SEPTEMBER 2007

Doremus Jessup, editor of the Fort Beulah The Daily Informer, in Sinclair Lewis' famous book "It Can't Happen Here", at its conclusion, "drove out saluted by the meadow larks, and onward all day, to a hidden cabin in the Northern Woods where quiet men awaited news of freedom.....still Doremus goes on, into the sunrise, for a Doremus Jessup can never die.

Anti-War Demonstrations

"The world is dangerous not because of those who do harm, but because of
those who look at it without doing anything. Nothing that I can do will
change the structure of the Universe. But, maybe by raising my voice I can
help the greatest of all causes...good will among men and peace on earth."
~~~Albert Einstein

On Saturday, September 15, 2007, the ANSWER Coalition is sponsoring an antiwar protest timed to coincide with the report by General David Petraeus on the status of the "surge" or escalation of the war in Iraq.

Anti-war demonstrators will begin assembling at the White House in the late morning. There will not be an opening rally. A march will form with the front contingent of Iraq war veterans, family members of soldiers and marines and other veterans. When the march arrives at Congress, the Iraq
Veterans Against the War and family members will be the leadership of a mass die-in symbolizing the deaths of an estimated 4,000 U.S. service members. A powerful representation of the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis will be the other central component of this dramatic confrontation with Congress at the time that they will be debating spending another $100 billion to sustain the criminal occupation of Iraq.

The Die-In is a civil disobedience action that will involve at least 4,000 people who are able to risk arrest.

There will be a permitted rally taking place simultaneously with the Die-In. All those who cannot afford to risk arrest will be able to participate in the permitted rally that will take place on the West Lawn of the Capitol Building.

For more information, on the march from the White House to the US Capitol,
the rally and other September 15 anti-war activities, contact,
info@internationalanswer.org or visit the website at
http://www.sept15.org.The DISH Vol. 10 No 36

Billionares Profit off Congo Debt Forgiveness

wvns@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of World
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 9:03 AM

Randi Rhodes and Greg Palast Hunt Giuliani's Favorite Vulture
by Greg Palast


"Can't he make a living in a more reputable, less disgusting way, say, in child pornography?"

Randi Rhodes is asking you, Mr. Singer. And we're still waiting for the answer.

Paul Singer is a vulture. And a billionaire. And, with his underlings at Elliott Associates, the number one sugar-daddy donor to the presidential campaign of Rudy Giuliani, dropping $168,400 so far and, according to secret campaign documents, committed to raise $10 million for Rudolf the Great, Emperor of 9/11.

So who is this bird of prey Singer who holds Rudy in his beak?

Unlike feathered predators, Singer preys on the living. Singer figured out a way to siphon off funds intended for debt relief to some of the poorest countries in the world. Nice guy.And by the way, I didn't come up with the moniker "vulture." Just about everyone, from the new Prime Minister of Britain to the World Bank, calls Singer and his ilk "vultures."

Here's how a vulture operation works. The vulture fund buys up the debt of poor nations cheaply when it is about to be written off and then sue for the full value of the debt plus interest -- sometimes
more than ten times what they paid for it. Singer, for example, paid just $10 million for Congo Brazzaville's debt and is now suing for over $400 million.Singer knew he'd turn a 1000%-plus profit on his $10 million investment with George Bush's help.Bush convinced the US Congress to forgive the money Congo owes the US taxpayer, but once the US taxpayer forgives Congo's debt, the vulture, Singer, swoops in with lawyers to claim, "Congo now has the money to pay ME."

But wait a minute - the debt money given up by US taxpayers wasn't supposed to go to Rudy's predator Singer. In fact, the US Constitution provides power to the President to stop vultures from
suing a foreign country in a US court if the President states such a private lawsuit interferes with America's foreign policy. Singer, by suing Congo for the taxpayer money meant for debt relief
and medicine, is interfering with US foreign policy. Yet Bush has done nothing.

