrested by Scotland Yard.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that Lewington carried two improvised explosive devices to Lowestoft from Reading, a city near London where he lives, on Oct. 30. It said Lewington was being charged with making or having an explosive substance intended to "to endanger life, or cause serious injury to property in the U.K."

The police statement said Lewington had four containers of weed killer, seven timers, three tennis balls, fire lighters, and a book entitled: "Waffen SS U.K. Members Handbook." The statement said he also had drawings and notes "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."

A spokesman for Scotland Yard did not go into further detail, saying only that the incident was not al-Qaida-related. He spoke anonymously in line with force policy.

The Waffen SS was the name of a feared Nazi military organization.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gFA7B1NXaj1yTHGPF7HSpVhY-ORAD949N2SG0

Australian Letters to the Editor: Echoes in Nazism in Moeller "Useless Eater" Case

The Age
November 1, 2008

Echoes of Nazism

THE Immigration Department's decision not to allow a Wimmera doctor permanent residency because he has a Down syndrome son who will be a "burden" on the community, smacks of the Nazi description of people with disability as "useless eaters". Have we descended to this in our economic rationalist, consumer, materialist world?

I am a person with a disability who works in paid employment and who does massive amounts of voluntary work in the arts and disability. I give much in the way of friendship and fun in my social circle. I work with Downs people who are great contributors to the common good. Am I a burden? Are they?

This is symptomatic of the purely economic value by which the bean counters judge things, and the harsh immigration approach taken under the former government. Despite advances, there is still a dark-ages, discriminatory underbelly in regard to disability.

Janice Florence, Preston

A shameful decision

HOW ASHAMED I am to be an Australian. We have refused permanent residency to a doctor and his family who have been prepared to move to regional Victoria in the service of the community, because the family has a child with Down syndrome. In a week in which our nation prides itself on the fact that it stops for a horse race in which millions of dollars are spent, we refuse to accept a family because their child may require extra medical care. What kind of a nation have we become?
Frances Baker, Moonee Ponds

Goodwill trashed

I AM NOT sure if the Immigration Department is aware, but the Liberal Party lost the election and the community expects a greater degree of compassion and respect in the decision-making of Government. Millions of dollars are spent enticing skilled migration and tourism to our country and a single decision wipes out all goodwill that is achieved. The only saving grace is the attitude of the Moellers, who still want to reside in Australia and see a clear difference between the Government and the community.

Adrian Cope, Gisborne ...

LETTERS CONTINUE
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/letters/echoes-in-nazism-in-moeller-case-20081031-5fjz.html?page=2

More Bacteria Genes on the Way from Monsanto: Legal Tussle over Modified Sugar Beets

" ... Roundup Ready sugar beets - which can withstand repeated applications of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide - gain their chemical tolerance from a gene that Monsanto plucked from a soil bacterium and pasted into the sugar beet genome. ... "

Legal tussle over modified sugar beets
Deborah K. Rich, Special to The SF Chronicle
November 8, 2008

Home gardeners seldom grow sugar beets, but the commercialization of Roundup Ready sugar beets could toss genetically engineered DNA into many a garden-fresh salad unless a lawsuit prevails.

The suit, filed by the Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds and the Sierra Club, is expected to be heard April 3 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. It seeks to halt the planting, sale and use of Roundup Ready sugar beets until the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducts an in-depth environmental study of this latest genetically engineered crop.

Roundup Ready sugar beets - which can withstand repeated applications of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide - gain their chemical tolerance from a gene that Monsanto plucked from a soil bacterium and pasted into the sugar beet genome.

Among the environmental concerns the plaintiffs want the Agriculture Department to consider is the potential for DNA from genetically engineered sugar beets to contaminate the U.S. chard and table beet seed stock.

In March 2005, the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service deregulated Roundup Ready sugar beets, which meant that Monsanto was free to sell its bacterium-sugar beet construct.

With little fanfare, farmers harvested the first commercially grown Roundup Ready sugar beets this fall. Tom Schwartz, executive vice president of the Beet Sugar Development Foundation, estimates that 60 percent of the 1.2 million acres of sugar beets grown in the United States in 2008 were Roundup Ready, and expects that 90 to 95 percent of the 2009 U.S. sugar beet crop will be genetically engineered.

Sugar from genetically engineered sugar beets will begin entering the food stream in the next several months, although exactly when will be difficult to determine. U.S. law does not require genetically engineered sugar to be segregated from non-engineered sugar, nor to be labeled for the consumer. (Sugar beet sugar accounts for roughly half of total U.S. sugar production, with the balance of U.S. sugar coming from sugarcane.)

The likelihood of genetically engineered DNA from Roundup Ready sugar beets migrating into chard and beet seed packets is high. Sugar beets, chard and table beets are all members of the beta genus and sexually compatible. These kissing cousins are wind-pollinated, and the overwhelming majority - 90 percent or more - of the nation's sugar beet and chard seed, along with some of its table beet seed, is grown in a single location, Oregon's Willamette Valley.

"The Willamette Valley is right at 45 degrees latitude and has just the right day length for daylight-sensitive crops like sugar beets," said Frank Morton, a Willamette Valley seed farmer, breeder and founder of Wild Garden Seed. "We have great soil, plenty of summertime irrigation and a dry climate during harvest. We have mild winters where the ground doesn't typically freeze, so you can overwinter biennial seed crops such as chard and beets. If it were any colder we couldn't do that.

"The valley also has a relatively short agricultural history compared to other regions of the world where you can grow beta crops, so we don't have the diseases endemic here that cause these crops grief."

Voluntary agreements among Willamette Valley seed growers regarding who gets to grow what seed and where minimizes cross-contamination among beta crops. The greater or more significant the difference between varieties, the more miles of separation required between the seed fields.

Since the USDA views engineered and non-engineered sugar beets as substantially the same crop, sugar beet seed growers argue that no greater isolation of genetically engineered sugar beet seed from other beta seed crops is necessary.

Since there are more sugar beet acres in the valley than chard and table beet acres, increasing the miles between crops would disqualify hundreds of miles of land from chard and beet seed production.

Contamination won't be apparent and will go undetected unless every chard and table beet seed lot is tested for genetic purity. Even with testing, risk of contamination remains. "They can only test 10,000 seeds at a time, so what you get is essentially a test that tells you to 1 in 10,000 parts whether or not it is contaminated, so you are only accurate down to about .01 percent," Morton said.

