The next time someone gets in my face and presumes to shout orders at me, and when I ask by whose authority, they tell say “I’m a federal agent”, I’m going to ask them: “Would that be with President Trump’s federal government?” That should take some wind out of their sails.
DENVER, COLORADO- Very interesting testimony Friday at the trial of sovereigns Stephen Nalty and Steve Byfield. The prosecution’s latest witness was FBI INFORMER Marshall Ringer. Not a sovereign citizen type turned by government agents, Ringer is a disgraced police officer hired by the FBI and inserted into the so-called “enterprise” to report its activities and propose courses of action conducive to arrests. Ringer calls himself a “self-employed security expert.” His handler FBI Special Agent Ryan English calls him an “embedded confidencial human source”. His targets gave him the title “Continental U.S. Marshall”. They hoped he would recruit like-minded sovereigns to the cause of correcting what they saw as a corrupt judicial system. Ringer’s FBI codename was “Earp”.
The accusations corruption hinged on the understanding that according to Article VI of the US Constitution, positions of public authority must take an oath secured by a bond. The “enterprise” had discovered that many Colorado judges and prosecutors and sheriffs and other elected officials didn’t have oaths or bonds on file. If this expectation was indeed a misconception, and Article VI is inapplicable, you’d think the remedy might be to tell the would-be reformers, “no, that is not a requirement, here’s why, etc.” Strangely that was never done. Neither to their person, in a handout, or to reporters looking into this sad case. An undercover would present an excellent opportunity to huddle with the enterprise and say “hey guys, I was looking into this oath stuff and discovered that according to such and such law, or ruling or whatnot, oaths and bonds are no longer mandatory, end of story!”
But “Earp” didn’t. Nobody did. Nobody has yet to spell it out, even in this courtroom. When the defendants have tried to put Article VI into the trial record, they’ve been refused. So the issue is certainly a curious one.
Instead of using an undercover to diffuse the oath-seekers by presenting the incontrovertible truth of their error, the FBI and the state prosecutors instead gathered evidence to ridicule their character. We’re told they met in trailerhomes, they struggled to cobble enough money together to give their marshall a pair of handcuffs. They dreamed of putting together a network of De Jure judges to replace the corrupt ones currently alas De Facto.
Tapes
You might think the taped conversations of the sovereigns would be damning. The defendants certainly seem to be embarassed by them, but they’re less incriminating than disarming. When “Earp” asked what was he to do with the officials he arrested, he was told, nothing, for now. Do not take any action on your own. Wait for instructions from the People’s Grand Jury. Every time “Earp” goaded his colleagues about what he could do, they’d tell him to wait until matters could be addressed democratically and judicially.
The most interesting information to come from the undercover testimony was about how the FBI wires up its informants. Colorado law requires that at least on person in a conversation consents to being recorded. As a result, every recording presented to the court begins with the person wearing the wire dictating this preamble: “This is confidential human source X, on such and such date, etc” before that informant gets out of his car or enters a meeting area.
This offers potential targets a remedy for how to avoid intrusive surveillance by authoritarian law enforcement agencies IN COLORADO. Before every meeting, have everyone say out loud: “I do not consent to being recorded.” In unison is fine. Then a leader can then ask: “Was that everyone?” To which everyone can answer in unison: “Yes.” Provided that everyone said it, that meeting cannot be recorded. Such a method not only invalidates a recording being used as evidence later, it makes the recording a crime and the agency undertaking it and in possession of it, cupabe. If an undercover continues with the recording, he’s committing a crime.
In the case of te sovereigns, and likely your scenario as well, the government’s criminal act will far exceed in severity what they thought they were recording you doing.
We’ve yet to learn how, but apparently this undercover was discovered by the defendants early in 2017. They outed him by accusing him of making recordings and giving them to the FBI. That’s when he extracted himself and the indictments and arrests happened immediately thereafter.
The Enterprise
However you may feel about these perhaps misguided judicial reformers, their adversaries are behaving every bit the corrupt villains they pretend not to be.
The accused called themselves the People’s Grand Jury, the Indestructible People’s Trust, The Colorado Supreme Court, the Continental US Marshalls, the De Jure whatnot, or simply We The People. There seems to be no end to the permutations but they never called themselves “The Enterprise”. Yet that is what their accusers call them. In fact, for the duration of the prosecution’s case, a posterboard has been left in the center of the courtroom, beneath the judge’s dias, from which the jury cannot look away, it’s titled The Enterprise, with photos of ten member now-defendants, like employees of the month, except with mugshots, ranked in order of their title or prominence. Another ten members didn’t warrant photos or arrest, yet are listed as culpable parties, guilty by association and without the chance to . You wonder if that is legal. It certainly is prejudicial. Never mind if the witness testimonies don’t add up, there is The Enterprise, like it’s a thing instead of a characterization fashioned by frame-up artists.
MONDAY UPDATE:
On Monday defendants were given one day’s recess to review the evidence for their defense, which being incarcerated has impeded. So FBI informer Marshall Springs will resume his testimony tomorrow. But the courtroom also heard that the prosecution plans to bring TWO MORE UNDERCOVERS to testify, plus two cooperative witnesses, one of whom is a co-defendant who’s taken a plea to turn STATE’S EVIDENCE.
So that makes THREE undercover officers infiltrating “the enterprise” of not much more than a dozen conspirators, two of whom have become so intimidated they’ve changed their minds about what they were trying to achieve.
The next few days should prove enlightening and heartbreaking because although prosecutors have been documenting what the defendants did, they haven’t demonstrated the acts were crimes,. As much as defendants conspired, organized and racketeered, they didn’t aim to make one cent profit, illicit or otherwise. To what offenses did the cooperative witnesses plead guilty and what accusations do they make toward their friends?
So Nalty and Byfield have the rest of the day to study the evidence against them. The jail has not provided the paper and pencils ordered by the judge. The jail hasn’t afforded the defendants access to the case evidence either. Nalty indicated today that he’d spent a sum total of 45 minutes with the electronic files. He asked for a break of four days to prepare for the rest of the trial.
Both are in Denver jail, though their legal papers were not transferred with them when the defendants are on loan from Adams and Arapahoe Counties respectively. All the defendants being charged with conspiracy are being detained in different jails to prevent them talking to each other. But the problem is they don’t have their case papers or filings, and are in Denver’s customary 22 hour lockdown in their cells, which inhibits using the jail computers which are confined to the jail law library.
Prosecutor Shapiro responded to the defendant’s complaints of the jail not providing paper and pencils by cavalierly handing them writing pads, which they grasped with handcuffed hands, with polite thankyous. Though Shapiro no doubt know they won’t be allowed to take these into the jail. Then he condescendingly bragged that he’d resolved that complaint by providing “brand new” pads to each defendant. Defendant Byfield’s pad had a couple sheets missing, so he immediately pointed out that his pad wasn’t new. I couldn’t help but burst out with a laugh.
The judge thought there was merit to Nalty’s complaint Both defendants have scant access to the jail computers necessary to see the evidence. By the prosecutor’s own admission, the “tens of thousands of pages” would have been prohibitive to provide on paper, and the “hours and hours of taped testimony” likewise can only be provided electronically.
Prosecutor Shapiro acquiesced to allowing the defendants one day to catch up, though it sounds like he is well aware that analyzing tens of thousands of pages and hours and hours of evidence would take longer than that. Shapiro told the judge he calculated the state had wiggle room to allow a one day delay and still finish with the case by Friday. Here’s what he calculated: The state figures to rest its case by Thursday afternoon. That should leave a day and a half, less closing arguments and jury instructions and jury deliberations, to finish the trial on Friday. The prosecutors’s case will have taken six and a half days, but Shapiro thought the extra day needed to look over the evidence could come out of the defense’s day planned for defense.
To help the defendants prepare, Shapiro volunteered a preview of the witnesses to expect to testify to close out their case. Coming up we have four Gilpin County administrators, but we have also two more government undercovers, and the two cooperating witnesses. One of them co-defendant Bryan Baylog.
Herbert Hoover was elected POTUS in 1928 and served one term.