While the President has made big speeches about debt relief for Africa and has even had his picture taken with a Bono, he won't get in the way of Singer's talons. One wonders if the President is influenced by Mr. Singer's strong support for debt relief, that is, debt relief for the Republican Party. The world's top vulture has become top donor to the GOP in New York.

Singer's not alone. He's joined in tearing at the flesh of the Congo's poor by a Washington operator named Michael Francis Sheehan. Sheehan is also known as "Goldfinger."

Besides joining Singer in attacking Congo, Goldfinger has also taken a piece of the debt relief earmarked for AIDS medicine for Zambia. Goldfinger paid $4 million for the right to collect on Zambia's debt - and just won $22 million from Zambia in a UK court, half that nation's
debt relief. Goldfinger was able to seize that money because, he boasts in an email, he secretly paid $2 million to the "favorite charity" of Zambia's president. (That former President, Frederick
Chiluba, is now under arrest for taking bribes ... but Goldfinger can still collect his pound of flesh.)


Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Palast and his team are investigating the 'Vultures' for BBC Television Newsnight.

*********************************************************************

WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE

Burning the Law in a Riot of Treason
    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Columnist

    Monday 27 August 2007

 The departure of Alberto Gonzales from the Attorney General's Office brings America to a place of definitions, and hanging in the balance is the very idea of the nation itself. The basic concepts and fundamental principles of our republic now stand as the only legitimate considerations going forward, for they have been tested almost to annihilation already, and will not endure much longer if we continue on this path.

    It is the mythology within the Declaration of Independence we speak of, the fiction that tells us we are endowed with rights, and that those rights are unalienable. This falsehood has been vividly exposed in the last several years, and it has been a harsh lesson indeed. All the rights we hold dear and believe to be our greatest strength are, in fact, only words on old paper with neither force nor power. The next line - "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" - is the muscle behind the myth, the core that has endured a withering assault.

    Matters are so much worse than our national political dialogue lets on. The resignation of Gonzales has unleashed a torrent of hard words and harsh criticisms aimed at the deplorable nature of his tenure, but the truth of it continues to elude mention. They call Gonzales an incompetent, a crony, a loyalist, a disgrace, leaving off the one word necessary to fully explain who he is, and what he was engaged in before he stepped down.

    Alberto Gonzales is a traitor. That is the only word to explain it.

    He is not the only one; there are many more traitors like him in the Bush administration, criminals joined in an act of treason so vast and comprehensive that it beggars comparison. Nothing quite like this has ever before been attempted in America, and if they are allowed to succeed, there will be nothing of what defines America left to be seen.

    Gonzales and his Bush administration collaborators have committed their treason against the rule of law itself, a crime so absolute that it is technically not illegal. There is no code, ordinance or law specifically forbidding the total ruination of all our rights and protections; the act is neither felony nor misdemeanor, because nobody ever considered the black-letter necessity of making it illegal to destroy the rule of law.

    But there is no America without that rule of law - no rights, no protections, no Constitution; there is nothing, and if you destroy the rule of law, you destroy the idea that is America itself. The only word for a crime like that is treason, and those who would dare commit it are traitors. Gonzales and his Bush administration collaborators have done more than dare. They have been pursuing it, with deliberation and intent, throughout each moment of their tenure.

    Their treason is not in the actual crimes they have committed, but in the way they have chosen to avoid accountability for them. Their treason is not their refusal to obey the Freedom of Information Act, but in their insistence that they are above the application of that law. Their treason is not in their refusal to obey subpoenas from Congress, but in their claim that they are above the laws behind those subpoenas. Their treason is not that they fired United States attorneys and then refused to come clean about it, but that they decimated the impartiality of the Department of Justice and turned the rule of law into another partisan weapon. Their treason is not the NSA surveillance of Americans, but their steadfast refusal to submit to the governing laws and the requirement of oversight.

    When George W. Bush asserted a claim of Executive Privilege that made him and his administration immune to all laws and oversight, that was an act of treason because it shattered the rule of law. When Dick Cheney asserted that the Office of the Vice President was not part of the Executive Branch, because he did not want to obey the laws requiring him to hand over official documents to the Archives, that was an act of treason because it shattered the rule of law. When Alberto Gonzales chose to surrender the independence of the Department of Justice so he could protect those assertions, that was an act of treason because it shattered the rule of law.