Once the DNA from the Monsanto sugar beets slips into chard and table beet seed, consumers will be tossing it into their salads regardless of whether they bought them at the grocery store or farmers' market or grew them in their garden.

For more information on the lawsuit, visit www.centerforfoodsafety.org. To receive updates on the case and action alerts, sign up on the center's True Food Network.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/07/HOUD13NONA.DTL

Dressed to Kill

As a student initiation draws condemnation of binge drinking, but silence over its fascist overtones, The Journal finds out how easy it is to acquire a Nazi unform for fun, and if its right that we can

Paris Gourtsoyannis
The Journal, Issue 11/www.journal-online.co.uk
14 October 2008

Both the news coverage of recent events at the University of Gloucestershire and the press statement released by the college in response ignored the presence of an elephant in their midst. The former only noted in passing the Nazi overtones of the initiation ceremony; the latter, reflecting the considerable embarrasment already being felt, didn’t mention it at all.

Public fatigue may be to blame. In 2005, when Prince Harry was pictured on the front page of The Sun wearing a Nazi uniform, it generated considerable column inches and an official apology, but no police caution. In 2007, Formula 1 boss, Max Mosley was filmed enjoying a military-themed orgy, but allegations of Nazi overtones made in the News of the World have since been proved libelous.

If there is diminished sensitivity about Nazi imagery used as a subject of fun, it hasn’t yet reached the Edinburgh fancy dress market. Only one of the Edinburgh costume shops listed in the online yellow pages stocks Nazi uniforms, and when told that it was going to be worn on a stag-do pub crawl, was unwilling to rent it out.

“We have a couple of Nazi outfits, for when we do The Sound of Music, but I’d be wary of letting you have it to go out in.

“It’s just that when we rent to people who wear it to go to the pub, they sometimes get attacked,” the lady from Macmillan Stage told me, adding that two clients who had gone for a Third Reich-themed piss-up had suffered just that fate.

“People can get quite offended by it – and anyway, we don’t have any Nazis in your size,” she said, obliquely confirming the stereotype about short men being aggressively addicted to symbols of power. The awkwardness with which many of the store attendants reacted to the request seems to suggest a significant level of discomfort with the matter.

“Yeah, we don’t have anything like that,” sighs the girl behind the counter at Armstrongs, Edinburgh’s best known vintage clothing emporium. “A lot of people come in asking for that sort of thing, and I tell them what I’m telling you – no.” She’s dripping in studs, chains and dark eye makeup—to say nothing of disdain—and one can’t help but wonder what a hardened Goth like her could find wrong in the innocent request for an SS uniform to wear to a birthday party.

Contrary to the notion that Nazi imagery inhabits a moral grey area, the line between what’s acceptable and what isn’t is at times unmistakably clear. “We’ve got a black German WWII uniform, an SS-style kind of thing,” says the man at Monkey Business over the phone. For £30 it could be mine – but am I getting my money's worth?

“Of course it doesn’t have any swastikas; that would be offensive.”

Then again, sometimes that line is non-existant. The store clerk at Fairy Funny, a fancy-dress store in Glasgow, has to check whether their only Nazi uniform is available on the date of my ficitonal pub crawl; whether this is standard policy or a reflection of west coast taste in party wear remains unclear. What is certain is that, with a price tag of £35, the search is over: “It comes with trousers, shirt, tie, hat and jacket, with a red swastika armband on it – you could do yourself a little moustache with a marker pen, as well!”

There is, of course, legitimate historical interest in German World War Two memorabilia. “There is a very large market for Third Reich antiques,” Craig Gottlieb, a Florida-based collector and trader of Nazi militaria, told The Journal.

“I only sell original antiques. There is a great demand for reproductions, but I find that to sell them without historical context reduces the business to a purely economic pursuit. I see myself as a preserver of history, and for me, modern products seem to glorify the subject matter, which I do not wish to do.”

Mr Gottlieb, who sources his items mainly from families of Allied soldiers who returned with them as trophies, is steadfast in the defence of his trade and its social value. “In my view, this holocaust is too often presented out of context... by studying the trappings of military regalia, we can more effectively answer the question we always ask: ‘How could the Holocaust happen in a civilized society?’

“For me, military antiques illustrate exactly how Hitler and his lieutenants assembled a team of civilized Germans to commit what is now known as genocide, in so short a period of time. Within the SS, Himmler capitalized on a universal need for human beings to feel part of a group, to be a member of an inner-circle of elites. This universal human need explains what makes otherwise normal men do very bad things.”

Mr Gottlieb’s sentiments are echoed by "Alex", who helps run Panzergrenadier, an Axis historical re-enactment online community. “My re-enactment group do infantrymen of the 272nd Division,” he told The Journal. “They didn’t have cuff-titles and the ear of Hitler. They were school-teachers, draftsmen. They were bricklayers and factory workers. They were called up in 1944 to fight a rich man’s war on a global political stage not of their making or choice.

“Our stand-first is that an ordinary German soldier had much more in common with an ordinary British soldier than he had with a German officer.”

Though the benefits of keeping a place for Nazi imagery in society are clear, it is - as in the Gloucestershire case - open to abuse. “The simple wearing of a swastika isn’t enough to be considered a hate crime,” explains inspector Tom Galbraith of the Safer Communities Department of the Lothian and Borders Police. “The reported event has to be taken into context, and often there isn’t enough evidence to bring a prosecution.

“In the event of someone wearing a Nazi emblem for entertainment, the most likely police reaction would be to charge them with breach of the peace, if applicable. But the way the law is framed requires a complaint for any action to be taken.”

That no complaint was made in Gloucestershire invites the question: rightly or wrongly, have we become desensitized to Nazi imagery?

Leslie Bunder, editor of the online Jewish community forum SomethingJewish, clearly believes so. “I’m not offended – are you?

“Maybe if they were neo-Nazis at some sort of gathering, that would be offensive; but if it’s done for comedy, or humour, then there isn’t really any problem,” he said. “If it’s done as some sort of prank, then some might find it funny, some might not. There isn’t any reason why it should be inherently offensive. Are you offended by Mel Brooks' The Producers, or 'Allo 'Allo?

“If you’re looking for some Jew to say, ‘Oh, I’m so offended, that’s appalling,’ then you’re going to be disappointed. Why not ask a homosexual, or a disabled person? Hitler killed millions of disabled people; why don’t you ask one of them?”

Insisting that “there isn’t a story here” and that to ask for a Jewish perspective on the potential offense of wearing Nazi emblems in jest was “lazy,” Mr Bunder concluded: “Things have changed since World War Two. People don’t get worked up about this anymore.”