John Edgar Hoover was promoted to Director of the FBI in 1923 and served ruled until 1972. When he died in office. Most royalty never serve rule that long.
Eisenhower had far more personal power to kill other people as an officer in the Army, another Bureaucracy. He was in the Mexican campaign in 1911 hunting Doroteo Aranga, aka Pancho Villa. Who they never caught. Until he was elected President of Mexico and then assassinated. By US (bureaucratic) agents.
The army DID succeed in killing quite a lot of Mexican citizens and pissing off all the others. I guess that’s some kind of accomplishment. Eisenhower got to decide who would die (nobody has the power to decide who lives) for a long time. How much would you like to bet he stayed on as an advisor (lobbyist) to the Pentagon after he was out of the White House? After that glorious Cross of Iron speech, of course, he was acting de-facto as a lobbyist for the War Industries.
Presidents and congress critters come and go. Bureaucrats we have until they retire or die. And not one of us gets to actually vote for them.
Wherever did NY congressman Michael Grimm learn such language? I’m guessing the FBI edition of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, Grimm being former FBI. If ex-officer Grimm isn’t prosecuted for MENACING, threatening to throw a DC news reporter off a balcony, it would seem only fair that the representative’s constituents be free to tease him with the same bullying words, and who knows, even mean them. I doubt Grimm himself is “man enough” to weather bluster coming his way, especially if spoken with intent. “HEY CONGRESSMAN! LET ME BE CLEAR TO YOU! If you disrespect us again, we’re going to throw you off this fucking platform! We’re going to break you in half, boy!” That heckle should be perfunctory at every next Grimm public appearance. Would it be illegal? It is. As it should be, in particular from the mouth of an offensive politician who appears to act with impunity. For example, I not only believe Grimm, I believe he’d get away with it. Does Grimm have to throw journalists from balconies before he is arrested? Would he be more than upbraided even then? It shouldn’t be up to reporter Michael Scotto to decline to press charges, the real victims are everyone who’ve now witnessed and felt this threat. And let’s press the FBI to apologize for their former agent, and promise to wipe “throw you from a fucking balcony” from their interrogation script.
MS. SHAKUR (né Joanne Chesimard) insists she did not kill the New Jersey trooper in 1973, that she couldn’t have, she’d been disabled by a police bullet to the back while her hands were raised. Shakur contends she was the victim of a legal lynching and before that a target of the USG’s COINTELPRO. Understanding now that many black activists of that era were deliberately assassinated by law enforcement, might the 17-yr old Shakur have been justified in defending herself? She was certainly justified in escaping her torturers in prison and then gaining political asylum in Cuba. She hasn’t killed a trooper since, so it’s odd then, isn’t it, that Assata Shakur is being added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List? She’s the “first woman” because it’s a terrorist-only list. Looking back, some of the best revolutionaries have been women. Retroactively designating enemies of the people is a strange development for President Obama who won’t even revisit the last administration to look for war crimes.
Certainly Assata Shakur speaks against US Capitalism but does she fit the profile of drone-strike eligibility? Apparently so and that’s telling. The intelligence community doesn’t want to stop acts of terror, it’s the ideology that terrorizes them.
That the chemical spill which has currently gotten Monument evacuated… is going to be neatly and safely taken care of and that you’re not going to be in any danger from it?
Because the Chemical Industry, especially those divisions most closely tied to the Military, are betting a hundred percent of Your Ass that if they have a Chernobyl or Fukushima or Bhopal or Texas City happen say, in Downtown Colorado Springs, they’ll be able to cover it up as neatly as they have their other little boo-boos.
What’s that? Texas City? Oh, yeah. Not only were they experiencing a chemical spill, and arresting people for taking pictures, draining the equivalent of the weeks worth of water used in Texas City, Galveston Co Texas in sheer liquid volume of volatile petrochemicals. Volatile means they react with other chemicals very quickly, sometimes explosively. The volatility of some, like Raid and Black Flag insectides, is such that they even kill (most of) the roaches in any given area. Oh, that volatile. This was done by BP at the same time their little boo-boo Earth Day present from last year was going full blast. Still is, but reporting on the damage is being covered up like cat droppings in the litter box. On the scene police brutality to keep nosy citizens from seeing first hand what’s killing them, to a neat little YouTube channel where soothing music and deep mellow voices assure us that all is well, no need to worry, the Smart People are working on it, nothing to see here, citizen, all is Hell…
But that’s not the boo-boo I’m talking about. Some people still think about that and are still trying to get answers and get those answers to US.
No, children, The Boo-Boo in question was a long time ago. End of World War 2 long time.
A cargo ship being loaded at Texas City (Oh, did I mention also that that volatile chemical leak went directly to the Gulf too? No? Bad Me, very Naughty)
But there was a huge stack of fertilizer on the pier. The fertilizer is Ammonia Nitrate.
One of the most nitrogen rich naturally occuring chemicals. Nitrogen increases volatility as well. Plants need nitrogen in the soil to metabolize other chemicals like Oxygen, Water, carbon dioxide, sugars, starches, fiber and proteins. One way to increase nitrogen is to use legume crops on a rotation basis, beans, peas, peanuts, clover…
Another is to add Anhydrous Ammonia. Much like Ammonia Nitrate it has a higher percentage of its mass in Nitrogen. Difference being Ammonia Nitrate has one extra nitrogen atom in the molecule and Anhydrous has one less hydrogen atom than the ammonia you’re accustomed to using to clean your glass.
And then there’s Nitric Acid. Used in, among other things, production of fertilizer, refining metals, making Explosives ooooo…
Bet some of the smarter readers were wondering when I was going to bring it back to all that Ammonia Nitrate, just a’ sittin’ on the dock of the bay, in the very Hot Texas Sunshine, high explosive Ammonia Nitrate, just heating up…
Now, children, what do YOU think happened on that fateful day?
From Wikipedia:
The Texas City Disaster is the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history. The incident took place on April 16, 1947, and began with a mid-morning fire on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp which was docked in the Port of Texas City. The fire detonated approximately 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate[1] and the resulting chain reaction of fires and explosions killed at least 581 people.[2] These events also triggered the first ever class action lawsuit against the United States government, under the then-recently enacted Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), on behalf of 8,485 victims
Oh NO! Not the Class Action Lawsuit! OMG that paved the way for all those Indian peasants who were the survivors of the Bhopal chemical leak from a Union Carbide plant to Oppress the Poor, poor victimized by a lawsuit (where they had to pay an outrageous sum of less than three hundred dollars apiece for Dead Children) Corporate Sucks! Wicked, Bad, Naughty Tort Laws, assuming that People had the same right to petition the government for redress of grievances as the Corporation does!
And, to further PISS OFF the Tort Reform faction of the Tea Party, it was at a time when safety regulations were blatantly ignored.
Note the date, (of the Texas City disasters, both of them) April 16th. Let’s go to the Terrorist Wing of the TeaParty/Millitia/Minutemen Republicans. On April 19th 1995 Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and an unidentified Third Murderer detonated a truck full of Ammonia Nitrate mixed with diesel fuel in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City, aiming for the IRS and BATF offices. Which were virtually untouched.
What WAS “touched” were the buildings across the street, and the offices facing the explosion on either side. One of which was a Day Care Center.
WHY do Right Wing Terrorist Freaks hate American Children?
But they were loading the ship, not unloading. The Ammonia Nitrate had come down from Nebraska on a rail line very similar to the one that passes through both Downtown and Monument. Like the one where a chemical train made a boo-boo today in Monument and could just as easily have been Denver, or Pueblo, or El Paso Texas.
Accidents happen, sure. And the more you push your luck, the more times the accidents happen.
This one just happened to happen, at at time when Republican TeaBag Fanatics are screaming that they should be allowed to slash safety and environmental regulations even further, that they have a God-Given RIGHT to poison our water land and air, a RIGHT to risk and sometimes accomplish Killing us and our children, and that we, in contrast, have a Right To Shut the Hell Up About It. And we’d better not dare file a claim for compensation when they do it to us and our kids either. They are the Royal Corporations, Bow Before Them, O Ye Peasants!