    Americans have only the rights they are able to protect and defend. Our rights are nothing more than ideas; only theory and argument on parchment all too easily burned to ashes. The power of those rights is only found in our collective submission to the rule of law, and submission to that rule of law is all that stands between our freedoms and the conflagration of tyranny. Without the rule of law, there is no America.

    That is the treason of Alberto Gonzales, and the treason of the Bush administration entire. They have attacked and undercut the rule of law by refusing to submit to it, and in doing so have brought us to the edge of appalling infamy. Theirs is a crime without peer, and we will be fortunate beyond measure if we are able to recover from it.

    The fact that Alberto Gonzales has left is meaningless in the main, because the treason he participated in continues in his absence. If the damage is to be repaired, he must be replaced by someone who will submit to the main imperative, someone who will submit to the rule of law, someone with real independence and unbending respect for the idea that is America. Gonzales must not be replaced by another crony or yes-man, because Americans have only those rights we can protect and defend, and another traitor in that lofty post is no protection at all.

    Gonzales was more than a poor steward of this trust. He was a traitor among traitors. If the rule of law is to stand, the treason he helped commit must be ended, and a patriot must take his place.

    William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

DRUG WEAPONS

Fentanyl is an opiate which was used as an intravenous analgesic in the 1960’s. It’s classified as a narcotic in the US, with effects said to be similar to heroin. It’s first known use a weapon was in the Moscow Theater siege , when a Fentanyl derivative called Kolokol-1 (believed to be carfentanil) was pumped into the building. All of the terrorists were overpowered without firing a shot, but over a hundred hostages died as a result of respiratory depression.

US work is said to involve a Fentanyl derivative combined with an antagonist which will counter the respiratory depression. According to the Bradford report, it may already be in use:

Since the 2003 National Research Council (NRC) report confirming renewed US Military research on incapacitating agents there has been no further openly available information on the programme, due to likely classification of the ongoing work….It is unclear whether these types of chemical weapons can now be accessed for US military operations. Two unconfirmed reports in 2003 quoted Rear Admiral Stephen Baker, the Navy's former Chief of Operational Testing and Evaluation, as saying that US Special Forces had “knock-out” gases available for use in Iraq.



Tilman knew too Much??

FROM CHARLES LAURENCE IN NEW YORK

PAT TILLMAN died a hero's death. At least, that's what America was told when this former football star and steel-jawed poster boy for the War on Terror, returned home in a box. Here was a soldier who had paid the ultimate price for defending his fellow Army Rangers from an enemy ambush in the badlands of Afghanistan.President Bush awarded him a posthumous Silver Star and made speeches in his honour. Such was the mood of public mourning that his funeral service was broadcast on national television. In death, he was promoted to Corporal.

More than ever, the huge, slab-sided face below the crisply trimmed beret became the face of American patriotism.

But that was never the true story. One month after the fateful day in April 2004, when the 27-year-old died in a ravine on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan where Osama Bin Laden hid with Al-Qaeda, it was officially acknowledged that Tillman had not been killed by the Taliban at all. Instead, he had been cut down by his own side, a victim of 'friendly fire'.

This was a revelation that triggered outrage.

Spearheaded by Tillman's devastated mother Mary and father Pat 'senior', a swelling tide of protesters demanded to know whether the Pentagon and the White House had deliberately played Tillman's death for propaganda value to boost support for the war. Plainly there were lies and cover-ups. Who knew what and when?

Now comes a new and even darker possibility. A growing body of evidence suggests that Tillman died neither at the hands of his nation's enemy nor in the tragic, accidental confusion of 'friendly fire'; rather he was shot with three bullets in tight formation in the forehead at very close range.

If so, this is evidence of murder. Only now are the original battlefield reports emerging and they clearly suggest that his death was not a mistake, just as his mother -- who has inevitably been trying to make sense of the inconsistent reports surrounding the loss of her son -- has long suggested.

