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The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
(Eric Bosse, AlterNet, March 17, 2003)
In the opening chapter, Palast details the ways Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris rigged Florida's 2000 vote by hiring a data mining company, DataBase Technologies, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint. . . . Forbes says, "We don't know who has lost the war on terror, but we do know who has won: ChoicePoint, Inc." They're the big contractor in Total Information Awareness. They've got the big DNA database they're keeping for the new vampiric agency. ChoicePoint owns the companies that are going to do the airport profiling, the immigration intake profiling, and, most importantly, these are the guys that have the database of over 20 billion records on Americans. . . . Under the USA Patriot Act � and I mean the one in force, we don't have to wait for the second shoe to drop � for the first time in American history the feds will be able to go through private records, the private database. They call it "data mining." They're going to be hunting through our records without a search warrant, on a massive data-crunching basis. . . . I bring up in the book the failure to hunt down the sources and the total operation of the Pakistan bomb building program. And we're worried about Saddam Hussein? Colin Powell stands up in front the United Nations and says we can't let some crazy, fanatical dictator with nuclear bombs stay in office, and my wife says, "Oh, we're invading Pakistan, right?" But instead we've got George Bush with his arm around the dictator of Pakistan, Musharraf, who we know has weapons of mass destruction and has threatened to use them; but our President stands there and gets his picture taken with him like he's a prom date. . . . You see, we're trying to clean up campaign financing, but we also have to clean up presidential family funding if we're ever going to have any reform. That's the most poisonous part of the Bush operation. . . . Let me give you an example. Who won Gulf War One? And that will tell you who is going to win Gulf War Two. Gulf War One, if you look in the book, Daddy Bush writes a letter for Chevron Oil, after he leaves the White House, to the Kuwaiti Emirate. We call them the royalty of Kuwait. That means that they're dictators with robes and crowns. So, he writes to the Kuwaiti dictatorship and asks them to give Chevron an oil concession. What the hell is a President of the United States doing, lobbying for a private oil company? . . . And Schwarzkopf was talking about that. He was also concerned that after Gulf War One, who do we see sneaking in the desert, wearing saddle shoes and salesman's bags? Marvin and Neal Bush, trying to sell pipeline operations to the Gulf states, representing Enron Corporation. You know, these people have no shame. . . . And while you're supposed to be hypnotized by Iraq, don't watch that man behind the screen, Otto Reich in the White House, who is doing his level best to overthrow the elected government in Venezuela. . . . The New York Times runs a front-page picture of thousands of Venezuelans marching against Hugo Chavez. The same day, I'm photographing it myself, more people are marching for Chavez, but they don't show the others. It's more devastating than fabrication, because a picture makes you think, "That must be real." It's terribly sad, because the story of Venezuela is about oil. It is about crushing a dissenter to the new globalization order. . . . There are what I call the honest conservatives � they're not comfortable with the country club set. I've been having discussions with my big, huge corporate publisher about something called "alternative media," which is bigger than the mainstream media. We are bigger. We should stop acting puny and stop calling ourselves alternative.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 8:25 AM

 

When Representative Ron Paul Asked For A Declaration of War
By Carl F. Worden - 03. 27. 03 - The Sierra Times
On 10/3/2002, Representative Ron Paul of Texas made a motion to declare war on Iraq. Chairman Henry Hyde rejected the motion by declaring:
"There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events, by time. Declaration of war is one of them. There are things no longer relevant to a modern society. Why declare war if you don't have to? We are saying to the President, use your judgment. So, to demand that we declare war is to strengthen something to death. You have got a hammerlock on this situation, and it is not called for. Inappropriate, anachronistic, it isn't done anymore." --Chairman Henry Hyde, 10/3/2002, in session of House of Representatives, during hearing on H.J. Res. 114, "AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ", discussing Ron Paul's motion to declare war.

Before you read on, please stop and re-read Chairman Hyde's statement again, and carefully digest exactly what he said. I'll wait. Now, this is a high-ranking, elected government official who placed his left hand on the Bible, raised his right hand, and swore before almighty God his absolute allegiance to the Constitution of the United States -- all of it -- and apparently intended to violate that sacred oath even as he was swearing it! Think about that, and what it means.

If any part of our Constitution is "no longer relevant" to this modern society of ours, a constitutional amendment must be passed making it no longer relevant. Unless and until that is done, every part of that Constitution of ours is to be strictly adhered to, no ifs ands or buts.

*****This should be a concern to ALL Americans - once we lose (abdicate) what freedoms we currently have, once we allow our politicians to invalidate the basic premise of our Republic, we will never regain them. Never. Why aren't more CITIZENS concerned? Have we become sheep? molon labe *****

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 9:04 AM

 

Could The Executive Branch Use War In Iraq To Seize More Freedoms?
By Michael Gaddy - The Sierra Times
A very ugly theory has been making the usual rounds lately. Considering the Patriot Act was passed on October 25th 2001, 98-1, by senators who had not even read the legislation, this theory becomes increasingly ominous. The theory goes like this: The Bush administration would wait until war began, and worry gripped the homeland, to ram a staggering package of domestic security measures through a Congress silenced by fears of seeming unpatriotic. Such measures would radically expand the executive branch powers already inflated by the 2001 USA Patriot Act. To add fuel to the flame, Justice Department spokesperson Mark Corallo confirmed to the Village Voice that such measures were coming soon. Exact details are confined to "internal deliberations," he said, but the proposals "will be filling in the holes" of the Patriot Act, "refining things that will enable us to do our job."

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 8:51 AM

 

U.S. plan: Threat level for every flyer
(Associated Press, February 28, 2003)
Civil liberties groups are objecting to a government plan for a new system that would check background information and assign a threat level to everyone who buys a ticket for a commercial flight. . . . This system threatens to create a permanent blacklisted underclass of Americans who cannot travel freely . . . Delta Air Lines will try it out at three undisclosed airports beginning next month, and a comprehensive system could be in place by the end of the year. . . . Airlines already do rudimentary checks of passenger information, such as method of payment, address and date the ticket was reserved. The system was developed by Northwest Airlines in the early 1990s to spot possible hijackers. . . . Unusual behavior, such as purchasing a one-way ticket with cash, is supposed to prompt increased scrutiny at the airport. . . . CAPPS II will collect data and rate each passenger's risk potential according to a three-color system: green, yellow, red. When travelers check in, their names will be punched into the system and their boarding passes encrypted with the ranking. TSA screeners will check the passes at checkpoints. . . . The whole track record of profiling is a very poor to mixed one," Hudson said, noting incorrect profiles of the Unabomber and the Washington-area snipers.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 2:54 PM