The Lexington Comair Crash, Part One: The Hand on the Data Stream

By Alex Constantine
[A repost - see the 2006-07 archive for subsequent parts of the Lexington Comair crash series.]

Monday morning, weekend already fading into memory. There is an ache impaling the axis of your brain. You head for the corner coffee shop, order a large. A layer of innocence is about to be stripped away from you like a coal deposit at a Pennsylvania butte but you have no idea and pick out a muffin.

A ruffled newspaper waits at a table. You sit down to the front-page story on a plane crash near Lexington, Kentucky. No lights on the runway (?). All passengers dead.

What?

There is a book about the locale, Sally Denton's Bluegrass Conspiracy, a book that never received much press. You recall some of the details ... CIA-trained police, cocaine smuggling, political murders. Who'd think to find so much political intrigue in stove-pipe country? Off the beaten path. The very idea.

The governor at the time was involved in the Bluegrass scandal, and a criminal network with ties to Oliver North and Adnan Khashoggi. They were known as "The Company."

But this downed commuter jet in horse country had nothing to do with all that ancient history, you tell yourself, stirring in a little raw sugar.

The plane taxied on the wrong runway ... heart-breaking. You imagine the plane rolling down a black, short runway ... the moment when the headlights caught the fence, the trees, the furious attempt to rise clear of them before the quake of rent metal from below ...


The lone dispatcher had been distracted by paper work. A series of ludicrous errors. Pointless horrors, meaningless existence.

The authorities ruled out foul play.

You take the paper cup and newspaper, push through the doors into the autumn sunlight, content that life - now seasoned by a warm neuro-toxic glow - is merely meaningless and bleak, tainted not by foul play but common human failings.

Two days pass. You watch the news, back to the murky runway, the 40-degree error in take-off heading, the burning plane. That flight number ... 5191.

You pick a name from the Flight 5191 passenger list, Fenton Dawson, and do a Google search ...

Dawson is survived by his wife and had two children.

He had a steady job.

Fenton Dawson: ACS employee was en route to Washington

Fenton Dawson, who worked for Affiliated Computer Services in the government solutions department, was on his way to a business conference in Washington, D.C., when Flight 5191 crashed...1 Affiliated Computer Services ... ACS ... a company currently under investigation by the Justice Department for back-dating stock options. Fenton Dawson, the government liaison at ACS, was on his way to Washington to attend a conference – other sources said seminar, minor difference – and the pilots tried to take off on the wrong runway. A horrible, pointless death among many.

The founder and chairman of the ACS board is Mr. Darwin Deason, a generous contributor to the Republican Party. Deason's "partner in crime" at ACS, and a ranking company director, is J. Livingston Kosberg - a former S&L thief. Pete Brewton, in The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, wrote: "Gibraltar Savings, whose chairman, J. Livingston Kosberg, was a prominent fund-raiser in Texas for the Democratic Party."2

Patriots. And "prominent," too. Their company lost a government solutions man on August 27, 2006 - no one will ask him what he knows about back-dating stock options or anything else. Ponder that one. A flush of suspicion freezes your gaze ... Back to the Internet, take another look at that S&L, get to know the pre-history of Fenton Dawson's employer.

At Gibralter Savings down in Dallas, there was this nasty business ...

"ROBERT STRAUSS, Dallas attorney; U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee; friend of George Bush and former business partner with James A. Baker III; he and his son, Richard, were involved in a number of failed Texas S&Ls, including Lamar and Gibraltar." -
http://www.freewebs.com/ciascams/

Yes, "CiaScams." Gibralter, like the other S&L heists of the '80s, was a CIA/Mafia operation.

CIA/Mafia, like ACS, with "prominent" friends at the pinnacles of both political parties.

Dawson must have known many of them.

A little searching on the net turns up another interesting connection to ACS - the destruction of the World Trade Center, or at least the plotline.