COLORADO SPRINGS- Outnumbered! Though we comprised a perfectly respectable half-dozen on the hastily organized protest of FBI tactics meant to intimidate, scouting the city blocks which formed our periphery revealed motorcycle cops poised unseen behind corners. Is that merely obligatory, post-9/11, when activists speak out against intelligence agencies? Except for a building security guard who warned us the elevated planters along the sidewalk were private property, 
CSPD and state troopers kept an unobtrusive distance — well, enough to mask their number. Our sign-holding was the usual peaceful vigil, but our minders parked a solitary unmarked cruiser smack in our faces to keep up with [menacing] appearances. The proverbial chill on free speech.
Which in their customary thought processes, comes out as confusion. For a long while they’ve been vacillating, our Dearest Redneck Leaders that is. They praise the Putin-Medvedev-KGB response to the theatre hostage situation, where they killed civilians to get at the terrorists, then a school with the same methods, same results… In response to REAL Caucasians who formerly had, until being rolled over by the Russians under the Tsars and kept a part of Russia under the Soviets and still are, much like the much booed Soviet takeover in Afghanistan which mirrors the Current NATO takeover, Where “our” current enemies were THEIR enemies… they had been sovereign nations. Then the Right Wing Reactionaries condemn the Russian government for being simultaneously too lenient and too hard-line. WTF? How Hard-Core Repressive Does One Have To Be To Satisfy These Jackasses?
This attack occurred in the waiting area where people were queued up waiting to be poked, prodded, stripped, x-rayed and fondled by the Russian equivalent of TSA. So what next, what levels of “security” will suffice? a buffer zone around the buffer zone?
Having to hire extra uniformed thugs to staff the new protocol and the buffer zones that will expand ever outward around them?
A perpetually replicating concentric circle, what happens when the borders of the safety zone collide with the borders of other safety zones, do the uniformed thugs declare inter-agency war on each other?
All that extra staffing, they’ll need to hire extra Security Screen personnel to do background checks on the New Hires. And of course constantly monitor them.
Spies to keep track of the other spies. If I were to write a computer program that does the same thing it would take all the space in each infected computer in a matter of hours. Trillions of bytes of replicated, duplicated effort.
And this in the post-Capitalist economy wherein Ponzi Capitalism crashed and burned.
Again.
Perhaps in its final death throes.
You on the Capitalist side of the argument, you can’t afford the security measures that would make your stolen gold and stolen oil safe. You don’t have enough money and guess what?
Your usual method of securing extra capital, Conquest? ain’t going to work either because you’ve already stolen all the money in the world.
There’s nothing left for you to steal.
Now for the REALLY sad part. Remember World War One? Well, unless you’re about a hundred and twenty years old you probably don’t.
But World War One was BEFORE there were any socialist economies active. All the belligerent parties were Capitalists who banked in the same system.
And they ran into essentially the same problem, all the resources were locked into either your own account, or those of competing corporations nations. No new capital to sustain the unsustainable.
Money borrowed from people who had in turn borrowed. No principal left, just an upward spiral of increasing interest.
What are Bloated Capitalist Big-pigs to do in such a scenario? Exactly what they did in 1914, mobilize their hordes of Peasants to march off and slaughter other hordes of Peasants in order to seize the Hoards of their Whored masters.
Soylent Green is PEOPLE.
COLORADO SPRINGS – JANUARY 25 – Protest the recent FBI raids and the DOJ grand jury subpoenas aimed at intimidating members of antiwar and Palestinian rights groups. Join Coloradans For Peace and compatriots beneath the windows of the FBI field office, located in the Plaza of the Rockies downtown, the complex where activists have been prevented from visiting their senator’s office, mostly a mall of investment bankers and brokerage firms. Not without irony, the main facade is named for war profiteer consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton. Come Tuesday Jan 25, from 4pm to 5pm. Meet on the NE corner of Tejon & Colorado.
Some consider the FBI to be the lesser of the US intelligence community’s seventeen known evils. Shall we draw the line at surveillance, infiltration and instigation of peace advocacy groups? Eric Holder’s Department of Justice won’t go after war criminals, torturers, or any facet of President Obama’s accelerated abuses on human rights. But they want to target humanitarian groups in hopes of tying their social causes to “terrorism, ” the traditional authoritarian label for political rival.
Social justice activists across the US are uniting January 25 to protest the infiltration of peaceful protest groups by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. As European environmental organizations reel from the revelation that high-profile activist “Mark Stone,” really PC Mark Kennedy, served undercover for London’s MET for seven years, the Guardian has confirmed another unnamed infiltrator, identified by activist sources as “Lyn Watson.” A longtime Leeds Common Place volunteer, Watson is reportedly serving at another undercover location. 
Kennedy is in the US evading the blowback of many EU and UK former comrades. As US lawyers fend off grand jury inquiries against chiefly Palestinian-rights advocacy groups, the Minneapolis based Anti-War Committee has obtained confirmation that FBI agent “Karen Sullivan” had been disrupting from their midst since the 2008 RNC. A “Daniela Cardenas” is considered to be her accomplice.
While accounts vary between MET officer Mark Kennedy “going native” and privatizing his surveillance services, there are reports that Kennedy had been sexually intimate with a number of the activists he had been infiltrating. The role of “Lyn Watson” becomes critical because her reports would reflect that the authorities knew of and did not halt officer Kennedy’s improper conduct.
Green activist are debating the merits of releasing details about the infiltrators. Save Iceland made this excellent statement about Kennedy.
UPDATE UK:
To prevent further details from going public, the comments section has been disabled for the original Guardian article which refuses to name, or unscramble to photograph of Officer A, aka Lyn Watson. A subsequent UK Indymedia article has been deleted together with its thread. Discussion persists at another IMC in Sheffield now suffering under a common ISP hobble of sites designed to serve secure pages through HTTPS, having its certificate called into doubt. As a result visitors are warned by their browser that the site cannot be trusted until they finally desist from clicking through. For the benefit of those timid souls we reprint the comment thread, as of 4PM GMT.
Hold on …
13.01.2011 09:54It says she disappeared in 2008, but someone is quoted saying “she was present at Drax and Heathrow climate camp actions, against Coryton oil refinery and various anti-capitalist gatherings and protests” … but the Coryton blockade was last year. Or was there some other Coryton action I wasn’t aware of?
Shame the Guardian took representations from the cops and no one else. They’ve even decided against a comments section – maybe in case someone decided to put her name up.
I might be missing some key piece of info or argument here, but I really think people have GOT to post her identity up here – people will want to know what info the state now definitely has on them etc.
proof-reader
Her activist name was…
13.01.2011 10:12Lyn Watson. Haven’t got a photo though.
Someone
there was a earlier coryton blockade
13.01.2011 10:26,,, on fossil fools day. yeah, i don’t see a problem in posting her (false) name… though in general i’m not sure what feeding this story is doing for our movement… though i am perfectly aware their is a wider public interest at stake…but it may cost us dear.
old timer
Media Whores
13.01.2011 11:43Knew it was only a time before Dr Chatterton got his name in print. Seems to be one rule for the oi polloi and one for the careerists.
ACAB
No news here
13.01.2011 12:04She came under suspicion long before Flash Mark did. When he was confronted, hers was the name put to him and he, apparently, said she was part of the “same unit” as he was, but was otherwise not forthcoming. She was long gone by then.
Stroppyoldgit
She may not have put it about like Shagger Stone…
13.01.2011 12:09But Lynn certainly wasn’t averse to a roll in the hay.
Sleaze-watch
To say or not to say
13.01.2011 13:07I can see both sides of the argument about how much to say about these spies.
On the one hand saying what has been going on will get some sympathy. On the other it reveals the spies who have been spotted, which tells the enemy which spies have not been spotted.
I come down slightly on the side of exposing them to the light of day. Circulate their photograph and brief details widely, together with what they were up to. This will allow those involved with them to realise who they are, even if they used a different name. The police and other forces of darkness will suffer more from the truth than we will.