Inspector Galbraith disagrees: “I’ve worked with the Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation on Salisbury Street in relation to racist incidents, and there are clearly historical issues at work here which aren’t going away.

"If by wearing Nazi imagery someone were glorifying that part of the past, then that would likely be considered offensive in law."

Student initiations are the subject of renewed debate after a group of students at the University of Gloucestershire were filmed performing a drinking "ceremony" with Nazi overtones.

Chivvied along by a student in Nazi uniform, the group were marched along a residential street with plastic carrier bags over their heads and forced to drink, stopping occasionally to be sick.

The video was taken in secret by another student during freshers' week in 2007, and sent in to the BBC on 2 October.

An investigation has been launched by the universities, where initiation rites featuring “bullying and intimidation” are banned.

In a statement, Paul Drake, director of communications for the University of Gloucestershire, said: “The university takes the issue of intimidation and bullying extremely seriously.

“Disciplinary action may be brought against those who are found to be leading initiation ceremonies and who continue to perpetuate unacceptable intimidatory and coercive practices, in line with the university’s student charter.

“This particular incident illustrates that we have more to do to eliminate poor student behaviour. It should be remembered however that this represents a small minority.”

Students’ union president, James Durant added: “We go to great lengths to ensure our sports captains understand that initiation events that include intimidating or bullying behaviour will not be tolerated."

His sentiments were echoed by NUS president, Wes Streeting who told BBC News: "We are totally opposed to student initiations. They put students at serious risk and exclude students who don't want to take part in that binge-drinking culture."

At the beginning of the 2007-08 academic year, Edinburgh University RFC managed to close a significant part of the Three Sisters, one of Scotland's largest pubs, after their fancy-dress induction for new recruits resulted in two toilets, the dancefloor and one of the pub’s three bars being sprayed with vomit, owing largely to the practice of "salting" each other's pints.

http://www.journal-online.co.uk/article/3333-dressed-to-kill

Plans for Auschwitz Found in Berlin Apartment: Report

afp.google.com

BERLIN (AFP) — Original plans for the construction of the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz, including a gas chamber and crematorium, have been found in a Berlin apartment, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The daily Bild published copies of some of the 28 plans, which the head of Germany's federal archives, Hans-Dieter Krekamp, called "authentic proof of the systematically planned genocide of the Jews of Europe."

Bild gave no indication of where, when or by whom the plans were found.It said they were dated between 1941 and 1943 and stamped, "Waffen-SS and Police Construction Directorate." Some were signed by senior SS officials and one initialled by the head of the Nazi ideological corps, Heinrich Himmler.

Kreikamp told the newspaper the documents were "extraordinarily important."

One plan, drawn by a detainee as early as November 1941, when experiments in eliminating prisoners were already under way, had a gas chamber clearly labelled, Bild said.

Another showed a crematorium with places for ovens marked, and storage space for bodies.

The "final solution to the Jewish question", namely the extermination of Jews living in Nazi-occupied Europe in what became known as the Holocaust, was decided by officials of Adolf Hitler's regime in January 1942 at a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. More than one million Jews, gypsies and others deemed "subhumans" by the Nazis were killed at Auschwitz, near the Polish city of Kracow, out of a total six million slaughtered up to the fall of the regime in 1945.

Advancing Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz in January 1945, but camp authorities had blown up the gas chambers, and Holocaust deniers have claimed there was no proof of the camp's purpose.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jHhoXgXFH77DTUtiyY6TrF7v7eug

Brain Scans Show Bullies Enjoy Others' Pain

www.washingtonpost.com
November 7, 2008

FRIDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Bullies may actually enjoy the pain they cause others, a new study using brain scans suggests.

The part of the brain associated with reward lights up when an aggressive teen watches a video of someone hurting another person, but not when a non-aggressive youth watches the same clip, according to the University of Chicago study, published in the current Biological Psychology.

"Aggressive adolescents showed a specific and very strong activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum (an area that responds to feeling rewarded) when watching pain inflicted on others, which suggested that they enjoyed watching pain," researcher Jean Decety, a professor in psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago, said in a university news release. "Unlike the control group, the youth with conduct disorder did not activate the area of the brain involved in self-regulation (the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction)."

The study compared eight 16- to 18-year-old boys with an aggressive conduct disorder to a group that didn't show unusual signs of aggression. All participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while watching videos in which people endured pain accidentally, such as when a heavy bowl was dropped on their hands, and intentionally, such as when a person stepped on another's foot.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110701898.html

Corporate Environmental Crime: Robert Kennedy’s Fascist America

“ ... 'The Republicans are 95 percent corrupt and the Democrats are 75 percent corrupt,' Kennedy told Corporate Crime Reporter. 'They are accepting money from the same corporations.' ... Kennedy also quotes Benito Mussolini's insight that 'fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.' ... "


22 Corporate Crime Reporter 43, November 6, 2008
www.corporatecrimereporter.com

Politico reported last week that President-elect Barack Obama is considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Kennedy has strong views on corporate crime and corruption, and he expressed them in a 2005 interview with Corporate Crime Reporter.

“The Republicans are 95 percent corrupt and the Democrats are 75 percent corrupt,” Kennedy told Corporate Crime Reporter. “They are accepting money from the same corporations. And of course, that is going to corrupt you.”

As founder and head of the environmental group Riverkeepers, Kennedy has spent the last 20 years as a sort of private attorney general – suing polluters to clean up the Hudson River.

Kennedy says that in the late 1960s, the Hudson River was “a national joke.”

“It was dead water for 20-mile stretches north of New York City and south of Albany. It caught fire. It changed colors,” Kennedy said. “Today, it is the richest water body in the North Atlantic. It produces more pounds of fish per acre and more biomass per gallon than any other waterway in the Atlantic north of the equator. It is the last major river system left in the North Atlantic, on both sides, that still has strong spawning stocks of all of its historical species of migratory fish.”

Kennedy is no fan of nuclear power.

He has spent much of his time trying to close down the Indian Point nuclear power plant 22 miles north of New York City.

“After Chernobyl, 1,000 miles around the plant were uninhabitable. One hundred miles around the plant are permanently uninhabitable,” he said. “One hundred miles around Indian Point would be all of New York City. So, imagine a world without New York City. Well, the terrorists already have. According to the 9/11 Commission, Mohammed Atta cased Indian Point before deciding to bomb the World Trade Center. But he believed, erroneously as it turned out, that the plant must be so heavily guarded, that it would be impossible to crash an airliner into it.”

