From ths at psalience.org Tue Jan 17 13:35:14 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:35:14 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?!!!!!_Chris_Hedges=3A_Why_I=92m_Suing_Barack?= =?iso-8859-1?q?__Obama?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120117133324.047a90c8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30265.htm Why I?m Suing Barack Obama By Chris Hedges January 16, 2012 "Truthdig" -- Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31. The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled ?Counter-Terrorism,? for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until ?the end of hostilities.? It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties. I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have ?disappeared? into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism. Section 1031 of the bill defines a ?covered person??one subject to detention?as ?a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.? The bill, however, does not define the terms ?substantially supported,? ?directly supported? or ?associated forces.? I met regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. I used to visit Palestine Liberation Organization leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, in Tunis when they were branded international terrorists. I have spent time with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and was in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers? Party. All these entities were or are labeled as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. What would this bill have meant if it had been in place when I and other Americans traveled in the 1980s with armed units of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerrillas in El Salvador? What would it have meant for those of us who were with the southern insurgents during the civil war in Yemen or the rebels in the southern Sudan? I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists. But that does not make me one. Once a group is deemed to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or an element of the Uighur independence movement, the military can under this bill pick up a U.S. citizen who supported charities associated with the group or unwittingly sent money or medical supplies to front groups. We have already seen the persecution and closure of Islamic charity organizations in the United States that supported the Palestinians. Now the members of these organizations can be treated like card-carrying ?terrorists? and sent to Guantanamo. But I suspect the real purpose of this bill is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. The definition of a terrorist is already so amorphous under the Patriot Act that there are probably a few million Americans who qualify to be investigated if not locked up. Consider the arcane criteria that can make you a suspect in our new military-corporate state. The Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process. On the whim of the military, a suspected ?terrorist? who also happens to be a U.S. citizen can suffer extraordinary rendition?being kidnapped and then left to rot in one of our black sites ?until the end of hostilities.? Since this is an endless war that will be a very long stay. This demented ?war on terror? is as undefined and vague as such a conflict is in any totalitarian state. Dissent is increasingly equated in this country with treason. Enemies supposedly lurk in every organization that does not chant the patriotic mantras provided to it by the state. And this bill feeds a mounting state paranoia. It expands our permanent war to every spot on the globe. It erases fundamental constitutional liberties. It means we can no longer use the word ?democracy? to describe our political system. The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won?t. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous. The threat and reach of al-Qaida?which I spent a year covering for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East?are marginal, despite the attacks of 9/11. The terrorist group poses no existential threat to the nation. It has been so disrupted and broken that it can barely function. Osama bin Laden was gunned down by commandos and his body dumped into the sea. Even the Pentagon says the organization is crippled. So why, a decade after the start of the so-called war on terror, do these draconian measures need to be implemented? Why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens, as he did in the killing of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen? Why is this bill necessary when the government routinely ignores our Fifth Amendment rights??No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law??as well as our First Amendment right of free speech? How much more power do they need to fight ?terrorism?? Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren?t afraid enough. If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship. Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission. The oddest part of this legislation is that the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn?t support it. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he feared the bill would actually impede the bureau?s ability to investigate terrorism because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military. ?The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain cooperation from the persons in the past that we?ve been fairly successful in gaining,? he told Congress. But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can. Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com ? 2012 TruthDig From ths at psalience.org Tue Jan 17 13:36:25 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:36:25 +0100 Subject: [THS] True Cops Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120117133609.046acac8@mail.messagingengine.com> Police Officer Beating 66-year-old Man Suffering from Dementia Video Flowers was also punched repeatedly, and another officer used a stun gun to shoot him in the face. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30261.htm From ths at psalience.org Tue Jan 17 13:42:38 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:42:38 +0100 Subject: [THS] WAR PLAN IRAN: Dispelling the Lies, Telling the Truth Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120117134056.05f55930@mail.messagingengine.com> URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28675 Global Research, January 16, 2012 War Plan Iran Dispelling the Lies, Telling the Truth about Western Aggression in the Persian Gulf Finian Cunningham and Michel Chossudovsky (Editors) N-Book No. 1. 2012, January 16, 2012 Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference. Please Forward the GR I-Book far and wide. Post it on Facebook. [scroll down for I-BOOK Table of Contents] The year 2012 may become known as a watershed for humanity ? the year when mankind was precipitated into a global conflagration involving nuclear weapons. The signs are indeed grimly ominous as formidable military forces converge on the Persian Gulf in the long-running stand-off between the United States and Iran. On side with the US are its European allies in NATO, primarily Britain, Washington?s Middle East client states: Israel and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf ? all bristling with weapons of mass destruction. Recent naval exercises by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz have also displayed a fierce arsenal of missiles and military capability, and Iran has strategic alliances with Russia and China, both of whom will not stand idly by if their Persian partner is attacked. As we have consistently analysed on Global Research, the conflict between the US-led powers and Iran has wider ramifications. It is part and parcel of Washington?s bid to engineer the social and political upheavals across the Arab World in order to redraw the region in its strategic interests. It is no coincidence that fresh from NATO?s conquest of and regime change in Libya, the focus has quickly shifted to Syria ? a key regional ally of Iran. As Michel Chossudovsky has pointed out ?the road to Tehran goes through to Damascus?. Regime change in Syria would serve to isolate Iran. Subjugating Iran and returning it to Western tutelage is the prize that Washington and its allies have been seeking for the past 33 years ever since their client the Shah, Mohammad Rez? Pahlavi, was deposed by the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Iran is an energy-rich colossus, with oil and, more importantly, natural gas reserves that put it, with approximately 10% of global reserves in the world?s top three oil economies alongside Washington?s client states of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In sharp contrast, the US has less than 2% of global oil reserves. The conquest of Iran's oil riches is the driving force behind America's military agenda. The US-led conquest of Iraq ? costing over a million lives in a nine-year occupation ? is part of Washington?s long-held plans to dominate the globe?s vast energy resources that reside in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian regions. The decade-long war in Afghanistan is another flank in this US bid for hegemony over the fuel for the capitalist world economy. For nearly three decades, the US-led Western capitalist world has been deprived of exploiting Iranian energy wealth. The Islamic Republic has remained defiantly independent of Washington?s control, not just in terms of its vast hydrocarbon riches, but also politically. Iran is no puppet of the West as it was formerly under the despotic Shah Mohammad Rez? Pahlavi. Tehran has shown itself to be a trenchant critic of Western imperialist meddling in the region and fawning over the criminal Israeli persecution of Palestinians. Another important source of Western animus towards Iran and the deeply held desire for regime change is the loss that the Iranian revolution implies for the lucrative American, British and French weapons industry. When Shah Mohammad Rez? Pahlavi was kicked out in February 1979, so too was a massive market for Western arms dealers. The recent $50 billion arms sales to Saudi Arabia ? the ?biggest-ever in history? ? that had the Pentagon salivating, would be easily replicated in Iran, if a similar client regime could be installed there. From the Western powers? point of view, Iran is both an elusive prize and a frustrating obstacle. Bringing Iran back into the orbit of Western capitalist control has the added significance of depriving energy and other geopolitical advantages to rival powers, in particular Russia and China. In a strategic review earlier this month, Washington highlighted China as its pre-eminent global competitor in the coming decades. The militarized agenda towards China was also heralded by US President Barack Obama during his Asia-Pacific tour at the end of 2011. China is heavily dependent on Iranian oil. Some 20 per cent of all Iranian crude oil exports are traded with China. The latter has billions of dollars worth of energy investments in Iran, in particular the natural gas sector, which energy analysts view as the primary fuel in forthcoming decades. Washington?s policy of hostility and regime change towards Iran and furthering its hegemony over this vital region is as much about wresting control from its perceived competitors, Russia and China. That factor takes on added importance as America?s economic power wanes. These issues form the bigger picture that explains the drive for war in the Persian Gulf, which the mainstream media has chosen to carefully ignore. The broader implications of this war are either trivialized or not mentioned. People are led to believe that war is part of a "humanitarian mandate" and that both Iran as well as Iran's allies, namely China and Russia, constitute an unrelenting threat to global security and "Western democracy" While the most advanced weapons system are used, America's wars are never presented as "killing operations" resulting in extensive civilian casualties. While the incidence of "collateral damage" is acknowledged, US-led wars are heralded as an unquestionable instrument of "peace-making" and "democratization". The selection of articles below is intended to give readers a condensed overview of the events and issues at stake in the so-called stand-off between the US, its allies, and Iran. We have selected articles with a news emphasis while also providing a historical background. In Part I, Playing with Fire: Covert Acts of Aggression, Provocation and War, our reports and analyses show how the military build-up in the Persian Gulf has an alarming deliberation and potential for an all-out regional conflict. We also expose Washington?s criminal covert war against Iran, including the assassination of Iranian scientists and the incursion of the country?s territory with spy drones. However, we don?t merely report the occurrence of these events, our writers show how this mainly US-led militarization is part of the wider strategy for American global dominance. We also demonstrate in Part II, War-Making is a Crime: The Latest Episode in America?s Long Record, that the belligerent policy of Washington and its allies is criminal. Before even firing a shot, the Western powers are violating international laws and protocols of diplomacy. Equipped with this legal insight and knowledge is essential for citizens to mount an effective anti-war movement. In this section, we also provide a historical background showing that Washington?s hostility towards Iran is but the latest episode in a long history of criminal war-making by the US. Central to the Western powers' avowed rationale in the Persian Gulf is their presentation of Iran as a threat to world peace, in particular from its alleged development of nuclear weapons. In Part III, Media Manipulation: Lies, Distortions and Selling Yet Another War to the Public, we dispel the myths, fog and fabrications behind these allegations to show that Iran does not have, nor is intending to build, nuclear weapons. Its ?nuclear ambitions? (a phrase so often said with sinister connotations) are to develop civilian energy and medical capabilities ? well within the provisions and entitlements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Countless inspections over several years by the United Nations? nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have not found any evidence to support Western claims. Yet these well-worn and hollow claims continue to be recycled in the mainstream media. The IAEA has also shown itself to have become a willing political tool for Western governments and intelligence agencies by casting sinister doubt on the Iranian nuclear programme even though the IAEA has not found any proof to justify such doubts. We show that the supposed nuclear threat feared by the Western powers is a specious pretext for their otherwise criminal aggression towards Iran and its 80 million people. Finally, in Part IV Towards a Global Conflagration, we point to the very real danger of a horrendous cataclysm ? if Western governments persist in their criminal drumbeat for war in the Persian Gulf. Russia and China are fully aware that a war on Iran is a stepping stone towards a broader war. The Russian government, in a recent statement, has warned the US and NATO that "should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security.? The region is on a hair-trigger for a conflagration that would involve nuclear weapons and the collision of global powers in what would constitute World War III. The consequences are barely imaginable for the loss of life in such a scenario and for the very future of the planet. Yet all the while, the mainstream media has served to justify this march to war or to downplay its horrific possibilities. The complacency of Western public opinion --including segments of the US anti-war movement-- is disturbing. No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. Such an action would result in "the unthinkable": a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East. It should be noted that a nuclear nightmare would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing a Chernobyl-Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout. The "Globalization of War" involving the hegemonic deployment of a formidable US-NATO military force in all major regions of the World is inconsequential in the eyes of the Western media. War is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities. The broader implications of this war on Iran are either trivialized or not mentioned. People are led to believe that war is part of a "humanitarian mandate" and that both Iran as well as Iran's allies, namely China and Russia, constitute an unrelenting threat to global security and "Western democracy". In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, We at Global Research are committed to raising public awareness of the injustice and criminality being perpetrated by Western governments. We began this News Reader by saying that 2012 could be a watershed year for ominous reasons. It could also be a watershed year for a better future in which citizens rise up to avert war and overthrow their oppressive governments, to create societies that are worthy of human beings. In order to achieve that, we first need to know what is at stake and why. This Online News Reader (N-Book) aims to do that. Finian Cunningham, Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 16, 2012 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I Playing with Fire: Covert Acts of Aggression, Provocation and War Beating the Drums of War: Provoking Iran into "Firing the First Shot"? - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-01-14 Very few people in America are aware or informed regarding the devastation and massive loss of life which would occur in the case of a US-Israeli sponsored attack on Iran. Terror Attacks, U.S.-Israeli War Games Raise the Prospects for War with Iran - by Tom Burghardt - 2012-01-14 Assassination in Iran: Obama Administration is CEO of "Murder Inc" Clinton denies US involvement in murder of nuclear scientist - by Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-13 Iran Says It Has Evidence CIA Was Behind Assassination Of Scientist- 2012-01-15 The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz: Could the U.S. Navy be defeated by Iran in the Persian Gulf? - by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2012-01-08 The Pentagon?s own war simulations show that a war in the Persian Gulf with Iran would spell disaster for the U.S. Navy. FINANCIAL WARFARE: US Sabotage of Iran?s Currency: A New Twist of the Screw to War - by Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-03 War Plan Iran: China Snubs Washington's Best-Laid Plans to Destabilize Iran's Oil Industry - by Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-10 Building Another Pretext to Wage War on Iran: US Court Holds Tehran Responsible for the 9/11 Attacks $100 billion in damages - by Dr. Ismail Salami - 2011-12-27 Downed CIA Stealth Drone Marks Another Step Towards America's War On Iran - by Finian Cunningham - 2011-12-07 Pearl Harbor: 70 Years on, Is Iran the New Japan? - by Finian Cunningham - 2011-12-08 PART II War-Making is a Crime: The Latest Episode in America?s Long Record War Plan Iran: The US Finally Admits Its Criminal Bankruptcy. - by Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-09 ?Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.? says US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta. So if Iran is not even trying to develop a nuclear weapon, what then is the criminal US warmongering predicated on? Waging War against Iran is a Criminal Act, in Violation of International Law The death toll from World War III will be incalculable... - by Prof. Francis A. Boyle - 2012-01-07 US Obligated to Take Iran Dispute to International Arbitration - by Sherwood Ross - 2012-01-07 Manipulation of the UN Security Council in support of the US-NATO Military Agenda Coercion, Intimidation & Bribery used to Extort Approval from Reluctant Members - by Carla Stea - 2012-01-10 PART III Media Manipulation: Lies, Distortions and Selling Yet Another War to the Public VIDEO: Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War - by James Corbett - 2012-01-02 The centuries-long history of how media has been used to whip the nation into wartime frenzy, dehumanize the supposed enemies, and even to manipulate the public into believing in causes for war that, decades later, were admitted to be completely fictitious. Israel: "Wiped off The Map". Rumor of the Century, Fabricated by the US Media to Justify An All out War on Iran - by Arash Norouzi - 2012-01-04 Using Fake Intelligence to Justify War on Iran - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-11-09 Washington is in the process of concocting a new string of lies pertaining to Iran's nuclear program with a view to justifying the implementation of punitive bombings. Media Manipulation and the Drums of War: How Media is used to Whip the Nation into Wartime Frenzy - by James Corbett - 2012-01-03 PART IV Towards a Global Conflagration World War III: The Launching of a Preemptive Nuclear War against Iran - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-12-04 World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans. IRAN: The Next War on Washington?s Agenda Politics - by Dr Paul Craig Roberts - 2012-01-13 The American-Iranian Cold War in the Middle East and the Threat of A Broader War - by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2012-01-01 A Cold War between Tehran and Washington has been raging across the Middle East from Lebanon to Iraq and the Persian Gulf with the use of spies, drones, assassinations, and perception campaigns. When War Games Go Live. Preparing to Attack Iran. "Simulating World War III" - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-01-08 With ongoing war games on both sides, armed hostilities between the US-Israel led coalition and Iran are, according to Israeli military analysts, "dangerously close". Imperial Military Adventurism: Tensions Rise as the U.S. Imposes the 'Nuclear Option' on Iran's Economy Blocking oil Shipments through the Strait of Hormuz... - by Tom Burghardt - 2012-01-02 Preparing to Attack Iran with Nuclear Weapons: "No Option can be taken off the Table." - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-12-26 Red Lines and Ticking Clocks: U.S. War Plans Against Iran The possibility of Russia's Military Involvement... - by Tom Burghardt - 2011-12-26 Any conflict on Iran is a direct threat to Russia?s security ? Rogozin US-NATO AMD Target Russia. Will Russia Intervene Militarily against the US in the Case of an Attack on Iran - 2012-01-13 Why Attacking Iran Will Not Work in 2012. Failure could Result in a US-Israel Military and Economic Tailspin - by Patrick Henningsen - 2012-01-05 Why Not Attack Iran? Iran will retaliate against U.S. troops and Israel - by David Swanson - 2012-01-06 Obama's New Military Strategy: Targeting Nations which Challenge US Hegemony - by Stephen Lendman - 2012-01-07 IMPLOSION OF THE MIDDLE EAST: Destabilizing Iraq and Syria, Recalibrating America's War Plans directed against Iran - by Dr. Ismail Salami - 2012-01-06 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more background analysis consult our latest Online Interactive I-Book The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER - by Michel Chossudovsky, Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-31 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spread the word, reverse the tide of war, forward the N-Book to friends and family, post on facebook. We call upon college, university and high school teachers to bring this N-Book to the attention of their students. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Online News Reader Series is provided free of charge to our readers. Kindly consider making a Donation to Global Research Any amount large or small will contribute to supporting our endeavors. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW RELEASE: GLOBAL RESEARCH E-BOOK Purchase Online directly from Global Research Towards a World War III Scenario by Michel Chossudovsky -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research e-newsletter From ths at psalience.org Tue Jan 17 13:38:59 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:38:59 +0100 Subject: [THS] The US Government Is Bankrupt Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120117133708.03e0b8e8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30262.htm The US Government Is Bankrupt By Doug Casey January 16, 2012 "Lew Rockwell" -- Everyone knows that the US government is bankrupt and has been for many years. But I thought it might be instructive to see what its current cash-flow situation actually is. At least insofar as it's possible to get a clear picture. As you know, the so-called Super Committee recently tried to come up with a plan to cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion and failed completely. To anyone who understands the nature of the political process, the failure was, of course, as predictable as it was shameful. What's even more shameful, though, is that the sought-after $1.5 trillion cut wasn't meant to apply to the annual budget but to the total budget of the next 10 years ? a fact that is rarely mentioned. Now whenever the chattering classes talk about cuts, it's always about cuts over the course of 10 years. Which is a dodge, partly because most of the supposed cuts will be scheduled for the end of the period, but also because new programs, new emergencies and hidden contingencies will creep in to offset any announced cuts. So the numbers below aren't a worst case; they're the rosiest possible scenario. People have thought I was joking when, asked how bad the Greater Depression was going to be, I answered that it would be worse than even I thought it would be. But I haven't been joking. To sum up the situation, given its financial condition and the political forces working to worsen it, the US government is facing a completely impossible and irremediable situation. I'm going to try to illustrate that here. But because I'm a perpetual optimist, not a gloom-and-doomer, I'm also going to give you solutions to the purely financial problems ? albeit with some good news and some bad news. The good news is, there actually are solutions. The bad news is that there is zero chance that any of them will be put into effect. The problems are one hundred percent caused by the US government, not by bankers, brokers or the real estate industry ? although they have been complicit. Recall what government is: an organization with a monopoly of force within a certain geographical area. Its purpose is, ostensibly, to protect the inhabitants of its bailiwick from the initiation of force. That implies three functions: an army to protect against aggressors coming from outside of its borders; police to protect citizens from aggressors inside its borders; and a court system to allow citizens to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force. Assuming you're going to have a government, it's important to limit it strictly, lest it get completely out of control ? it's got a monopoly of force, after all ? and overwhelm the society it's supposed to protect. Here I want you to distinguish government from society. They are not only two totally different things, but are potentially antithetical to each other. This is because the essence of government is force, not voluntary cooperation. Everything that people think the government provides (beyond some forms of protection) is really provided by society or with resources the government has taken from society. It's critical to understand this, or you won't see the slippery slope the US is now sliding on. Is there any chance that the US government can reform and go back to a sustainable basis at this point? I'd say no. Its descent started in earnest with the Spanish-American War in 1898, when it acquired its first foreign possessions (Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, etc). It accelerated with the advent of the income tax and the Federal Reserve in 1913. It accelerated further with World War I, when the government took over the economy for 18 months. The New Deal and World War II made the state into a permanent major feature in the average American's life. The Great Society made free food, housing and medical care a feature. The final elimination of any link of the dollar to gold in 1971 ensured ever-increasing levels of currency inflation. The Cold War and a series of undeclared wars (Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq) cemented the military in place as a permanent focus of the government. And since 9/11, the curve has gone hyperbolic with the War on Terror. It's been said that war is the health of the state. We have lots more war on the way, and that will expand the state's spending. But the Greater Depression will be an even bigger drain, and it will likely destroy the middle class as an unwelcome bonus. In all that time, from 1898 to today, there have been no substantial retrenchments of the US government, and the situation is getting worse, on a hyperbolic curve. Trends in motion tend to stay in motion until a genuine crisis changes them, and this trend has been gaining momentum for over a century. Let's divide people into three classes ? rich, poor and middle class. Rich people are going to be okay. They can bribe the politicians to change the laws, hire the lawyers to interpret the laws, the accountants to limit their liabilities, advisors to help them profit from distortions and travel agents to get them out of Dodge. They may get eaten later, but for the moment, don't worry about them. The poor don't have much to lose, and the government is going to keep throwing benefits at them to keep them happy. That's a shame because it cements them to the bottom as poor people ? but that's a topic for another day. The real danger is to the middle class, and it's a serious matter because the US is a middle-class society. These are people who try to produce more than they consume and save the difference in order to grow wealthier. That formula has worked well up to now ? but almost everybody saves dollars. What happens, however, if the dollars are destroyed? It means that most of what they saved disappears, and most of the middle class will disappear with it, at least for that generation. They'll be very unhappy, and they'll be up for some serious changes. I'll come back to those later. The Budget Take a look at the following pie chart of US government spending. It's cut into 10 slices, by function. The government used to break down and report its spending according to agencies ? Defense Department, so much; Department of Agriculture, this much; FTC, that much. They've de-emphasized that and now seem to prefer reporting by function, because most of the agencies do many things. Actually, with thousands of agencies, departments, divisions, bureaus, units and contractors, it's impossible to figure out exactly who does what in the government. It's so large, so irresponsible and so unmanageable that the only solution is to abolish things wholesale. Bureaucracy naturally grows unless it's pulled out by the roots; reform, or pruning it back, is doomed to failure. Justice The chart shows a tiny little yellow sliver, 2% of the pie, equaling $55 billion, for administration of justice. That's the police and the courts ? by far government's most important functions, but also by far its smallest expenditure. That's a lot of money, but how much of it is really necessary? Of the 2.3 million people currently incarcerated and the tens of millions more who are ex-convicts, parolees or otherwise "in the system," most are there because of victimless crimes, mainly drugs. In the Constitution, only three federal crimes are mentioned ? counterfeiting, piracy and treason. Dope isn't there. Now there are over 5,000 categories of federal crime. Most of them should be abandoned to the states. So the most important function of the federal government could be cut back hugely. Defense This is the red chunk, 24%, equaling about $850 billion. The very title of this part of the budget is an Orwellian misnomer. Until 1946, there was a War Department (for declared wars) and the Department of the Navy (for miscellaneous foreign adventures). Regrettably, the Defense Department doesn't defend the US so much as its own budget. By having troops all over the world, they're actually attracting danger to the US. As you know, the US spends more on so-called defense than the rest of the world combined; in effect, it's bought a gold-plated hammer that makes everything start to look like a nail. Are there dangers in the world, and bad people? Absolutely. But bankrupting yourself while developing new enemies isn't an optimal response. A bit of perspective is in order. World War II, by far the biggest war in history, is said to have cost 288 billion 1940 dollars. Today that's only a third of TARP. Of course, those were 1940 dollars, equal to perhaps about 4.1 trillion of today's units. One other thought about the military budget and where it's going: You may recall that, for a while after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was talk about a "peace dividend" of $50 billion. It seemed like a lot of money at the time, but it evaporated like water on a hot skillet. Americans seem to love their military, if only because it's a part of the government that seems to work (at least when cost is no object), and it doesn't seem corrupt (at least below the level of the Pentagon). They'll be loath to cut military spending and hard pressed to do so with new wars clearly on the way. So it's likely to grow. That said, 90% of this piece of the pie should be eliminated before it?s too late. Social Security This is the big blue chunk, at 20%, for about $706 billion. People who receive it don't like to hear this, but Social Security is a classic Ponzi scheme, where late entrants are essential to pay early entrants. But it's worse than a Ponzi scheme because it's involuntary. It's justified by alleging "it's for their own good." But that's a lie, because it actually discourages saving on the part of the poor in two ways. First, it makes many believe saving is unnecessary because they figure they'll have Social Security to rely on when they're old. Second, it takes 6.2% off the top of an employee's pay, plus another 6.2% from his employer, up to $106,800 of earnings. That's over $13,000 every year that can't be saved. Further, it doesn't go into some mythical "lock box." It goes into the government's general revenue, and payments come out of general revenue. It's not somehow "set aside" anymore, as was once the case, when it went to buy a special class of government bonds. Even when that was the case, it was a fraud. Those bonds never represented savings; they just represented future tax revenues that would need to be extracted from future generations. If the government insisted on making citizens save ? itself a bad idea that I don't have space to dissect here ? it should be in the form of an individually owned IRA. Chile has had these for 30 years, and as a result today the average Chilean has more net wealth than the average American. They have real assets in the form of shares, not a liability in the form of government debt. What, then, is going to happen to Social Security? Right now, 12% of the US population are 65 or over, therefore eligible for Social Security. By 2030, that number is going to rise to 23%; about two workers will be supporting each retiree. That's probably impossible, but I doubt we'll have to confront the eventuality because the system is unlikely to last that long. It's a real time bomb, however, because few Americans any longer have sufficient savings to support them in their dotage. So don't look for any cuts here. It's become an insoluble problem. Income security This next-biggest item equals $624 billion, for 17% of the budget. It's a catchall of many different programs from many different agencies that could more accurately be termed "welfare spending." It includes food stamps for over 45 million. Unemployment benefits for perhaps 12 million more. Housing assistance for millions more. Pensions for federal employees and a myriad of other welfare benefits. Can much of this $624 billion be cut? I would say it should be cut to zero. It's a morally corrupting influence and a financially bankrupting one. But because unemployment is going much higher and the standard of living is going much lower, there's not much chance of any cuts here. People now fervently believe this is what government is for ? entirely apart from the fact that the unemployed and the poor are voters. Medicare At $451 billion, 13% of the budget, this item is growing the most rapidly. What should happen to Medicare? The answer, of course, is that it was the height of hubris and stupidity for the government to have created this cancerous monster ? but that doesn't address the current issue. This isn't a question that lends itself to a technocrat's answer; even more than other categories of spending, it's a philosophical proposition. Let's address it from that direction. What, historically, have men done upon reaching a certain age, when the body starts to desert you and you become an active liability to your fellows as well as to yourself? In pre-industrial cultures, the honorable course was to wander out into the wilderness (while you were still able), make your peace with reality and die. Eskimos would step out onto an ice floe and disappear. An especially loved or valuable person would be cared for ? a good incentive to be loved and of value. Only a coward, a degraded and despicable person, would attempt to hold on to life at the active expense of others. Of course we now live in relatively rich industrial cultures. But, I submit, the moral principles are the same. We now have savings, and if you save up enough, and if you want to dissipate your assets by putting yourself in a hospital bed, surrounded by strangers, with a tube up your nose for ten years before you kick the bucket ? it's your money. But you certainly shouldn't require other people to do that for you ? which is what Medicare is about. The answer is to take care of yourself. If you think advances in technology can keep you alive to age 200, save the money to pay for it. Assuming you don't care enough for your progeny to leave them anything. As with Social Security, the demographics for Medicare are disastrous. Again, 12% of the population now is over 65, but by 2030 it will be 23%, so, everything being equal, spending is going vastly higher. But it's much worse than that because of skyrocketing medical costs. Note that there is no necessity, in a free market, for medical costs to rise. Rather, they should be expected to fall, like the cost of most technology. But as medicine becomes ever more regulated and (theoretically) available to everyone, just the opposite will happen. This is one reason the FDA should be renamed the Federal Death Authority. By raising the prices of new drugs and devices literally tenfold, it probably kills more people every year than the Defense Department does in a decade. Health At $369 billion, 10% of spending, this is another Orwellian misnomer. People are, understandably, willing to pay most anything to preserve their health. But the government's spending has almost zero to do with health. Health is something you and only you are responsible for. You maintain it by proper diet, exercise and general lifestyle ? plus a dollop of good genes. It's inaccurate and deceptive to call medical care health care. Medical care is needed for emergencies, but it's a poor substitute for health care. So where does all this money go? Part of it is Medicaid, for people too young to qualify for Medicare and too poor to pay their own bills. Many are the morbidly obese types you've seen fighting for bargains at the Black Friday sales at Walmart. Some funds go to buy a scooter for an oldster ? you've seen the ads on TV, an excellent scam for the companies marketing them. If health is what is wanted, the answer lies partly in abolishing public housing and food stamps; some people might actually go out and exercise. The whole thing is corrupt from top to bottom. Where is this item going? If Obamacare goes into effect, vastly higher. Medicare and Medicaid are exact templates for Obamacare. Education, training and social services Here we have $125 billion, but that's only 3% of the budget. Most of it is direct school expenditures and school subsidies. Of course education is a good thing, but I don't feel out of line saying that most government schooling amounts to indoctrination ? or just day care. It should be abolished and education left to parents (who are more interested in their kids than any bureaucrat) and to communities, churches and entrepreneurs. Much of the money is for higher education, most of which is doled out in places where kids go to misallocate four to six years of time, pick up bad habits, acquire destructive notions from professors and incur a pile of debt that they can't get rid of. Between the bad ideas and the debt, they graduate as serfs ? psychologically from their classes, financially from having to pay for the experience. Education, like health, is something every individual must acquire on his own; throwing other people's money at schools to keep kids sitting at desks is counterproductive. Taking a hard science, math, medicine or engineering course in school is one thing; taking courses in political science, English and gender studies is something else. 90% of the universities and colleges in the US should, and would, go bankrupt without federal aid. But since it's anathema to cut education funding, there's no help from this quarter. Transportation $92 billion per year, 3% of the budget, is a lot to spend for highways that are falling apart; the interstate highway system should be privatized and run as toll roads. The government railroads, Amtrak and Conrail, are disasters; they, too, should be privatized. Air traffic control, which the FAA provides with technology from the '50s, should be the province of the airlines or of privately owned airports. The TSA is part of this slice, and it's expanding. It now has sixty thousand employees providing "security theater" not just at airports but bus stations, highways and NFL football games, where you have to be examined at the gate. General government Note the violet slice labeled "other," for $119 billion, or 3% of the budget. This catchall includes general science, space and technology, natural resources, environment, agriculture, community and regional development. Other than the police agencies, the military and the courts, this category encompasses most of the government's traditional ? which is not to imply necessary ? functions and services. Let's look at a few random items, mostly for amusement, since it would take a large book to even summarize the government's budget. It's a vast array of miscellany, including flood insurance nobody else will sell you because you chose to build your house on a flood plain. It encompasses the $2.7 billion Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has forever been the most corrupt agency in the government but still exists 125 years after the frontier was closed. It includes the FCC, with its $1.2 billion budget (a trivial cost relative to the economic distortions it pays for). Although the agency serves no useful purpose, its average employee makes $147,000 per year; but then the average government employee makes $74,311 per year, which itself