A N Other
Thanks for the pic
13.01.2011 13:52Many thanks for putting a pic up. Does anyone have a better one though. I’ve been told that I definitely know this woman, but can’t think who she is/was.
Leeds activist
medic?
13.01.2011 14:21Am I correct in thinking she was involved in our medic collective?
fleabite
Guardian website
13.01.2011 15:12I have been keeping an eye on the Guardian web site http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/12/second-undercover-police-officer to see what people had to say.
They opened up coments then suddenly stopped them, including not just saying that some comments had been removed by a moderator but deleting them entirely as if they never were. The entirely deleted comments are the ones that point to Indymedia and this thread in particular.
Possibly after “Officer A” was withdrawn from her unethical activities against campaigners she was pointed towards groups she should have been working against all the time, criminals. Unlike campaigners criminals may not be too kind to her.
If that is the case I have limited sympathy for her. Injury or death is not right, even for a maggot like her, though she deserves any verbal attack she gets for spying on campaigners. Her bosses got her into whatever situation she is now in, they should get her out of it.
Time to make sure information about her is spread widely, so the police can’t attack a single point like Indymedia and suppress the information.
A N Other
Who knows? Gary Faulkner will undoubtedly get more Due Process from Colorado’s courts (Go ahead, Gary, THANK us “bleeding heart do-gooder Liberals” for not just turning over Due Process meekly and without protest to your Fascist Whore-lords) than he was willing to give Osama bin Dead_for_8_years.
Which is more to the point, but if the un-named by reporters female who was alleged to have been assaulted by him (and given more than one injury) is his wife and he did smack her around, Mrs Faulkner, forget that life insurance policy you’re waiting to collect, ditch his crazy ass. It ain’t worth it, baby.
Meanwhile, he made some cryptic statements back in June about “Wait until August, then you’ll see”. August ended a month and a half ago and the most anybody has said about Osama is that stupid faked up picture the F.B.I. tried to push off on the rest of the world.
And an admission, once it was shown to be a retouched picture of a Spanish member of parliament, that they don’t have a single picture of Osama from anytime in the last 8 years.
Almost 9 years now. So, Mr Stupid Crazoid Faulkner, how the hell were you intending to know if the “ay-rab towel head sand-nigger” you would have ended up murdering was in fact Osama bin Laden? The God-Damned Freakin’ Bureau Of Incompetence DOESN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE but YOUR stupid ass was going to commit murder in the Tribal Autonomous Region,
and then run around like an idiot with some vague idea that the lying-ass United States departments of State, Defense and Justice were going to back you up on it? The Pathans would have been parading your pin-sized head on a stake for a week after your very short trial.
That’s just on the very off chance that Gary Faulkner will read this or more likely have one of his Responsible Grown-ups read it for him.
For his fan club who think it was a good idea, and who get all their information on Islam, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Arabs, other Muslims (an Arab would stand out like a sore thumb in Afghanistan or Pakistan, like a Guatemalan tribal leader would in Berlin) consider this, o ye Expert Ones… your Expert Psycho-Social Profile Experts like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, neither of whom know the least little thing about Islam, don’t know any Muslim PEOPLE, don’t speak read or write Arabic, or Hebrew, or Aramaic, or any of those other Religious Languages they claim to be Authorities therein…
According to the Profile Osama bin Laden is a glory-hound who wants his own name on everybody’s lips and wants the entire world to recognize him as a great Religious and Political Super-Leader.
Wouldn’t you think, just maybe, that a glory-hound like that might want to have his verified picture taken regularly? If, that is, he were still alive?
It seems to me, you know, that as long as they can hold up a picture or other representation of the Bogus Boogieman Osama the Corporate “leaders” can continue to collect huge amounts of money with their own very expensive to us but costs them NOTHING “hunt for Osama” and “Global War on Terror” and they can also use stupid people like Gary Faulkner to draw attention from their own very serious ongoing Crime Spree. Kind of like the Myth of Goldberg from the novel 1984 by Eric Blair pen name Orwell.
Faulkner, dude…
You’re lucky that the actual Pakistani military caught up to you first.
Now the Colorado police have rescued you a second time.
So let’s recap.
The people who are in charge of putting out the propaganda don’t know even if Osama bin Laden is actually alive, and do know he’s probably been dead for more than 8 years.
The pictures of him training at and training others at Paramilitary Bases in Afghanistan, those bases look suspiciously like U.S. Army bases and don’t exist anywhere in Afghanistan.
Osama might be just as mythical a construct as those bases.
The “Experts” who tell us otherwise are largely Actors like Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, who are paid to read propaganda provided to them by people who might or maybe not believe the lies they tell the DumFoxers to pass along. And Rudi Giuliani, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Huckabee, all of them supposed to be “Experienced” in fighting Terrorism, all of them actually Chickenhawks, none of whom served in the Military, and the closest one to having experienced Terrorism would be Giuliani whose claim to expertise involves him getting skunked twice in the same location allegedly by the same group. No proof of Osama there.
Also each and every one of those lying Chickenshit jackasses have made the claim that there’s a million pounds of Nerve Gas hidden by Saddam Hussein.
The Arizona State police are running cover for the Murdering Scum Minutemen who killed among others Raul and Briseña Flores, father and 9 year old Daughter, both of them American. The PIGS are parroting the unproved Racist Minutemen accusation that Raul was a drug dealer. Easy to do when the accused is Dead.
The Racists who did that, the Racists who cover for them, are the same Racist TeaBags who are leading the charge against freedom of Religion, having killed one person, at least, burned at least one Community Center in Murfreesboro Tennessee, an assault on a darker-skinned construction worker at the ground zero memorial, because he was wearing a Rastafarian tee-shirt. Rastafarian is a Christian sect., but they say he “looked” muslim so it’s all right.
And, it doesn’t stop with simple assaults, arsons and murders. There’s also the notion of giving the PIGS even MORE powers to arrest people simply for being “different”. Which is a violent act.
Arresting somebody means forcing him to obey you, to put chains on him and take everything from him, under threat of DEATH if he resists.
The PIGS who commit that violence take the job because they get sexually aroused by such acts of violence. It’s RAPE.
And the TeaBag FREAKS want to give their PIG buddies ever increasing powers to Rape, Torture and Murder than they already have.
There’s an FBI PIG interrogator right now acting all proud that he “brcoke down Saddam Hussein”
With of course his PIG buddies controlling the situation. Some “heroic” and “noble” act!
They do the same thing in prisons around the world, using every technique possible, including and especially Torture. They do it in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and in American jails against Americans.
Once more, Anti-American Terrorism supported fully by the Tea Party so-called “Patriots”.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is officially a wanted man. After the arrest of whistleblower Bradley Manning for leaking the Collateral Murder video, the Pentagon announced it is hunting Assange “to talk to him” about 260,000 diplomatic cables which Army Specialist Manning is purported to have passed along as well. Appealing for fans to create Wikileak support groups worldwide, Assange confirmed possession of sensitive material to which he could only allude earlier: the US military’s own video of the “Garani Massacre” (sic), its 2009 airstrike and coverup of the killing of over 140 Afghan civilians, most of them children. Within hours, the claim and Assange’s appeal, were removed from the Wikileaks website.
Assange’s announcement has been propagated by journalists in the Wikileaks email circle, but strangely the call for creating a network of support groups, “Friends of Wikileaks is being given no traction.
The hasty typo of “Garani,” uncorrected, doesn’t serve the cause either. As a keyword, Garani brings up only Assange’s recent Tweet. All news references of the original incident are indexed under “Granai.” Or of course Julian Assange’s earlier codeword, Project G.
That the media is so casual about describing the Wikileaks founder as subject of an “international manhunt” is unfortunately disarming. Assange has had to cancel an appearance in Las Vegas, and a later keynote engagement for 2600 in NYC. Oh hw funny. Pentagon Papers whisleblower Daniel Ellsberg is warning the Assange is facing very real danger of rendition, interrogation, disappearance, even assassination by US drone. The excitement builds?
You can do more than watch Assange dodge missile strikes like Flash Osama. Contact Wikileaks about enlisting as friend or supporter, not just spectator.