In a 2004 book – Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and his Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy (HarperCollins, 2004), Kennedy implies that we live in a fascist country and that the Bush White House has learned key lessons from the Nazis.

“While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business,” he writes. “My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as ‘a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.’ Sound familiar?”

He quotes Hitler's propaganda chief Herman Goerring: "It is always simply a matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Kennedy then adds: "The White House has clearly grasped the lesson."

Kennedy also quotes Benito Mussolini's insight that “fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

“The biggest threat to American democracy is corporate power,” Kennedy told us. “There is vogue in the White House to talk about the threat of big government. But since the beginning of our national history, our most visionary political leaders have warned the American public against the domination of government by corporate power. That warning is missing in the national debate right now. Because so much corporate money is going into politics, the Democratic Party itself has dropped the ball. They just quash discussion about the corrosive impact of excessive corporate power on American democracy.”

http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/kennedy110608.htm

The fascists, of course, are already bad-mouthing Kennedy and scrambling for their lives. Right-wing Politico.com asks: "RFK Jr.: Too controversial for EPA?"

What's so "controversial" about speaking openly about fascism and environmental crimes that poison natural resources essential for sustaining human life? You have to be a fascist to understand the reasoning of America's toxin-hugging "conservatives":

"Some energy and environmental lobbyists [sic] are worried that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial past would thwart his Senate confirmation. ... A well-respected climate lawyer, Kennedy has also been in the spotlight for his controversial environmental statements. Last year, for instance, he said that global warming skeptics should be treated as 'traitors,' which garnered the ire of Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, whose deep skepticism about the causes of climate change is well-known.

“'Robert Kennedy calling me a traitor would be like me calling Robert Kennedy a patriot,' Inhofe retorted on Fox News. ...

"'This would speak volumes as to where Obama is going with his appointments,” said U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist William Kovacs. “A Kennedy appointment is as liberal as you can possibly get. There is no one [candidate] based firmer in extremes. ...”

http://www.mlive.com/us-politics/index.ssf/2008/11/rfk_jr_too_controversial_for_e.html

"Extremism" = liberal in the fascist nomenclature. Hitler and Pinochet were merely "business-savvy" front men, though the corporate clowns who bash "enviro-nazis" keep it close to their blood-stained vests.

- AC

Obit: Domenico Leccisi, the Right-Wing Activist and Politician who Stole Mussolini's Corpse

Domenico Leccisi
NYT

ROME (AP) — Domenico Leccisi, the right-wing activist and politician who stole the corpse of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini more than a half century ago has died. He was 88.

Leccisi died Sunday at a retirement home in Milan after a battle with heart and respiratory problems, his son Gabriele said Monday.

In 1946, Leccisi and two other Italians marked the anniversary of the death of "Il Duce" by digging up Mussolini's body at night from an unmarked grave in a Milan cemetery. The theft sparked a nationwide manhunt for the group.
The three entrusted the body to two monks who buried it at a monastery near the northern city. Authorities located the remains there and returned them to the family years later for burial in Predappio, Mussolini's birthplace.

Leccisi was sentenced to six years in jail for stealing the body but benefited from an amnesty passed for some Fascist-era crimes, his son said. He worked as a right-wing journalist and later served as a lawmaker with a neo-Fascist party in the 1950s and 1960s.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jj4yj37U9DWYfLMh8iNpt2MokknAD9482TR80

NGOs: Right-Wing Extremism on Rise

www.b92.net
7 November 2008

BELGRADE -- Three non-governmental organizations have warned that right-wing extremist, pro-fascist and neo-Nazi groups are increasing in number in Europe.

“Serbia, unfortunately, is following that unenviable trend,” said the Women in Black, Queeria and United Networks NGOs in a statement to mark November 9—the International Day against Fascism and Anti-Semitism.

The NGOs stated that in Serbia there was no political will for combating the so-called “criminal past.”

“There are ever more voices calling for hatred and violence, and they are being validated by equating these voices with those of ordinary citizens, especially those who work in the field of human rights,” the NGOs said.

The International Day against Fascism and Anti-Semitism is commemorated in remembrance of the “Crystal Night” of November 1938, when the Nazis began the systematic persecution of Jews in Germany.

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2008&mm=11&dd=07&nav_id=54828

How can we stand by as genocide again threatens the Congo?

" ... Eagle Wings Resources International, a subsidiary of Trinitech International of the US, continues to exploit the coltan from the Rwandan-controlled eastern region of Congo, and proceeds from this exploitation are sold to H. C. Starck, a subsidiary of Bayer AG of Germany, while 50% of the coltan purchased by Ningxia Non-Ferrous Metals Smeltery of China originates from mining under control of the 'Congo desk' of the Rwandan army."



Andre Renzaho
Australian Age
November 3, 2008

AS AN African migrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, I am fortunate to be leading a peaceful and productive life in Australia. But reading the daily newspapers or watching the news on television is very distressing.

Over the last couple of days tens of thousands of civilians, mainly Hutus of the Rusthuru and Masisi districts, have fled their homes and are now surrounded by Rwandan-backed rebels.

The rebels and the Rwandan army have taken Rutshuru and Masisi, and their leader, General Laurent Nkunda, has vowed to seize Goma under the pretext of protecting the minority Tutsi population from Rwandan Hutu extremists responsible for the 1994 genocide.

With the international financial situation becoming the main priority for world leaders, little attention has been given to what is unfolding in Congo. Rwanda has seized the opportunity to join Nkunda to complete unfinished business: the "ethnic cleansing" of Hutus of Rutshuru and Masisi districts.

These Hutu represent a Congolese ethnic group that shares linguistic and cultural similarities with Rwandans. However, in his book, The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality, Thomas Turner notes that some of the Hutu of the Rutshuru and Masisi and the Goma-Rutshuru-Masisi area in eastern Congo have never been part of the Kingdom of Rwanda.

Unfortunately, Nkunda and his backers cannot discriminate between the Hutu of Rutshuru and Masisi, who are Congolese citizens, and Rwandan extremist Hutus.

The international community, under the Genocide Convention, has declared that there would never be another genocide after Nazi mass killings of World War II.

It is therefore ethically, politically and morally wrong for the international community to keep silent while Rwandan-backed militias continue to slaughter innocent civilians — the way it remained silent when genocide unfolded in Bosnia, Rwanda and, now, in Sudan.