But could Pat Tillman really have been assassinated? And if so, why?

The dark shadow of 'black ops' has fallen over the Tillman story, and it reaches all the way to the White House. Conspiracy theories are multiplying.Preposterous though it may seem, there is a growing view that Pat Tillman was targeted by American special forces because he was about to become an embarrassment. New evidence shows that he was turning out to be a very troubled 'hero', a poster boy for the Army and the War on Terror who may have been about to speak out against the war he had come to symbolise.

Letters home and memories of those who knew him in Iraq suggest that after his initial enthusiasm, he had decided that Iraq was not just a quagmire but an 'illegal' war.Tillman had been heard arguing bitterly against the Iraq war and urging his fellow soldiers to vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004. He had also been using his celebrity to contact the best- selling anti-war intellectual Noam Chomsky, and they were due to meet as soon as Tillman returned from Afghanistan.

Astonishingly, long-hidden details of his death support the murder theory: medical evidence never did match up with the scenario of friendly fire; those three bullets from an M16 combat rifle could not have been fired from farther than ten yards; there were special forces snipers in the group immediately behind Tillman's platoon.'The nation has been deceived,' says Mary Tillman. 'It's now about justice for Pat and justice for the other soldiers.'

After three years of grief and anger -- three years during which the national mood has changed from gung-ho support to rejection of the Bush wars and an atmosphere of dark suspicion over every White House motive -- questions over the Tillman story are now convulsing America.
Just this week, the Army produced its seventh report into the affair to try to wipe away the stain of Pat Tillman's death. There is no mention of assassination: the report adheres strictly to the friendly fire line. But it apportions blame for the initial confusion over how Tillman died -- enabling the White House and Pentagon to portray him as an all-American hero -- on Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who was in charge of the special forces in Afghanistan that included Tillman's Rangers.

According to the report, the General had failed to notify both the Tillman family and senior officials of inquiries into the possibility of friendly fire. He then lied to two sets of investigators about the stage at which he knew that American bullets had killed him. This was a 'failure of leadership'.The report insists there was no cover-up and that the death was a battlefield accident, followed by a misunderstanding. Kensinger faces post-retirement demotion by one star and a cut in his pension from $9,500 a month to $8,500.In Washington, Army Secretary Pete Geren unveiled the report, saying: 'General Kensinger was the captain of that ship and his ship ran aground.' He added that he expected this report to be the last.

There is little chance of that. Mary Tillman, who has long suggested her son was deliberately killed by his comrades, said the report was a farce -- 'a complete donkey show'. And Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, added: 'We don't know the full story about the way the Pentagon and (the White House) managed this tragedy. In my view, the Army should reconsider today's announcement and move forward with harsher punishment.'

Only a day after the Army report, the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform convened an inquiry titled The Tillman Fratricide: What The Leadership Of The Defence Department Knew. Chaired by another Californian Democrat with an eye on next year's elections, Henry Waxman, it is calling a slew of top brass and key Pentagon officials to the witness stand. These include former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was sacked by Bush when the Iraq war turned sour for the voters.'How high up did this go?' asks Waxman. In other words, did Bush ignore the truth on Tillman to use him for votes? Or did Pentagon officials, White House staff or election strategists keep the truth from him?

The answer to that might be momentous. But this has all been pushed aside by the revelations prised from records by national news agency the Associated Press (AP).Using the Freedom of Information Act -- American law since the Watergate scandal -- they went to court in San Francisco and sued for the right to look at the Pentagon records on the Tillman affair.They were rewarded with 2,300 pages of documents, and what they contained raised extraordinary inconsistencies when put alongside the official versions of events.

The first mystery surrounds the nature of the wounds he sustained. 'The medical evidence did not match-up with the scenario as described,' a doctor who examined Tillman's body told the first group of Army investigators.Several doctors, their names blacked out in the reports, said that the bullets were so close together that Tillman must have been shot by an M16 combat rifle -- a highpowered repeat machine gun -- fired from no more than ten yards.But soldiers have said their experience with an M16 on a three-shot burst suggests the killer was even closer. To put three rounds into a man's forehead, they would need to be no more than ten feet away.