is 40% more than the average private-sector employee. The FDIC, which provides stickers on bank doors to bolster confidence in failed institutions, has $3 billion of assets left to insure over a trillion dollars in deposits. The General Government slice also includes the national parks and administration of the roughly one-third of the US that is directly owned by the US government. Of course all that should be privatized; it's dead capital. The US government should not be in the real-estate business or any other business ? like the Post Office, which currently runs an $8 billion annual deficit. Perhaps some of its employees would "go postal" if its assets were sold off, but many would qualify for a job at FedEx or UPS. It includes NASA, which has devolved into just another turf-protecting bureaucracy, slowing down the development of the private space industry. It should be sold; I doubt they could get much for it, but that beats a $14 billion expenditure every year. Interest The US government made net interest payments of $196 billion, for only 5% of the budget. It seems like a reasonable enough figure, financing so many laudable projects, and small by comparison to other categories. As I've indicated above, the other categories of spending are likely to grow ? but interest will explode. I expect, in the next few years, it will become by far the largest category of spending, possibly larger than the next two largest put together, even while most of the others grow like cancers. The reason is simple. Right now interest rates are at extremely low levels. That's partly because few people want to borrow in today's uncertain climate. But it's also because rates are being suppressed by the government. They want to "stimulate" the economy with low rates ? so people can borrow more and they can avoid default for a while longer. And the US government is itself, by far, the world's largest debtor. They have $15 trillion in official national debt, on which they are paying $200 billion per year in interest. Most of that debt is short term, with less than a year to maturity. At some point very soon, they won't be able to roll over most of that $15 trillion, in addition to floating $1.5 trillion of new debt incurred each year, at anywhere near current interest rates. At some point, we'll see rates go to the levels of the early '80s, when The Long Boom started. And probably even much higher. But even at 12%, the interest cost alone would be $1.8 trillion per year ? a completely unbearable amount. But it's also both inevitable and imminent. As unnecessary, corrupt and destructive as almost all of the federal budget is, I suppose the government could get by for a good number of years to come, on some basis. As Adam Smith accurately put it, there's a lot of ruin in a nation. But as the current financial crisis in Europe is illustrating, debt can bring it all to a head very quickly. The US is only slightly behind the Europeans. The same is true of China and even truer of Japan. Denouement My point is to make it very apparent that there really is no conventional solution to the US government's financial crisis. It's reached a stage where the government will have to start defaulting on some of its obligations. You decide which. The only questions are political; the economics are quite clear. Nothing will be done, as the Super Committee showed. I believe they would have done something if they thought it possible and knew how. Actually, the situation is much more serious than what I've briefly illustrated. We've only discussed one aspect of the income statement, which itself is enough to bring down the whole structure, and soon. We haven't discussed the government's balance sheet. Estimates vary, but the US government has direct and contingent obligations that go far beyond its $15 trillion in accumulated borrowing. The present value of its Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, veterans, financial insurance and numerous unfunded liabilities might be another $200 trillion. Nobody knows, and it's probably impossible to calculate. So, the US government will go bankrupt. That's not the end of the world. Lots of governments have gone bankrupt, some of them numerous times ? like almost all of them here in South America, where I am at the moment. In fact, there's a temptation to look forward to it eagerly. After all, the state is the enemy of any decent human. One might hope that when they bankrupt themselves, maybe we will get to live in a libertarian paradise. But that's not likely the way things will come down; rather, just the opposite. Not all state bankruptcies are just temporary upsets. Most of the great revolutions in history have financial roots. Great revolutions are more than just unpleasant and inconvenient; they're extremely dangerous. The French Revolution of 1789 was brought on by the financial collapse of the French government. It was a good thing to depose Louis XVI, but things didn't get better ? they got much, much worse with Robespierre and then Napoleon. In Germany, the destruction of the German mark in 1923 set the stage for the Nazis ? and then the Depression ushered them in. The collapse of the Czar's regime in Russia in 1917 seemed to be good news at first ? but then things got worse, and they stayed worse for a long time. The fact is that when a government collapses, especially when the government is providing all the things the US government does today, people want somebody to fix it; they want their goodies back. It's well known that over 50% of the US population are net recipients of state largess. And the degree of state support and involvement in the US is far, far greater than it was in France, Russia or Germany. After a period of chaos, it's always the people who are most political, who have the most rabid statist ideas who get the public's attention and rise to the top. It seems highly likely that the US will get a savior, someone full of bravado, who assures the booboisie that he can straighten things out ? if he is given sufficient power. Perhaps it will be an arrogant windbag like Gingrich, perhaps some general. The government won't wither away; it will reassert itself. I don't see any way around it, actually. We are already moving into a police state (evidenced most recently by the Senate's Nov. 2 vote allowing the military to indefinitely incarcerate anyone they accuse of terrorism). But at least it's a police state with a fairly high standard of living, one with Walmarts, McDonalds, and SUVs ? at least for the time being. But rest assured that if the situation evolves the way I expect, the standard of living will drop steeply, financial markets are going to become chaotic and the US will become a quite repressive place for some time ? at least as long as the War on Terror lasts. I will bet you money on this. In fact, I am betting money on it. So what can you do about it? Well, actually, there is nothing you can do about it. At least as far as changing the course of history is concerned. The best you can do is to speculate intelligently on further, new distortions that will be cranked into the system, as well as others that are inevitably going to be liquidated. It seems to me that this is a trend that can no longer be turned around. The US government's budget is, in fact, the biggest thing in the world; it won't be turned around, because it is like a gigantic snowball rolling down a hill. It will only stop when it smashes into the village at the bottom of the valley. The best thing you can do is capitalize on it as well as you can and get out of its way while you do.2 Doug Casey (send him mail) is a best-selling author and chairman of Casey Research, LLC., publishers of Casey?s International Speculator. Copyright ? 2012 Casey and Associates -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: USGovernment2010Outlays.png Type: application/octet-stream Size: 140857 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.psalience.org/pipermail/ths/attachments/20120117/92eb37e9/attachment-0001.obj From ths at psalience.org Tue Jan 17 15:38:48 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:38:48 +0100 Subject: [THS] Accounts of a busted entheogen distributor Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120117153735.046ec698@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.mushroomman.org/ mushroomman Accounts of a busted entheogen distributor On October 22, 2011 I was arrested by the DEA for cultivation and distribution of psilocybin mushrooms. The Feds conducted a two year investigation that included an informant, interception of my email, phone taps and surveillance in three states. I was incarcerated for 14 days at the SeaTac Federal Detention Center. Upon arrival, at SeaTac FDC I was greeted by a group of guys watching the evening news who shouted: ?There he is, Mushroom Man!? I have adopted that moniker for this blog. Currently, I am on house arrest pending further legal negotiations. This blog describes my encounters with law enforcement as a case study of the misguided and ineffective drug policy our country is pursuing. My goal is to bring intelligence, compassion and common sense to bear on the reform of the unscientific and unfair Uniform Drug Control Act of 1970, DEA Schedule I classification, and other misguided drug laws. Toward that goal, check out the Drug War Clock below, courtesy the good folks at DrugSense.org (http://www.drugsense.org), to see just how much money is being thrown at a ?war? that can never be won. For the benefit of all concerned, Michael Maki Posted in General | Tagged DEA, Drug War Clock, entheogens, Magic Mushrooms, Michael Maki, mushroom bust, psilocybin, SeaTac Federal Detention Center, Uniform Drug Control Act of 1970 | Leave a reply Prison Perspectives ?2 Posted on January 12, 2012 by admin Reply While I was being shuttled in shackles between the SeaTac Federal Detention Center (FDC) and the Federal Courthouse in Tacoma for arraignments, etc. I spent van and holding time with other prisoners who were in the legal process like me. The way that the gears of the law engage and shift is that folks get transferred to and fro in informal batches. This was my only opportunity to communicate with my co-defendants Bill, Eduardo, Galen, and my son Peter. Strip Search and Shackles A typical 10 hour trip from the FDC to Tacoma and back, for what would likely be a ten minute appearance, begins at 7:30 a.m. with a strip search at the FDC, a mysterious change from the FDC issue chemise to a same-color button-up shirt (I guess it?s a tad more formal looking or something), then a wait in holding cells with a dozen or more guys while vans north to the Seattle court and south to the Tacoma court are filled and dispatched. Then comes the customary shackling: a chain wrapped twice around the waist, then padlocked in front to the double locked handcuffs, leg irons, and then off we hobble to our waiting van. Not Many White Guys Like Me on the Van The holding cells are a mixture of guys from different units, so there is an exchange of news between units and about people of mutual interest. The women have an adjacent and similar process, and the vans are co-ed (by seats) and there is gender segregation in the holding cells at either end of the line. Lots of Latinos on their way to prison or deportation, Asians, African-Americans, usually a Native American or two, and some token white guys like me. The racial mixing of America is nowhere so apparent as in places like this. Tattoos of every description are in abundance. At the Tacoma Federal Courthouse, the holding cells are in the basement, with courtrooms down a corridor on the same lower level. Prisoners-in-process spend the day in cells with typically four people in them. Stainless steel benches and a sink-toilet are the furnishings. There is a de-shackling and re-shackling ritual that is done as prisoners are led back and forth to the courtroom. It?s a relentless and noisy clattering on again-off again-on again process, as shackles are removed for the brief courtroom appearances. The federal marshals are experts at tossing the chains onto the floor like Houdini would do in throwing his shackles aside. ?I?m gettin? my life together ? Lamented the Probation Violator Riding to Tacoma from the FDC one morning I was accompanied by three black guys, two of them on the rebound from probation violations. The younger had failed a UA (urine analysis) for alcohol consumption and was being bounced back into prison for 6 months to a year. He was on his way to find out. ?Man, I?ve been so good, I?m in college, I just got a job, I?m taking care of my two kids, I?m gettin? my life together, and now this!?. My PO (probation officer) just don?t like me. I hope the judge will give me another chance.? He began to weep openly. ?Man, I only ever met my own father four or five times in my life. I want something better for my kids.? Another, older guy, covered with tattoos all over his body, including his shaved head and most of his face, said, ?Shit, man, ya? should know by now, that?s the way it is, y?know what I mean?? He seemed resigned to his next bit of impending fate, resultant from some mix-up down in Vancouver, Washington. ?Ya know, Portland?s cool, cops are cool. But Vancouver Man, Vancouver?s a place you go to on vacation, and you come back on probation!? He laughs a big open laugh. And Then There is the Quiet M.D. Our other black companion is of a very different sort. His gentle smile and affirmative nod show sympathy for his brethren, and, when he speaks it?s clear he is educated and not a man of the street. In fact, I?d already met Dr. Antoine Johnson on a couple of other occasions in the to and fro back to court. He?s an MD charged with Medicare fraud and other financial crimes associated with his four clinics. He is the rare prisoner who is defending his own Federal case along with his mother Lawanna, who has been similarly charged. The two of them have already been in the FDC two and a half years, pending trial, which is finally in process. They ride the van daily to plead their case, a three week process unusual in its length, breadth, and pro se defense. Both son and mother receive a set of street clothes in Tacoma to don for their court appearances. The progress of their pro se (self-defended) trial is the talk of the FDC, and everyone is rooting for them. We took a liking to each other right away. In fact, Dr. Johnson had a clinic in my hometown of Aberdeen. It?s hard to tell what all is involved in the dozens of counts, but it sounds like he got a little liberal in his prescription of pain medications. Paperwork has been lost or otherwise disappeared from both sides, as it would seem that the State of Washington has as many files missing and poor memories on the part of supposed responsible parties and witnesses as the Johnsons. As an astute jailhouse lawyer Antoine has built an extensive case, and has even tried to subpoena the Surgeon General of the US and the head of the Washington DSHS to testify. And as couple of guys have quoted to me an ironic prison truism, ?Man, everybody in here is innocent, ya know what I mean?? As a black doctor in a very white community (except for a recent large Hispanic influx), his legal issues became a local scandal with racial and not-so-subtle racist undertones. Interim he was living in exile in Madagascar doing community development work and was extradited back to the US to face these federal charges. He?s very bright and has a sense of social purpose like me, for whom the prospect of prison time would be a momentary interruption in a life devoted to service. We share moments of prayer together. Mushrooms?! WTF? Mr. Tattoo wants to know more about me, the odd older white guy on the van. When I explain my situation he says: ?Mushrooms?!! WTF?! Man I love mushrooms! My homie found some growing in a yard [they must have been Psilocybe stuntzii?s] in the grass and he brought them home and we made some tea and put in some lemonade, and shit, man, I never been so high! We laughed more that I ever laughed before in my life. Ya? know what I mean? Man if I knew I was gonna die, I?d want to eat some mushrooms to go out on, ya? know what I mean?? Yes, and so did Aldous Huxley, but that?s another story. With a Roll of Toilet Paper as My Pillow, We Discuss Racism While Antoine and his mother are clattering off to another day in court, in jacket, tie, handcuffs and leg irons and I recline on the stainless steel bench in the holding cell, a roll of toilet paper for a pillow. Another black guy is led in. We can?t see each other directly, our cells facing the corridor wall, but he asks from the adjacent cell: ?Hey, next door! Who is that guy?? I tell him a little about Dr. Johnson, how he?s from my town, Aberdeen, and how the whole thing has a racial spin there. ?So what is it, man?? He asks me in all seriousness. ?Why do white folks have such a negative thing about us black folks anyway?? I think for a moment, reflecting on my town, where growing up there were no blacks to form any opinions about one way or another. What is it, anyway? The best I could come up with was: ?You know, I think it?s so deep it?s maybe even genetic, to distrust people who look different from us; you know, the other tribe, the people from the other side of the mountain, the other. Doesn?t so much matter what they look like really, except that we see and look for the differences between us, whatever they might be. That?s about all I can think of.? Thinking of my own dad?s racism and xenophobia. ?It?s a God-damned mystery, really,? he replied ?Yeah, man, it?s a mystery.? Posted in General | Leave a reply Prison Perspectives ? 1 Posted on January 10, 2012 by admin Reply At The SeaTac FDC (Federal Detention Facility) Under the flight path of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport stands the seven story SeaTac Federal Detention Center. With capacity for a thousand inmates of both genders (in separate units, of course), SeaTac FDC as of December 1 is holding 816 prisoners. One of six federal detention centers in the country, the SeaTac FDC is principally a holding facility for transit to other prisons or deportation. These federal holding facilities are generally located near international airports since there is an international traffic in prisoners that passes through an FDC. However, folks can easily end up there for a couple of years or more. There are also increasing numbers of private for-profit companies that are part of the larger program of federal incarceration, although not to the extent that states and counties are contracting to private prison corporations. Since federal laws define a wide spectrum of criminal activities, from the white collar type, to counterfeiting, to drug smuggling to any crime that happens to be committed on federal property (national parks, military bases) the combination of people at an FDC (Federal Detention Facility) at any given time is quite a mix?jackals to geniuses. I am Dubbed, Mushroomman I arrived at Unit F-C in my temporary garb issued at entry downstairs in the booking area (a size XXL dark green coverall that made me feel like one of the Seven Dwarves) to the greeting by a couple of tables of TV-watching inmates: ?Hey, it must be the Mushroom Man! What?s up, Mushroom Man? Did you bring some with you?? I waved a thumbs-up and shuffled over to my assigned cell number 21. In prison vernacular cells are ?houses?. As the new and junior resident, I took the less desirable upper bunk. An armload of bedding was issued. Pillows seemed to be in short supply, but I got a sheet, towel, and two light blankets. I was told by the guard that I would get the rest of my basic issue gear the next day or so. And Learned: ?You are Fucked for Sure? I met my cell-mate? ?cellie??Tom, who right away informed me: ?Oh yeah, you are fucked for sure. You won?t get bail; you?ll be here for many months. Everybody is.? Not reassuring, but conveyed with a sort of we?re-all-fucked-here ironic cheer. Tom kindly gave me kind of a briefing on the way things work in the unit and told me his reasons for being there (?My gun collection got a little bit out of control.?) Our friendship began and I realized right away that here is a place where one can meet people who you would never have the chance to get to know under other circumstances, a real potluck of people. Life in the F-C Unit The F-C unit houses 60 men in 30 cells that surround a triangular-shaped common area about half the size of a basketball court. Other units have twice that number in two tiers of cells. A glassed-in cubicle in the center of the common room is the guard station. An obviously bored single male or female guard in 8 hour rotating shifts keeps an eye on things and conducts twice daily head counts of all the cells, which are locked down for the purpose. The head counts come at shift change, so two guards walk together and peek in to see that both prisoners are present and accounted for in each ?house?. Lock-down also happens at night, so twice during the day are periods of blessed quiet time, and at night the lights are turned way down, but not off. Meals are served three times a day, although a lot of guys sleep in past the 6 a.m. breakfast which usually consists of cold cereal, bread and peanut butter and jelly. Extra food is available through weekly commissary purchases. Except on Saturdays, when instant coffee is offered, inmates are required to purchase their own instant coffee or other beverages. Often, but not always, there is a dispenser of Kool-Aid type beverage ( the in-house joke line: ?Don?t drink the Kool-Aid!?) at meal-time, and hot water is always available from a dispenser, along with ice from an adjacent gurgling, clunking ice-maker. Meals are brought to the unit in big roller trays from a central kitchen downstairs, and served on plastic cafeteria trays from a secure commissary room by two inmates. One those two inmates is my cellie Tom, who I?ve dubbed ?the Mayor of F-C?. The food service jobs are coveted positions that pay 17 cents per hour and have certain perks. There are only a few ?paying? jobs at an FDC, unlike at long-term federal facilities where inmates who are physically able are required to engage in some kind of labor at the pay rate of 12-40 cents per hour. In other BOP (Bureau of Prisons) facilities, there are work opportunities in Federal Prison Industries. Where TV is Just About the Only Entertainment For most of each day the residents of the unit are out and about in the common room. Concrete supporting columns also hold overhead televisions and wall-mounted telephones. So talking on a public phone means standing below a television monitor with a few guys staring up at the screen over your head. It?s one of the things you get used to?like doing your bodily functions in a very small shared space. One television is kept on a Hispanic channel, one on a channel favored by blacks, another is usually tuned relentlessly to sports, and another on a good day would have the History Channel. The hunting and fishing channel are also very popular. And Watching the Weather Report is the Only Link to the Outside A strange communal habit is the daily observance of the local weather and commuter traffic reports, which I guess keeps the guys in touch with the outside world somehow. Thankfully the audio is only heard on FM radio headphones (which must be purchased). The only ?sound track? in the unit is the reaction of the men to whatever?s on the screen: mostly sports shouting. Eating is the Other Pastime Eating is a principal pastime in the unit, as is walking the common room perimeter, which is commonly done in twos, and conversations of all sorts accompany the laps around the unit. An exercise room has a basketball hoop, a volleyball net, and a couple of dilapidated stair climb exercise machines. The room?s greatest feature for me, though, is that is the only contact with the outdoors, the sky, and (sort of) fresh air. Looking up and out while climbing in place on the stair climber became a favored pastime, when the rec area wasn?t filled with hoop-shooting rowdies. The Weekly Native American Smudging Ceremony The outdoor-connected rec area is also the location of the Tuesday night Native American smudging ceremony, considered a religious practice and thus allowed. Some guys came out just to be able to smoke some cedar, sage, and kinnickinick- anything for some kind of smoke! One young Native American who joined us was from the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, where he violated parole by beating some guy nearly to death with a piece of firewood while under the influence of God-knows-what, and it being an Indian reservation and thus Federally-regulated real estate, he ended here at the FDC. Despite the distinctly separate ethnic groups in the unit?Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, tatted-up skinheads, Asians, Canadian smugglers and gangsters of various ethnicities?there is an easy camaraderie. However, mealtime becomes a self-segregated affair with certain dining tables where only certain ethnicities share meals and TV-viewing. Card-playing tables and the surprisingly popular chess matches are ethnically mixed. Prison Chess Chess is a game of strategy, and it would seem, also is a level playing field, a platform for a kind of nonviolent competitive interaction. The unit?s premier chess player, a Romanian national who was the kingpin of some large international embezzling ring, was remarkable. He could play two games simultaneously behind his back with someone verbally describing the opponent?s moves?and win! But he was also willing to play respectfully with a nearly illiterate Asian gang member. It was a classless and classic meeting of very different minds on a level playing field, the chessboard. This strange community of we?re-all-fucked brethren created daily scenes of cultural juxtaposition that consciously or unconsciously kept a subtle sense of humor wafting around the unit. Cellie Swapping After a couple of days, Tom told me that there was a vacancy coming up in 7 House, and that the remaining resident, Bobby, would like to trade bunks with me in 21. Bobby is incarcerated as an ?eco-terrorist? whose expression of protest was setting a Porsche/Ferrari dealership in Seattle on fire. Our real estate deal was made (cleared with the guards by Tom), and I moved into a cell of my own for the time being. A moment of personal domestic tranquility arrived: my own room, er, house! A couple days of the joy of personal space later, in walked my new cellie, and I couldn?t believe my eyes: it was my friend and now fellow codefendant Gordon! At first we became suspicious that this was a set-up, and that we were placed together and that our conversations were being recorded through the ventilation system or something, but ?experts? in the unit assured me that it was just the luck of the draw. However, downstairs where the unit and cell assignments are made, I know there is some direction taking place, with certain prisoners being separated, and we assumed that everything we said was being eavesdropped, whether it was or not. My New Cellie ?Happens? to be My Codefendant? Unit F-C was by all accounts one of the most low-key units at the FDC, and thus desirable, the luck of the draw for me I guess. After initial hesitancy, we became accustomed to conversing about our related cases. His home and farm had been raided the next day, and it was the excellent mushroom fruiting from his farm that had been used on the TV news reports. It was the only actual mushroom production that was encountered in the whole sweep, since folks in our network aren?t always in production. Anyway, Gordon was released to personal recognizance in a couple of days, while I was held over due to bureaucratic bungling for nearly another week. Another New Cellie: An (alleged) Drive-by Shooter Gordon?s upper bunk was filled the next day by my new cellie, a diminutive and well-tattooed Hawaiian-Filipino-Japanese guy called Spu (short for Sputnik- don?t ask me why). While being held for weapons and drug and parole violations as part of a recent drive-by shooting he (allegedly) participated in, he was preparing himself for some years in a long-term prison facility. Again, where would I ever encounter a guy directly from the gang world, for whom shooting into an inhabited house (or being in one being shot at) was a part of life? Spu was scrupulously clean in his personal and our shared hygiene, bringing our cell into military-grade spiffiness. He exuded an inner tension that I could imagine under certain circumstances being deadly violent, in an earnest and direct way. Definitely a guy you?d want to have on your side in a tight spot. We agreed to pray for each other?s well-being after we parted. I helped him with spelling his letter writing, coaching him on words like ?silver?, ?padlock?, and ?shirt?. Crimes Committed on Federal Property: Backpackers to Snatch-and-Grab to The whole issue of crimes committed on Federal property bring an odd mix of people into the Federal system and the FDC. Miles is a young recently-returned Iraq veteran who went with a buddy for a get-away-from-it-all hike up the Dosewallips trail in the Olympic National Park at the end of the season. Loaded with gear for a week in the mountains, they met with newly-fallen and falling snow the first day on the trail. The Dosewallips road washed out a few years ago, and due to federal budget cuts hasn?t been repaired, thus isolating the trailhead ranger station five miles up, and the trail out five miles longer. The two young men camped overnight on their return near the ranger station and then ditched their gear in the woods and walked out to the road. Coming back a week later they found that a ranger had found their gear and locked it up in a shed. Miles and his friend knocked a hole in the door big enough to open the latch and recover their stuff. Suddenly, there?s a ranger! The result: Miles, who was on probation for marijuana possession, gets a year in the FDC (he?ll do 6 months with credit for good behavior). Norm, a guy who?s worst offense previously was home marijuana growing, is at Mt. Rainier National Park for the day. It?s near the end of the day, and, as he walks in the parking lot he notices an expensive camera on the back seat of a parked car. Impetuously, he breaks the window and grabs the camera. Busted! It?s a trap set up by the rangers to catch car prowlers. The penalty: 9 months in the FDC. As it turns out our National Parks are the location of all sorts of mischief, and, occasssionally, tragedy including a recent murder of a ranger at Mt. Rainier National Park. The next example is more troubling. Tim is just back from two tours in Afghanistan, and is visiting a female soldier friend on base. Leaving Ft. Lewis late at night, he fails to stop completely on a right turn and then fails a field sobriety test. It?s not his first DUI. The penalty: a year in the FDC. ?Wish I could just go back to Afghanistan,? he complains. ?I don?t want to be on probation, I just want to do my time and go back to being an alcoholic.? ?So what did you do in Afghanistan?? I ask. ?I loved my job, driving a big armored bulldozer, mostly ?dozing the homes of suspected Taliban, which was most everyone. You should see the looks on some of those people when I drive over their houses. And you know the best part of the job? Being able to shoot people with no consequences!? And Then There are the Illegal Aliens There is current wave of illegal aliens, men and women who have been in the US 20 or more years but are just now being swept up in the reactionary movement to ?clean the American house.? Sweet guys like my friend Hector who neither speaks English nor reads Spanish. We walk circles together, me practicing my Spanish, he kindly repeating himself, glad for a friend in a frightening, isolated world. A grandfather, he?s been in the US illegally 27 years doing annual labor and has managed to live here all that time knowing only a smattering of English. One day we?re walking and talking together (?Camiando, amigo, camiando!?), another day he?s gone, deported to Jalisco after decades in the US and 6 months in the tidepool that is the FDC. The Purpose of Prisons The spectrum of Federal crimes is indeed wide and includes people who (in my opinion) need to be off the streets, violent people who individually or in gangs are a serious social threat. The population includes many who are out of control of their personal lives. Drugs like meth and cocaine have a lot to do with it. Being locked up gives them pause, but there is little in the way of actual therapeutic support for changing their lives. The system is clumsy, insensitive, unable to cope with the diversity of people being ground in its gears, even intentionally ignorant it seems sometimes. Visits by buttoned-up Mormon missionaries, Father Tim the Catholic priest, ?Barefoot? Stan of ?Jews for Jesus,? or even the charming blind Korean evangelist with the Stevie Wonder smile and off-key guitar playing aren?t drawing the interest of many inmates. It costs around $85.00 a day to keep a person locked up, they say. Incarcerating these two young guys, Norm and Miles, has cost the government $4-5000, plus legal expenses. The result: two young men now have a very jaded view of the justice system who will have a difficult time getting jobs when they get out. While undeniably socially unacceptable behavior, is this the best use of our tax dollars? Big question, no easy answers. Posted in General | Tagged crimes committed on federal property, SeaTac FDC, SeaTac Federal Detention Center | Leave a reply $20k Seized For Violating ?the 2 second blinker? Law: AKA, the Utah Blues Posted on December 21, 2011 by admin Reply ?The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.? ?Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Before my current trouble as a busted entheogen distributer, I got a bitter taste of the dissolution of our Constitution in June, 2011: The seizure of nearly $20k in cash, simply because it was well.. cash So there I was, a sunny summer morning, driving out of Salt Lake City, headed west on Interstate 80. I had been there visiting friends and consulting with my friend Daniel, a restaurateur. He had recently purchased a nice commercial building in an upscale neighborhood with the plans of opening a wine bar and bistro. I had come to pitch the idea of a mutual beneficial business development effort: a Peruvian fusion bistro using innovative ingredients I was going to import from Peru. I had also been out on the road visiting friends and friends-of-friends seeking potential investors and lenders for the Peruvian nutritional products import start-up I have been involved in for the last two years. (For more about our Peruvian project, stay tuned for a future post.) Driving out of the city, just beginning the long and bleak and windy straight stretch that goes through the Bonneville Salt Flats, I passed a Utah State trooper who was closing the trunk on a car driven by an Asian guy. As is courteous and also the law in Utah, I signaled and pulled over into the left lane to give a safe distance buffer. The trooper glanced up and at me as I rolled by at the speed limit, and somehow I got a funny feeling that he was going to pull me over next. Sure enough, next thing I knew, moments after I had signaled and returned to the right lane, he was speeding up right alongside me, gave me a hard look, then pulled behind me and turned on his lights. I of course signaled and immediately pulled over. WTF? I hadn?t done anything, the lights on my new rental car surely worked, but here I was being pulled over. There?s always a little blast of adrenaline that accompanies getting pulled over by cops, but this was puzzling. The trooper, a husky young guy in his 30?s, walked around to the passenger side of my car and looked in. I lowered the electric window and fished for the rental car?s paperwork, which I passed to him. ?So what seems to be the problem, officer?? I noticed he had no name tag. ?I guess maybe you don?t know about the ?two second law? here in Utah. You have to signal a full two seconds before changing lanes, and you didn?t.? I knew I changed lanes with special care because, well, I was passing a trooper. However, I didn?t think that arguing was the right approach for a ?courtesy? pullover to inform me about Utah traffic laws. Then he began questioning me, in a friendly but assertive manner: ?Where are you coming from, where are you going, who did you visit, what was your business, what is your occupation?? in rapid fire. Finally, he said: ?I?m going to go back to my car and check out your paperwork. Would you come back and sit in my patrol car with me while I do this?? In retrospect this is the moment that I should have suspected something fishy, and when I should have asserted my right to remain in my car and have him do his transaction in a prompt and professional manner. But I was cooperative. After all, I was doing nothing wrong, I had no contraband aboard, and I hadn?t broken any laws. So, I climbed into the front of his patrol car because the back seat of the car was caged with a dog breathing excitedly and whining. ?Oh, that?s Tank, ? said the officer. ?He?s my partner, no problem.? Uh, yeah. The problem would not be with Tank. The trooper tapped on the laptop in his messy but high tech car and talked into his radio. Then he began another interrogation, basically asking the same questions again. This time he wanted specifics: names and addresses of my friends in Salt Lake City; exactly where I had stayed; exactly what I did for a living; how my business was going; how much did I earn? I tried to keep it friendly and conversational, but his pushiness was making me uneasy. Then came the question: ?Do you have any guns, drugs, or more than ten thousand dollars in your car?? I answered, ?no.? Actually I was carrying more than that amount of cash in my suitcase, but I just wanted to end the interview and get on my way. ?Then of course you won?t mind if I look around your car, will you?? Again, in retrospect, this would have been the time to answer with an assertive ?No!? But I had been psyched out by his whole approach, and there I was, caught in his web. The trooper told me to stand outside, away from my car and his, over by the barbed wire fence of the freeway right of way. The wind whistled across the salt flats as he rummaged through my car. He opened up my suitcase and pulled out a box with cash in it. ?So how much cash is in here?? He demanded. ?Just under twenty thousand dollars.? ?So why didn?t you tell me the truth?? ?Because I have heard that basically you can?t trust anyone anymore,? implying my distrust for him, and also recalling stories from California, where it?s pretty well known for CHP and other police officers to shake down drivers in Northern California for their marijuana buy money. ?I am taking your money on suspicion that it is drug money,? he said, ?You will have to prove where you got it if you want it back.? The trooper calls for back-up, and within a couple of minutes another car shows up, and they accompany me, front and back, to the edge of the last developed area, west of the Salt Lake City airport. We stop at a nondescript storefront office, no visible signs, definitely not a police station. No arrest. No handcuffs. I am instructed to sit in the office waiting room. I hear two female dispatchers in back: ?Twenty thousand and it?s not even ten o?clock! That Officer Neff is hot!? The trooper who has taken my little box of cash into the back tells me to wait, that I am going to be further interviewed by a couple of ?detectives?. Eventually, I am led to a room with two guys, an older fellow named Jim, around my age, and a young guy named Troy. They aren?t cops. Troy?s card reads Utah Department of Public Safety. We go through pretty much the same set of questions as with the trooper I now know is named Neff. These guys have notebooks to write down the names that I provide. But now I am being cautious, since I don?t want to bring heat down on anyone. I decide to stand my ground now: ?Am I being charged with anything?? ? No. ? ?So what?s this about, anyway?? ?We suspect that your money was used in a drug transaction, and we are going to keep it, unless you can prove otherwise. To prove it?s yours you will have to go to court here in Utah and file a complaint. Otherwise, the cash goes to the State.? ?So,? I ask, ?how does this work? Do the police get a cut of this? Is this some kind of cottage industry?? ?No,? they assure me, ?the funds go to the State general fund.? I am skeptical. But in all situations I treat everyone as fellow human beings, offering respectful conversation and getting to what I understand about them: You have a difficult but necessary job, at least at this stage of social evolution. Indeed, I actually connect with Jim, the older guy, on a deeper and more spiritual interpersonal level. He is a life-long Mormon, and in the end we offered each other blessings in our lives and for our families. Then I was given a receipt, shown the door, and pointed back toward the freeway. Wow! Just like that, relieved of my money with no charges filed. Shaken down basically. I would have to return to Utah, hire an attorney, and fight to get my money back. I can see how folks that were guilty or otherwise in a compromised legal position would just walk away, and consider themselves lucky. However, I came back a month later, interviewed a couple of recommended attorneys, and settled on Jim Bradshaw, who I would recommend: http://www.brownbradshaw.com/bradshaw.html Of the two attorneys I met with, both were familiar with this scam and in particular with Trooper Chamberlain Neff III, who had a reputation as the best money and drug cop on Interstate 80. Both attorneys shook their heads when they looked at the names of the judge and the prosecutor who were assigned to the case: ?Neither of these guys want to give your money back.? They also noticed that the top layer of the paperwork was signed by a newer guy in the prosecutor?s office, who happened to be good human being as well. A call was made, and returned the next day: ?We?re giving the man his money back.? Just like that. Was it the threat of a legal case, the State preferring to stick with the easiest money? Or simply the discernment of a decent man? I?ll likely never know, but the whole experience was a head shaker. Jim Bradshaw was kind enough to give me a copy of a lengthy deposition he had made on Officer Neff in a previous case. Some interesting facts came out. This Federally funded officer worked specifically on drug and money interdiction as a state police officer. In six years he had issued no speeding tickets. The ?two second law? is a sham but is used regularly by interdiction cops as an excuse to initially pull people over. So why me? The deposition revealed that in Neff?s case, over 95% of the vehicles he pulls over are with out?of-state license plates. How many pull-overs does it take to get a ?hit?? Around 30. So an average of 29 innocent drivers are pulled over and given an interrogation to find one who has either drugs or cash. In Tennessee the whole business was part of a major 2011 investigative report. Interstate 40 has become a major profit center for Tennessee law enforcement ? with officers stopping and often searching out-of-state vehicles because a state law that lets them seize money simply based on the suspicion that it?s linked to drug trafficking. http://www.newschannel5.com/story/14643085/police-profiting-off-drug-trade There is a privately run training organization with the quasi-military mission name, Desert Snow, that teaches police the latest interdiction techniques. Here?s a Patriot Act jargon-laden, exclamation