ACS approved the change in Mohammed Atta's visa status in the US from tourist to student, according to the testimony of Huffman Aviation CEO Rudy Dekkers, and Tom Blodgett, a managing director at ACS, before the Kean Commission.3

How far, exactly, was ACS involved in CIA business? The GovExec website reports, "in November 2003, Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. acquired a government contracts division of Affiliated Computer Services Inc., a smaller firm, headquartered in Dallas, with DEEP CONNECTIONS TO THE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES."4 The very idea.

The intimate bond was apparent when it emerged that it was an ACS division purchased by Lockheed responsible for torture at Guantanamo Bay.5

What a busy little computer company.

One week before the Comair crash in Lexington, on August 20, 2006, the Associated Press released a story on the "ACS Bribery and Federal Contract Fixing" scandal: "Affiliated Computer Services Inc., one of the companies negotiating with the Family and Social Services Administration for a state welfare eligibility contract worth an estimated $1 billion over 10 years, formerly employed FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob." But most significantly, "Privately-owned" ES&S and Sequoia voting machine concerns are effectively controlled by the same company - Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) of Dallas, Texas."

And it was an election year ...

While digging about, you will find an anonymous blogger who observes that ACS and ES&S are "a major player in providing technology services to the US court system, USPS, DOT, FCC, the US Senate, the White House, and several other government agencies.... What does this mean? It's an interesting concentration of power. If one controls the datastream of an organization, one has a great deal of knowledge of what it's really doing. Actually, in this case, it would be interesting to know the relationship between ACS and the GOP and/or the Bush family."6

Fenton Dawson was just the man to know all about that relationship. But he's dead ...
--
NOTES

1.) http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/15385951.htm?source=rss&channel=kentucky_news

2) Brewton, P., The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush, 1992, p. 241.

3) Library of Congress release:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/congress/2002_h/hju78298_0.htm#7
- "TESTIMONY OF TOM BLODGETT, MANAGING DIRECTOR, BUSINESS PROCESS SOLUTIONS, AFFILIATED COMPUTER SERVICES, INC.," and "TESTIMONY OF RUDI DEKKERS, CEO, HUFFMAN AVIATION INTERNATIONAL, INC."

4) Shane Harris, "Intelligence Inc.," May 15, 2005.
http://www.govexec.com/features/0505-15/0505-15s1.htm.

5) http://www.apfn.net/MESSAGEBOARD/03-09-05/discussion.cgi.53.html.

6) Anon., "A Parable of the US 2000 Election,"
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/vote2000.html.

Otto Reich, the Venezuelan Coup and the Media "Concert of Lies"

Subject: FW: Otto Reich
(Originally posted April 17, 2002)

A coup d'tat signed by Otto Reich
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD
(Special for Granma International)

Otto Reich

HIS fingerprints are all over the perimeter of the crime. The disgraceful disinformation campaign carried out by the private Venezuelan media; the siege of the Cuban embassy in Caracas; the false resignation of President Ch?vez and his alleged plea for asylum in Cuba: everything bears the stamp of Otto Reich.

The former top official in the Reagan regime, buddy of the most fanatical anti-Cuba terrorists ... he has personally and clearly masterminded the subversive plans that have just failed in Caracas.

Recruited by the CIA while he was still in the university, Reich was a specialist in deception during the Reagan administration. Reagan?s vice president, George Bush was a former operative and then head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

From his Office of Public Diplomacy, Reich covered up all the dirtiest operations of the war in Nicaragua, circulating false information through the media.

When the narco-contra scandal - poorly named the Iran-Contra scandal - blew open with the discovery of drug trafficking operations managed by Cuban-American terrorists Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada Carriles,
Reagan was forced to remove him from the White House.

U.S. EMBASSY, HEART OF THE CONSPIRACY

Otto was appointed as ambassador to Venezuela, a disparaging gesture remembered for years in Caracas. There he dedicated himself to securing the release of killer pediatrician and CIA agent Orlando Bosch - detained there after the horrific sabotage of a Cuban airliner - and to act the mafioso on behalf of U.S. interests, particularly within Venezuela's Cuban business circles.

Reich, born in Cuba of an Austrian father and an immigrant to the United States at an early age, established his Venezuelan network in military circles - thus obtaining an order for Bosch's release from a military tribunal - and within the Venezuelan secret services, in which the CIA and the U.S. embassy had their people well placed.