Rwanda has many motives to destabilise Congo. It is already over-populated and does not have enough land or food for its 8.3 million people — and its population will double to 16 million by 2020.

The Rwandan Government has been working behind the scenes to help Nkunda and his militias secure land in Congo to accommodate the growing population and loot Congo mineral resources to boost the Rwandan economy.

A report commissioned by the United Nations found that Western companies, under the auspice of Rwanda and Uganda, were looting Congo.

The report provided detailed information on activities carried out by various Western companies with the overwhelming military support of either Rwanda or Uganda, to the point where these two nations fought each other over diamond mining.

It noted that Eagle Wings Resources International, a subsidiary of Trinitech International of the US, continues to exploit the coltan from the Rwandan-controlled eastern region of Congo, and proceeds from this exploitation are sold to H. C. Starck, a subsidiary of Bayer AG of Germany, while 50% of the coltan purchased by Ningxia Non-Ferrous Metals Smeltery of China originates from mining under control of the "Congo desk" of the Rwandan army.

If the 1994 killing of 700,000 moderate Hutus and Tutsis by extremist Hutus in Rwanda constituted genocide, what will it take for the international community to recognise that genocide is happening in Congo and to pursue those responsible? Repeated surveys by the International Rescue Committee have found that more than 5 million have died since Rwanda and Uganda invaded Congo in 1998, making the war here the deadliest conflict since World War II. The unfolding genocide is a legacy of the Clinton administration and the biggest moral failure of the Bush administration. It is time for the world to act.

Dr Andre M. N. Renzaho is the executive director of the African Leadership, Learning and Advocacy Group, a non-profit organisation, and a senior research fellow at Deakin University.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/how-can-we-stand-by-as-genocide-again-threatens-the-congo-20081102-5gbv.html

CIA Blackmailed Karadzic With His Gay Porn

www.javno.com
August 04, 2008

Karadzic was threatened he would go to the worst prison if he mentioned the deal with Holbrooke.

CIA agents spoke with Radovan Karadzic a few hours before the announcement of his arrest, asking him not to reveal the deal with Holbrooke. In return, they offered him a 40-year sentence in a luxury Swedish prison, Serbian Press Online writes.

The Americans asked him not to mention the details of the deal and not to speak about his confidential contacts with people from the top of the Clinton administration. They wanted Karadzic to tell The Hague everything he knew about general Ratko Mladic and to witness against him during a possible trial.

As a counter favour, the agents guaranteed Karadzic he would get special treatment, according to which he would serve a 40-year sentence in a Swedish prison with all sorts of privileges. They guaranteed that his family would not have any problems in Serbia, the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska and Montenegro.

They also told him that if he does not agree, he would serve his sentence in the worst British prison, together with serial killers, drug dealers and rapists. They threatened him that he would be completely compromised in the Serbian public when they published edited homosexual porn footage, apart from continuing with severe pressure on his family.

Press Online confirmed this information from several independent intelligence sources. Officially, everyone decisively denies that any foreigner had such contacts with Karadzic at the time when he was arrested.

- Nobody will ever verify this, but this is more or less common practice in this region. Well, the Americans worked on Ante Gotovina after his arrest, for several days – an unnamed source points out.

http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=169212

Who Claims that Mac Wallace Killed JFK for LBJ?

Also see: The Origin of the "LBJ Killed JFK" Psyop: Bircher James Evetts Haley

Is this book for real? Author Barr McClellan (Scott's papa) maintains that Mac Wallace, a hit man on Lyndon Johnon's payroll, killed John Kennedy. I find this ridiculous, but judge for yourselves ...

Walt Brown: Author Barr McClellan's partner. Brown has since stated that McClellan's cable documentary The Guilty Men, naming Mac Wallace as a JFK killer, is largely "fiction." McClellan himself calls it "faction." Most of this is boosted from http://davesjfk.com/guilty.html.

Brown earned his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Notre Dame. He authored The People v. Lee Harvey Oswald (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992) and Treachery in Dallas (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1995). He is a frequent contributor/editor of the Kennedy assassination newsletter, JFK / Deep Politics Quarterly. (see http://www.manuscriptservice.com/DPQ/)

Brown is well-known for his search for Noah's Ark.

Author of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, by Dr. Walt Brown
http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:zuxWhhzSvZMJ:www.biblecodesecrets.com/documents/GrizzlyAdamsDocumentaryExaminesNoahsArk-GlobalWarmingConnection.pdf+researcher+and+author+Walt+Brown+and+noah%27s+ark&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us

Since November 1, 2003 Dr. Brown has been attempting to distance himself from his involvement in Barr McClellan's book.

"I would not have so eagerly endorsed this work had I known what the publisher's edition would look like."

"I have no reason to think that his (McClellan's) work is in any way an attempt at deceit, but at the same time, I have no answers to the 'why?' of how it went from a solid, stand-on-its-own-legs work in July to an almost fictionalized account in October."

I for one find it hard to believe that Dr. Brown, who points out he once served as a Special Agent with the Justice Department in New York and Washington, D.C., never asked what happened to his input and fails to see the "why."
see: http://www.davesjfk.com/waltbrown.html

About Walt Brown:

Dr. Walt Brown, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, a mechanical engineer from MIT, and the former Chief of Science and Technology Studies at the Air War College, is another scientist featured in Miraculous Messages. According to Dr. Brown, it is inevitable that man contributes to some Global Warming, "but the amount is probably not large and no one really knows the extent."

http://www.biblecodesecrets.com/documents/GrizzlyAdamsDocumentaryExaminesNoahsArk-GlobalWarmingConnection.pdf

Barr McClellan:

Barr McClellan - McClellan is touted in The Guilty Men as "an attorney for Lyndon Johnson." No proof of this relationship is ever produced.

In his book McClellan opines that his former boss at the law firm, Ed Clark (1906-1992), is not only the person responsible for McClellan's past legal problems but the architect of the Kennedy assassination. McClellan claims Clark was one of the individuals culpable in the hiring of Oswald's alleged co-assassin, Malcolm Wallace. Wallace died in a single car accident in Pittsburgh, Texas on January 7, 1971 at age 50.

By his own admission, he is a lawyer who around October of 1982 was found guilty of forging a $35,000 deed of trust, was given probation, and was ordered to reimburse the $35,000 to the Travis Bank. He acknowledges that as a result of these events he was forced to cease the practice of law. (p. 292)

His animosity toward Clark carries over from his book to The Guilty Men. During McClellan's on camera appearance he explains that Clark:

"was the secret boss of Texas. He could and did arrange for people to be killed, he arranged for money to be laundered, he had that control."