point riddled cut from their website: ?The Desert Snow, Advanced Highway Criminal Interdiction training program was established in 1990, due to the lack of training throughout the country. There is no other training like it in the world! It is not an awareness program! It is advanced training, where attendees are provided answers to real life situations. Where unanswered suspicious things, seen and heard in the past, now become clear, as officers are given a legal approach to confirm or deny their suspicions Since these criminals do pose a serious threat to the American public, there is an immediate need to develop a domestic homeland defense system in order to prevent another catastrophe from happening. All kinds of security measures are being instituted or discussed in order to prevent another tragedy. The most logical and economical solution to this homeland defense system is already in place throughout the country! Law enforcement has the obligation to protect the public and there are currently thousands of officers who have taken an oath to protect the American people.? The moral of this story, and the take-home lesson? The police are required by law to either issue a citation or send you on your way in a timely manner. They can?t make you get out of the car unless there is a serious suspicion of a crime or DUI. One needs to be firm and clear: Am I in some violation? Are you writing me a ticket? I am in a hurry and to where it?s really none of your business. And no, I don?t want to get in your car or allow a search. If a drug sniffing dog ?hits? on part of a vehicle after walking around, it is legal reason to search a vehicle. Know your rights. Relax but don?t be too friendly (as that is considered suspicious behavior as well). Know that this quasi-legal scam is widespread, but the Fourth Amendment has not been repealed yet. Posted in General | Tagged Advanced Highway Criminal Interdiction, Desert Snow, Fourth Amendment, Patriot Act, two second law | Leave a reply The Feds Were My Biggest Customer Posted on December 16, 2011 by admin 3 In a previous post I related how a fellow, for the sake of anonymity, we are calling ?Lance? and I had become what I thought were friends, introduced to each other by a mutual friend from whom Lance originally had been obtaining mushrooms. After that, we were meeting on a regular basis, Lance and I (and sometimes his brother), transacting 20 or 50 or even more pounds of high quality dried Psilocybes. Some?but not all?of these transactions were orchestrated by the DEA who provided Lance with cash and outfitted him with a wire to record our conversations. As a result, for nearly two years the Feds ended up being far and away my biggest customer, to the tune of over two hundred pounds?more than 20,000 doses?purchased basically at wholesale. Looking back, he may have been continuing to do deals for his own benefit on the side. It?s all a little unclear. Although Lance had mentioned to me a couple of times?without going into detail? that he had spent some jail time in Utah for ?cooking meth?, I had no reason to believe that he and his brother weren?t decent, certainly very intelligent, and as far as meth goes, reformed, guys, even if a bit caught up in overindulgence in powerful halide-grown pot and alcohol. Besides, Lance insisted, ?all that? meth stuff was far behind him and the reason for him to be very careful in his ?business?. As I learned reading Volume I of the DEA/Federal indictment, Lance?s supposed legal pot grow operation was busted, and he was indeed in possession and selling a variety of other drugs. In a desperate attempt to save his own bacon, he turned on me. I also discovered Lance had a much more checkered past than what he led on and far more than I could have even imagined: ?convictions for drug distribution in 1997, 1999, and 2006; and kidnapping, robbery, and witness tampering in 1996.? Jeez, I should have run a background check on this seemingly nice guy! Why Did The Feds Keep Buying Shrooms? Basically the Feds kind of stumbled upon us, given up by Lance in his probably futile effort to save himself from some serious jail time. But why would they keep on buying consecutive Walmart Large Sport Duffels with 20 pounds in each? There?s just not a huge market for them. They are not a drug of abuse, even though they seem to be pretty widely available and accepted (joked about on TV and in movies). And the wholesale value hasn?t changed for many years. So why would they buy the equivalent of over 20,000 doses when surely even 5000 would have demonstrated some sort of knowledgeable, ?professional? operation if that?s what they were looking for? And, the other intriguing question: Had I not told Lance I was getting out of the business and that was the last transaction he could expect, how long would they have continued to buy? Making Me and My Friends Look Like a Big Bunch of Bad Hombres Of course part of the job undertaken by a prosecutorial posse is to make the pursued and prosecuted look as big and bad as possible, and themselves as good and clean as they can, in their purported mission to protect the citizenry and energize the endless War on Drugs. Reading my email and extended wiretaps over a year and a half is expensive, and in my case, a whole lot of homework to keep up with my many and diverse interests. Shaking his head, my DEA case officer said: ?You are an interesting guy, Mr. Maki. I have a lot of questions I?d like to ask you.? For the DEA agents who pursued me and my friends for almost two years, it had to have been a really, really choice gig: tracking completely non-violent, un-armed, kind-hearted communitarians around, trying to figure out, who?s got the mushrooms? Two years closer to retirement for their badges, and a mushroom ring taken down, so the population can breathe a collective sigh of relief and go back to their meth, crack, heroin and ?killer pot?, oh, and prescription drugs. While my trackers seem to be actually very good guys, doing a job that they must rationally believe in, they also must know in their hearts that there is a world of difference between the usual folks they encounter and us. Did it ever give them pause? Nevertheless, they aim to make ?a Federal case? of it, with an extraordinarily wide sentencing range of 0-20 years (zero being three years? probation). And, Where are the Mushrooms Now? So what did the Feds do with all the mushrooms I sold them? When we look into what happens to all the tons of confiscated drugs in America, we immediately bump into a wall: This from the website ohmygov.com ?According to a DEA Public Affairs Officer, when agents confiscate illegal drugs, the drugs are field tested to determine the substance, weighed, and then sealed in proper evidence packaging. They are then transferred to a laboratory for further testing. ?The DEA maintains custody of the drugs in a secured location until the investigation has been concluded. If needed for criminal proceedings, the DEA will then produce the drugs at the request of a U.S. Attorney?s Office,? the spokesperson said. Once the case has been adjudicated, the drugs are destroyed. The DEA maintains non-disclosure agreements with contractors in the destruction of drugs, and for contractor and citizen safety purposes, they do not reveal this information to the public. http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2009/02/04/when-drugs-are-seized-where-do-they-go.aspx Wait! The DEA Gives These Drugs to ?unidentified sub-contractors?? Why doesn?t the DEA do this itself, with its practically unlimited budget? Then they could provide video documentation, make a big deal of it, and use it for propaganda purposes. And this, from Cannabiszone.com: ?On an average week the government seizes over twenty million dollars worth of marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, and meth. In addition to this, the government seizes millions worth of weapons, money, and counterfeit goods. When asked what became of all these goods, the DEA office of public affairs responds ?it gets destroyed.? They hold the contraband until any investigations are completed before destruction. The DEA refuses to disclose where or who they have contracted with to destroy the contraband. The reasons they cite for not releasing this information are contractor and citizen safety.? ?Contractor and citizen safety?? Are they kidding? From the same website: ?It is also curious that the DEA is so secretive about their means of destroying seized contraband. There are many nations that have joined America?s War on Drugs that make public spectacles of destroying drugs. In 2008 the government of Thailand burned over fifteen tons of drugs in a ceremony near Bangkok. While the burning took place, over a thousand youngsters signed agreed to an anti-drug pledge. With the help of the UN Haiti seized twenty two hundred kilos of drugs. These drugs were then burned in the town square as a public symbol.? The Drug War is a failure. The media bombardment of drug raids does nothing to stop the flow of drugs but does increase public recognition of the ?Drug War?. Why if for no other reason then to be a symbolic statement would the government not be broadcasting the destruction of drugs with the same vigor that they do the seizure of drugs?? Show Me the Shrooms I know exactly how many mushrooms, practically down to the gram?there were, all lovingly grown and sent out with prayers for their beneficial use. Will I ever get a chance to compare my accounting with the DEA?s? What do they plan on doing with them? Which sub-contractor will be charged with the disposal of 20,000 doses of top quality dried mushrooms? I for one would like to clearly understand the chain of custody. Now mind you, I?m not trying to stir up a hornets? nest here, I?m just a mushroom guy wondering why they wanted to keep buying and presumably stockpiling all those fungi. I?m sure there?s a perfectly good explanation and I would like to hear it. I mean I am old enough to recall the multiple news stories about CIA involvement in drug trafficking, all of course to serve their perceived higher purposes. And I recall with rather fond memories the regular shipments of gold-seal Freedom Fighter hashish that used to come in through McCord AFB to help support the mujahideen during the Reagan era, back in the days before the Afghan economy was all about opium poppies and heroin. For more insight check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan. What?s the Big Deal with Mushrooms? Folks just don?t abuse mushrooms by consuming mass quantities on a daily basis. Most people like to carefully choose the time and place, set and setting, of their mushroom experiences, and treat them with respect if not awe. This is a good thing, and even though I can no more tell folks how to use them as a sacrament, the mushrooms have a way of sitting people down themselves, with the most secular outcome being some hours of laughter. This altogether makes it a good medicine for our times, and for many people the mushrooms can provide a life-changing insight or vision, and serve as a teacher from another dimension, a dimension that lies within each of us. That?s why they call them entheogens. As I said to the federales as I drove with them to the FDC, and I believe it: Before prosecuting people they should each at least once try it for themselves so that they know experientially what they?re dealing with. A decade ago a friend of mine went to the Amazon to attend an ayahuasca retreat. His roommate at the retreat turned out to be a DEA chemist who told him: ?Yes I was sent here to take this drug and learn about it by the DEA. I will write my report, and it will be a positive one, but it will be filed and ignored. But at least it will be on the shelf somewhere so that some day maybe it can serve a higher purpose.? As the Native American Church peyote song goes: ?May we live to see the day...? Posted in General | Tagged DEA, Psilocybes | 3 Replies The Informant Posted on December 8, 2011 by admin 3 Whereupon I Meet What Seems to be a Nice Guy .and his slacker friends I first visited Lance (aka, The Informant) at his rented home in Oregon, a beautiful open-beamed ranch style hilltop home on a couple of acres near the end of a dead end road off Highway 30, which runs from Portland to Astoria along the Columbia River. Lance was setting up what he told me was a legally permitted marijuana growing operation in the basement the house. He mentioned he had an option to buy the place from the owner who knew full well what he was up. In fact, Lance joked, the landlord?s only concern was that the grow-op was wired up safely. My evangelical agro-forestry inclinations kicked the first time he gave me a tour of the land. I encouraged Lance to develop a vegetable garden, get a soil-building program underway; basically, expand his horticultural horizons. While he expressed enthusiasm, it was clear slacker inertia was endemic at his place. Although he appeared to be in his early 40s other household members were a collection of 20-something stoner/slacker types: late risers and party-ers circulating a perpetually lit bong. They were often parked in front of a big screen TV with game consoles. The kitchen and porch were piled with beer and liquor bottles. And Try to Mentor Him to a Different Path I tried to make my comings and goings discrete, not wanting to interact with unknown young folks who really didn?t need to know our business. Lance was involved with distribution of wholesale quantities of Ecstasy and, I was concerned, perhaps other white powders were involved as well. He told me had done some time for cooking meth in his home state of Utah. I told him that although I appreciated the potential therapeutic use of Ecstasy/MDMA, that I was down on it?s use in high-consumption doses in inappropriate settings by na?ve users looking for a thrill. I described examples of what I consider intelligent use of MDMA, which is quite limited, but nonetheless valuable and told him about its use in scientific studies as treatment for PTSD. As for cocaine and meth, I could only warn him away from these dangerous drugs and appeal to his own past experience and common sense to guide him along a better path. When I saw that he had acquired a gun, I scolded him about having firearms associated with any kind of drug business. I later learned that the young folks there called me ?Grandpa?. Wherein the Informant Goes Through Some Kind of Change I didn?t see Lance for months but we stayed in email contact. He wrote that he was in Georgia training to do installation of high tech home security systems for an up-and-coming company. He planned on moving back to Oregon, to go back to college to study computer science, and basically re-boot his life. He was vague about what had happened to cause him to let go of his beautiful Oregon place and permitted marijuana grow-op, what had happened with his super-bright brother and even his girlfriend. The final time I heard from him he said, he was moving back to Portland and wanted to get together and get things moving again. I was glad to pick up where we left off that fateful October day. What He Was Really Up To Through all our meetings, and all our discussions, including me trying to mentor him away from dangerous drugs, Lance had been working for the Feds as an informant, often wearing a ?wire?. I?ve only seen bits of the transcripts of some of our taped conversations, the pieces that the Feds used in the indictment. The whole of the tapes must be released to my Federal Public Defender, who rolled his eyes at the thought of going through the mass of recordings that are likely involved. When my captors told me that they?d been investigating me for over two years, my response was: ?Good. Then you know what kind of a person I am.? Wherein I Participate in Federally Financed Drug Deals When Lance wore a wire he typically tried to get me to talk about other drugs and their availability, offering that he could provide such things as MDMA from his solid kilogram-level supplies. I saw his supplies on a couple of occasions, and can only speculate that he got a pass from the Feds to do his own dealing. Either that or he was engaging in some pretty convincing theater for my benefit. Where the truth is at this point I couldn?t say for sure, but it would seem that some mushroom purchases were staged with the oversight and funds from the Feds; other?s were on Lance?s own initiative and with his own money. Thus, he was working both sides of the fence. And the Informant Probes about Getting Something Besides Mushrooms Lance began to probe me about getting wholesale supplies of LSD, a rare commodity in the 21st Century. As is pretty much true of anyone in this world, with a few degrees of separation, I had heard of friends-of-friends-of-friends who might at some future point have such an item, but it was always far removed, highly speculative, and never came into view fortunately. The mushroom transactions that were for the benefit of the ?law? of building a case against me. The ones described in the indictment, always happened in Washington at someplace like a Home Depot parking lot. In every case, I spoke as a friend and an elder, encouraging Lance and his friends to use the mushrooms in a sacramental way. They don?t call them ?magic? for nothing, and it has been duly recorded that I encouraged, even mildly scolded Lance to ?use the medicine?. I had no way of knowing that I was speaking into a hidden microphone as he was wearing a ?wire? at several of our meetings. My openness may in this legal process work against me to some extent, but in the end it is ?on the record.? Playing on Desperation: How the Feds Gather Information The information gathered by the authorities to make an indictment is called ?discovery?, and it is released to the defendant (me) in stages. First, that which was used to get the court orders for wire-taps and search warrants; the whole of the evidence gathered comprises the complete ?discovery? with possible redacted sections to protect those still undercover and not reveal other information sources. This includes the names of informants, who will remain anonymous unless they have to appear at trial as a witness. In any case, it?s usually not too hard to triangulate on who the snitch is. I can only imagine the kind of hypocrisy and guilt that such a person must carry who has given up a friend for their own selfish purpose, the stories they have to tell themselves to make it all right. Especially when the person given up is many shades more innocent than the snitch. But people are selfish, and short-sighted when faced with prison time, not to mention pressure from the authorities. So they do desperate things. People with prior records, like Lance, are particularly susceptible, since they face long sentences for repeat and violent offenses. Women and parents of young children are also easy prey for the prying ways of law enforcement?s levers. What The Feds Call ?Conspiracy? Anyway, there I was, meeting and talking with Lance like a good friend and mentor, being tape-recorded without my knowledge, and bringing him batch after batch of dried Psilocybes. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and it all seemed to be going smoothly. As it turns out the Feds were far and away my best customer over a year and a half. (I wonder what they did with all that fine fruit? Maybe they could donate it to the Johns Hopkins University [http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2006/07_11_06.html] or The Council on Spiritual Practices [http://csp.org/psilocybin/ ] or, the Heffter foundation [http://www.heffter.org/research-hucla.htm] for worthwhile research purposes. And yes, for sure, in retrospect I blabbed too much, more than was necessary about my network and my business. My bad. What I disclosed is referred to in Federal parlance as Conspiracy. For me ?conspiracy? amounted to trying to help a few friends make a decent living, without having to go out and take the risk of the marketing function. I have known all along that ?marketing? is the weakest link in the distribution chain, but I took it on and tried to do my best job. ?Best job? is a relative term, and over time we all tend to get a bit lax in our habits. Keeping full security protocols in place at all times is tedious and inconvenient: always use phone booths?if you can find one that works?and/or ?burner? (pre-paid) phones, etc. But it?s all too true: A system is as strong as its weakest link. And the charge of conspiracy is a separate charge, with a replicate set of penalties attached. How the Prosecution of Drug Distribution Works If all of this sounds like giving myself up before I am convicted, it goes like this: The Feds win over 95% of the cases they prosecute. However, of that vast majority, over 95% do not go to trial, they are instead plea-bargained, and thus settled with a negotiated guilty plea. So it?s all in the negotiation, and for someone like myself who refuses to snitch, I don?t have a lot of chips with which to deal. What I have going for me is that this is my first offense (second really, I was a draft resister in 1971 during the Vietnam War, and won acquittal on a technicality, later grouped into the Jimmy Carter blanket amnesty). And, of course, there were no weapons involved. No Guns?Ever I have never understood why anyone dealing would want to keep a gun (or as many stoned folks seem to do, a whole freakin? arsenal), since that is a separate and serious charge in itself. Besides, what are you gonna do, shoot someone over drugs? Not on my planet. And not in my house. This is the kind of thing that makes police justifiably nervous, and leads to the type of rude behavior that is seen on the awful cop shows onTV. Guns seem to bring out all the worst in people, the Second Amendment notwithstanding. Why He Did It Why would a seemingly nice fellow, who purchased a couple hundred pounds of mushrooms from me over two years?making him and the government by far my best customer!?be working for the Feds? He was trying to save himself. Lance had hoped to get a reduced sentence for charges that he had hanging over him. This is the deal-making that is at the core of drug investigations. There is a saying: ?Turn three and walk free.? However, with the Feds this is said to not be the case at all. In the end most snitches discover that they haven?t gained much for themselves by informing on other people. In certain plea bargains, a defendant giving people up is the only bargaining chip they have. It?s a vicious business, and families and friendships get destroyed in the futile process. The real truth is that such deals are purely manipulative on the part of the authorities. At least that is what I heard in prison but, I get ahead of the story here. And What They Got is What They Got As for me, I made it clear to my captors in our first hour together that what they have is what they have; they can expect nothing more from me. This is partly because they have indeed scooped up our entire little network. Two years of tracking, taping, tapping, and reading my email pretty much lays everything out for them. I Told the Feds: ?We?re The Same? I told the Federales during our drive to jail: ?If you look a couple of layers deeper, gentlemen, you can see that at heart of this you and I are on the same side. I am personally deeply opposed to the use and almost inevitable misuse of meth and coke and heroin and whatever the hell all these prescription pills that people seem to be taking, selling, and abusing so much these days.? My youthful hopes for a psychedelic revolution in consciousness got mired in hard drugs, cultural cynicism and addiction. It?s certainly not ?All good.? ?And here are three personal data points for you, guys. I?ve never smoked a cigarette, fired a gun, or done a line of coke in my life. Can you say that?? We are all trying to get people to rise to a greater personal and social responsibility and accountability. You?re doing your part, and I?m doing my part. ?How is that War on Drugs going for you, anyhow?? Posted in General | Tagged DEA Informants, Ecstasy, Federal Drug Informants, Heffter Foundation, Johns Hopkins psilocybin research, LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, The Council on Spiritual Practices | 3 Replies The Bust Posted on November 29, 2011 by admin 11 [Important note: Most names fictionalized (but you know who you are)] At 5 a.m. my usual rising time, that fateful October morning, I went online and reserved a rental car in Olympia, Washington since my trusty 1991 Ford Econoline van isn?t the most convenient or comfortable ride for freeway driving. When I rent a car I like to take advantage of a newer ride to do a lot of other running around. My interests, business, and friendships are way bigger than simply mushroom distribution, and I use my rental car to visit botanic gardens, friends, and lots of other destinations, which, as it turns out, made the DEA guys who had been trying to tail me crazy. (Had I known, I would have made it even more interesting for them!) On that day I loaded up my last 60 pounds of mushrooms in three big duffel bags, and headed to Olympia. I would be meeting ?Lance?, a young man I had known for several years and whom I had tried to mentor away from the distribution of meth and coke, substances I regard as social poisons. We?d always had a cordial relationship and indeed, I considered him a friend. I had told Lance that this was our last transaction, that I was retiring from the biz, having a great, completely legal enterprise I had been building in Peru to import high-nutrition products. This new venture would be taking up all my time and attention. (More on this in a later post.) Noon was the agreed upon hour and I arrived promptly. I drove the rental car to the location I?d chosen to park my van for the next couple of days. I opened the trunk of the rental. Just as I prepared to load the first duffel from the van to the trunk, another van came up behind me on the street. A burly guy got out and approached me, showing a badge in a worn holder: DEA. After a moment of profound disbelief, I understood that this was the moment that I had always known was possible in my line of work: I was busted! They had really hustled from 5 a.m. to be ready to catch up to me by noon. ?Darren? introduced himself, as another agent approached. There seemed a bit of hesitancy or confusion between them, but no uncertainty as to what was happening to me. This was IT. Darren immediately told the other officer, ?No worries, Mike (he of course already knew my name) isn?t armed, there will be no problems.? Handcuffs went on. I was led to a nearby car parked along the same street. There was a flurry of cell phone and radio conversation as all the agents located each other and converged on an agreed upon spot. No squad cars. No sirens. No flashing lights. No visible guns. And, thankfully, no excessive force. I was loaded into the back of an unmarked car, with a DEA agent named Greg at the wheel. Despite the profound gravity of the situation I entered a strange state of clarity. Yes, this was IT. Nothing to do now but be in the moment. We were joined by another agent named Albert, who identified himself as my case officer, the fellow in charge of coordinating my investigation. With no trace of irony or sarcasm Albert stated matter-of-factly,? Your life is about to change dramatically?. Like a surreal rewind of a cop show, I listened as Albert read me my MIranda rights. He said that we could either talk?and he would very much like to have a conversation with me?or I could invoke my right to an attorney. I responded that since I seemed to be having a legal problem, I thought it best that I should have an attorney. Albert assented and said: ?Too bad, but this is your choice. There are a whole lot of things I?d like to ask you about. I?ve been reading your emails for a year and you seem like a very interesting man, Mr. Maki. But, now that you?ve invoked your right to an attorney, our conversation is pretty much over.? I was very curious about the extent of the bust. Albert responded that there were a number of other folks who would be swept up as part of this, and, that in due time, I would know all, or most all, of the details. With Greg as wheelman, Albert, shot-gun, and me in the back, we headed for SeaTac. They were kind enough to ask if I was hungry, to which I replied, ?not really?. Albert said, ?It?s going to be a long day, let?s stop by a fast food place and get you something to eat. Any preference?? I told them I am vegetarian, but added, ?Burger King has as good a veggie burger as any of the chains,? so we stopped by the drive-up window. Albert threw a jacket across my lap to cover my handcuffs, so as to save me any possible embarrassment. I remarked, sincerely, ?Thanks for being so considerate.? This small act typified the level of respect we shared through the ride to the DEA offices at SeaTac. Booking and Incarceration Then came booking as well as meeting couple of other DEA agents. It was all quite civil, almost cordial, but clearly I was deeply in custody. Albert, almost playing a counselor role, said: ?As this all sinks in, you will go through some emotional changes. We will be going to your home tomorrow and searching the place, and also bringing in some other people as part of this investigation. It will be a little while before you know all the details, but you will. Your life has just changed in a big way.? Darren, the agent who first approached me, had driven my van to the DEA SeaTac headquarters. In the van were my laptop and travel gear, since I had planned on being on the road for a couple of days. It was getting late in the day, and for some reason the decision was made to take me to the Kent city jail for an overnight stay. There I was relieved of my street clothes and suited up in jail coveralls. Sixty-one years old and my first ever night in jail. A smaller jail facility is a jolting introduction to incarceration. The bright fluorescent lights in my cell were on all night. Down the hall from my cell a woman in another cell intermittently screamed and muttered to herself all night, in a kind of schizophrenic fury remarkable in its ability to sustain itself. Finally, with only a towel to shield my eyes, I was able to drop into a fitful sleep. Jail is all about ?Hurry up and wait.? I decided I must arrive at a completely resigned state of being and acknowledge this moment is definitely part of the ?eternal now?. That can be part of the punishment or part of an opportunity to enter into a meditative state. I choose the latter, and begin a breathing and wordless mantra of trust in the Divine. It is a choice and a process, but can provide a surprising sense of peace in the midst of a kind of muffled chaos. The next day was transfer, in full shackles, to Tacoma and the Federal courthouse holding facility. I spent the day parked in a basement cell on a stainless steel bench with two other men, one a young goateed man, ?Andre?, who was being charged with DVD piracy and another, ?Sam?, in on a weapons and crack cocaine dealing charge. Booking involved photos, fingerprinting, and a DNA mouth swab sample, thus fully integrating me into the Federal database. 10 hours in the cell, 10 minutes in front of the judge where I first met with my court-appointed Federal defense attorney, a friendly, bespectacled and pony-tailed man named ?William Anderson?. There was a quick, ?not guilty? plea, and then a van ride, in shackles, to the Federal Detention Facility (FDC) at SeaTac, a few blocks from the nondescript DEA headquarters. In the van with us were a man and his mother, who had been in custody over two years awaiting trial. (More on them in a later post.) At the FDC, I was photographed, fingerprinted again, strip-searched, and issued a different set of underwear and coveralls, and deck shoes. Then, step-by-step escorted upstairs to my new home in Unit FC. Upon arrival, I was greeted by a group of guys watching the evening news who shouted: ?There he is, Mushroom Man!? ?Hey man, did you bring any with you?? Apparently they had surmised or somehow heard that a mushroom bust that had just been on the tv in the common room involved me. And so I arrived at my new home: Cell number 21. From ths at psalience.org Wed Jan 18 11:35:51 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:35:51 +0100 Subject: [THS] STOP SOPA: Why MichaelMoore.com Will Be Blacked Out Wednesday Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120118113411.06a31600@mail.messagingengine.com> STOP SOPA: Why MichaelMoore.com Will Be Blacked Out Wednesday, January 18th ...a note from Michael Moore Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 Friends, My websites MichaelMoore.com and Mike's High School Newspaper will both be going dark for 24 hours starting at midnight tonight in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act now before Congress. I'm proud to join with Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing and thousands of websites in this action to raise awareness of this huge threat to an open internet. I think we all knew that the powers-that-be would eventually try to kill the world wide web as we've come to know and love it. I'm sure it's just an accident that these bills are being proposed after a year where uprisings around the world were literally started on the internet. This is a scary device to those in power and I'm sure they rue the day they allowed us to talk freely to each other. They weren't thinking about the revolution that would cause -- they just saw it as a way to sell more stuff. Oops. And now they want to rein it in. Please take the time to learn about SOPA (and its twin Senate bill, PIPA) and then call AND fax AND email your Representative and Senators tomorrow. Let's melt their phone lines and computers. We've got to use the internet while we still can to organize, fight back and stop this. The good news is the Obama administration says it doesn't support the bills in their current form (but he said that about the National Defense Authorization Act -- and then went ahead and signed it after changes that still left its most dangerous provisions intact). We can win this. But we've got to pour it on right now. I'll see you on the other side tomorrow night at midnight! Yours, Michael Moore MMFlint at MichaelMoore.com @MMFlint MichaelMoore.com P.S. Part 2 of the Tavis Smiley Show with Cornel West, Barbara Ehrenreich and me airs tonight late night on PBS. Part 3 tomorrow night. Find your local station and showtime here. P.P.S. There's a powerful film opening wide on Friday, 'Extremely Loud and Incredible Close.' It's one of my favorite films of the year. Go see it if you're in the mood for a deeply moving experience. Join Mike's Mailing List | Follow Mike on Twitter | Join Mike's Facebook Group | Become Mike's MySpace Friend From ths at psalience.org Wed Jan 18 22:12:49 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:12:49 +0100 Subject: [THS] Simon Jenkins : Why is Britain ramping up sanctions against Iran? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120118221218.063b9dc8@mail.messagingengine.com> Why is Britain ramping up sanctions against Iran? Sabre-rattling at Washington's behest is an idiocy, and likely to do little other than escalate the steps to open conflict Simon Jenkins guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 January 2012 21.00 GMT Cameron Obama Downing Street David Cameron and Barack Obama meet outside No 10 Downing Street during a presidential visit in May 2010. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty 'The dog returns to its vomit, and the sow returns to her mire/ And the burnt fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire." Kipling was right. Britain is out of Iraq and desperate to get out of Afghanistan. So why gird ourselves for a fight with Iran, a proud country of 75 million people with whom we cannot go to war without taking leave of our senses? Do any of Britain's leaders really think further economic sanctions will stop Iran's nuclear programme? I cannot believe it. Sanctions did not topple Saddam Hussein,Slobodan Milosevic or Muammar Gaddafi; they led merely to war. Sanctions have been imposed on Iran for 33 years because there was nothing else to do. They have done no good and almost certainly been counterproductive in reinforcing autocracy. Washington has announced new commercial and financial sanctions on Iran, blacklisting anyone who does business with it. With an election in the offing, President Obama must show America's pro-Israel lobby that he is tough somewhere in the Middle East. The EU must this month decide whether to collude with the US in this dangerous game and ban Iran's oil exports. The threat was enough to get Tehran to test medium-range missiles in the Gulf, and its wilder heads to murmur about closing the Straits of Hormuz, thus blocking a third of the world's sea-borne oil. This sabre-rattling ? in the midst of a recession ? is beyond stupid. No one has seriously doubted that Iran's government, surrounded by nuclear-armed or nuclear-allied powers, would one day seek a similar capability. It is the nature of well-resourced and insecure regimes to find comfort in "the ultimate weapon". It seems of no account that no war fought by a nuclear power has seen such a weapon even threatened. It was not a factor in Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, the Caucasus, Kashmir or numerous Middle East conflicts. The one time such weapons were "on the table" was over Cuba in 1962 ? and then they probably helped prevent war. Any fool may say, you cannot be too careful. It is the motto of the arms race. Israel has a nuclear capability for that reason, and that is why Iran wants one. A pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear plants might postpone their work, but make eventual war more likely. I would prefer it if Iran had no such missiles, but that is hardly for Britain to say when it demands "the right" to its own. In this case, what matters is the avoidance of escalation, of the megaphone belligerence that makes some western leaders vulnerable to the "inevitability" of war. The only question for the west over the last three decades has been how to respond to Iran's fundamentalist leadership and, more recently, its craving for nuclear status. The answer has been of startling ineptitude. The attempt to set up pro-west regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan led the west to upset the balance of power established by the Iran-Iraq war and the Taliban-Pakistan regime in Kabul. Now the Iraq occupation has secured for Tehran unprecedented influence in Baghdad. Its influence also penetrates deep into western Afghanistan, and its support for resistance movements in the Gulf sheikhdoms is said to be growing by the year. Where now the Foreign Office's famed Arabists? The long experience of sanctions indicates that they suck the sanctioning powers into confrontation. Their imposition is a prelude either to inert hostility or to war. They embattle the victim regime, driving power and money to its ruling cadres. In Tehran, as in Tripoli and Baghdad in the 1990s, sanctions toppled nobody but made rulers and generals rich. They impoverish not just the poor but the mercantile and professional classes, denying them contact with the outside world. They hasten middle-class emigration and thus reduce the scope for political pluralism and opposition. Government sources at the weekend rejected all this experience. They claimed tougher sanctions would "hasten Iran's economic collapse and deepen rifts within the regime, in the hope that saner voices will deem the price of pursuing nuclear weapons too high". This commits the democratic fallacy that totalitarian states react to economic pressure as democracies might. Sanctions do not initiate such a process. They just build walls. Meanwhile we are enraging Iran's scientific community by apparently condoning secret assassination as a way of impeding its nuclear programme. The idea that any nation becomes more malleable when threatened from outside is absurd. A reasonable observer could assume that every utterance from Washington and London at present is scripted to bolster the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on his insecure throne. The west's threats must exhilarate the young bloods of the Revolutionary Guard and depress the opposition. They may be supported by Iran's ?migr?s, but the diaspora is seldom a reliable guide to politics in the home country. Economic sanctions are coward's diplomacy. They purport to high moral stance but are merely a low-risk way of bullying the world. The danger is that they encourage militarist lobbies to escalate the steps that lead to open conflict. Those who argue against unnecessary war are routinely asked the father's knee question, "So what would you do?" Taught since 1939 that Britain must be seen to do something, the British are programmed to meddle. There have been occasions in the last 50 years when it has been right to declare hostilities against other nations ? the Falklands, Kosovo and the first Iraq war. But usually the answer to "what to do" about foreign regimes of which we disapprove is, quite simply, to do nothing. For the most part, other nations' business is not ours. In the last 25 years Britain has mostly been useless at putting the world to rights ? it has struggled to wrap itself in the tattered flag of empire, at vast expense but to little effect. It would have been better, far better, to maintain good relations with other states in the hope of assisting causes we profess to hold dear. As for rattling a sabre whenever Washington says so, that is the most humiliating idiocy. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/03/britain-ramoing-sanctions-against-iran-washington From ths at psalience.org Thu Jan 19 12:20:22 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:20:22 +0100 Subject: [THS] SOPA: PRESS RELEASE from The Pirate Bay Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120119121513.05b8b7b8@mail.messagingengine.com> INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture. Because of Edison's patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North American east coast. The movie studios therefore relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disney's biggest hits ever. So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules. The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between each other, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It's all based on the fact that we're competition. We've proven that their existence in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are. And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations. The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a Swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet into a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown. SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat. In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News. Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that. THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012 From ths at psalience.org Fri Jan 20 22:40:00 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:40:00 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Paul_Craig_Roberts=3A_America=92s_Last_Chanc?= =?iso-8859-1?q?e?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120120223943.072adbd8@mail.messagingengine.com> America?s Last Chance By Paul Craig Roberts URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28669 Global Research, January 15, 2012 paulcraigroberts.com America has one last chance, and it is a very slim one. Americans can elect Ron Paul President, or they can descend into tyranny. Why is Ron Paul America?s last chance? Because he is the only candidate who is not owned lock, stock, and barrel by the military-security complex, Wall Street, and the Israel Lobby. All of the others, including President Obama, are owned by exactly the same interest groups. There are no differences between them. Every candidate except Ron Paul stands for war and a police state, and all have demonstrated their complete and total subservience to Israel. The fact that there is no difference between them is made perfectly clear by the absence of substantive issues in the campaigns of the Republican candidates. Only Ron Paul deals with real issues, so he is excluded from ?debates? in which the other Republican candidates throw mud at one another: ?Gingrich voted $60 million to a UN program supporting abortion in China.? ?Romney loves to fire people.? The mindlessness repels. More importantly, only Ron Paul respects the US Constitution and its protection of civil liberty. Only Ron Paul understands that if the Constitution cannot be resurrected from its public murder by Congress and the executive branch, then Americans are lost to tyranny. There isn?t much time in which to revive the Constitution. One more presidential term with no habeas corpus and no due process for US citizens and with torture and assassination of US citizens by their own government, and it will be too late. Tyranny will have been firmly institutionalized, and too many Americans from the lowly to the high and mighty will have been implicated in the crimes of the state. Extensive guilt and complicity will make it impossible to restore the accountability of government to law. If Ron Paul is not elected president in this year?s election, by 2016 American liberty will be in a forgotten grave in a forgotten grave yard. Having said this, there is no way Ron Paul can be elected, for these reasons: Not enough Americans understand that the ?war on terror? has been used to create a police state. The brainwashed citizenry believe that the police state is making them safe from terrorists. Liberals, progressives, and the left-wing oppose Ron Paul, claiming that ?he would abolish the social safety net, privatize Social Security and Medicare, throw the widows and orphans into the street, abolish the Federal Reserve,? etc. Apparently, liberals, progressives, and the left-wing do not understand that privatizing Social Security and Medicare and destroying the social safety net are policies that many conservative Republicans favor and are policies that Wall Street is forcing on both political parties. In contrast, a President Ron Paul would be isolated in the White House and would never be able to muster the support of Congress and the powerful interest groups to achieve such radical changes. Moreover, Ron Paul has made it clear that a welfare-free state cannot be achieved by decree but only by creating an economy in which opportunity exists for people to stand on their own feet. Ron Paul has said that he does not support ending welfare before an economy is created that makes a welfare state unnecessary. Candidate Paul cannot take any steps to reassure Americans that he would not throw them to the mercy of the free market, because his libertarian base would turn on him as another unprincipled politician willing to sacrifice his principles for political expediency. If libertarians were not inflexible, candidate Paul could endorse Ron Unz?s proposal to solve the illegal immigration problem by raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour, so that Americans could afford to work the jobs that are taken by illegals. Economist James K. Galbraith is probably correct that Unz?s proposal would boost the economy by injecting purchasing power and that the unemployment would be largely confined to illegals who would return to their home country. However, if Ron Paul were to treat Unz?s proposal as one worthy of study and consideration, libertarian ideologues would write him off. Whatever liberal/progressive support he gained would be offset by the loss of his libertarian base. Why can?t libertarians be as intelligent as Ron Unz and see that if the Constitution is lost all that remains is tyranny? In short, Americans cannot see beyond their ideologies to the real issue, which is the choice between the Constitution and tyranny. So we hear absurd accusations that Ron Paul, a libertarian ?is a racist.? ?Ron Paul is an anti-semite.? ?Ron Paul would favor the rich and hurt the poor.? We don?t hear ?Ron Paul would restore and protect the US Constitution.? What do Americans think life will be like in the absence of the Constitution? I will tell you what it will be like, but first let?s consider the obstacles Ron Paul would face if he were to win the Republican nomination and if he were to be elected president. In my opinion, if Ron Paul were to win the Republican nomination, the Republican Party would conspire to refuse it to him. The party would simply nominate a different candidate. If despite everything, Ron Paul were to end up in the White House, he would not be able to form a government that would support his policies. Appointments to cabinet secretaries and assistant secretaries that would support his policies could not be confirmed by the US Senate. President Paul would have to appoint whomever the Senate would confirm in order to form a government. The Senate?s appointees would undermine his policies. What a President Ron Paul could do, assuming Congress, controlled by powerful private interest groups, did not impeach him on trumped up charges, would be to use whatever forums that might be permitted him to explain to the public, judges, and law schools that the danger from terrorists is miniscule compared to the danger from a government unaccountable to law and the Constitution. The reason we should vote for Ron Paul is to signal to the powers that be that we understand what they are doing to us. If Paul were to receive a large vote, it could have two good effects. One could be to introduce some caution into the establishment that would slow the march into more war and tyranny. The other is it would signal to Washington?s European and Japanese puppets that not all Americans are stupid sheep. Such an indication could make Washington?s puppet states more cautious and less cooperative with Washington?s drive for world hegemony. What America Without the Constitution Will Be Like In the January 4 Huff Post, attorney and author John Whitehead reported on the militarization of local police. Some police forces are now equipped with spy drones. Whitehead reports that a drone manufacturer, AeroVironment Inc., plans to sell 18,000 drones to police departments throughout the country. The company is also advertising a small drone, the ?Switchblade,? which can track a person, land on the person and explode. How long before Americans will be spied upon or murdered as extremists at the discretion of local police? Recognizing the privacy danger, if not the murder danger, the American Civil Liberties Union has issued a report, ?Protecting Privacy From Aerial Surveillance.? https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/protectingprivacyfromaerialsurveillance.pdf The ACLU believes, correctly, that liberty is threatened by ?a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by authorities.? The ACLU calls on Congress to legislate privacy protections against the police use of drones. I support the ACLU because it is the most important defender of civil liberty despite other misguided activities, but I wonder what the ACLU is thinking. Congress and the federal courts have already acquiesced in the federal government?s warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency. The Bush regime violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act many times, and all involved, including President Bush, should have been sent to prison for many lifetimes, as each violation carries a 5-year prison term. But the executive branch emerged scot free. No one was held accountable for clear violations of US statutory law. The ACLU might think that although the federal executive branch has successfully elevated itself above the law, state and local police forces are still accountable. We must hope that they are, but I doubt it. The militarization of local police has received some attention. What has not received attention is that state and local police are also being federalized. It is not only military armaments and spy technology that local police are receiving from Washington, but also an attitude toward the public along with federal oversight and the collaboration that goes with it. When Homeland Security, a federal police force, comes into states, as I know has occurred in Georgia and Tennessee, and doubtless other states, and together with the state police stop cars and trucks on Interstate highways and subject them to warrantless searches, what is happening is the de facto deputizing of the state police by Homeland Security. This is the way that Goering and Himmler federalized into the Gestapo the independent police forces of German provinces such as Prussia and Bavaria. Homeland Security has expanded its warrantless searches far beyond ?airline security.? The budding gestapo agency now conducts warrantless searches on the nation?s highways, on bus and train passengers, and at Social Security offices. On Tuesday January 3, 2012, the Social Security office in Leesburg, Florida, apparently a terrorist hotspot, became a Homeland Security checkpoint. The DHS Gestapo armed with automatic weapons and sniffer dogs demanded IDs from local residents visiting their local Social Security office. http://www.dailycommercial.com/News/LakeCounty/010412shield Thomas Milligan, district manager for the Social Security Administration office, said staff were not informed their offices were about to be stormed by armed federal police officers. DHS officials refused to answer questions asked by local media and left with no explanation at noon, reports infowars.com. The DHS gestapo justified its takeover of a Leesburg Florida Social Security office as being an integral part of ?Operational Shield,? conducted by the Federal Protective Service to detect ?the presence of unauthorized persons and potentially disruptive or dangerous activities.? One wonders if even brainwashed flag-waving ?superpatriots? can miss the message. The Social Security office of Leesburg, Florida, population 19,086 in central Florida is not a place where terrorists devoid of proper ID might be visiting. To protect America from the scant possibility that terrorists might be congregating at the Leesburg Social Security office, the tyrants in Washington sent the Federal Protective Service at who knows what cost to demand ID from locals visiting their Social Security office. What is this all about except to establish the precedent that federal police, a new entity in American life, the Federal Protective Service, has authority over state and local police offices and can appear out of the blue to interrogate local citizens. Why the ACLU thinks it is going to get any action out of a Congress that has accommodated the executive branch?s destruction of habeas corpus, due process, and the constitutional and legal prohibitions against torture is beyond me. But at least the issue is raised. But don?t expect to hear about it from the ?mainstream media.? Americans in 2012, although only a few are aware, live in a concentration camp that is far better controlled than the one portrayed by George Orwell in 1984. Orwell, writing in the late 1940s could not imagine the technology that makes control of populations so thorough as it is today. Orwell?s protagonist could at least have hope. In 2012 with the erasure of privacy by the US government, protagonists can be eliminated by hummingbird-sized drones before they can initiate a protest, much less a rebellion. Never in human history has a people been so easily and willingly controlled by a hostile government as Americans, who are the least free people on earth. And a large percentage of Americans still wave the flag and chant USA! USA! USA! The Bush regime operated as if the Constitution did not exist. Any semblance of constitutional government that remained after the Bush years was terminated when Congress passed and President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act. One wonders how the National Rifle Association, the defender of the Second Amendment, will now fare. If there is no Constitution, how can there be a Second Amendment? If the President, at his discretion, can set aside habeas corpus and due process and murder citizens based on unproven suspicions, why can?t he set aside the Second Amendment? Indeed, it is folly to expect a police state to tolerate an armed population. The NRA is very supportive of the police and military. Now that these armed organizations are being turned against the public, how will the NRA adjust its posture? Many NRA members, pointing to the ?Oath Keepers,? former members of the military who pledge to defend the Constitution, and to police chiefs who support the Second Amendment, believe that the police and military will disobey orders to attack citizens. But we already witness constantly the gratuitous brutality of ?our? police against peaceful protesters. We witness military troops all over the world murder citizens who protest government abuses. Why can?t it happen here? If you don?t want it to happen here, you had better figure out some way to get Ron Paul into the Presidency and to get him a cabinet and subcabinet that will support him. Meanwhile, the police state grows. On January 4, 2012, the Obama regime announced by decree, not by legislation, the creation of the Bureau of Counterterrorism which will among other tasks ?seek to strengthen homeland security, countering violent extremism.? http://newsok.com/obama-launches-bureau-of-counterterrorism/article/feed/332475 Take a moment to think. Do you know of any ?violent extremism? happening in the US? The regime is telling you that it needs a new police bureau with unaccountable powers to ?strengthen homeland security? against a nonexistent bogyman. So who will be the violent extremists who require countering by the Bureau of Counterterrorism? It will be peace activists, the Occupy Wall Street protesters, the unemployed and foreclosed homeless. It will be whoever the police state says. And there is no due process or recourse to law. Given the facts before you, you are out of your mind if you think Ron Paul?s rhetoric against the welfare state is more important than his defense of liberty. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research e-newsletter Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. To become a Member of Global Research The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor at yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: crgeditor at yahoo.com ? Copyright Paul Craig Roberts, paulcraigroberts.com, 2012 From ths at psalience.org Sat Jan 21 17:00:06 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:00:06 +0100 Subject: [THS] John Pilger: The World War on Democracy Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120121165626.070fba00@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30303.htm The World War on Democracy By John Pilger January 20, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was the embodiment of people?s resistance to the war on democracy. I first glimpsed her in a 1950s Colonial Office film about the Chagos islanders, a tiny creole nation living midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean. The camera panned across thriving villages, a church, a school, a hospital, set in a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace. Lisette remembers the producer saying to her and her teenage friends, "Keep smiling girls!" Sitting in her kitchen in Mauritius many years later, she said, "I didn?t have to be told to smile. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep in the islands, my paradise. My great-grandmother was born there; I made six children there. That?s why they couldn?t legally throw us out of our own homes; they had to terrify us into leaving or force us out. At first, they tried to starve us. The food ships stopped arriving [then] they spread rumors we would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs." In the early 1960s, the Labor government of Harold Wilson secretly agreed to a demand from Washington that the Chagos archipelago, a British colony, be "swept" and "sanitized" of its 2,500 inhabitants so that a military base could be built on the principal island, Diego Garcia. "They knew we were inseparable from our pets," said Lisette, "When the American soldiers arrived to build the base, they backed their big trucks against the brick shed where we prepared the coconuts; hundreds of our dogs had been rounded up and imprisoned there. Then they gassed them through tubes from the trucks? exhausts. You could hear them crying." Lisette and her family and hundreds of islanders were forced on to a rusting steamer bound for Mauritius, a distance of 2,500 miles. They were made to sleep in the hold on a cargo of fertilizer: bird shit. The weather was rough; everyone was ill; two women miscarried. Dumped on the docks at Port Louis, Lisette?s youngest children, Jollice, and Regis, died within a week of each other. "They died of sadness," she said. "They had heard all the talk and seen the horror of what had happened to the dogs. They knew they were leaving their home forever. The doctor in Mauritius said he could not treat sadness." This act of mass kidnapping was carried out in high secrecy. In one official file, under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction," the Foreign Office legal adviser exhorts his colleagues to cover their actions by "re-classifying" the population as "floating" and to "make up the rules as we go along." Article 7 of the statute of the International Criminal Court says the "deportation or forcible transfer of population" is a crime against humanity. That Britain had committed such a crime ? in exchange for a $14 million discount off an American Polaris nuclear submarine ? was not on the agenda of a group of British "defense" correspondents flown to the Chagos by the Ministry of Defense when the US base was completed. "There is nothing in our files," said a ministry official, "about inhabitants or an evacuation." Today, Diego Garcia is crucial to America?s and Britain?s war on democracy. The heaviest bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan was launched from its vast airstrips, beyond which the islanders? abandoned cemetery and church stand like archaeological ruins. The terraced garden where Lisette laughed for the camera is now a fortress housing the "bunker-busting" bombs carried by bat-shaped B-2 aircraft to targets in two continents; an attack on Iran will start here. As if to complete the emblem of rampant, criminal power, the CIA added a Guant?namo-style prison for its "rendition" victims and called it Camp Justice. What was done to Lisette?s paradise has an urgent and universal meaning, for it represents the violent, ruthless nature of a whole system behind its democratic fa?ade, and the scale of our own indoctrination to its messianic assumptions, described by Harold Pinter as a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis." Longer and bloodier than any war since 1945, waged with demonic weapons and a gangsterism dressed as economic policy and sometimes known as globalization, the war on democracy is unmentionable in western elite circles. As Pinter wrote, "it never happened even while it was happening." Last July, American historian William Blum published his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy." Since the Second World War, the US has: 1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them democratically-elected. 2. Attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries. 3. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. 4. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries. 5. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. In total, the United States has carried out one or more of these actions in 69 countries. In almost all cases, Britain has been a collaborator. The "enemy" changes in name ? from communism to Islamism ? but mostly it is the rise of democracy independent of western power or a society occupying strategically useful territory, deemed expendable, like the Chagos Islands. The sheer scale of suffering, let alone criminality, is little known in the west, despite the presence of the world?s most advanced communications, nominally freest journalism, and most admired academy. That the most numerous victims of terrorism ? western terrorism ? are Muslims is unsayable, if it is known. That half a million Iraqi infants died in the 1990s as a result of the embargo imposed by Britain and America is of no interest. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of western policy ("Operation Cyclone") is known to specialists but otherwise suppressed. While popular culture in Britain and America immerses the Second World War in an ethical bath for the victors, the holocausts arising from Anglo-American dominance of resource-rich regions are consigned to oblivion. Under the Indonesian tyrant Suharto, anointed "our man" by Thatcher, more than a million people were slaughtered. Described by the CIA as "the worst mass murder of the second half of the 20th century," the estimate does not include a third of the population of East Timor who were starved or murdered with western connivance, British fighter-bombers, and machine guns. These true stories are told in declassified files in the Public Record Office, yet represent an entire dimension of politics and the exercise of power excluded from public consideration. This has been achieved by a regime of un-coercive information control, from the evangelical mantra of consumer advertising to sound-bites on BBC news and now the ephemera of social media. It is as if writers as watchdogs are extinct, or in thrall to a sociopathic zeitgeist, convinced they are too clever to be duped. Witness the stampede of sycophants eager to deify Christopher Hitchens, a war lover who longed to be allowed to justify the crimes of rapacious power. "For almost the first time in two centuries," wrote Terry Eagleton, "there is no eminent British poet, playwright, or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life." No Orwell warns that we do not need to live in a totalitarian society to be corrupted by totalitarianism. No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake proffers a vision, no Wilde reminds us that "disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man?s original virtue." And grievously no Pinter rages at the war machine, as in American Football: Hallelujah. Praise the Lord for all good things We blew their balls into shards of dust, Into shards of fucking dust Into shards of fucking dust go all the lives blown there by Barack Obama, the Hopey Changey of western violence. Whenever one of Obama?s drones wipes out an entire family in a faraway tribal region of Pakistan, or Somalia, or Yemen, the American controllers in front of their computer-game screens type in "Bugsplat." Obama likes drones and has joked about them with journalists. One of his first actions as president was to order a wave of Predator drone attacks on Pakistan that killed 74 people. He has since killed thousands, mostly civilians; drones fire Hellfire missiles that suck the air out of the lungs of children and leave body parts festooned across scrubland. Remember the tear-stained headlines when Brand Obama was elected: "momentous, spine-tingling": the Guardian. "The American future," wrote Simon Schama, "is all vision, numinous, unformed, light-headed " The San Francisco Chronicle?s columnist saw a spiritual "lightworker [who can] usher in a new way of being on the planet." Beyond the drivel, as the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg had predicted, a military coup was taking place in Washington, and Obama was their man. Having seduced the antiwar movement into virtual silence, he has given America?s corrupt military officer class unprecedented powers of state and engagement. These include the prospect of wars in Africa and opportunities for provocations against China, America?s largest creditor and new "enemy" in Asia. Under Obama, the old source of official paranoia Russia, has been encircled with ballistic missiles and the Russian opposition infiltrated. Military and CIA assassination teams have been assigned to 120 countries; long planned attacks on Syria and Iran beckon a world war. Israel, the exemplar of US violence and lawlessness by proxy, has just received its annual pocket money of $3bn together with Obama?s permission to steal more Palestinian land. Obama?s most "historic" achievement is to bring the war on democracy home to America. On New Year?s Eve, he signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a law that grants the Pentagon the legal right to kidnap both foreigners and US citizens and indefinitely detain, interrogate and torture, or even kill them. They need only "associate" with those "belligerent" to the United States. There will be no protection of law, no trial, no legal representation. This is the first explicit legislation to abolish habeas corpus (the right to due process of law) and effectively repeal the Bill of Rights of 1789. On 5 January, in an extraordinary speech at the Pentagon, Obama said the military would not only be ready to "secure territory and populations" overseas but to fight in the "homeland" and provide "support to the civil authorities." In other words, US troops will be deployed on the streets of American cities when the inevitable civil unrest takes hold. America is now a land of epidemic poverty and barbaric prisons: the consequence of a "market" extremism which, under Obama, has prompted the transfer of $14 trillion in public money to criminal enterprises in Wall Street. The victims are mostly young jobless, homeless, incarcerated African-Americans, betrayed by the first black president. The historic corollary of a perpetual war state, this is not fascism, not yet, but neither is it democracy in any recognizable form, regardless of the placebo politics that will consume the news until November. The presidential campaign, says the Washington Post, will "feature a clash of philosophies rooted in distinctly different views of the economy." This is patently false. The circumscribed task of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic is to create the pretence of political choice where there is none. The same shadow is across Britain and much of Europe where social democracy, an article of faith two generations ago, has fallen to the central bank dictators. In David Cameron?s "big society," the theft of 84bn pounds in jobs and services even exceeds the amount of tax "legally" avoided by piratical corporations. Blame rests not with the far right, but a cowardly liberal political culture that has allowed this to happen, which, wrote Hywel Williams in the wake of the attacks on 9/11, "can itself be a form of self righteous fanaticism." Tony Blair is one such fanatic. In its managerial indifference to the freedoms that it claims to hold dear, bourgeois Blairite Britain has created a surveillance state with 3,000 new criminal offences and laws: more than for the whole of the previous century. The police clearly believe they have an impunity to kill. At the demand of the CIA, cases like that of Binyam Mohamed, an innocent British resident tortured and then held for five years in Guantanamo Bay, will be dealt with in secret courts in Britain "in order to protect the intelligence agencies" ? the torturers. This invisible state allowed the Blair government to fight the Chagos islanders as they rose from their despair in exile and demanded justice in the streets of Port Louis and London. "Only when you take direct action, face to face, even break laws, are you ever noticed," said Lisette. "And the smaller you are, the greater your example to others." Such an eloquent answer to those who still ask, "What can I do?" I last saw Lisette?s tiny figure standing in driving rain alongside her comrades outside the Houses of Parliament. What struck me was the enduring courage of their resistance. It is this refusal to give up that rotten power fears, above all, knowing it is the seed beneath the snow. www.johnpilger.com From ths at psalience.org Sun Jan 22 10:53:33 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:53:33 +0100 Subject: [THS] World Peace Hanging By A Thread Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120122105253.06277a18@mail.messagingengine.com> World Peace Hanging By A Thread By Fidel Castro Ruz January 21, 2012 "CubaDebate" -- Jan 14th, 2012 -- Yesterday I had the satisfaction of having a pleasant conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I had not seen him since 2006, more than five years ago, when he visited our country to participate in the 14th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement of Countries in Havana. During the summit, Cuba was elected for the second time as president of the organization for a three-year term. I had become gravely ill on July 26, 2006, a month and a half prior to the summit, and could barely sit up in bed. Many of the most distinguished leaders who participated in the event were kind enough to visit me. Chavez and Evo visited me several times. One afternoon four visitors came by whom I will always remember: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; an old friend, Abdelaziz Buteflika, the president of Algeria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran; and the vice minister of Foreign Affairs and current Foreign Minister of China, Yang Jiechi, on behalf of the leader of the Communist Party and the president of China, Hu Jintao. It was really an important time for me; I was in the midst of intense physiotherapy on my right hand that I had seriously injured when I fell in Santa Clara. With all four I spoke about some of the difficulties facing the world at the time; problems that have become progressively more complex. During our meeting yesterday, I noted that the Iranian president was absolutely calm and tranquil, completely unconcerned about the Yankee threats and, fully confident in the capacity of his people to confront any aggression and in the effectiveness of their arms ?which, in large part, they produce themselves? to inflict an unpayable price on its aggressors. In reality, we hardly spoke about the topic of war. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was focused on the ideas he had presented at the Main Hall of the University of Havana during his conference on the struggle of humankind: ?Moving towards reaching and achieving peace, security, respect and human dignity as a fundamental desire of all human beings throughout history.? I am convinced that Iran will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a war. If a war were to be unleashed, it would inevitably be completely as a result of the recklessness and congenital irresponsibility of the Yankee Empire. I believe that the political situation surrounding Iran and the associated risks of a nuclear war that involves us all ?regardless of whether one possess nuclear weapons? are extremely delicate because they threaten the very existence of our species. The Middle East has become the most troubled region on the planet, the same region that produces the energy resources vital for the world?s economy. The destructive power and the mass sufferings caused by some of the weapons used in World War Two led to a strong movement to ban weapons such as asphyxiating gas and others. Nevertheless, conflicting interests and the huge profits made by arms manufacturers led to the production of crueler and more destructive weapons; modern technology has now added the means and material to build weapons that if used in a world war would lead to extinction. I support the opinion, undoubtedly shared by all those with a basic sense of responsibility, that no country big or small has the right to possess nuclear weapons. They never should have been used to attack two defenseless cities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and irradiating with horrible and long-lasting effects hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, in a country that had already been militarily defeated. If fascism indeed forced the allied nations against Nazism to compete with this enemy of humanity in the production of such weapons, once the war ended and the United Nations was created, the first duty of this organization should have been to prohibit nuclear weapons without exception. However, the United States, the strongest and richest power, forced the rest of the world to follow its lead. Today, they have hundreds of satellites that spy and monitor the entire world from outer space. Their naval, air and land forces are equipped with thousands of nuclear weapons; and they control the world?s finances and investments at their whim via the International Monetary Fund. Analyzing the history of each Latin American nation, from Mexico to Patagonia, by way of Santo Domingo and Haiti, one can observe that each and every country, without exception, have suffered for 200 years, from the beginning of the 19th century up until today. And, in one way or another, they are increasingly suffering the worst crimes that power and force can commit against the rights of a people. Brilliant Latin American writers are emerging in an increasing number. One of them, Eduardo Galeano, author of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent that describes the aforementioned, has just been invited to open the prestigious Casa de Las Americas Awards as a recognition to his outstanding body of work. Events happen incredibly fast; but technologies report them to the public even faster. On any given day, like today, important news comes out a dizzying pace. A cable report dated from January 11 states: ?The Danish presidency of the European Union confirmed on Wednesday that a new series of more severe European sanctions against Iran, because of its nuclear program, will be discussed on January 23. The new sanctions will not only target the oil industry but also the Central Bank.? During a meeting with international journalists, Danish Foreign Minister Villy Soevndal said that ?We will increase sanctions against the oil industry in addition to sanctions against financial structures.? This clearly demonstrates that, in order to impede nuclear proliferation, Israel can go on accumulating hundreds of nuclear warheads while Iran is not allowed to produce 20% enriched uranium. Another article, from a respected British news agency, states that ?China gave no hint on Wednesday of giving ground to U.S. demands to curb Iran?s oil revenues, rejecting Washington?s sanctions on Tehran as overstepping ? The sheer tranquility with which the United States and civilized Europe carry out this campaign with incredible and systematic acts of terrorism is enough to shock anybody. Just look at these lines reported by another important European news agency: ?The murder on Wednesday of Iranian nuclear specialist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan [a scientist at the Natanz nuclear plant] was the fourth attack to kill a leading scientist in the country in almost exactly two years.? On January 12, 2010: ?Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at Tehran University is killed when a booby-trapped motorcycle explodes outside his home in the capital. ? On November 29, 2010: ?Two attacks target leading Iranian nuclear scientists on the same day. Majid Shahriari, a key member of Iran?s Atomic Energy Agency, is killed in Tehran by a limpet bomb attached to his car. His colleague Fereydoon Abbasi Davani is also targeted by a bomb attached to his car, but escapes.? The car was parked in front of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran where both men worked as professors. On July 23, 2011: ?Gunmen shoot dead Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, a senior scientist who is reportedly associated with the defense ministry, and wound his wife as they waited for their child outside a Tehran kindergarten.? On January 11, 2012 ?the same day that Ahmadinejad travelled from Nicaragua to Cuba to give a conference at the University of Havana?, scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, ?a deputy director at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, is killed in a car bomb blast outside the [Allameh Tabatabai] University in east Tehran.? As in previous years ?Iran once again accused the United States and Israel.? The killings represent a systematic and selective slaughter of brilliant Iranian scientists. I have read articles by known Israeli sympathizers who write about crimes carried out by Israeli intelligence services in cooperation with the United States and NATO as if they were the most normal occurrence. At the same time, Moscow news agencies report that ?Russia warned that in Syria a similar scenario is developing as to that in Libya, and added that this time the attack will be launched from neighboring Turkey. ?The secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, said the West wants to ?punish Damascus not as much for repressing the opposition, but because it is unwilling to sever ties with Tehran.?? ? NATO members and some Persian Gulf states, operating according to the Libya scenario, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syrian affairs to direct military intervention This time the main strikes forces will not be provided by France, the U.K. or Italy, but possibly by neighboring Turkey.? ?Washington and Ankara are now assumed to be negotiating a ?no-fly? zone over Syria, where Syrian armed insurgents can be trained and concentrated, added Patrushev.? News is not only coming out of Iran and the Middle East, but also from other parts of Central Asia near the Middle East. These reports show the great complexity of the problems that can arise from this dangerous region. The United States has been led by its contradictory and absurd imperial policy to get involved in serious problems in countries such as Pakistan, whose borders with Afghanistan were drawn up by the colonialists without taking into account culture or ethnicities. In Afghanistan, which defended its independence against English colonialism for centuries, drug production has multiplied in the wake of the Yankee invasion. Meanwhile, European soldiers, supported by drone airplanes and armed with sophisticated US weapons, carry out deplorable massacres that increase the people?s hatred and ward off any possibilities of peace. All this and other dirty actions are also reported by Western news agencies. ?WASHINGTON, January 12, 2012 ? US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called the actions of four U.S. marines who urinated on corpses in Afghanistan ?utterly deplorable? The video of the act was circulated in the Internet. ??I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable ? ??This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards of values our armed forces are sworn to uphold ?? In reality, Panetta neither confirms nor denies the action, and anyone, including the Secretary of Defense himself, may harbor doubt. But it is also extremely inhumane that men, women and children, or an Afghani combatant fighting against the foreign occupation, be murdered by bombs dropped by drone planes. Another very serious incident: dozens of Pakistani soldiers and officials who safeguarded the country?s borders have been killed by these bombs. Afghani President Karzai stated that the outrage committed against the bodies was ?simply inhumane.? He asked for the US government ?to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.? Meanwhile Taliban spokespersons declared that ?over the last ten years, hundreds of similar acts have been carried out that were not reported ? One even feels sorry for those soldiers, thousands of kilometers away from their family, friends and country, sent to fight in countries that they might not have even heard of during their school days, where they are assigned the task of killing or dying to enrich transnational companies, arms manufacturers and unscrupulous politicians who each year squander funds needed to feed and educate the uncountable millions of hungry and illiterate people around the world. Many of these soldiers, victims of the trauma suffered, end up taking their own lives. Is it an exaggeration to say that world peace is hanging by a thread? Fidel Castro Ruz - January 12, 2012 - 9:14 p.m. From ths at psalience.org Sun Jan 22 10:56:26 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:56:26 +0100 Subject: [THS] Newspaper Editor: Israel Should Consider Assassinating Obama Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120122105504.062cadc0@mail.messagingengine.com> Newspaper Editor: Israel Should Consider Assassinating Obama By John Cook January 20, 2012 "Gawker" -- Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper serving Atlanta's Jewish community, devoted his January 13, 2012 column to the thorny problem of the U.S. and Israel's diverging views on the threat posed by Iran. Basically Israel has three options, he wrote: Strike Hezbollah and Hamas, strike Iran, or "order a hit" on Barack Obama. Either way, problem solved! Here's how Adler laid out "option three" in his list of scenarios facing Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu (the column, which was forwarded to us by a tipster, isn't online, but you can read a copy here): Three, give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States' policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies. Yes, you read "three" correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel's existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don't you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel's most inner circles? Another way of putting "three" in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives...Jews, Christians and Arabs alike? You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table. It's hard to tell whether or not Adler is just some crank. But the Atlanta Jewish Times, which he purchased in 2009, appears to be a real community newspaper. It was founded in 1925 and, according to Wikipedia, claims a circulation of 3,500 and staff of five. To judge from its web site, it's a going concern. A nervous Adler told me over the phone that he wasn't advocating Obama's assassination by Mossad agents. "Of course not," he said. But do you think Israel should consider it an option? "No." But do you believe that Israel is in fact considering the option in its most inner circles? "No. Actually, no. I was hoping to make clear that it's unspeakable?god forbid this would ever happen. I take it you're quoting me?" Yes. "Oh, boy." When I asked Adler why, if he didn't advocate assassination and didn't believe Israel was actually considering it, he wrote a column saying he believed that the option was "on the table," he asked for a minute to compose himself and call me back. He did a few moments later, and said, "I wrote it to see what kind of reaction I was going to get from readers." And what was the reaction? "We've gotten a lot of calls and emails." Nothing from the Secret Service, though. Yet. UPDATE: Adler has told JTA that he "regrets" the column and plans to publish an apology. Oh, and the Secret Service says it will "make all appropriate, investigative follow-up in regard to this matter," according to ABC News.