That same U.S. embassy in Caracas is currently occupied by Ambassador Charles Shapiro, former head of the State Department's Cuba Desk, who received the central civilian conspirators of the April 11 coup on a regular basis, for several weeks prior to that action.

During the ?80s, Otto Reich launched disinformation from his Office of Public Diplomacy, like the ones about MiG fighter planes being purchased secretly by Nicaragua and allegedly ready to attack U.S. territory, and the story that the Miskito Indians were being persecuted by the Sandinistas. He also circulated rumors to discredit journalists who wrote about the Nicaraguan revolution in terms that were considered too positive.

Reich clearly threw himself into his passion for "slanted" journalism again, starting on January 11, when Bush handed him his new post, against the will of the Senate.

Since February, the U.S. press has been talking of an alleged malaise within the Venezuelan administration. The Washington Post wrote of a precarious and dangerous situation, quoting a senior State Department official.

On February 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell affirmed before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Chavez had broken with democracy.

On February 6, CIA Director George Tenet and Carl Ford, aide to the secretary of state for intelligence, spoke before the Senate Intelligence Committee of a climate of crisis in Venezuela.

On February 7, Colonel Pedro Soto, former aide to Carlos Andres Perez (president at the time of the 1992 coup led by Chavez), affirming that he represented "75% of the armed forces," publicly attacked the Chavez government. (Invited by an international institute, a CIA client, Soto then visited Washington and Miami, where he was to be found on April 11, loudly celebrating the "return to democracy," along with Cuban-American terrorist leaders).

Thus a rapidly and steadily more brazen deception campaign was mounted, rapidly joined by the Venezuelan private press, which ended up running a grossly hostile campaign against the government. El Universal daily and Radio Caracas Television, Globovision and Venevision TV networks were already actively preparing the media-military coup, channeling information and systematically harassing the constitutional government and the head of state.

During the coup, the same disinformation gang cut off the broadcast the president's speech to the people and repeated lie after lie, unleashing violent incidents that would subsequently serve to justify the subversive operation. Meanwhile, the representatives of the new "order" were destroying state television program material.

Then the communications junta shamelessly spread the false information that Chavez had resigned, silenced all public pronouncements by members of the government, and the played up declarations in favor of the criminal coup. One of these was made by Ambassador Shapiro, who affirmed that April 11 was an extraordinary day in the history of Venezuela.

In the morning of Saturday, April 13, speaking before more than 30,000 people at rally in the municipality of Gaira de Melena, Habana province, in the presence of President Fidel Castro, Bruno Rodriguez, Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, clearly denounced the media disinformation campaign in Venezuela. "The truth is that a coup d'tat has taken place in
Venezuela and that a sellout and pro-U.S. junta is usurping, by means of force, the power invested in President Ch?vez by the Venezuelan people, with hopes of erasing decades of injustice and corruption by applying Bolivar's ideals."

Other lies followed the one alleging Chavez's resignation, including the assertion that Chavez had sought asylum in Cuba, which was rapidly refuted by Havana.

Indeed, the media complicity with the coup organizers was so strong that when the latter attempted to take the imprisoned president out of the country to the United States, it was planned to transport him aboard a private plane registered in the United States in the name of Gustavo Cisneros, the owner of the Venevision TV network.

Meanwhile, CNN en Espanol linked up with Globovision to finally announce the taking of Miraflores Palace by the people and the presidential guard of honor... five hours after it happened.

Lies, deception, violence, terror: everything smacks of Otto Reich in this failed coup. Even that hysterical rabble of Cuban-Venezuelan immigrants that surrounded the Cuban embassy in Caracas for a number of hours, destroying cars and threatening to enter by force - before fleeing when the Bolivarian leader's return was announced.

Otto Reich, the White House's top representative in Latin America, servant of the Miami mafia and protector of terrorists, had a fleeting triumph last
weekend. But he also had to accept a bitter lesson: that the voice of the people is much stronger than a concert of lies.

Christian Philosopher Jaques Ellul on Mass Media Illusions

"It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale," French philosopher Jacques Ellul observed. "The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment."

[Jaques Ellul- Ellul was born in Bordeaux, France, and was educated at the universities of Bordeaux and Paris. In World War II he was a leader in the French resistance. He was also prominent in the worldwide Ecumenical movement, although he later became sharply critical of the movement for what he felt were indiscriminate endorsements of political establishments, primarily of the Left (namely the socialist states of western Europe), but sometimes of the Right (especially in later writings) "Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity," he wrote.]

The CIA Infiltration of Pacifica, Part Six: Marc Cooper Red Baits Peter Camejo

by Alex Constantine
(First posted Sep. 17, 2004)

Marc Cooper

During the 2004 election year, Marc Cooper critiqued Peter Camejo, Ralph Nader's running mate, for his supposed "Trotskyist" ties - an honest denunciation or yet another example of Cooper's demonization of the left? My own investigation of Comejo's past reveals Cooper to be a media confabulator in the business of mass opinion formation.


Introductory notice: Lest anyone walk away with the mistaken impression that I am defaming the name of Marc Cooper, a doyen of the controlled left, by discussing red-baiting tactics and his basic dishonesty (documented below) - serving to discredit leftist leaders - a search of the Internet yields the same observation from a number of independent critics, eg.:

" ... In recent articles, [Marc] Cooper and [David] Corn both volunteer their “advice” in scurrilous red-baiting attacks on the antiwar movement. ... "
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/dec_02/dec_02_1.html

" ... when he is not busy redbaiting the antiwar movement ... "
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/05/08/marc-cooper-and-term-limits-in-venezuela/

" ... journalist Marc Cooper, who has perfected these sorts of redbaiting attacks ... "
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2005/12/09/bill-weinberg-redbaiter/

Marc Cooper - the Nation-Pacifica-NPR-alternative weekly (he's multi-media and he's everywhere) circuit commentator who is forever scrutinizing progressive movements for signs of communist influence to publicize and cluck his tongue over - noted in a June 21, 2004 Internet posting, entitled "Nader's Nadir," that Peter Comejo, Ralph Nader's running mate, was, in the '60s, sponsored by the "Trotskyist" Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

"Even as he insists he’s capable of peeling off substantial numbers of disgruntled Republican voters," Cooper wrote, "Nader nevertheless tapped Peter Camejo, a Green Party honcho with an exclusively leftist appeal, as his VP choice today."

Nader should be taken to task for failing to draw enough Republicans to his "lonely" run for high office?

Further, Peter Camejo, Cooper spat, "has been a dusty fixture on the radical left for literally decades. Back in the sixties, Camejo ran for president on the ticket of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. Camejo got 5% of the vote as the 2002 Green Party candidate for California Governor. Last fall he ran again in the recall election but by the end of the race was mostly polishing the apples of doomed Democratic candidate Cruz Bustamante."

The rest of us recall that Peter Camejo was the sole voice of rationality in the recent California governor's race. Nader couldn't have shown more integrity in his selection of a running mate. Camejo spoke eloquently against the war in Iraq, villified war profiteers and blind Pentagon idealogues for sacrificing the lives and interests of the country in the pursuit of illicit geopolitical and economic gains, while the other candidates performed in an embarassing comic opera of whorish marionettes.

Indeed, in his youth, Peter Camejo's name was tied to the SWP. Cooper, who echoes the Birchite rhetoric of the Cold War -- the Bureau claimed falsely in 1975, before the Pike Commission, that the Socialist Workers' Party had intimate ties with the "Fourth International" (Pike Report, p. 171) - fails to mention that the SWP was a very clean organization.

According to the Pike Report, published in 1977, the SWP has "avoided illegal and potentially violent confrontations with the authorities during any sort of civil protest. Nevertheless, this had no apparent impact of 34 years of productive spying." Party members, Camejo told Pike's investogator's, were even "forbidden by the SWP to smoke marijuana."

The FBI had no incriminating information on Camejo or the Party whatsoever (Pike, p. 172), despite tight surveillance of their activities: "The bureau apparently formulated a philosophy, in this case, to justify their investigation," Pike's commission observed.

"Considerable resources have been allocated to compound the error."

For instance, he FBI's Internal Security agents engaged in a "massive" intelligence operation to undermine the SWP. Landlords and fellow employees of SWP members were interviewed. "The FBI," Pike reported, "also maintained intensive surveillance of most, if not all, of the SWP's 2500 members."

In their attempts to discredit the SWP, Hoover's agents engaged in tactics that were undeniably "Stalinist." But Cooper has an axe to grind with an organization that even Hoover found to be blameless, forcing the beefy, criminalized director of the Bureau to render his groundless "Fourth International" smear.

As Cooper himself notes, Camejo's past is obscure to most of us. But Pacifica's own Prince of Darkness has dredged it up, without elaboration, as if a 40-year-old alliance has the slightest bearing on the 2004 election race, and somehow marginalizes Nader.

In his criticism of the running mate, he borrows the rhetoric of a David Horowitz or Sean Hannity. Yet again, Cooper engages in Red baiting, and we can only ponder his motives. No one else in the press is making an issue of the candidate's "Trotskyist" past. Why does Cooper, who can find Camejo's past ties, fail to point out Bush's ties to any number of ruthless killers, fascists, swindlers and terrorists on the Right.

The full text of Cooper's remarks:

http://marccooper.typepad.com/marccooper/2004/06/naders_nadir.html

Monday, June 21, 2004 
Nader's Nadir

What’s up with Ralph Nader? He’s making less sense every day. While he eschewed the Green Party this time around to run an “independent” presidential campaign, and even as he insists he’s capable of peeling off substantial numbers of disgruntled Republican voters, Nader nevertheless tapped Peter Camejo, a Green Party honcho with an exclusively leftist appeal, as his VP choice today.

Camejo, a Bay Area-based fund manager, has been a dusty fixture on the radical left for literally decades. Back in the sixties, Camejo ran for president on the ticket of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. Camejo got 5% of the vote as the 2002 Green Party candidate for California Governor. Last fall he ran again in the recall election but by the end of the race was mostly polishing the apples of doomed Democratic candidate Cruz Bustamante.

If Camejo could muster more than 100 Republican or conservative votes (disgruntled or not) nationwide it would be a miracle. So much for Nader’s notion of appealing across ideological lines.

The Nader campaign – what there is of it—now seems to be driven by the same bureaucratic imperatives of any traditional campaign, albeit on a micro scale. Ralph now just wants to get on as many ballots as he can, at whatever cost, and with whomever it takes to get there.

My colleague Dougie Ireland, already outlined earlier this year Nader’s grim alliance with whacko cultists – a marriage cooked up to get Ralph on the New York ballot. Now Nader’s choice of hack Camejo is aimed not at winning any serious number of voters but rather at picking up the Green Party’s formal endorsement, along with its ballot line in 22 states.

The Greens meet in convention this week where in between “twinkling” at each other they will decide whom if anybody to nominate for president.

Lawyer David Cobb has been leading with a plurality of delegates promising to run a “strategic” campaign that would not draw votes from John Kerry in key toss-up "battleground" states. But Nader now might also pick up the delegates that had been pledged to Camejo.

Nader could very well then finish this weekend as, once again, the official Green nominee. But the Party itself is almost certain to emerge from the convention weakened and split.

I don’t think much of this matters very much as I wrote earlier this year. The Green Party, like Western Civilization, is a good idea that never really got off the ground. Nader, meanwhile, seems to be rapidly squandering a lifetime’s worth of well-earned respect. Running a third party campaign during this election cycle would have been tough enough even if conceived and implemented in the most thought-out, strategic, and serious manner. Now, with Camejo as his running mate, Nader’s lonely quest threatens to turn into nothing more than a carnival sideshow.

Posted by Marc Cooper on Monday, June 21, 2004 at 04:30 PM |
-------
Some of the commentary that followed this posting at one blog:

Cooper and Corn are narcs
by its real simple to figure out... Saturday, Sep. 18, 2004 at 1:03 AM

How come people in the establishment left don't recognize the CIA connections of these two shills of the man? Corn basically facilitated all of the talking heads in "UNCOVERED" and Cooper talks more anti-Left and anti-Arabic crap than Hannity and Coulter put together. Somebody give them the boot so they can go work for Jill Powers..snap!

if he had more to contribute...
by more rational Sunday, Sep. 19, 2004 at 10:15 AM

Camejo's morph into a liberal is less drastic than Coopers morph to Democratic party shill, and less drastic than Kerry's shift from an anti-war activist to a pro-war DLCer.

Yeah, Cooper's probably a spook
by Carolina Sunday, Sep. 19, 2004 at 1:41 PM

Glad some of our news wire contributors recognize Cooper as a likely shill for the Dummycrats and the military industrial complex. 

Among other things, Copper is an apologist for the Warren Commisson cover-up of the JFK assassination. The full brazzeness of this disinformation has been readily exposed in John Armstrong's 2003 book 'Harvey & Lee."

See http://www.jfkresearch.com/Armstrong

If more people read Armstrong's book, they'd realize why progress has been in a nose dive for the last 40 years [the exact time period since the publication of the Warren Report in September 1964].

FEMA hijacks Midwest broadcast signals with mistaken presidential alert

The federal government hijacked radio and TV transmissions in the Midwest yesterday with test signals that triggered the sort of high-level emergency alert that is reserved for use by the president.

The Quincy Herald says alerts were sent at 7:33 a.m., 7:49 a.m., 7:55 a.m. and 8:07 a.m. Radio listeners heard nothing but dead air. TV viewers saw a scrolling message that said: "The Emergency Action Notification Network has issued an emergency action notification for the United States, beginning at ..."

FEMA tells the Associated Press that the mistake affected Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan.

"While the interrupted morning drive-time broadcasts proved the Illinois system worked, the fact that what's known as an Emergency Action Notification, or EAN -- the highest level of EAS alert, indicating an emergency message is coming from the White House -- could be relayed mistakenly to override stations was a bit of a jolt, sending engineers scrambling at the affected outlets throughout Illinois and in adjacent media markets such as St. Louis," the Chicago Tribune reports. "Compounding the error, an actual presidential code, minus any audio explanation, was sent rather than a lesser alert or a notification of a systems test of some kind."

A FEMA spokeswoman tells the paper that this "unintentional disruption" occurred after a new piece of equipment in Springfield, Ill., picked up test signals that were being sent between Cleveland and Richmond, Va. WLS-TV expands on this explanation: "The federal emergency management agency is adapting satellites to handle emergency messages, and a government contractor Tuesday was testing it for Illinois, except he used active codes to send the message."

The Congressional Research Service has a report on the emergency alert system:

Congressional Research Service ̃ The Library of Congress
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Order Code RL32527
Emergency Communications: The Emergency Alert System (EAS) and All-Hazard Warnings
Updated September 13, 2006

Linda K. Moore
Analyst in Telecommunications Policy
Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Emergency Communications:
The Emergency Alert System (EAS)
and All-Hazard Warnings

Excerpt: The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (P.L. 108-458) addressed the possibility of using advanced telecommunications and Internet technologies for emergency notification by requiring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement pilot projects. On June 26, 2006, President George W. Bush issued an executive order stating that U.S. policy is “to have an effective, reliable, integrated, flexible, and comprehensive system to alert and warn the American people.” ...

Continues:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL32527.pdf

Cuba Official Wants U.S. Regime Change

" ... Alarcon refused to comment on whether Cuba has evidence of a plot to assassinate Castro, saying only that 'President Bush is very good in the business of killing people . ... '''

Guardian
Saturday June 2, 2007


HAVANA (AP) - A top Cuban official said Friday he hopes the United States will experience ``regime change'' and stop interfering in the affairs of governments around the globe.

In an interview with CNN, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon was asked to react to comments by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said while traveling in Spain that ``there must be a democratic transition in Cuba.''

Alarcon responded that he hopes ``there will be a regime change in your country.''

``A change from war to peace, a change (from) arrogance and this kind of interfering in everybody's affairs, and looking back a little bit at home and (facing) the real problems Americans have,'' he said.1

Alarcon also told CNN that ``the worst moments are behind'' Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who shocked Cuba and the world last July when he announced he was temporarily stepping aside in favor of a government headed by his younger brother Raul and a consortium of officials including Alarcon.

``Practically you can say he is fully recovered,'' Alarcon said.

Washington, which maintains a 45-year-old embargo and travel ban against communist Cuba, has long said it hopes a democratically elected government will take over in the wake of Castro's illness.

The 80-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since falling ill, but life on the island has remained little changed.

Castro has written a string of signed essays recently, and this week quoted President Bush as saying, ``I'm a hard-line president and I'm only waiting for Castro to die.''

``I'm not the first, nor will I be the last, that Bush has ordered to be deprived of life,'' wrote Castro, who provided few details about when the U.S. president allegedly made the comments.

Alarcon refused to comment on whether Cuba has evidence of a plot to assassinate Castro, saying only that "President Bush is very good in the business of killing people.''

"Just watch CNN every day and you will see how many Iraqis, how many innocent people, are losing their lives,'' he said.

PRINCE Andrew has sold his Berkshire mansion to a Kazakh tycoon

News of the World

PRINCE Andrew has sold his Berkshire mansion to a Kazakh tycoon for £6million, we can reveal. The buyer's famous countryman Borat was unavailable for comment, but his great admirer ROBBIE COLLIN has penned a few words on his behalf, for, as Borat might say, make benefit glorious readers of News of World.



JAGSHEMASH! I am delight to report that Prince Andrew has make sale of his beautiful home Sunninghill Park to a businessman from Kazakhstan.

One of my countrymens has bought the giant house for £6million and will move in as soon as it has been checked for gypsies.

The Kazakh businessman, whose name is not known, got a good deal. He originally make an offer of swap for Kazakhstan's biggest pubis harvesting factory—but this was reject.

Is Prince Andrew crazy? Kazakh pubis is best in world! We use to make everything, from scouring pad to children's sweater.

Plus he was going to throw in a family of freckle-faces who can produce red pubis, which is as valuable as diamonds.

It is not known where this Kazakh man got enough money to pay for house. Perhaps he is high up in famous Kazakh computer manufacturers Mikrozoft.

I used to work for them—I the one who paint the machines and remove dead birds from their pipes. Many British think that red-brick Sunninghill Park look cheap and tacky, like Tesco of 1980s.

But it remind me of the great Zailiysky Lunatic Asylum in Almaty, where for 20 tenge you can throw potatoes at the strange ones. The house has six reception rooms and 12 bedrooms, so there will be plenty of room for his goats. And all bedrooms are en-suite, so you need not make flush after doing a toilet for almost a fortnight. Nice!

There is also a secure compound at back for safe storage of vehicles and wives. And it is surrounded by a high wall for keep out the Jew.

I believe that Prince Andrew was once married to famous celebrity Sarah Ferguson —he is very lucky man!

In Kazakhstan we love Sarah Ferguson. We have a golden statue of her in the middle of Almaty. I would very much like to suck Sarah's toes!

I like her a lot more than my wife Oksana, who died last week. She was gathering sticks in the forest and a hunter mistake her for bear and shoot her.

I would also very much like to meet other royal wife, famous topless model Griff Rhys Jones. Prince Edward is a very lucky man too!

Both are luckier than his brother Prince Charles, who has followed ancient Kazakh tradition of marrying your favourite horse.

There are many nice things to do near to Sunninghill Park, in beautiful village of Sunningdale in Berkshire.

I hear that at nearby golf course, Prince Andrew has participated in many foursomes. Wa-wa-wee-wa!

I would very much like to try this because I once hear Prince Andrew talk of celebrating after getting his balls in the 18th hole. I very excite because in Kazakhstan our women only have three.

Plus there is lovely neighbour. Nearby estate called Harewood is 27 acres and costs £24million. It was bought two years ago by great Russian businessman Andrei Melnichenko, the world's 172nd richest man with a £2.3billion fortune.

He recently paid Jennifer Lopez £1 million to perform at a party for his wife Aleksandra. ...

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/borat_2406.shtml

The Public Lynching of Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie has made a film about the murder of Daniel Pearl, and committed the offense of shunning Fox News reporters who requested an interview (the famed actress obviously isn't politically naive). The controlled media, led by Fox, is retaliating by shredding her reputation.

The reaction from the press recalls the fury that rose up around Oliver Stone and his JFK movie - BEFORE THE SCRIPT WAS EVEN WRITTEN. Angelina Jolie is a busy left-wing activist, and the media attacks on her character serve to further discredit liberal causes in public perception, and one more progressive activist in the public eye is portrayed, like Stone, as a capricious political pariah.

This story from the London Observer reads like the anatomy of an orchestrated character assassination campaign - let this bandwagon pass. Send Fox a message about media brainwashing - See the Daniel Pearl movie, give to her landmine-elimination fund, turn off the tasteless corporate-state propaganda on Murdoch TV. Public lynchings are so passé ...

- AC

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2109952,00.html#article_continueAmerica's disgust at 'perfect Angelina'

Paul Harris in New York
Sunday June 24, 2007

The Observer

Mighty controversy... Angelina Jolie.
 
She's one of the most beautiful women in the world, a talented actress who lives with a man many claim is the sexiest man on the planet and she has a penchant for doing high-profile good deeds. But now - perhaps inevitably - the Angelina Jolie backlash has begun. The stunning movie star generates headlines almost every day but now those headlines have taken a distinctly negative turn.

For the backers of her new film, A Mighty Heart, which tells the story of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, negative publicity around Jolie's recent activities is becoming a potential threat to its success.

First was a disastrous PR gaffe after one of Jolie's overzealous lawyers tried to force journalists to sign a contract before they could interview her for the film's publicity drive. The document said they could not ask Jolie any personal questions and that the interview '... could only be used to promote the picture'.

Though the world of celebrity interviews is often full of such tacit agreements, the existence of a legal contract saw many reporters, including those from USA Today and the Associated Press news agency, cancel interviews. The fact that A Mighty Heart is about the issue of press freedom made the story all the more ironic. 'Jolie turns out to be a mighty hypocrite when it comes to her own freedom of the press,' said Fox TV's Roger Friedman.

But that move was just the latest in a series of press kerfuffles for Jolie's staff had previously tried to ban Fox journalists from covering her new film's premiere, until the studio behind the film, Paramount, intervened. At the same time some of the adulatory coverage of Jolie associated with the film has itself become the subject of intense criticism. Men's magazine Esquire is putting Jolie - barely clothed - on the cover of its July issue. The magazine is also running a lengthy profile and interview with Jolie inside.

Yet instead of drawing people into watching the movie, the piece has been the subject of intense media-bashing. On the popular online magazine Slate the article was trashed under the headline: 'The worst celebrity profile ever written?' And elsewhere a review of the film was headlined: 'The Mariane Pearl movie can't escape the shadow of Angelina Jolie' and went on to say that casting had trumped acting because Jolie was an actress whose 'global recognizability quotient is exceeded only by that of the sun' and hence we cannot suspend belief long enough to believe she is Pearl. Its a damning turnaround for the actress.

Perhaps some of the backlash is the inevitable consequence of how Jolie and Brad Pitt have skilfully exploited the intense media interest in their lives in return for publicity for charities and causes that they are interested in. But even that has started to backfire. Several US newspapers reported last week that she has abandoned a charity in her eldest son's name. She established the Maddox Jolie Project to protect the eco-system and watershed conservation values in his homeland of Cambodia. But according to 'sources' Jolie has stopped funding it.

Other recent stories in celebrity magazines have criticised her child-rearing skills and speculated that Pitt is reluctant to marry her. She is constantly compared with his ex, Jennifer Aniston.

But she still has support. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell last week heaped praise on the actress for her work raising awareness of landmines and refugees. 'Her work with refugees is not something to decorate herself. She studies the issues,' he told Newsweek.