Below is the original email from Julian Assange:
WikiLeaks may be under attack.
You were generous enough to write to us, but we have not had the labor resources to respond.
Your support is important to us. Please read all of this email to understand what is going on. We apologize for not getting back to you before. It is not through any lack of interest on our part, but an enforced lack of resources.
One of our alleged sources, a young US intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has been detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held without trail. Mr. Manning is alleged to have acted according to his conscious and leaked to us the Collateral Murder video and the video of a massacre that took place in Afghanistan last year at Garani.
The Garani massacre, which we are still working on, killed over 100 people, mostly children.
Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s engaging in abusive actions all over the world. We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true and we do have a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by the United States government.
Mr. Manning was allegedly exposed after talking to an unrelated “journalist” who then worked with the US government to detain him.
Some background on the Manning case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/state-department-anxious/
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/06/143011.htm
[ note that there are some questions about the Wired reportage, see: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/13/video-wikileaks-foun.html#comment-809677 ]
WikiLeaks a small organization going through enormous growth and operating in an adverserial, high-security environment which can make communication time consuming and the acquisition of new staff and volunteers, also difficult since they require high levels of trust.
To try and deal with our growth and the current difficult situation, we want to get you to work together with our other supporters to set up a “Friends of WikiLeaks” group in your area. We have multiple supporters in most countries and would like to see them be a strong and independent force.
Please write to friends@sunshinepress.org if you are interested in helping with Friends of WikiLeaks in your area. You will receive further instructions.
We also have significant unexpected legal costs (for example flying a legal team to Kuwait, video production. Collateral Murder production costs were $50,000 all up).
Any financial contributions will be of IMMEDIATE assistance.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support
Please donate and tell the world that you have done so. Encourage all your friends to follow the example you set, after all, courage is contagious.
Julian Assange
Editor in Chief
WIKILEAKS
It’s just plain dangerous to be an Afghan Muslim living in Colorado, or New York City for that matter. You provide personal material for White America’s Policing Establishment to play out their paranoic games with other peoples’ lives. Najibullah Zazi is finding that out the hard way as he tries to eke out a living in Denver, Colorado for he and his family to live on. Now he’s caught in another one of those dragnets and fabricated charges used to justify the Empires ever-non-ending war to spread its own police and military terrorism around the globe. See Queens terror raids part of FBI probe into Denver-based cell plotting attack on 9/11 scale
One doubts that it is mere coincidence that the FBI timed this racially profiled harrassment to begin just one week after the 9/11 anniversary. The militarized militaristic meatheads in our society drool over this stuff and poor Zazi is the perfect fall guy for this racist government campaign, headed up from the White House office that has proclaimed the supposed end to American racism ever being considered an issue again. Zazi even has a nice Osama style beard for his coming government public photo-ops fed to the crazed US corporate press.
God, Americans as a general rule hate Muslims! The Muslim hordes killed Jesus Christ by nailing him up on a cross and later drank Christian babies’ blood because Mohammad is a pedophile, you know? But if Sarah Palin ever gets after them helped by the Jewish State they’ll really have something to fear!
Si better not donate any of your personal monies to an Islamic charity organization this week and end your Ramadan fasting now immediately! That is if you know what’s good for you? (Now don’t you feel a lot safer today because of the FBI racially profiling your neighbors to feed Obama’s campaigns for yet more war?) I know the Military-industrial-governmental Establishment does.
The New York Post cartoon conveys a single message, because it certainly wasn’t humor. This is a warning for President Obama, drawn in the form of a thought balloon for public consumption, which has been floated before. White masters kill naughty blackeys. White supremacists hunt upstart niggers. Xenophobic kooks hurt people who don’t look like them. Cops kill ordinary African Americans with complete impunity.
Even black policemen kill innocent black men, on a very regular basis.
Message to Obama: Our corporate-interest jackals can shoot you dead on the street, in the guise of a racist act, and the American public will have thought it inevitable. There will be no inquest to determine if there was a military industrial complex conspiracy behind your assassination. No one will look beyond the lone gunman theory.
Dear Obama, just an unsubtle reminder to toe the line: there is a price to pay for white displeasure.
Hell, it could even be two beat cops with a taser. [This is] No Country For Porch Monkeys.
That’s what this cartoon was about. Somebody call the FBI, because making a threat against the life of the president is against the law.
According to his FOIA files which Edward Abbey requested from the FBI, and which the Moab Canyon County Zephyr is releasing serially, Abbey first came to the agency’s attention as editor of the University of New Mexico’s campus literary magazine The Thunderbird, when fellow students could not dissuade him from printing on its March 1951 cover:
“Man Will Never Be Free Until the Last King Is Strangled
With the Entrails of the Last Priest. –LOUISA MAY ALCOTT”
Wrote friend and colleague Jack Loeffler in Adventures with ED: “The campus went wild. Ed wouldn’t rescind the issue or apologize, and his tenure as editor was terminated.” According to an unnamed informant at UNM, Abbey showed “less sense than his fellow students.”
Actually, Abbey’s FBI file opens with his 1947 public letter calling for students to burn their draft cards. Most of the rest of his fed investigation attempts to separate fact from his fictional MONKEYWRENCH GANG, which inspired Earth First! When Edward Abbey died in 1989, there followed a rapid disintegration of Earth First, and the attempted car-bomb assassination and frame-up of organizer Judi Bari.
Revealed: two more US contractors were killed in Iraq. Their bodies discovered after they had been captured last year. The FBI has asked the families not to comment publicly. Plus, this latest report came with more gruesome detail than Americans are accustomed. Something about severed fingers.
Family members blabbing would certainly mar the news blackout under which our contractor mercenaries are concealed. Americans are told nothing about private warrior activities or casualties. Only by researching the number of US life insurance claims filed, listing Iraq as the place of death, was the Boston Globe able to tally 1,123 deaths in the Iraq private sector.
Though the condition of the two bodies are not being revealed, one of the bodies had been alive recently enough to provide a finger which his captors sent to expedite negotiations. Enclosed with it were fingers from three other captive contractors, whose bodies have not yet turned up. Perhaps the fingers were the proof our investigators asked for, that the captors held who they say they held, and that their captives were still alive.
Separating combatants from their fingers has a long precedent in war, in particular the index and middle finger, aka trigger fingers. This ensured that if your captive was released, he would no longer be able to wield a rifle against you.
Except for today’s report, severed fingers in Iraq hadn’t made the news. We don’t know, for example, which finger, or if this had been the first for Crescent Security Group Guard Paul Johnson-Reuben. Only FBI agents would know if hostage fingers arrive on a monthly basis, as a reminder or status check on the lives being negotiated. Do ten digits mark a captive’s expiration date?
Isn’t it interesting that the FBI is handling the case? Why not the CIA, nor INTERPOL, who handle international crimes, instead of our domestic investigators? To me this suggests something about the international jurisdiction of sovereign Iraq.
FBI whistle blower Sibel Edmond’s original 2001 allegations of drug running and money laundering within FBI now exposes in the articles below, selling of nuclear secrets by an inner group of Turks within the FBI is connected to U.S. officials, Pakistan and Israel. Don’t expect the U.S. press to cover this. Because Pakistan’s ISI is a CIA/Army Intel. branch created and funded by way of 80’s proxy war against Russia in Afghanistan, the U.S. will not support removal of Mushariff. He holds too many secrets. They’ll kill him if he threatens to expose U.S. criminals. He may become another long term U.S. ally similar to Egypt’s tyrant and anti-democratic Mubarak. Repressive regimes are part and parcel of the U.S. power players criminal activities.
From The Sunday Times, January 6, 2008
For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
From The Sunday Times, January 20, 2008
Joseph Kennedy, patriarch of what is often described as America’s royal family, built his fortune by bootlegging whiskey during the Prohibition and rose to power by mob control of the unions.
Ill-gotten gains are credited by some for the fate of Joseph’s offspring: the “Kennedy Curse.” Son JFK, elected president, shot; son Bobbie, declaring candidacy, shot; son Ted suffers a car-crash which derails his political aspirations; son of eldest son dies in a 1999 plane crash.
While Christian America ponders whether curse or karma, another constituency retains a dogged skepticism about the official account of both assassinations. That the details are still shrouded in secrecy suggests that whoever gained by killing the Kennedys is still around, and is still powerful enough to intimidate accomplices.
A lesser celebrated 20th Century up and comer is la familia Bush. Prescott Bush made his money in oil and nefarious financial deals with Hitler, and with influential friends formulated the CIA in 1947. His son rose through the CIA to be president. His eldest grandson was appointed to the presidency and to infamy as well.
Deathbed confessions, among other evidence, have tied the CIA to the assassination of JFK. “Conspiracy Theories” link the grassy knoll to ex-Batistas to George H. W. Bush’s little Zapata offshore Anti-Castro operation. (Alex Jones recounts that in the CIA Bay of Pigs Operation, launched without Kennedy’s permission, one of the American ships had been renamed “Barbara II,” its namesake perhaps the Grumman Avenger “Barbara” which H. W. crash-landed in WWII.) In fact, FBI records place G. W. on the first plane to DC (from Dealey Plaza?)
Recent improved photo-analysis show several high-ranking CIA operatives present at the RFK assassination in 1968. I’ll leave Chappaquiddick and John John’s Martha’s Vineyard plane crash to future leaks and investigators.
In the meantime, John Hinckley Jr., attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan while Vice President Bush was next in line, was not just any mentally disturbed highly-suggestible boy, but the son of friend of Bush’s son Neil.
And how about those fixed elections of 2000 and 2004? Never mind whatever it was that happened on 9/11!
Is America more prepared to accept a Kennedy Curse, than the possibility that one family’s and a nation’s bad fortune might really have been blood spilled by Long Knives, one Fascist putsch after the next, until the burning of the Reichstag?
Here is how the FBI works. It threatens to have your family tortured in another country unless you confess to a supposed crime that can get you life in prison.
Then the legal system comes along and tries to sweep all this under the rug. See the Abdallah Higazy case and how the US courts have been ruling about it. This is America today.
Suzanne Woolsey is vice chair of the Colorado College Board of Directors. Her husband will be speaking this Thursday at the school, and all three of their kids graduated from there. The following opinion piece by Evelyn Pringle is reprinted in whole below.
January 17, 2005
Mom & Pop War Profiteering Team – Woolseys
By Evelyn Pringle
Miamisburg, Ohio
The Defense Policy Board (DPB) is a hand-picked group of 30 people that advises Bush administration officials on matters such as whether and when to go to war, or not. The current group was selected by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, and approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Everyone who is anyone in the arms and defense industry knows that palling up to DPB members is the ticket to getting a Pentagon contract.
Shortly after the war in Iraq began, the April 10, 2003 New York Times pointed out that several board members stood to benefit financially from the war. It reported that the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) documented that 9 of the members were “linked to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.”
Promote War & Garner Positions For Profits
One of the members mentioned who stood to profit was R. James Woolsey. In addition to being a member of the DPB, Woolsey also sits on Navy and CIA advisory boards; and he is also a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), a private group that was specifically set up by Bush in 2002, to find ways to increase public support for a war against Iraq.
Let me say right here and now that I think bold lines are crossed when people like Woolsey, who promote a specific war, financially benefit from their successful promotion. There should be a law that requires a standard recusal from all war profits by any policy advisor who advocates sending our young men and women off to die in that same war.
And I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve never heard of our government forming a group of promoters to rally support for a war before. I dare anyone to try and convince me that this war profiteering scheme wasn’t well planned and managed from the get-go.
Mom & Pop Team Of War Profiteers
I would rate the husband and wife team of James and Suzanne Woolsey up there as one of the most blatant examples of war profiting that I‘ve ever seen. They both remain policy advisors on Iraq, even though they both work for private firms that do business there. James has long wanted to use US military might to transform the Middle East. “And he has pushed for war with Iraq as hard as anyone, even before the terrorist attacks of Sep 11, 2001,” according to the April 8, 2003 Global Policy Forum.
That’s right – long before 9/11. In January 1998, James signed the now infamous letter to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) calling for regime change in Iraq (which Clinton trashed). In 1998, he also successfully lobbied to pass the Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), which allocated nearly $100 million for the Iraqi opposition, mainly the Iraq National Congress (INC), headed by none other than Ahmed Chalabi.
9/11 – Gift To Profiteering Team
The lobby for the war in Iraq immediately moved into high gear after 9/11. Within days, the DPB convened to discuss how they could use 9/11 to justify a war in Iraq. James was sent overseas to try to find a link between Saddam and bin Laden. He returned with the tale that an unnamed source had told the Czech intelligence that in April, 2001, he had observed a meeting between the lead 9/11 skyjacker and an Iraqi agent in Prague.
Even though the tale was deemed not credible by US, British, Israeli, and French, intelligence agencies, it became the basis of a major neo-con disinformation campaign against Saddam on cable news shows and editorial pages in major US newspapers.
James himself wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that said a foreign state had aided Al Qaeda in preparing the 9/11 attacks and pointed to Iraq as the prime suspect. In fact, James even went so far to allege that Saddam was behind the 1993 WTC bombing and the anthrax letters sent out after 9/11. In large part, the propaganda campaign was successful. A poll conducted in late 2002, showed that over half of those polled believed that Saddam was somehow linked to 9/11.
Woolsey & Chalabi – Secret Long-Time Buddies
Just when I think I have seen every dirty filthy angle by which money can be made in the war profiteering trade, something else turns up. I recently discovered a little tid-bit that I was unaware of. In addition to getting $100 million tax dollars allocated for the INC and Ahmed Chalabi in 1998, James also became lawyer and adviser to Iraq’s “President in Waiting” in the same year.
With the help of the media, James must have forgot to mention this obvious conflict of interest while he was alleging collusion in 9/11 between Chalabi’s enemy Saddam and bin Laden. This relationship definitely should have been made public before the war began because of its relevance to the truth or falsity of the justification given for waging war in Iraq to begin with.
Back in 1998, Chalabi sought legal help from Woolsey to secure the release of 6 of his INC associates from the detention center in Guam, even though the CIA said they were threats to US interests. James successfully freed Chalabi’s minions and mowed a path for the so-called Iraqi defectors to feed bogus information to US intelligence teams.
The false information about WMDs and collusion between Saddam and bin Laden, that originated from the relationship of Chalabi and Woolsey, along with the resulting diversion of financial and military resources to Iraq, and away from the real terrorist bin Laden, has left the US with a limited ability to project military power anywhere else in the world. Any unexpected conflict would be a disaster with the military so overstretched in Iraq, and it looks like in large part, we can thank Woolsey and Chalabi for this predicament.
And as it turns out the CIA was right. One of men Woolsey freed, Aras Habib Karim, went on to become Chalabi’s Chief of Intelligence, and has since leaked classified information to Iran, and is currently under investigation by the FBI. I wonder if James is representing the guy now?
James & Booz Allen Hamilton
At the same time that they were advocating for war in Iraq, its more than obvious that James and Suzanne Woolsey were positioning themselves for a future in defense-related firms, with an eye on the anticipated war profits.
James is a shining example of how the revolving door policy works in Washington. Although he left his position as director of the CIA in 1995, he remained a senior advisor on intelligence and national security policies.
And he also now works for several private firms that do business in Iraq. According to Citizens for Public Integrity, in July, 2002, James joined Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that “had contracts worth more than $680 million” that year.
In May, 2003, in his capacity as a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, James was a featured speaker at a seminar entitled “Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq.” He spoke of the potential business opportunities in the reconstruction of Iraq and how Bush planned to steer the contracts to US companies. Approximately 80 corporate executives paid $1100 to listen to what he had to say.
May, 2003 was only 2 months after the war began. If not for his advisory positions in the Bush administration, how would James possibly be able to put together a investor seminar with information on how to make money in Iraq?
In addition, “Booz Allen is a subcontractor for a $75-million telecommunications project in Iraq. The company does extensive work for the Defense Department as well. Recently, the Navy awarded it $14 million in contracts,” according to the Aug 15, 2004 LA Times. In true Dick Cheney style, James said in an interview that “he had not been involved in Booz Allen’s Iraq contracts,” the Times reports. But then it really doesn’t matter whether he was involved in a particular contract or not, because as a Vice President of the firm, he benefits from profits resulting from all contracts.
Besides his recent statement to the Times belies the title of his own May, 2003 seminar which was: “Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq.” What is he trying to say? That he never got paid for speaking at that seminar? That none of the 80 executives that attended ever contacted Booz work in Iraq? Yea right. James & Paladin Capital Group
James positioned himself all over the map. He is now a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, another defense-related firm. In part, here is how the firm describes itself on its web site, Paladin Homeland Security Fund, L.P. Investment Strategy
As widely reported in public media, billions of dollars are being appropriated by the United States and foreign governments for replenishment of military stockpiles, deployment of new means to create more secure societies and creation of new standards, equipment, technologies and policies for coping with and recovering from the myriad forms of terrorism and attack. … the General Partner believes that the Federal and State governments … and indeed governments throughout the world, will look to … private enterprise to address these issues. The General Partner believes that the private sector thus will look to expend billions of dollars to execute defense and security plans for security in the public sector and to deploy growth equity to produce the products and services that non-governmental organizations will require.
Fund Management
Operation of the Fund starts with an experienced management team. … additional individuals who have prominent and distinguished records in relevant fields, including security, defense and information and technology sciences, have associated with Paladin Capital in connection with the Fund. These additional principals of the Fund include R. James Woolsey, …
The Fund’s Principals have extensive domestic and international experience in fund investments and in originating, underwriting, closing, monitoring and exiting investments similar to those that are proposed for the Fund. The additional Principals, including Mr. Woolsey, … have extensive and distinguished track records in service within the security, defense and related fields.
Investment Guidelines Characteristics
Small to medium-sized, worker-friendly companies with the following characteristics: Must relate to defense, prevention, coping or recovery from disaster. Dual use: commercial and government applicability for products and services.
Surely no one could ever allege a possible conflict of interest between James serving on 3 defense-related boards (Navy, DPB, & CIA) with the US government and his involvement with this firm.
Global Options – James & DPB Member Livingstone
James is also plugged into Global Options, which is headed by his fellow DPB member Neil Livingstone. In addition to sitting on the DPB, Livingstone has served as a Pentagon and State Department advisor and has long called for overthrowing Saddam.
Livingstone was already promoting war against Iraq back in 1993, when he wrote an editorial for Newsday that said the US “should launch a massive covert program designed to remove Hussein.” Well 11 years later, it looks like he finally got his wish, and just like his pal James, Livingstone is a regular speaker at investment seminars on Iraq.
Global Options provides contacts and consulting services to firms doing business in Iraq and “offers a wide range of security and risk management services,” according to its website. Although James admits that he is a paid advisor at Global Options, he again says the work he does at the firm does not involve Iraq. And of course I believe him (not).
Suzanne – Better Half Of Profiteering Team
From 1993 – 2003, Suzanne was an executive with the National Academies, an institution that advises the government on science, engineering, and medicine. There’s probably no big money to be made in that position and that’s probably what motivated Suzanne seek a more potentially profitable government position.
And she sure found one. According to the Aug 15, 2004 LA Times, Suzanne is a trustee of a little-known arms consulting group that had access to senior Pentagon leaders directing the Iraq war.
Although she had zero experience with military or national security matters, in 2000 she became a trustee at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a nonprofit corporation paid to do research for the Pentagon. During the attack against Iraq, the IDA provided senior Pentagon officials with assessments of the operation.
Through this position, Suzanne had unlimited insider access to valuable information. For instance, the Times reported that in a June 3, 2003, briefing, Brigadier General Robert Cone of the Army, described the group‘s operation. ”This team did business” within the Army Central Command ”on a daily basis, by observing meeting and planning sessions, attending command updates, watching key decisions being made, watching problems being solved, and generally being provided unrestricted access to the business of the conduct of this war,” Cone said, according to a transcript of the session.
The question is did Suzanne use the info to benefit the family business? I’ll let the reader be the judge. She was appointed to “Fluor’s board in January 2004, while Fluor and a partner, AMEC, were competing for two federal contracts to do reconstruction work in Iraq. A little more than a month after she was named, Fluor and AMEC got both contracts, with a combined value of $1.6 billion,” according to the LA Times.
Although a Fluor official refused to discuss why Suzanne was chosen for the job, the official confirmed SEC filings that show, “Fluor pays outside directors (like Suzanne) $40,000 a year, plus stock options and additional fees for attending meetings,” the Times reports.
As for the financial worth of her stock in the company, its looking good. Fluor’s stock has risen steadily since the war in Iraq began. The Times reports that in August, 2004, it was $45 a share, up from a little more than $30 a share in March 2003. Reports filed with the SEC show Suzanne owns 1,500 shares of Fluor stock.
With Fluor making a bundle, it only stands to reason that all the more money can be funneled back into the Woolsey piggy bank. SEC filings show that Fluor reported that its revenue for the first quarter of the current fiscal year from work in Iraq totaled ”approximately $190 million. There was no work in Iraq in the comparable period in 2003,” reports the Times.
I would be willing to bet that any defense related firm would have given an arm and a leg to find out what was being said during those IDA meetings and war planning sessions. Oh of course I’m not suggesting that Suzanne was feeding Fluor information before she came on board and that‘s why she was hired. But at the same time, its sure difficult to think of any other reason why she would be hired.
Here’s another profiteering trick that I would never have thought of. Suzanne even managed to get paid while she gathered the insider information. Tax records show that in 2003, she was paid $11,500 for serving on the IDA. Who wouldn’t want this gal on their team?
The overlapping public and private associations of the Woolsey’s are merely 2 examples of the all too familiar pattern in the Bush administration, in which people who play key roles in advising officials on policies, are involving themselves financially with firms in related fields. And it should be noted that the profiteering is certainly not limited to war policies. Its rampant in every area of policy within the Bush administration.
Long-Term War – Thriving Family Business
Hands down, James should be awarded a plaque for being the #1 Iraq War Monger, and it should say: “What could be more sickening than a war-hungry non-combatant? A war-hungry non-combatant reaping profit from the blood of slaughtered women, children and men of Iraq,” (Bill Berkowitz).
War-hungry James is still hard at it; promoting war for as far as the eye can see. On August 15, 2004, the LA Times reported that, “Last month, Woolsey appeared at a … news conference to announce the creation of a group called the Committee of the Present Danger, which he said would attempt to focus public attention on the threat ”to the US and the civilized world from Islamic terrorism.”
On September 29, 2004 he participated in a forum entitled: “World War IV: Why We Fight, Whom We Fight, How We Fight,” sponsored by the Committee on Present Danger and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. I wonder how many people who went to the polls on Nov 2, 2004, realized that a vote for Bush meant rubber-stamping more of World War IV?
Plan To Destroy and Conquer Iraq
The Iraqi citizens had no say-so in the Bush administration’s decision to bomb the hell out of their country and the Iraqi people, now suffering the most as a result of the war, are not allowed to be involved in making decisions about the reconstruction of Iraq.
In comments that could have been made yesterday, Naomi Klein described what would happen to the Iraqis under Bush’s war plan in the April 14, 2003 issue of the Guardian, “A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country had been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their new-found “freedom” – for which so many of their loved ones perished – comes pre-shackled by irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy. ”
Every one of her predictions has come true and Iraqis may be worse off than we realize. Klein reports that on October 13, 2004, Iraq’s “health ministry issued a harrowing report on its post-invasion health crisis, including outbreaks of typhoid and tuberculosis and soaring child and mother mortality rates,” while at the same time the “State Department announced that $3.5 billion for water, sanitation and electricity projects was being shifted to security.”
How can anybody in their right mind expect the Iraqi people to be grateful to America for all this good fortune?
Stop The War Profiteering
It seems to me that we’ve taken our eye off the ball here. Granted, the web of corruption is bad enough in itself, but too little consideration is being given to the Iraqi lives at stake. Every profiteering dollar bilked or wasted is a dollar that could be spent on improving Iraq’s basic living conditions like getting water, sanitation and electricity up and running again, or training Iraqi police and military forces, or developing jobs for Iraqis.
Instead our tax dollars are being funneled back to profiteers like the Woolseys, over the backs of not only our dead soldiers; but over 100,000 dead Iraqis as well. The administration had the chance to rebuild Iraq, and at the same time earn the trust of the Iraqi people, but instead it chose to rape and torture innocent Iraqi prisoners, raid the reconstruction fund, and deprive the Iraqis of everything essential to normal human life. The blatant acts of corruption by the occupational authority and US contractors have given the Iraqis every reason under the sun to mistrust the motives of Americans who say they want to help rebuild their country. And how can we expect their opinions to change as long as the obvious corruption continues?
If we ever expect to regain the trust of Iraqis, we have to stop the Woolseys, and others like them, who engage in this filthy, disgusting trade. For starters, I say all Bush war profiteers should be given 2 options: they can either recuse themselves from advising government officials on any matter of national security period, or they can donate all profits made through affiliations with defense-related companies to soldiers wounded in the war and families of soldiers killed in the war.
While this would definitely be a good first step, I won’t hold my breath while waiting to see which option the greedy war-mongers choose.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0501/S00107.htm
Escaping tyranny by sailing to the New World was a temporary fix. A ghost has come back to haunt us. We have another King George.
In the past six years, George Bush has sought to accumulate all governing powers into one place, his grubby hands. Bush has repeatedly violated the Constitution’s command that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” by breaking many and refusing to enforce others. The Constitution grants Congress the power to make laws; after both houses pass a bill, the President can only sign it or veto it. Bush, however, takes a different tack. He has vetoed just three bills, then quietly attached “signing statements” to more than 1,000 congressional laws, indicating his intent to follow only those parts with which he agrees. He flouts the law every chance he gets. Usually with a stupid grin on his face.
The King’s latest blatant power grab, the Protect America Act 2007 (PAA), revises the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA was passed in 1978 in response to Tricky Dick and the FBI’s unlawful surveillance of critics of national policy and other political enemies. FISA required that a panel of judges grant permission to an administration to spy on individuals within the U.S. Surveillance would only be allowed if the judges could be convinced that the communications to be monitored were exclusively those of foreign powers and that there was no substantial likelihood that an American would be overheard. FISA was designed to protect us from the government, not the other way around.
Not surprisingly, this new act takes the power to approve spying out of the hands of the judges and gives it the the Attorney General. Currently the highly esteemed Alberto Gonzales. An old friend of the King’s. A known lackey. It also requires telephone companies to collect data and turn it over to the Feds. And, of course, grants them immunity from lawsuits. Our brave and noble Congress passed this bullshit legislation with nary a whimper. Behavior we’ve come to expect from our “representatives.”
Protect America, my ass. To say that this shocking theft of our freedom is to save us from terrorists, from Al Qaeda, is a frank lie. Terrorists are well-trained. They move with stealth. They have face-to-face meetings. They don’t call each other’s cell phones and chitchat about the latest and greatest plans. Our government is well aware of this. No, PAA is directed at us. The American public. Especially those of us who slander the dictator.
King George is simply a tyrant.
The story begins with Sibel Edmonds, a Turkish translator fired from the FBI after one year of work. She is now being defended by the American Civil Liberties Union as a whistle blower who was unjustly retaliated against for doing her job. An interesting case for sure. But even more interesting is the peephole that her case has opened into the shady doings of The American Turkish Council which has been termed the ‘Mini AIPAC’ due to its similarities with AIPAC, the Israeli ‘lobbying’ machine.
Here in a long commentary, ‘The Highjacking of a Nation‘, Sibel Edmonds talks the truth about what she call The True Lords of Afghanistan’s Poppy Fields, which would be Turkey. It turns out that Turkey’s government is a key US governmental regional ally, human rights abuser, and world class smuggler in drugs and material for nuclear weaponry, which Edmonds comments on well. The country hosts numerous US military personnel, and sits astride Europe, Asia, and Africa. Of particular interest to the US government, is the opening into regions of the former Soviet Union, where Turkish language group populations predominate, that alliance with a barbaric and corrupt Turkish government provides.
And the story gets worse, when Edmonds connects up The American Turkish Council with American big wigs and companies like Lockheed, whose corporate officers sit on that council. Now we can begin to see why Sibel Edmonds was such an unfortunate worker to have at the FBI in so many eyes. Translate, but shut up is how they wanted it, but she did not oblige. She became a dangerous person to have around, so that most probably got her fired. Corruption does like to work in secret, and Sibel Edmonds was not about to let things just lie.
NotMyTribe is soliciting proposals for where to hold the impending War Crimes Trial. Brent Green replies:
In my van downtown.
This is kind of how I see it going: I’ll drive my van downtown- there’s a huge parking lot right on the bank of the river behind the UPS packing center. It’s unmarked, which I see as my biggest asset here, the secrecy of an unmarked van will keep these officials on familiar ground. I’ll hold out my dictionary (the only title the used bookstore wouldn’t purchase from me) and say “Place your right hand on this Science Bible, and promise that you’ll try hard not to fuck up.” W says “I swear.” I don’t believe him, he seems insincere, but I didn’t really give myself a backup option, so we move on.
I guess Bush will take the stand- a comfortable cloth spinning captain’s chair (one of Bush’s demands I’ll have to meet in order for him to submit to trial). I’ll grill him mercilessly.
“True or False: you are _______.” The correct answer is that tricky T/F hybrid that everyone mastered in elementary school quizzes, but that’s a very hard letter to say, so he’ll probably get this one wrong.
Whereupon I’ll make a powerful and moving objection “HEADS WILL ROLL!!!” I’ll shout, the wind shaking my ride.
We’ll turn on the radio for intermission. Some Mexican college rock station. Yo la tengo espanol.
And if you want experience and variety, this is your location. It’s seen it all. I got it from my Uncle Oscar who met Jack Kerouac once (not in the van)- it’s seen all there is: Illinois, DUI, DOA, FBI, Florida and a charging wild elk. Before Oscar raced dogs he used the van as an ambulance.
I pretended I was a lawyer once, to get my girlfriend a paycheck her boss was trying to keep for hisself.
Back when Great Uncle Oscar had the van it was always kept in tip-top shape. Uncle Oscar was rich. He was always saying “Get in the fucking van!!”
Uncle Oscar got more money than the government racing dogs between the cars on Wall Street.
Uncle Oscar lost his mind when his mistress died, and grew a cancerous hole the size some governments between his throat and his lungs. Wheezing like an elephant chasing dogs no one else could see up and down the cellar stairs. (Later, up, down and back up the street.)
Uncle Oscar’s legs went numb on Christmas Eve, a cart pulled by his dogs brought him to our front door (he was sitting on the hood, hollering whiskey fumes above the engine’s roar). With two strong hands and a trunk full of stuff he invited us “Come on In!” tramping snow through shoveled flowerbeds. He wasn’t yet, but he already looked dead.
After a long hard chase, Oscar liked to climb in his van and “help people.” He’d go ambulancing with a stethoscope and pliers and a bottle of Mescal. Mescal is terrible. Just everyone thinks so. Hitler didn’t like it ’cause it made him mean. But apparently it cures everything. Even road rash. Just say you’re halfway between the cab and the sidewalk and an ambulance turns you into a chalkline- Oscar’s there before you wake up. He cleans the blood off the hood with your shirt and puts you in the back. He opens the bottle, wraps your lips around the funnel, and moves the muscles in thee jaw (with his right hand- the left tipping back the bottle) ’till your teeth and your tongue eat the worm. Ambulancing was fun- even though I guess it directly led to my disbarrement (it was the only cause). I always told him it wasn’t his fault- but it was. Entirely.
Anyway, I guess Oscar should be the judge. He’s the oldest person I know, and he always says he’s done his share of courting.
Old Uncle Oscar, all hopped up on Viagara, screaming at Conde Rice “I hear my zipper shaking!”
I need these war crimes trials.