October 31, 2014

These are worse than Gangster Times... worse than NAZI Times...

...these are BFEE Times, when those who own the Oil possess Global Power.

For proof, look around. Wars without end to profit those making the gear needed to fight them, spying on the entire American people in order to do who-knows-what with the information, welfare for Wall Street and penure the Middle Class, destroy all hope for the poor and any chance at opportunity other than imprisonment. Other than that, times aren't all that bad for the richest people.

October 30, 2014

So what? Ricky Martin Bush is still a stalker.

A Look Back At The Stalkerish Past Of The Bush Dynasty's Future Star

May 6, 2013
The Smoking Gun

So George P. Bush--son of Jeb and the political dynasty’s fourth generation standout--is making his Washington, D.C. debut this week. The 37-year-old lawyer is now running for Texas land commissioner, but his family reportedly expects bigger things from the telegenic offspring of the former Florida governor.

Which is as good an excuse as any to revisit a police report detailing George P.’s creepy, stalkerish behavior towards a former girlfriend.

Back when he was a Rice University student, Bush was investigated for burglary and criminal mischief related to a 4 AM visit to the Miami home of his ex, Cristina Cohen, and her parents.

A Miami-Dade Police Department report includes an account of the December 31, 1994 incident provided to cops by Murry Cohen, Cristina’s father.

According to Cohen, Bush--wearing black shorts and no shirt--arrived at the residence and “went to his daughter’s bedroom window,” pulled it open, and “pushed the screen inward.” As Bush was “climbing in the window,” Murry Cohen awoke and spotted the trespasser. A neighbor of the Cohens also spotted Bush trying to get into the residence and began to argue with him.

With his intrusion thwarted, Bush “backed out of the window.” Cohen reported seeing Bush then “jump into a vehicle and flee.” But he would not be gone for long.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/george-p-bush/george-p-bush-stalking-758409

It's like they think they're royalty above the law in an empire or something.

October 29, 2014

British Spy Agency: We Don't Need Warrant for Americans' Data. We Have 'Arrangements'

Practices revealed by human rights organizations show how GCHQ gets warrantless access to NSA data

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer
Oct. 29, 2014, Common Dreams

British intelligence agencies can access Americans' communications data without a warrant and keep it for two years, newly released documents show.

The British spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), revealed the practices, called "arrangements" by the government, to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), a watchdog for national surveillance practices.

Some of the details of of these "arrangements" were provided to human rights organizations including Privacy International, Liberty and Amnesty International, which had brought a challenge regarding GCHQ's surveillance activities to the IPT following revelations made possible by Edward Snowden.

The policies allow the British agencies to receive bulk data from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as well as other foreign agencies.

As detailed in a document (pdf) posted by Privacy International, the arrangements appear to serve as legal justification for the practice, stating that it not a circumvention of law when "it is not technically feasible" to get a warrant "and it is necessary and proportionate for the Intelligence Services to obtain those communications."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/29/british-spy-agency-we-dont-need-warrant-americans-data-we-have-arrangements



There seems to be a SPECTRE looking over America's shoulder.

October 29, 2014

The Contras ''are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'' -- Ronald Reagan

NICARAGUA

Human Rights Watch (1989)

Under the Reagan administration, U.S. policy toward Nicaragua's Sandinista government was marked by constant hostility. This hostility yielded, among other things, an inordinate amount of publicity about human rights issues. Almost invariably, U.S. pronouncements on human rights exaggerated and distorted the real human rights violations of the Sandinista regime, and exculpated those of the U.S.-supported insurgents, known as the contras. In 1989, under the Bush administration, U.S. policy toward Nicaragua has experienced one major change, in that it appears that the contras have ceased to be regarded as a viable military and political option. The White House has managed to keep the contras alive -- against the wishes of the Central American presidents as repeatedly expressed in the agreements that are part of the peace process -- but the contras have not been a significant fighting force, and they are unlikely to be turned into one after the Nicaraguan elections scheduled for February 1990.

This is an important change from a human rights perspective, because the contras were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners. In 1989 the number of contra abuses has been greatly reduced in comparison to the beginning of the peace process, largely because, at least through September, they were entering Nicaragua less frequently. To the extent that the contras have continued to operate, however, they have continued to commit these violations, and toward the end of 1989, abuses by the contras appeared to be on the increase. The Bush administration is responsible for these abuses, not only because the contras are, for all practical purposes, a U.S. force, but also because the Bush administration has continued to minimize and deny these violations, and has refused to investigate them seriously. As in the Reagan years, the Bush State Department has continued to make too much of monitoring mechanisms within the contra movement that have been wholly unsuccessful in prosecuting those responsible for abuses.

In all other respects, U.S. policy toward Nicaragua under the Bush administration is no different than it was throughout the Reagan years. The peace process in Central America has taken hold in Nicaragua, albeit with difficulties, but largely because the Central American presidents who devised it have been able to overcome U.S. objections. The process initiated in Esquipulas, Guatemala in August 1987 has resulted in 1989 in an electoral process in Nicaragua that is well under way. The Sandinista government has offered several concessions to the opposition, whose candidates are openly supported by the United States. There is extensive ongoing international observation of the election campaign by large, independent teams sent to live in the country on behalf of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. By all accounts, this international presence is helping to reduce frictions that might arise during a highly polarized and emotional campaign.

In contrast, the Bush administration has found only negative remarks to make about the electoral process. It has echoed contra complaints about the composition of the electoral tribunal, chaired by an independent person appointed by the government, and including two members of the Sandinista party and two members of different factions of the opposition in proportion to their results in the 1984 elections. By contrast, the Bush administration complimented the government of Paraguay for its 1989 elections, even though all members of the electoral council were appointed in accordance with their parties' showings in the elections held under the Stroessner dictatorship. The Sandinista government agreed to allow Nicaraguans living abroad to register, but did not yield to the demand that they be allowed to vote in Miami and Honduras. The State Department considered that a blatant flaw in the elections, although most Latin American countries do not offer polling places abroad and, most notably, the Salvadoran elections, hailed by the State Department as models of fairness, were closed to Salvadorans residing abroad.

In November 1989, the State Department circulated a "Nicaraguan Human and Civil Rights Update," in which it quoted selectively from a report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. It cited the Commission's comments on the need for full freedom of expressions, as well as mechanisms to guarantee it, and on the problems posed by the fact that the Ministry of Interior was responsible for enforcing the newly amended Media Law. The State Department omitted the Commission's acknowledgment that, under the August 1989 agreement between President Daniel Ortega and the opposition, jurisdiction to enforce the Media Law during the electoral campaign had been transferred to the Supreme Electoral Council.

[font color="red"]This posturing by the Bush administration leaves the impression that it will find the elections to have been clean and fair only if the U.S.-supported opposition candidates win. If the Sandinistas prevail, the groundwork has been laid for the State Department to claim that the elections were illegitimate.[/font color]

In a related matter, the Bush administration has continued to press its predecessors' long-standing but indefensible position that the number of prisoners held in Nicaragua for security-related offenses is much larger than it really is. The November "Update" mentions 6,000 such prisoners, when in fact there were no more than about 1,300. This insistence on unsupportable figures is bad enough as an exaggeration, since effective human rights advocacy depends on accuracy, but as the peace process slowly progresses, the U.S. figures may also become an obstacle to peace. The Sandinista government has agreed to release all political prisoners once the contras are completely demobilized. The State Department's figures thus may become a tool to impugn the completeness of an eventual prisoner release.

In 1989, for the first time in many years, the State Department spoke about Americas Watch with words of praise. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Bernard Aronson, appearing on national television, called Americas Watch "an independent human rights organization." Even contra leader Adolfo Calero quoted approvingly from an Americas Watch report, released in April 1989, which he waved in front of the cameras. The reason for this praise was that Americas Watch had taken the lead in documenting and publicizing killings in remote, war-torn areas of Nicaragua, where Sandinista military and state-security agents had summarily executed peasants whom they considered contra supporters. In an October 1989 report, Americas Watch added to the murders documented in the April report and also analyzed the Nicaraguan government's actions in response to complaints by Americas Watch about the killings. Those actions included investigation, prosecutions and, in some cases, punishment of government agents for the abuses described. The State Department has not commented on the October report. The State Department's November "Update" mentioned references by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to the pattern of summary executions, but did not mention, as the Commission did, that the Nicaraguan government had investigated and prosecuted some of those responsible for these killings.

The contras have continued to operate in Nicaragua and have increased their operations there since September. Talks between the Nicaraguan government and the contras have not resumed since they broke down in June 1988, although in November 1989 talks were held in New York and Washington for the limited purpose of reaching a cease-fire agreement, after President Ortega abruptly announced the end of the unilateral cease fire his government had established the year before. Ortega's decision had been prompted by two large contra attacks, one an ambush against demobilized militias who were traveling to register for the elections. In the succession of claims and counterclaims that followed Ortega's announcement, the State Department admitted that in October, contra contingents had crossed into Nicaragua from Honduras, offering the disingenuous explanation that the purpose of the infiltration was to encourage registration for the elections.

The policy of keeping the contras alive, through so-called "humanitarian" or non-lethal aid, sustains a force that has shown itself incapable of operating without consistently committing gross abuses in violation of the laws of war. The policy also has placed in jeopardy the holding of elections by encouraging contra attacks on the electoral process. Thus, while the Bush administration proclaims its support for human rights and free and fair elections in Nicaragua, it persists in sabotaging both.

SOURCE: http://www.hrw.org/reports/1989/WR89/Nicaragu.htm

[font color="purple"]NEVER VOTE for the GOP. They are toadies for conservative warmongers.[/font color]

February 14, 2021

Your hearts warm my heart. Thank you.

October 27, 2014

How Rich Are the 400 Richest Americans?

How Rich Are the 400 Richest Americans?

And What They Do With Their Money

by LAWRENCE WITTNER
CounterPunch, Oct. 27, 2014

EXCERPT...

According to Forbes, a leading business magazine, the combined wealth of the 400 richest Americans has now reached the staggering total of $2.3 trillion. This gives them an average net worth of $5.7 billion–an increase of 14 percent over the previous year.

With fortunes far beyond the dreams of past kings and potentates, these super-wealthy individuals enjoy extraordinary lifestyles. Larry Ellison, the third wealthiest man in the United States (with $50 billion, an increase of 22 percent) reportedly has “15 or so homes scattered all around the world.” Among his yachts are two exceptionally big ones, each over half as long as a football field. In fact, they’re large enough for him to play basketball while on board. If a ball bounces over the rail, Ellison has a powerboat following along to retrieve it.

SNIP...

Furthermore, the richest Americans often use their wealth to campaign against the public good. Pre-eminent among them are Charles and David Koch, the sons of a wealthy founder of the John Birch Society, as well as the fourth and fifth richest Americans (with $84 billion). Over the years, the Koch brothers have used their vast wealth to champion the abolition of public schools, the postal system, minimum wage laws, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Bankrolling a broad variety of rightwing groups and foundations, they have zealously opposed legislation providing for environmental protection, health care reform, and limits on campaign contributions. As massive financers of rightwing election campaigns–including more than $400 million to candidates in 2011-2012 alone–they have been very effective in pulling the Republican Party and American politics rightward.

Even Americans who place some of their enormous wealth in tax exempt foundations often use them for questionable purposes. Since 2008, the Gates Foundation–funded by Bill Gates (the nation’s wealthiest individual, with $81 billion)–has spent at least $2 billion to undermine public schools by promoting charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing, and other corporate educational initiatives. The Gates Foundation has also played a key role in creating organizations opposing teacher unions and teacher tenure. Meanwhile, the Walton Foundation contributed more than $750 million to these efforts. In Milwaukee, the Walton Foundation funded the organizations that developed and pushed through that city’s school voucher program. In addition, both the Gates and Walton Foundations have funded the work of ALEC, the rightwing operation that has successfully promoted the passage of state laws that restrict voting rights, weaken unions, privatize education, harass immigrants, encourage “Stand Your Ground” behavior, and, of course, provide big tax cuts for the rich.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/27/how-rich-are-the-400-richest-americans/

Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is “What’s Going On at UAardvark?” (Solidarity Press), a satirical novel about campus life.



Life's a beach.

October 25, 2014

Horton is the attorney who kept Gov. Don Siegelman's case in the national spotlight.

Regarding the Senate report on CIA torture: When did this stop being a democracy?



Look forward to Horton's book:

State secrecy is increasingly used as the explanation for the shrinking of public discussion surrounding national security issues. The phrase “that’s classified” is increasingly used not to protect national secrets from legitimate enemies, but rather to stifle public discourse regarding national security. Washington today is inclined to see secrecy as a convenient cure to many of its problems. But too often these problems are not challenges to national security, they involve the embarrassment of political figures, disclosure of mismanagement, incompetence and corruption and even outright criminality.

For national security issues to figure in democratic deliberation, the public must have access to basic facts that underlie the issues. The more those facts disappear under a cloak of state secrecy, the less space remains for democratic process and the more deliberation falls into the hands of largely unelected national security elites. The way out requires us to think much more critically and systematically about secrecy and its role in a democratic state.

http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/lords-of-secrecy/scott-horton/9781568584881

October 24, 2014

They certainly don't like leaving anything to chance.

Their problem is they don't know what they don't need to know, and they don't know what they do need to know. And I certainly don't mean to call all of them "Gestapo," just the NAZI ones.

People who pointed this out include Sen. Frank Church. The great Democrat from Idaho was a liberal patriot, a war hero and a statesman, truly an extraordinary American.

Standing up for the United States Constitution and We the People, Frank Church also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he warned if it were turned on the American people, it's "Goodnight, Democracy." So, the NSA spied on him:

And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:



From GWU's National Security Archives:



I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-CT) also got the treatment from NSA? Sort of anti-buy partisanship, that Integrity.

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up.” — Senator Richard Schweiker on “Face the Nation” in 1976.

Lost to History NOT

October 24, 2014

Details from the great Russ Baker via the great DUer Mc_Mike...

There's a good analysis of the Parrott memo in Russ Baker's book 'Family of Secrets'

It runs on pp 45 through 66 (paperback version). I'm not saying you must read my source, though. To sum it up: Poppy bush was in Dallas campaigning against Kennedy and the Democrats on 11-21 and 11-22 morning. He was in Tyler, Texas (he alleges) prepared to give a repug campaign speech, and heard that wires from Dallas confirmed that the President had been assassinated (1:38 pm Central). He didn’t give the political speech. Instead, a few minutes later, he called the FBI to 'finger' Parrott (1:45 pm Central) -- 'There's this guy who volunteers for the organization I'm leading, and he's been talking about killing Kennedy. Gee whiz, I hope he didn’t do anything rash against the guy I’ve been railing against in my Senate run. By the way, I’m not in Dallas, I used my oil buddy’s private jet to go to Tyler, and I’ll use it to go back to Dallas, now'. Fortunately for James Parrott, at the exact same time of the call, Poppy's right hand man in the Harris County repug Party, Kearney Reynolds, was visiting Parrott on behalf of bush to coordinate repug campaign activities with him, and so could provide an alibi to the FBI for Parrott. So what was the point?

There are several points, actually. First, as author Russ Baker points out, bush phoned a FBI agent named Graham Kitchel with the tip. Graham's brother George, an offshore oil engineer, was good friends with Poppy, long-time friends according to an interview George K. himself gave. This ensured his useless tip, among hundreds of calls fielded on what may have been the most hectic day in the FBI’s history, would get action and documentation, unlike a lot of other ‘tips’ that weren’t worthy of documentation. It wasted the Feds’ time and resources, but that waste wasn’t caused in furtherance of a plot against JFK. What the documentation of bush’s ‘tip’ ‘from Tyler’ did, was ‘establish’ the ‘fact’ that bush wasn’t in Dallas, though he was in Dallas on the morning of the 22nd and (according to bush) ‘flew back and was in Dallas on the afternoon of the 22nd’. The FBI memo functioned as a paper trail that explained bush’s presence in Dallas before and after the assassination (because many people saw him there), and ‘established’ that he wasn’t there during it. The result of the useless tip was that “Parrott became Poppy’s alibi, and Poppy’s assistant became Parrott’s.”(--Baker, p. 61). It’s the Texas two step.

Hoover didn’t like the Kennedys, but had no lost love for bush’s bircher crowd, either. He also knew that if they could kill JFK, they could kill Hoover. His reaction to the bush ‘tip’ was a memo of his own a few days later, saying ‘Mr. George Bush of the CIA , we’ve been watching that crowd of armed extremist Batista Cubans you’ve been training, and we think they’re trying to use the assassination as a pretext to launch a war from our soil against Cuba. We know that’s illegal, and we ARE in the business of law enforcement, after all.’ (Those Cubans are the people who Oswald had documented involvement with, working both in favor of their cause and, as the only documented member of the FPCC in New Orleans, ‘against’ their cause. Carlos Bringuier, Antonio Veciana, Col. Orlando Piedro, Sergio Arcacha Smith – those Cubans.)

Hoover’s memo was also important because Poppy denied being in the CIA until he was appointed to lead it, and denies having been in the CIA from the 50’s – 70’s, to this day. Hoover blew bush’s cover, quite purposefully, and told bush’s crowd that they had reached the end of their chain, in action terms.

The reaction to Hoover’s move was an immediate set of leaks in December to Dallas D.A. Wade and ‘friendly’ (to right wing repugs) Dallas reporters saying that Oswald was an FBI informant. And in January, Texas A. G. Waggoner Carr sent Warren Commission General Counsel Rankin a memo about the allegations. Carr said the allegations came from Dallas D.A. Wade, and Wade was unable or unwilling to specify the source of them. That’s the Texas repugs and CIA man bush’s crowd saying ‘How about we pin the assassination on you, Hoover?’

Interestingly, when D.A. Wade was giving a late night press conference as Nov. 22 ended, he identified Oswald as a member of the ‘Free Cuba Committee’. He was corrected by a strip-club owner named Jack Ruby, who had mixed in with the crowd of reporters, and who said ‘That’s the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.’ (The Crusade to Free Cuba Committee was an anti-Castro pro Batista Cuban expatriate crowd who had offices in the New Orleans building at 544 Camp Street. Oswald distributed flyers stamped with that address for the pro-Castro FPCC, he distributed those flyers on the street outside that building, and used that building as a base for his ‘work on behalf of’ Castro.)

I remember discussing Wade’s actions with Zap, the DU WC advocate last year. Why would a DA in a high profile international press conference take public correction from a mob flunky, instead of having the cops remove the guy from the room? How did a mob flunky strip club owner come to have such in depth knowledge about obscure pro and anti Castro groups, to make sure that the anti-Castro group didn’t get blamed, but the pro-Castro group did get blamed? Those two lines from the press conference showed that Wade knew Ruby, and Ruby knew Oswald, but the response to my question from Zap was a glib ‘Why don’t you ask Wade?’, (who is dead).

And finally, regarding Parrott: Baker’s book talked about an interview conducted with Parrott in ’93. The high interest in the Kennedy assassination in the early ‘90’s had led to Congress unanimously passing the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of ’92, which caused the Parrott memo to be released. This generated interest in Parrott, and he gave an interview in ’93. He noted that he had worked for bush’s re-election campaign in ’92, and “in an article covering the frenzied GOP-convention podium attacks on the Clinton-Gore team over family values, Parrott is described as passing out flyers saying ‘no queers or baby killing’, while wearing a plastic shield over his face, explaining that it was protection against the AIDS virus.” (-- Baker, p. 63, sourced to Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter Steve Berg, 8-19-92.) Parrott was a teabagger 17 years before the movement existed. He suffered no harm from bush’s ‘tip’. If he did, bush wouldn’t have cared, because Parrott is deranged teabag cannon fodder. But he didn’t.

Parrott’s party activism illustrates a point: for those of us who find the ‘official story’ yarn spun by the Warren Commission to be composed of a thousand loose threads, we’re not just re-hashing academic historical facts about the murder of JFK. We believe that the people who committed the crime benefitted from it, and they and their heirs are still around hurting the country. Exposing them will help prevent them from hurting the country more.

Original Post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024070535#post186

More from Russ Baker: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/16/part-1-mr-george-bush-of-the-central-intelligence-agency/

October 23, 2014

Answers sought on CIA role in ‘78 JFK probe

Investigators say files could prove interference



Eddie Lopez was the investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 2014

WASHINGTON — It was nearly four decades ago that Eddie Lopez was hired by a congressional committee to reinvestigate the 1963 murder of President John F. Kennedy, a role that had him digging through top secret documents at the CIA.

In the end, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in 1978 that it believed the assassination was probably the result of a conspiracy, although it couldn’t prove that, and its conclusions are disputed by many researchers.

But now Lopez is seeking answers to a lingering question: Could still-classified records reveal, as he and some of his fellow investigators have long alleged, that the CIA interfered with the congressional investigation and placed the committee staff under surveillance?

SNIP...

“It was time to fight one last time to ascertain what happened to JFK and to our investigation into his assassination,” Lopez, who is now the chief counsel for a school district in Rochester, N.Y., said in an interview. He is joined in the effort by two other former investigators, researcher Dan Hardway and G. Robert Blakey, the panel’s staff director.

Lopez, 58, charges that the CIA actively stymied the probe and monitored the committee staff members as they pursued leads about the events leading up to the assassination.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/10/15/decades-later-seeking-shed-light-cia-conduct-congressional-inquiry-jfk-assassination/dUf8qawsBQWfM2kxm7w7DM/story.html

PS: Must've missed this story when it came out, as it wasn't in my local paper. Thought DU might be interested, seeing how CIA and the Secret Government are still lying to the American people, still spying on the American people, and still making a killing off war. What else they're doing to the American people, I can't guess.

PPS: What Ed Lopez's partner, Dan Hardway, told me and a college museum full of folks a year ago.