"And when I heard that - there was no question but that Clark had been behind the assassination and he had done it for Johnson. I know beyond a reasonable doubt that Johnson murdered Kennedy. He acted through Clark he saw that it was done and he did it out of a corruption of power that is unequaled in our history"
http://davesjfk.com/guilty.html

Then there is Glen Sample who with Mark Collom authored The Men on the Sixth Floor, (Garden Grove, CA: Sample Graphics, 1995). He has vociferously disputed McClellan, Brown and Darby's fingerprint evidence that supposedly places Malcolm Wallace on the sixth floor with Oswald.

The Men on the Sixth Floor's web site
(http://home.earthlink.net/~sixthfloor/) press release of May 27, 1998 concluded:

"The challenge is hereby issued to Walt Brown, Jay Harrison, Barr McClellen and the entire Texas research group who claim to have made a forensic match between Wallace and the sixth floor fingerprints. Provide for us proof that will stand up to the harshest scrutiny of the critics. We will be waiting - hoping, for a change, that we are wrong."

Since his performance on the History Channel he has removed from his web site all references to past differences and is now working steadfastly on resolving the "issues."

"Even though Mark and I were unsuccessful (through our fingerprint investigators) in finding a match, we still feel that there is a distinct possibility that Darby's work is correct. Having discussed the issues with Mr. Darby, as well as, with Barr McClellan, we are now revisiting the print issue."

Glen Sample
11/22/03

In The Guilty Men, Sample fails to spell out that his book implicating Malcolm Wallace as a shooter is based upon the "confession" of a now deceased Chickasaw Indian, Loy Factor. Factor died May 5, 1994 due to complications from diabetes. Sample's co-author Mark Collom discovered Factor in 1971 while both he and Factor were in the hospital isolation ward at the State Prison at McAlester, Oklahoma. Factor was incarcerated for the 1968-strangulation murder of his wife while Collom was serving a 16-month sentence for a drug-related conviction.

Sample and Collom believe just about everything that Factor tells them. So what do the authors have to say concerning Factor's veracity? Factor is a man described in the book as having:

". . . a metal plate in his head as a result of a shrapnel wound, according to a brother. Factor was a veteran of World War II, and in June, 1948, the Veterans Administration said he was incompetent and entitled to receive compensation in the amount of $60 per month, but a guardian must be appointed before the monies would be released." (p. 43)

If Nigel Turner had compelled Sample to tell the whole story for the "documentary", that is that Factor's claims of involvement contradict McClellan's assertions - it might just damage the credibility of The Guilty Men.

Next we have Ed Tatro who I believe must be an expert in document mutation. In The Guilty Men he managed to convert an August 9, 1984 letter from Billie Sol Estes attorney, Douglas Caddy, to Stephen Trott of the U.S. Department of Justice into a "Justice Department document."

So naïve is Mr. Tatro he feels convicted con-man Estes, who was involved in millions of dollars in loans made on nonexistent fertilizer tanks, ". . . is telling the truth and there is every reason to believe he is . . ." Tatro never reveals just why he feels the almost life long plea bargaining Estes would not attempt to deceive.

http://davesjfk.com/guilty.html

- AC

Big Oil and Freedom's Watch

Bush Linked Group Attacks Shaheen on Sununu´s Behalf; Advocates Same Failed Direction
American Chronicle
October 29, 2008

In Washington, Jeanne Shaheen will stand up to the special interests and John Sununu´s cronies to move America in a new direction. Freedom´s Watch was founded by a slew of Bush cronies bent on keeping US troops in Iraq in perpetuity and giving tax breaks to oil companies.

Former Bush spokesperson Ari Fleischer, casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, aides to Bush and Cheney and members of a Republican constituency caucus founded Freedom´s Watch in 2006. [USA Today, 7/22/08]. Other Bush backers who have helped fund the group include Mel Sembler, a Bush fundraiser Bush appointed as ambassador of Italy, Howard Leach, former ambassador to France and Anthony Gioia, former ambassador to Malta. Each raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Bush. A former president of the group, Brad Blakeman was Bush's White House scheduler.

Despite what these right wing special interest groups such as Freedom´s Watch and their backers would have us believe, Jeanne Shaheen has a comprehensive plan to bring down energy costs in the short term and ween America from its dependence on foreign oil in the long term.

In the short term, Jeanne Shaheen supports bringing down the cost of gas through expanded drilling and cutting down on Wall Street speculation. As recent events have shown us, Wall Street cannot be trusted to govern itself. We need to close the loopholes that allow billion dollar hedge fund managers who have no intention of ever taking delivery of the commodities they trade to buy and sell large quantities of oil with little or over no government oversight. Jeanne Shaheen supports closing these loopholes and bringing greater oversight to Wall Street trading to ensure that middle class families don´t pay the price for irresponsible speculation.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/79471

Much to the consternation of the Oil Companies that have given John Sununu over $250,000 to date, Jeanne Shaheen also supports ending the tax breaks to Big Oil companies. Just this summer, John Sununu voted to continue giving $17 billion in tax breaks to Big Oil.

With oil companies seeing record profits and middle class families paying the price at the pump, Jeanne Shaheen believes it´s time to put America on track to a new energy future through incentives for clean renewable energy that will create green jobs–many of the in New Hampshire´s North Country.

John Sununu has proven that he cannot take New Hampshire in a new energy direction, and his cronies´ baseless attacks only belabor this point. If we want a new direction, we need a new Senator.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/79471

An Unholy Alliance: Holocaust Denier Mark Weber Addresses "Peace Conferences" (Anti-War Poseur Ramsey Clark, as well) in Baltimore and Portland

" ... Masquerading as opposition and dissident opinion, we have racist 'trufing' perhaps of the John Birch variey morphed via the leftist elite into the UNHOLY ALLIANCE of true stupidity. ... "
Right still wooing left: Mark Weber, director of the notorious, Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review, addressed a peace conference in August, and was reportedly "well-received." This report is from the IHR web site:

Weber Addresses Peace Conference in Baltimore

Mark Weber addressed a conference to promote peace and cross-cultural understanding on August 16 in suburban Baltimore. In a crisply delivered and well-received address, the IHR director spoke about the motives behind the US invasion of Iraq, the harmful consequences of America’s "blank check" support for Israel, the Jewish-Zionist grip on US foreign policy, the danger of new wars, and the prospects for an effective peace movement. The event was organized by an Islamic association, Jamaat Al-Muslimeen.

Among the other speakers were: Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General; Charles E. Carlson, director of "We Hold These Truths," a Christian organization for peace and justice; and, Dr. Kaukab Siddique, MC and publisher of New Trend Magazine.

http://www.ihr.org/
•••••••
Beyond Words. Past Expression. Gladdened by 'academia', and the moral cowardice of elitist je ne sais crois.
By epaminondas
November 2, 2007

Eugene, Oregon....Home of the University of Orgeon...

Foes target Pacifica Forum

Foes of what, you wonder????

Critics of a speaker widely viewed as one of the nation’s most prominent deniers of the Holocaust say they will counter his talk in Eugene on Friday with a competing event and a later symposium.

Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review (out of Willis Carto and the 'Liberty Lobby'), will speak on “The Israel Lobby.” His visit comes at the invitation of the Pacifica Forum, a local discussion group founded by retired University of Oregon professor Orval Etter (Orval Etter, associate professor emeritus. B.S., 1937, J.D., 1939, Oregon. (1939)).

Calling the Kennedy School of Govt at Harvard, we have a message for Herr Doktor Smears and Gruppenfuhrer Waltheimer. Advertisements for the event feature the image of a snake in the shape of a Star of David with the legend "The Israel Lobby: How Powerful Is It?"

Weber, a historian who grew up in Portland, describes himself as a Holocaust revisionist. But detractors point to Weber’s own writings in labeling him a white supremacist, racist and anti-Semite.

“People may think I’m wrong or I’m right, but they should have a chance to hear what I have to say,” Weber said in a telephone interview from his institute’s office in Newport Beach, Calif.

Can you imagine? Any view is due equal consideration? Is this the adulterated thinking of university symposiums?

What is this forum anyway ..check out their schedual:

11/17 - Post-Mortem on MARK WEBER visit

11/10 - Orval talks on Kristallnacht anniversary

11/3 - Conferences with Mark Weber

11/2 - The INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW - (Orval Etter)
7:00 - evening lecture by Mark Weber, Director of the IHR

10/26 - George Beres continues talk on the Mearsheimer-Walt book and recent Portland appearance.

10/19 - A review of Mearsheimer-Walt book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"

10/12 - video - "Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire"

10/5 - anniversary of Gandhi's birth - field trip to Knight library

9/28 - The Spiritual Basis of 9/11 and the 'War' on Terror -(Orval Etter)

9/21 - Post-Mortem on the Tolerance/Intolerance Breakfast, (reports and discussion)

9/14 - Complicity on 9/11:? Common-Sense Physics and The WORLD TRADE TOWERS - Dan Athearn

Clearly, masquerading as opposition and dissident opinion, we have racist 'trufing' perhaps of the John Birch variey morphed via the leftist elite into the UNHOLY ALLIANCE of true stupidity.

http://vwt.d2g.com:8081/2007/11/

Bolivian President Suspends US Anti-Drug Efforts

By CARLOS VALDEZ

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivian President Evo Morales suspended U.S. anti-drug operations on Saturday as Washington's relations with his leftist government spiraled downward.

Morales accused the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of espionage and funding "criminal groups" trying to undermine his government.

He announced the indefinite suspension while declaring that his government has eradicated more than 12,300 acres of illegally planted coca so far this year — the minimum required under a 1988 Bolivian law passed under U.S. pressure. ...

STORY CONTINUES
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gD_LIj0JpFpazvQpMrman9LUYBhQD946ORE80

Not Only McCain Palled Around With Pinochet

" ... I've talked to plenty of torture fans at McCain-Palin rallies. They know they're backing the torture ticket. ... "

David Swanson
American Chronicle
October 24, 2008

The Huffington Post has dug up, and the Daily Kos and everybody else are commenting on evidence that McCain held a private secret meeting with Chilean dictator and torturer General Augusto Pinochet. But this is not just a story about John McCain's hypocrisy (what a shock that would be!). It's a teachable moment, and in two senses.

First, it's an opening to talk about McCain's more recent support for torture, a topic Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and other liberal blogs have been no more open to than the New York Times or Fox News. In 2005 John McCain championed the McCain Detainee Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill for 2005, which passed the Congress and was signed into law by Bush, adding one more redundant ban on torture to existing U.S. law, despite Vice President Cheney having lobbied hard against it. But McCain allowed a major loophole for the CIA and then kept quiet when Bush threw out the whole thing with a "signing statement."

Bush and Cheney's administration continued to torture without pause or slowdown.

In 2006 Time Magazine recognized McCain's efforts to supposedly ban torture in naming him one of America's 10 Best Senators. Time made no mention of the fact that torture had always been illegal, the fact that Bush had thrown out the new law with a "signing statement," or the fact that the United States was continuing to torture people on a large scale.

Also in 2006 McCain voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act which supposedly left torture decisions up to the president. And in February 2008, McCain voted against a bill that would supposedly ban torture, and then applauded Bush for vetoing the bill. I've talked to plenty of torture fans at McCain-Palin rallies. They know they're backing the torture ticket. Why won't even the independent progressive media admit it?

Second, this is a teachable moment because not just McCain palled around with Pinochet. Without the efforts of a number of fine upstanding Americans, there never would have been a President Pinochet. The idea to overthrow Chile's democratically elected President Salvador Allende Gossens originated with Harold Geneen, chief operating officer of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, and his fellow board member and former CIA director, still then CIA employee, John McCone, who took the idea to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and to CIA Director Richard Helms. Donald Kendall, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Pepsi-Cola , and former employer of then president Richard Nixon, took the idea to Nixon, Kissinger and Attorney General John Mitchell. Kissinger consulted with David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank. David Atlee Phillips, who had already worked on the successful U.S. overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and William Broe were named co-directors of the CIA's new Chile Task Force. On September 11, 1973, the United States executed a brutal coup, murdering Allende and many others. One of the last Americans to meet with Allende, the previous December in New York, was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, George H. W. Bush.

If you haven't already, pick up a copy of the 2006 bestseller by Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq. This book leaves out overthrows the United States only marginally supported, and leaves out a long list of invasions that did not involve regime change. Kinzer focuses on cases of U.S. managed regime change on foreign soil. He provides the story of Pinochet's rise to power that no one is talking about, and quite a few other stories we desperately need to start talking about if we are going to avoid repeating them. Aside from a perjury conviction for Helms, I don´t think anyone has paid any penalty for what they did to Allende and the people of Chile. And, of course, Bush Jr. was well aware of that when he launched his campaigns of illegal invasion, assassination, detention, torture, and war crimes. Successors to Nixon and Bush will know very well whether anyone is ever held accountable, and that knowledge will determine their behavior.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/78871

Book Review: Murder Of An American Nazi

PRLog (Press Release) – Oct 31, 2008 – “Nothing is more pathetic than an American who does not know the real history of America. I’m not referring to the whitewashed, Pollyanna version contained in high school texts; rather, the ugly, murderous truth of how we got to the place we are now,” author Tim Fleming said about why he wrote his new book Murder of an American Nazi.

Fleming’s narrative wraps this theme around a murder mystery, the story of a few ordinary American citizens caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Ex-homicide detective Don Hayes is haunted by his one unsolved case, the murder of ex-Nazi/CIA operative Walter Dornberger. Dornberger’s corpse disappears before Hayes can begin the investigation, but the tough cop won’t let go, even after he leaves the police force.

As he uncovers the truth of who Dornberger really was, the trail leads on a heart-pounding journey through Nazi-occupied France in World War II, the German death camps, foreign coup d’etats, lethal Cold War espionage, the JFK assassination, and revolution in central America.

One of Hayes’ suspects turns out to be a concentration camp refugee, Hannah Kanermann, whose mother and brother were brutalized by Dornberger during the war. When Hannah discovers that the CIA helped Dornberger escape prosecution for war crimes and arranged for his safe passage to the U.S., she turns the tables on Dornberger, his Nazi cronies, and their CIA protectors.

http://www.prlog.org/10135085-murder-of-an-american-nazi.html

Ku Klux Klan Warns of Race War if Obama Wins

sify.com
03 November, 2008

Arkansas: A Ku Klux Klan leader has warned of a “race war” in the United States if Barack Obama wins his White House bid. Describing African-Americans as aliens who have “invaded” the United States to destroy “Christian culture”, Thomas Robb, 62, who styles himself as the Grand Knight of the Ku Klux Klan, warned: “We’re in the middle of a race war.”

Robb, who claims he is now recruiting as far away as Britain, went on to say: “I have people from England coming here for training. This war is between our people who I see as the rightful owners and leaders of this great country and their people, the blacks. People are angered by the invasion of their communities by those who belong somewhere other than our schools, churches and communities.

“We’re being taken over by aliens and I certainly consider Obama an alien,” Robb was quoted as saying.

Robb, however, criticized plots to kill Obama.

“Despite what many may believe, the last thing I want is for someone to kill Obama. My, oh my, that would be a disaster. That would turn him into a martyr, just like Martin Luther King. For sure I don’t want him in the White House but there are thousands of Obamas who would want to take his place.

“If someone does assassinate him, it’d give the authorities a reason to really hammer the white supremacist movement,” the New York Times quoted him, as saying.

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14789559

Denial of the Denial, or The Battle Under Auschwitz: The Debate on the Geopolitics and the Demography of the Holocaust

www.marketwatch.com
Oct. 16, 2008

A New Book Released in Moscow Repudiates Growing Neo-Nazi and Revisionist Claims

MOSCOW, Oct 16, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- A new book, Denial of the Denial -- the first work in Russia to refute deniers' claims that the Holocaust was a hoax -- was announced by Alfred Kokh and Pavel Polian at a press conference today. By using hard evidence instead of silent disdain, this landmark book counters deniers' allegations with scientific proof - the raw data and fact-based, verifiable evidence that categorically establishes that the Holocaust did, in fact, take place. The publication will be available in bookstores in Russia in late October.

The book confronts a conflagration of neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic forces emerging in Europe and the Middle East -- specifically in Iran in the east, and Spain and France in the west -- where hostile attitudes toward Jews continue to rise steadily. This resurgence in anti-Semitic sentiment comes in concert with the passing of the last living survivors of the Holocaust, marking the end of a generation of brave souls whose first-hand accounts served as the primary testimony with which the sad truths of the Holocaust were first identified and verified.

"By addressing the deniers head-on, we are able to categorically repudiate their dangerous and spurious distortions and put the truth on the record once and for all," said Alfred Kokh, author and former deputy prime minister of Russia. "We decided to publish this book to respond finally to what should be a long-closed question. We tried to present as strictly as possible the demographic arguments of both the traditionalist scholars and the deniers, thereby modeling some semblance of discussion between them and most importantly between their arguments."

While the voice of Holocaust survivors quickly begins to fade away, another is gaining steam and threatens to take its place. Nowhere is this rhetoric more prominent than in Iran where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic defamation, coupled with his un-abashed denial of the Holocaust, serves to fuel an already rapidly spreading fire among Muslim fundamentalists around the world. The only way to combat the convergence of these powerful anti-Semitic forces is to seize the real facts and use the proven data to strip the deniers of all legitimacy, all authority and therefore all potential to convince and influence others.

"We hope that this publication becomes a resource for others working in similar contexts," says Pavel Polian. "While anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial is an issue in Russia, the biased attacks that perpetuate this kind of hatred are likely to be encountered in other countries seeking the truth, the accountability and the evidentiary proof of past abuses. We hope that the lessons learned from this experience will strengthen such efforts in the future."

Denial of the Denial contains articles by:

• Alexander Avraham (Yad Vashem, Israel)
• Wolfgang Benz (Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, Technical
University of Berlin, Berlin)
• Mark Kupovetsky (The Russian-American Center for Bible and Judaic
Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow)
• Sergio Della Pergola (The Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary
Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
• Dieter Pohl (The Institute of Contemporary History, Munich)
• Aron Shneer (Yad Vashem, Israel)

The book is made up of three main parts and three appendixes. In part one, Alfred Kokh introduces the book in the Foreword, which is followed by Polian's article, "Denial and the Geopolitics of the Holocaust." In part two, the issues of evolution and the structure of the denier movement are examined through a collection of essays written by professional demographers, professional historians, and archivists and historians from Yad Vashem. In part three, Kokh and Polian return to conclude the book with Kokh's Afterword, followed again by Polian, who provides an overview of the demographic analysis of the Holocaust.

The book ends with three appendixes: the first is a bibliography of recommended reading from the editors; the second includes documents of the Soviet administration that attest to the horrible reality that liberators found upon arriving in Auschwitz and Birkenau; the third appendix brings the book to its close with a compilation table that shows nearly all of the many structural variations used in estimating the total number of Holocaust victims.

For more information, visit www.denialofthedenial.com.