The Army doctors told the investigators that these wounds suggested murder and urged them to launch a criminal investigation.The documents record that another doctor who conducted the Tillman autopsy was similarly so suspicious that he told investigators he had taken the unusual step of contacting the Human Resources Command which deals with personnel matters. He was rebuffed.He then contacted an officer in the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) to suggest he open a criminal case. 'He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said "no",' the doctor testified.

The newly uncovered papers then reveal, however, that as the controversy grew, the Pentagon did go back to check on the possibility of a fratricidal murder. There is a record of investigators talking to then-Cpt. Richard Scott, who was in charge of the first, local army review.'Have you, at any time since this incident on April 22, 2004, ever received any information or even rumour that Cpl Tillman was killed by anyone within his own unit intentionally?' they asked. Scott replied he was sure the killing was accidental, though he must have been aware of the rumours that Tillman had been murdered.

Was Tillman disliked? Was anyone jealous of his celebrity? Was he --considered arrogant? His brothersinarms all insisted that Tillman was admired, respected and liked.

But there are more bombshells from the pages released to AP.

First, there was no evidence of any incoming fire from the enemy, and no sign of damage to any man or equipment from enemy fire.Yet, the official story has always been that the tragedy started with the breakdown of a personnel carrier as Tillman's unit went into the ravine on an early evening seek-and-destroy patrol.Tillman and his squad were ordered to continue on foot and were then ambushed; and the squad from a second vehicle following behind mistook them for the enemy ambushers.

If there is no evidence of an enemy ambush, how did the shooting start? Is it coincidence that after more than three years it has been discovered that there were never-before mentioned U.S. snipers in the second group?Could there have been a secret sniper on a mission to Afghanistan to assassinate the Army's poster boy? Or perhaps three assassins, because as a general rule snipers fire in single shots, from specially tuned rifles, rather than in bursts of three?

Could the suggestion that Tillman was going to become a voice for the anti-war movement be why his mother says that a journal he'd kept since was 16 has gone missing? It disappeared, along with most of his possessions, two days after he died.'It's time to really ask who ordered the assassination of Pat Tillman,' wrote blogger Josh Swiller on The Huffington Post, a mainstream website, sparking off a series of conspiracy theories.

If that is going too far, it is at least time for the Army, the Pentagon and the White House to come clean on the Tillman tragedy. In these troubled times, the last thing America and its allies need is such suspicion, rumour and intrigue.

handstand received copy of a letter for Dick Cheney

August 27th, 2007

Mr Vice President,

You are a walking disaster.  You have destroyed the American Dream for millions of Americans and destroyed the hopes and aspirations of whole nations.  Your energy policy is a crock of pro-nuclear secret deals -- there's nothing in it for the common man.

You probably had a large hand in the precipitating events leading to the firing of the U.S. Attorneys.  I suspect you specifically wanted Carol Lam fired, lest she investigate your former friend and colleague Randall "Duke" Cunningham's involvement in the attempted murder of two anti-nuclear activists when he tried to commit suicide by smashing his car at high speed head-on into the one I was driving on November 25th, 2005.  He didn't know at the time who his victims would be.  But by now I'll bet YOU know who they were.

Is there no limit to the depths of your crimes?  Violating civil liberties, lying to the American people, and showing favoritism for your old uranium mining cronies in Wyoming are all just tips of icebergs.

Resign, Mr. Cheney!  Resign so that the American people do not have to fear you will step in if, God forbid, anything were to happen to the president.

Such as HIS resigning!

I charge you with obstruction of justice, Mr. Cheney.  I charge you with high crimes and misdemeanors.  I charge you with violating MY civil rights.  I charge you with trying to cover up for political reasons an attempted murder by then-Congressman Cunningham.

Step aside and have your heart checked out.  It seems to be missing entirely.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA