"Once he dies, there will probably be enormous political infighting inside the Moon organization," Clarkson said. "But the people who run it have tried to arrange a family succession centered around a compromise candidate: Mrs. Moon. Mrs. Moon, the ‘rue co-parent,’will be either the titular or actual head of the Moon operation for the foreseeable future."
©2001 Rob Boston

The Wrong Way To Fix The Vote
By Greg Palast

If you liked the way Florida handled the presidential vote in November, you'll just love the election reform laws that have passed since then in 10 states, and have been proposed in 16 others.

These laws mandate a practice that was at the heart of the Florida debacle: computer-aided purging of centralized voter files. The laudable aim is torrid registries of the names of the dead, as well as of felons and others legally barred from voting. But the likely result will be the elimination of a lot of legitimate voters and an increased potential for political mischief.

Traditionally, American voter registries are managed at the county level, and they've been managed pretty well. Certainly there are flaws, but in the overwhelming majority of cases these are clerical errors, not election fraud. Think about it: A citizen dies, another one leaves town. But the dead guy doesn't vote, and the one who moved simply registers and votes from his new home. No harm, no foul.

Trying to cure that relatively minor problem by creating a single, statewide database of voters is overkill. More importantly, it cannot be counted on to fix a very different problem that really is worth worrying about -- purposeful voter fraud. Rather, it creates the potential for new errors on a much greater scale and opens to the door to political manipulations that are harder to detect than the old ballot-stuffing games, and nearly impossible to prosecute.

In Florida, a state-run purge removed thousands of legal voters -- more than half of them black -- in the months leading up to last fall's election. Most had no idea what had happened until they showed up at the polls. As the U.S. Civil Rights Commission wrote in a report made public last week, it was this "widespread voter disenfranchisement" -- much more thanany hanging chads or butterfly ballots -- that was the "extraordinary feature" of the dubious Florida vote.

What happened there in 2000 can too easily be repeated in 2002 and thereafter, anywhere computer-aided purges are mandated.

Florida adopted its purge program in the aftermath of the 1997 Miami mayoral race, which was so marred by crooked voting that courts later reversed the outcome. The state contracted with Database Technologies (which soon was bought by Choice Point Inc. of Atlanta) to compile a central list of Floridians who were ineligible to vote -- notably, convicted felons -- and cross-match them with voter rolls.

In June 2000, on the basis of Choice Point's results, the Florida Division of Elections ordered county election officials to remove from their registries some 58,000 residents unless the counties had evidence that they were not in fact convicted felons.

One of those 58,000 was Linda Howell, who says she has never committed a felony. Her protest was immediately taken seriously, since she happens to be Madison County's election supervisor. The false accusation shook her faith in the purge process: "It really is a mess," she told me afterward.

Another was the Rev. Willie D. Whiting Jr. In fact, Whiting's rap sheet contains a single traffic ticket. His biggest "crime" was his resemblance on paper to Willie J. Whiting (no Jr.), a convicted felon born two days after the reverend.

Fortunately, Whiting lives in Leon County -- which, alone among Florida's 67 counties, independently researched every name on its scrub list. The county could only verify that 34 of the 694 cited -- 5 percent -- had criminal records. Because officials were skeptical of the list, Whiting was able to convince them he should be permitted to vote when he turned up on Election Day.

Researchers from Salon.com who investigated the lists in 13 Florida counties found that at least 15 percent of the names should not have been there. Choice Point spokesmen subsequently told me they don't dispute that figure, and they consider it a reasonable rate of error.

However, the company also defends its scrub list as "accurate" -- because its standard is that the list accurately records all names found in accordance with the specifications devised by the stateofficials who supervised the work.

And that's the problem.

The reason so many wrong names ended up on the scrub list is that Florida ordered Choice Point to input questionably broad matching criteriainto its sophisticated computer programs. According to various statements by Choice Point officials, the criteria were:

First four letters of the first name. Middle initial. Gender. At least 80 percent of the letters in the last name. Approximate date of birth. Last four digits of Social Security number when available -- which was not often, since fewer than 10 percent of Floridians had that number on their voter registration forms. Certain variations were also programmed in (Willie could match William; John Richard could match Richard John).

There are a lot of Whitings and Howells -- and Browns and Brownes and Harwoods and Haywoods -- so given these rough standards, massive misidentification was almost guaranteed.

The results were then skewed because of another piece of data passed on to local officials: the voter's race. Next to every alleged felon's name was the designation "BLA" or "WHI." This meant that if someone named, say, John Smith was identified as a felon, and 10 matches came up, only the ones of the same race were likely to be purged. This is logical, but consider the implications: Since about half of felony convictions involve African Americans -- while barely one in seven Floridians are black -- this methodology ensured that a disproportionate number of law-abiding black voters would be disenfranchised.

If Salon's 15 percent error figure is right -- and data like Leon County's indicates it is much higher -- almost 9,000 of the 58,000 names on the scrub list belonged to rightful voters. (Furthermore, 2,883 other names belonged to people convicted of felonies in states that restore voting privileges after a sentence is served. These people were also purged -- even though they should not have lost their civil rights merely by moving to Florida.)

Database experts say the state could have reduced mismatches to one in 500 by expanding the match criteria -- making name matches more specific and adding such elements as current and prior address and suffixes like "Jr."

But Florida officials counter that if they had done that, they would have erred equally in the opposite direction -- allowing ineligible people to vote.

You would think other states would run from Florida's methods. But in their current legislative sessions, Colorado, Indiana, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Kansas, Montana and Washington have passed bills that -- while varying in specifics -- would follow the Sunshine State's lead in centralizing, computerizing and cleansing voter rolls. Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) has introduced a bill in which certain conditions in any state would trigger mandatory voter list purges.

To a large extent, these bills are a response to "motor voter" legislation, which has added millions of citizens, particularly minorities, to voter registries. Since minority voters tend to be Democratic, it is not surprising that motor voter laws are popular among Democrats, and most of the bills attempting to purge the rolls are sponsored by Republicans.

But many factors go into the ill-advised rush to reform. Take the case of Georgia.

The day before the November election, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV jointly reported that records indicated that deceased Georgians had voted 5,412 times over the last 20 years. They specifically cited one Alan J. Mandel, who apparently cast his ballot in three separate elections after his demise in 1997.

Subsequently, a very live Alan J. Mandell (note the two L's) told the secretary of state that local election workers had accidentally checked off the wrong name on the list. That may or may not explain what really happened -- but in the midst of the chad-mania that dominated the headlines last fall, details became less important than the newly energized drive for so-called reform. Under a law signed April 18, Georgia's secretary of state controls "list maintenance" and, for example, has taken over the power of deleting the names of dead voters.

This is too big a response to a little problem. In a state of 8 million people, 5,412 possibly bad votes -- not in one election, but in all the primaries, local elections and general elections that were held over 20 years -- is an extremely small number. If reformers really want to clean up voting lists, they should consider more funding for local election boards so they can do the job more directly, and better.

The centralization of state voter registries hands an all-too-tempting monopoly to whichever party controls the office of secretary of state. The highly technical (and, where contractors are involved, commercially confidential) nature of computer-aided purges makes bias in the cleansing of supposed felons, deceased voters and duplicate voters astonishingly easy to carry out and difficult to uncover.

Even uncovered, apparent bias is difficult to challenge. Florida officials defend their methods, saying they wanted to cast the widest net to catch the highest number of ineligible voters. Who is to say that, despite the devastating racial imbalance in the roster of those wrongly purged, Florida chose the wrong match criteria? One Florida Democratic leader admitted to me (on condition of anonymity) that, if he and his party had control of the voter files, they would have been tempted to pick some elimination criteria of their own.

After all, one man's overzealous purge is another man's inauguration.
©2001 Greg Palast

"We fully expect that on a variety of environmental issues ranging from energy to the Clean Air Act," Mr. Clapp said, "that we will see these kinds of industry campaigns, and we felt it was best to be there first."
©2001 Alison Mitchell

The Enemies Of Democracy
By RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #725

The enemies of democracy are flexing their muscles. A corporate front group calling itself Frontiers of Freedom has petitioned U.S. tax officials to revoke the tax-exempt status of Rainforest Action Network (RAN), a major environmental organization www.ran.org). If successful, the petition would put Rainforest Action Network out of business, and would open the door for lethal attacks on other environmental advocates. Frontiers of Freedom acknowledged to the WALL STREET JOURNAL that, if successful against RAN, "it will challenge other environmental groups."[1]

Frontiers of Freedom was founded in 1995 by Malcolm Wallop, a former U.S. Senator (R-Wyo.) and "friend of vice-president Dick Cheney," according to the WALL STREET JOURNAL. The JOURNAL reports that Frontiers is funded by Philip Morris Companies, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, Inc., and the Exxon Mobil Corporation.

This latest corporate attack on freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of assembly, is not random. It is part of an accelerating campaign to replace representative democracy with control by corporate elites.

Now a new book, TRUST US, WE'RE EXPERTS! by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, provides a chilling, documented history of ongoing corporate efforts to use propaganda and "public relations" to distort science, manipulate public opinion, discredit democracy, and consolidate political power in the hands of a wealthy few.[2]

The Big Idea behind the anti-democratic corporate-power movement is that people cannot be trusted to make political decisions because they are irrational, emotional, and illogical. This cynical view of humans is widely held by the public relations industry's experts but also by the scientific experts they employ to 'guide' the public. For example, physics professor H.W. Lewis (University of California, Santa Barbara), a well-known risk assessor, says people worry about non-problems like nuclear waste and pesticides because they are irrational and poorly educated. "The common good is ill served by the democratic process," he says. (pg. 111)

If people are not rational they cannot be guided by reason, so they must be manipulated through emotion, PR experts say (thus justifying their own propaganda services). For example, a spokesperson for Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm that manipulates the public on behalf of Philip Morris, Monsanto, Exxon Mobil and others, told the Society of Chemical Industry in London in 1989, "All of this research is helpful in figuring out a strategy for the chemical industry and for its products. It suggests, for example, that a strategy based on logic and information is probably not going to succeed. We are in the realm of the illogical, the emotional, and we must respond with the tools that we have for managing the emotional aspects of the human psyche... The industry must be like the psychiatrist..." (pg. 3)

The PR psychiatric manipulation industry is now enormous. Corporations spend at least $10 billion each year hiring PR propaganda experts (pg. 26) and our federal government spends another $2.3 billion or so (pg. 27) -- and these are no doubt underestimates. But these huge sums are not wasted -- they provide major benefits to the clients. For example, about 40% of all stories that appear in newspapers are planted there by PR firms on behalf of a specific paying client. Because most radio and TV news is simply re-written from newspaper stories, a substantial proportion of the public's "news" originates as PR propaganda. Naturally the connection to the PR source is edited out.

The COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW analyzed the WALL STREET JOURNAL and found that more than half its stories are "based solely on press releases" even though many carry the misleading statement, "By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter." Thus what passes for news these days is, as often as not, corporate propaganda. Tongue in cheek, Rampton and Stauber refer to the major news media as the disinfotainment industry.

Unfortunately, as Rampton and Stauber make crystal clear with example after example, all of this manipulation has devastating consequences for real people. The news media largely set the limits on public discussion, and thus on public policy debate. What is excluded from the news is often more significant than what gets inserted. For example, approximately 800,000 new cases of occupational illness arise each year, making occupational illness much larger than AIDS and roughly equivalent to cancer and all circulatory diseases, but most people have no idea that this is so. (See REHN #578.)

Combined with on-the-job injuries, work-related illnesses kill about 80,000 workers each year -- nearly twice the national death total from automobile accidents. In 1991 former NEW YORK TIMES labor correspondent William Serrin reported (but, notably, NOT in the NEW YORK TIMES) that about 200,000 workers had been killed on the job since the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) in 1970, and that an additional 2 million workers had died from diseases caused by conditions where they worked.[3] That's 273 work-related deaths EACH DAY, day after day after day. This corporate carnage is ignored by the news media, which prefer to keep us focused on yuppie SUV crashes, and crimes of passion.

During the same 20-year period, 1970-1990, an additional 1.4 million workers were permanently disabled in workplace accidents. Yet during those 20 years, only 14 people were prosecuted by the Justice Department for violation of workplace safety standards and only one person went to jail -- for 45 days for suffocating two workers to death in a trench cave-in.

PR experts "spin" stories for the media on the assumption that most reporters are too overworked (or too lazy) to search out the truth for themselves. But Rampton and Stauber exhaustively document that "spin" goes much farther than merely providing a "news hook," a viewpoint, or a few facts. Modern corporate propaganda involves purchasing scientific opinions and planting them in scientific journals (without, of course, mentioning the money connection to the corporate benefactor). Tobacco companies invented this technique, but now others are using it freely. For example, in the early 1990s, tobacco companies paid $156,000 to a handful of scientists to sign their names to letters written by tobacco company lawyers. The letters were published in the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, the LANCET, the JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE, and the WALL STREET JOURNAL, and were then cited by the tobacco companies as if they had been written by independent scientists. "It's a systematic effort to pollute the scientific literature," says professor of medicine Stanton Glantz (University of California, San Francisco), a longtime critic of Big Tobacco. (pg. 199)

In 1999 drug maker Wyeth Laboratories commissioned ghost writers to manufacture ten medical articles promoting a combination of Wyeth drugs called fen-fen, as a treatment for obesity. Two of the articles actually got published in peer-reviewed journals. After fen-fen was pulled from the market for permanently damaging peoples' heart valves, lawyers for injured victims discovered that Wyeth had edited the articles to play down and occasionally delete descriptions of side effects caused by fen-fen. Prominent scientists put their names on these articles in return for fees as small as $1000 to $1500 -- and journal editors published the articles as if they represented independent scientific inquiry. Wyeth could then cite these "independent" studies to convince doctors to prescribe fen-fen.

In 1996, Sheldon Krimsky of Tufts University examined 789 articles published by 1105 researchers in 14 leading life science and biomedical journals. In 34% of the articles, at least one of the chief authors had an identifiable financial interest connected to the research. None of these financial interests was disclosed in the journals. Krimsky said the 34% figure was probably an underestimate because he couldn't check stock ownership or corporate consulting fees paid to researchers.

Science, like democracy, depends crucially upon the free flow of information. When secrecy is imposed, errors go undetected and fallacies proliferate -- only to be discovered years later, if at all.[4] For example, secrecy has allowed the U.S. military to create a "pattern of exaggeration and deception" in its reports >to Congress, just as secrecy allowed the military to waste more than $100 billion (!) in failed attempts to create a workable "star wars" missile defense system.[5] In 1993, a front-page story in the NEW YORK TIMES began, "Officials of the 'Star Wars' project rigged a crucial 1984 test and faked other data in a program of deception that misled Congress..."[6] Secrecy invites deception and destroys democratic accountability.

Rampton and Stauber point out that "Corporate funding creates a culture of secrecy that can be as chilling to free academic inquiry as funding from the military. Instead of government censorship, we hear the language of commerce: nondisclosure agreements, patent rights, intellectual property rights, intellectual capital." (pg. 214)

A key feature of the corporate anti-democracy strategy of the past 20 years is reduced government funding for needed research, thus inviting corporate funders to step in. This is what "tax cut" really means. Tax cuts are not primarily aimed at giving families another $300 to spend -- they are mainly intended to reduce the capacity of governments to fund needed public services, such as medical research. As a result, corporations are asked to provide the funds and thus they gain an opportunity to influence the national research agenda and the results.

In 1994 and 1995 researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital surveyed more than 3000 academic scientists and found that 64% of them had financial ties to corporations. They reported in the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA), that 20% of the 3000 researchers admitted that they had delayed publication of research results for more than 6 months, to obtain patents and to "slow the dissemination of undesired results." "Sometimes if you accept a grant from a company, you have to include a proviso that you won't distribute anything except with its OK. It has a negative impact on science," says Nobel-prize-winning biochemist Paul Berg. (pg. 215) In 1999 Drummond Rennie, editor of JAMA, said private funding of medical research was causing "a race to the ethical bottom.... The behavior of universities and scientists is sad, shocking, and frightening," Rennie said. "They are seduced by industry funding, and frightened that if they don't go along with these gag orders, the money will go to less rigorous institutions," he said. (pg. 217)

In this rich, deep book, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have painstakingly documented the specific techniques that PR experts and their corporate masters employ to deceive the courts, the legislatures, the media, educators, and the public. The next time someone accuses you of "chemophobia" or of relying on "junk science" you'll know you're dealing with corporate manipulators who are being guided by PR skanks. Their overriding goal is to discredit decision-making by the public and replace it with control by corporate elites. They know better, they're experts, trust them.

The final chapter of this important book tells us how to fight back. If you care about democracy, science or simple truth and want to know exactly how corporate elites subvert all three, this is the book for you.
©2001 RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #725

Quotable Quote

"President Bush said today he's working on his plan to give religious groups federal money. He says there no reason government and religion can't coexist. After all it works so well in Iran." -- Jay Leno

It is no surprise, then, that zealot crooks such as Oliver North wind up as hosts of national TV and radio talk shows, George W. Bush sits in the Oval Office, and Iran-Contra figures continue to land high-level jobs.
©2001 Larry Chin

Elliot Abrams' Appointment Shows Who Controls the GOP

The real consequence of these grotesque choices could be what Goodfellow calls "the Cubanization of Latin American policy." In the meantime, Abrams and Reich tell us what we already knew: that the great political imperative in the White House is the stroking of the right wing. Cuban Americans who helped the president in the great fight for Florida are getting what he feels is their due. Bush owes them big time. He can't seem to keep his campaign promises to any of the rest of us, but Florida comes first.
©2001 Mary McGrory

Giuliani’s "Jerks, Idiots, Morons"
by Robert Lederman

"New York's divorcing mayor lost his cool yesterday as reporters queried him about his sleepovers at a top political fund-raiser's Manhattan apartment. "Don't be a jerk," a testy Rudolph Giuliani said just a day after Giuliani heckled a group of bus drivers, branding them "morons"...You're a bunch of idiots," the mayor said. "Really, really scary that these people drive buses," he added. "I know the kindergarten does a lot better than these morons. You are acting like morons, yes."

I have to confess from the outset that I am one of the, "jerks, idiots and morons" who consistently annoy the 107th Mayor of New York by daring to question his actions. My fellow ingrates and I just don’t appreciate all that Rudy Giuliani has done for us in the past seven-and-a-half years, the so-called "Giuliani Legacy".

According to Mr. Giuliani’s many statements about us we are, "immature and irresponsible", and act, "like kindergarteners". The most threatening of us - street artists, cabbies and anti-pesticide activists - he has called "terrorists". And for the very, very most incorrigible offenders he reserves the ultimate Giuliani insult, "it’s silly - they just want to get on TV".

We morons angrily confront him at carefully staged and otherwise picture-perfect Town Hall meetings, daring to interrupt the pre-screened testimonials to his awesome greatness. The jerk-reporters among us interrupt his feel-good corporate message with embarrassing family questions at City Hall press conferences. At parades, we idiots yell insults and hold up unflattering portraits of him and Judy Nathan, the ersatz First Lady of New York.

We have no sense of decency.

When thousands of us demonstrated at One Police Plaza carrying signs comparing the Mayor to Hitler (his ideas can be directly traced to the ideology behind Nazi Germany - see my website for details), he called us, "the lowest element in society". He was referring of course to reverends, priests, nuns, rabbis, members of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, U.S. Congressmen, NY City Council members and other such, "lowlifes".

The writers among us persist in challenging the truthfulness of his cooked statistics and countless claims to having done things which the record shows were actually done before he ever took office. Our research proves beyond question that his crime stats are false, that few former welfare recipients got jobs and that the squeegee guys were almost all gone before he was ever sworn into office. But why let the facts besmirch a great reputation?

We morons point out the logical inconsistency of throwing mothers and children off welfare and then giving the money to Giuliani’s billionaire pals in order to build privately-owned baseball stadiums (the Yankees and the Mets), refurbish privately-owned art museums (David Rockefeller’s Museum of Modern Art) or to convince immensely successful corporations whose image is inextricably linked to NYC (the NY Stock Exchange and many others) to remain here rather than move to New Jersey.

The Mayor likes to say of his critics that we are, "stuck in the age of Communism", and just don’t understand the American system of business as taught at the CIA’s Nazi-inspired right-wing think tank, the Manhattan Institute.

We’re the people who - with the help of the next soon-to-be-elected Democratic Mayor - will return the City to it’s previous state of, "filth, crime and depravity". According to Rudy, if we get our way thousands of squeegee guys and topless dancers will be racing back to live in the Big Apple while all the "decent" people will leave.

Goodbye to all you fine and decent people. Can I get a quarter for washing your car window as you cross the George Washington Bridge on your way to New Jersey?

Unlike Mr. Giuliani - who in an earlier election tried to damage Mayor Ed Koch’s reputation by circulating reports that he was gay - we have no respect for the sanctity of a Mayor’s private life. Just because Giuliani announced on live TV that he had a mistress and was breaking up with his second wife or had his aides tell the media that he was impotent, doesn’t give us the right to ask questions about his sex life or where he sleeps.

The Mayor made it very very clear he does not want us to pay any attention to his marriage break-up or his two children. That’s why at the height of his custody battle he arranged for his son Andrew to play golf with Tiger Woods and made sure the media was there in force to cover it.

It’s OK for the Mayor’s divorce attorney - Raoul Felder - to viciously attack his wife, Donna Hanover in public calling her a, "terrible mother who won’t clean up the Mayor’s vomit, exercises at five in the morning and gets her hair done before court appearances". However, it’s an invasion of the Mayor’s privacy for reporters to ask him any questions about his family, about a first marriage to a cousin or about a previous mistress being given a City job at a yearly salary of $400,000.

"Respect my privacy", the Mayor sternly warns. If reporters disobey and dare ask a second time Rudy lets them have it with a select example of his brilliant wit such as, "you’re a jerk".

Unlike a genius former Federal Prosecutor and top Justice Department official like Mayor Giuliani, we jerks, morons and idiots are not intelligent enough to understand the First Amendment right to free speech. Contrary to the myths about free speech and civil rights dispensed by left-wing propagandists, "Freedom is about authority" as the Mayor has repeatedly explained.

What that means in layman’s terms goes something like this:

Street artists don’t have First Amendment rights on streets or around NYC parks despite winning Federal lawsuits that say we are exempt from any form of license, permit or fee and are fully protected by the First Amendment. According to the Mayor, we now have to buy a permit and compete in a lottery to even paint a picture within 350 feet of a park.

Corporations on the other hand, especially those closely associated with the Mayor like Disney, JP Morgan/Chase Bank or Macys have full First Amendment rights and can exploit entire parks or close off entire streets in order to promote their corporate products.

As an example of how this works in practice, a 3 X 8 foot cardboard artists’ display is a, "public safety hazard". A film crew running huge electrical cables and parking 30 giant trucks on a street is, "a great way to advertise New York". Naturally, these Hollywood film and television crews with hundred million dollar budgets don’t have to pay a single penny in fees to the City, although it helps if they let the Mayor do an occasional guest spot in drag on their film or TV show.

Taxpaying members of the public can’t post any leaflets no matter how small on City-owned light poles because that would severely violate the quality of life laws on graffiti and defacing public property. Under Giuliani’s regime, thousands of New Yorkers are arrested each year for nothing more than posting a leaflet about a lost dog or a political cause.

On the other hand, corporations that Giuliani has given billions of dollars in tax write-offs are encouraged to hang huge banners - most of which have the Mayor’s name in large letters - from thousands of the very same NYC light poles. They don’t need to pay a cent in fees to the City because these banners, "promote tourism" (see excerpt from Daily News article below).

I can’t see how these banners promote tourism since you have to be in New York to see them. Perhaps that’s because I’m a jerk.

If a group of political activists want to hold a small press conference on the steps of City Hall they can’t because of a, "threat of terrorism". The Yankees can hold numerous rallies there however, attended by tens of thousands of people because - well, because The Mayor is a Yankees fan.

If these don’t seem like reasonable rules to you it’s because you are immature, a Communist or just another idiot, moron or jerk.

Later this year we will all get the chance to carefully study the Mayor’s profound philosophy thanks to a three million dollar two-book deal he’s signed with Talk/Miramax. According to newspaper reports, the first book to be published will be called, "Rudy’s Rules" a point by point guide to how he "tamed" all of us idiots, moron and jerks.

Unfortunately, because of the City’s awful public school system - which gets worse every single day of the Giuliani administration - most of us are functionally illiterate and won’t be able to read this important textbook on City management.

Here’s a four sentence synopsis of the Giuliani philosophy. If you are one of the lucky few who can read perhaps you’ll verbally convey this important message to your less fortunate neighbors.

1. Sex is bad, Disney is good.
2. Welfare is bad, corporate welfare is good.
3. Donna Hanover is bad, Judy Nathan is good.
4. You are bad, I am good.
End of story.
©2001 Robert Lederman

Why Would Bin Laden Want To Kill Dubya, His Former Business Partner?
By James Hatfield

There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—is first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?

I knew that bombshell would whip your heads around. So here's the straight scoop, folks.

In June 1977, Dubya formed his own drilling company, Arbusto Energy ("arbusto" means "bush" in Spanish), in Midland, Texas. Like his father before him, Dubya founded his oil business with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom Dubya apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit. (Interestingly, both Dubya and Bath were both suspended from flying in August and September 1972, respectively, for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination.")

Tax documents and other financial records show that Bath, an aircraft broker with controversial ties to Saudi Arabia sheiks, had invested $50,000 in Arbusto, granting him a 5 percent interest in two limited partnerships controlled by Dubya.

Time magazine described Bath in 1991 as "a deal broker whose alleged associations run from the CIA to a major shareholder and director of the Bank of Credit & Commerce." BCCI, as it was more commonly known, closed its doors in July 1991 amid charges of multibillion-dollar fraud and global news reports that the financial institution had been heavily involved in drug money laundering, arms brokering, covert intelligence work, bribery of government officials and—ere's the kicker—id to terrorists.

Bath was never directly implicated in the BCCI scandal, but according to The Outlaw Bank, an award-winning 1993 book by Time correspondents, Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, Bath originally "made his fortune by investing money for [Sheikh Kalid bin] Mahfouz and another BCCI-connected Saudi, Sheikh bin Laden," reportedly the father of none other than Osama bin Laden, the man accused by the U.S. government of masterminding the August 1998 terrorist bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed more than 250 people.

According to court documents, Bath swore that in 1977 he represented four prominent and wealthy Saudi Arabians as a trustee and used his name on their investments in the United States. In return, he received a 5 percent interest in their deals. Time reporters Beaty and Gwynne suggest in their book that the $50,000 Bath invested in Dubya's Arbusto Energy drilling company may have belonged to Bath's Saudi clients since the Houston businessman "had no substantial money of his own at the time."

The FBI and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network later investigated Bath after allegations were made by one of his American business partners that the Saudis were using Bath and their giant piggy bank to influence U.S. policy. (Dubya's father had been appointed by President Ford to head the CIA from 197677.)

So, folks, the Middle Eastern oil money used to underwrite the first business venture of our future president of the United States, may have been derived at least in part from the family fortune of Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, who is now being accused of masterminding his assassination.
©2001 James Hatfield

Dead Letter Office

Heil Bush,

Dear Propaganda Ansager Hannity,

Congratulations you have just been awarded the Vidkun Quisling Award for 2001. Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling and last year’s winner Volksjudge Antoni (light-fingers) Scalia.

Without your help shilling for us, spinning the truth, telling out right lies and ignoring the real news, holding onto power after our Coup D' Etat would have been impossible. With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Media Whores," you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account.

Along with this award there will be an Iron Cross 2nd class presented by our glorious Fuhrer Herr Bush at a gala celebration in der Wolf's Lair (formerly Rancho de Bimbo) on 9-03-2001. We salute you Herr Hannity ! Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Deputy Fuhrer Cheney

Heil Bush

GOP Comes To The Aid Of Money-Laundering Criminals
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- The trial of Slobodan Milosevic is a rather noble effort to hold rulers accountable for genocide. At great pain and cost, the man has been extradited and is on trial for crimes against humanity, on the theory that his having to face an international tribunal will give future genocidal dictators some pause.

But what if the crime of a dictator is not slaughter but massive theft? Various ex-presidents of Mexico; Fujimori of Peru; Idi Amin of Uganda; Mobutu Sese Seku, the late kleptocrat head of Zaire; Suharto of Indonesia; the late Shah of Iran -- all have skimmed millions if not billions of dollars out of their countries' economies, and most of them then headed off for la dolce vita in foreign parts.

The Bush administration is now backing away from international efforts to reduce money-laundering, a banking procedure used by drug cartels, arms traffickers and terrorist groups, as well as crooked dictators. In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, William Wechsler, who worked on these problems as special adviser to the secretary of the treasury from 1999 to 2001, has a fascinating account of the progress that has been made over the years in building international cooperation against rogue banking. I am indebted to him for all the following information unless otherwise indicated.

Until this administration, the United States has been the leader in trying to stop money-laundering. Several organizations work to stop this and other banking abuses -- the G-7's Financial Stability Forum, the Financial Action Task Force, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), along with the IMF (news - web sites). To give you an idea of how big this problem is, the U.S. Treasury loses $70 billion annually through offshore tax evasion by individuals. That leaves the rest of us with more than our share of the tax burden and less money for schools, the military and quite a few other things.

Wechsler reports, "According to the Russian Central Bank, $74 billion was transferred from Russian banks to offshore accounts in 1998, the year of the ruble devaluation and the Russian financial meltdown."

The most popular new havens, in addition to the usual suspects, are small islands in the South Pacific, Nauru, Niue and Vanuatu. Some $70 billion of the Russian money went into accounts of banks chartered in Nauru. In the old days -- 10 years ago -- money-launderers needed to be near the banks that kept their secrets: Europeans could easily get to Switzerland with a suitcase full of cash, Americans to the Cayman Islands. But with the advent of banking by Internet, many small, poor countries around the world realized that all they need do was establish strict bank secrecy, criminalize the release of customer information and ban international law-enforcement cooperation -- and the money would roll in. It makes life much safer for Osama bin Ladin, Saddam Hussein and other charmers.

The international community gradually figured out a strategy to combat this new plague -- "name and shame." The FSF (11 nations with advanced financial systems) and FATF (29 nations) slowly developed criteria for international banking, focusing on bank regulation, customer identification, the reporting of suspicious activity, international cooperation and the criminalization of money laundering. The FATF developed a list of 15 non-cooperating nations and another 14 with serious banking deficiencies. The only way these efforts can succeed is with multilateral countermeasures, with penalties ranging from stronger warnings up to economic sanctions, including the wholesale restriction of financial transactions.

Unfortunately, Bush's chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, is opposed to legislation to deter international money-laundering, apparently because he is generally opposed to banking regulation. As Wechsler notes, there are legitimate privacy concerns that do need to be addressed, but this is not a choice between privacy and law enforcement, but a question of how to balance them both.

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told The Washington Times he shares "many of the serious concerns that have been expressed recently about the direction of the OECD initiative" and "the project is too broad, and it is not in line with this administration's tax and economic priorities." That mind-boggling gobbledy-gook is an indication that the United States will not go along with the OECD on multilateral sanctions.

So far, all O'Neill had done is the classic bureaucratic dodge of instituting a thorough study of the situation. Unfortunately, the study is headed by Dina Ellis, formerly senior lawyer at the Senate banking committee under Phil Gramm, no friend to banking regulation he. According to The Financial Times of London, political pressure is being put on the administration by a coalition of small bankers (especially from Texas), privacy advocates and libertarians.

Here we move off the radar and into the wiggy conspiracy theories of the U.N.-black-helicopter set. I am as ready as anyone to oppose faceless, international regulatory agencies -- I'm against trade agreements without labor and environmental provisions, always happy to fault NAFTA and GATT, and generally opposed to secret and unaccountable organizations. But we are talking here about an international anti-crime effort that involves more transparency, not less; more accountability, not less. How this one ever got to be a bogeyman of the far right is beyond me. Why should we make life easier for kleptocratic dictators, drug traffickers, arms dealers and terrorists? Give us a break.
©2001 Molly Ivins

The Arming Of Ashcroft’s America
By Tally Briggs

Attorney General Ashcroft wants the FBI to destroy records on gun purchases twenty-four hours after the sale.

Is he insane?

Well yes, most assuredly, that goes without saying, but why haven't I heard everyone screaming about this?

It is a gun purchase. Not a car, not a house, a gun. A firearm. A weapon designed to kill.

According to an article recently in the Los Angeles Times, "Currently, the FBI retains the gun records for up to six months, auditing about 10% of the transactions to determine whether felons or others banned from buying weapons were allowed to get one. That auditing window will narrow to a single business day under Ashcroft's plan. The move, which drew cheers from the NRA and jeers from gun control supporters, was part of a broader package of gun reforms that Ashcroft said should help keep weapons out of the hands of criminals while speeding the legitimate purchase of guns by law-abiding citizens."

How would this help to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals? To me it seems like a much easier way to get all the firearms Ashcroft wants into the hands of the criminals he selects.

How easy is it to get a fake ID? It's so easy, Jenna Bush even has one, and we all know how smart she is.

Ashcroft says he wants to protect the privacy of law-abiding citizens. But why would law-abiding citizens have a problem with the FBI knowing they purchased a gun, or keeping the information for six months, or even longer for that matter? We are expected to keep our tax return information for up to, what is it, three years just in case the IRS wants to have a look? How many of you have tax records back farther than that just in case they want to extend that rule on a whim? I have news for you; your bank most likely has records dating farther back than that. And let's not even get into credit companies like Equifax. No one seems to be introducing legislation on credit companies dumping your credit history within twenty-four hours.

So, why the hurry with a gun purchase? Oh, is it because law-abiding citizens like the friends of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have a problem with the FBI having it on record that they purchased a gun or two? Or perhaps those serious "collectors" who need a cache of semi-automatic weapons for deer season just don't want their hunting buddies to be jealous.

I honestly don’t believe that law-abiding citizens, who own and respect the lawful use of firearms, want their rights infringed by making it even faster and easier for guns to find their way into the hands of criminals. And the ones I know think the gun laws need to be far more restrictive than they are now, and have no problem with that, including stiffer regualtions on restricting children's access to firearms.

The article goes on to say, "The FBI has insisted in the past that it needs at least 90 days to properly audit gun transactions. But Ashcroft rejected suggestions that drastically shortening the review period will hurt the government's ability to catch improper purchases. He said that "real-time auditing," without delays, can "best guarantee the integrity" of the system."

What the hell does that mean? Does he understand the process? Or does he think that all the things computers can do in the movies are real? Like in Independence Day of being able to link a Powerbook into an alien mainframe? (And people are always pooh-poohing Macs.)

And..."Ashcroft's proposed change is now open for public comment before it comes back to him within the next several months for final approval."

Why should it matter what we say, when the Supreme Court actually did something right three days earlier by refusing to hear the NRA's claim that the FBI was illegally maintaining transaction records. If he doesn't care what the USSC says, why would it matter a damn if the entire country rejected this insanity. As was proven December 12, 2000, the USSC is above the electorate, and now we find Ashcroft is even higher still. In which court is an attorney ever the last word over a judge? Hmmm..... perhaps the Hive of Five may live to regret the monster of an administration they've illegally installed.

Maybe there will be a hiring frenzy at the FBI. I wonder if there's an office in Vegas. Or maybe Maui?
©2001 Tally Briggs ... bardgal@yahoo.com

The Cartoon Corner

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of Don Addis .

Bush Lost, But Won By Stealing

Sung to the tune of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"
With apologies to The Righteous Brothers

(instrumental intro)

We will expose his lies.
You'll hear more from George Bush's lips.
Last year's election mess
Nearly slipped through his fingertips.
He's trying hard not to show (he's crazy).
Bush Baby.... yes, we all know it.

(Chorus:)
Bush lost, but won by stealing.
Yeah, he won by stealing
Bush lost, but won by stealing.
Supreme Court... in - stalled... whoa...

We won't welcome this crook.
In our eyes, who is Duh-Buh-You.
The world is starting to
Criticize everything he'll do.
This faker's shills are denying (that he),
Bush Baby, can continue by lying.

Bush lost, but won by stealing
Yeah, he won by stealing
Bush lost, but won by stealing
Supreme Court... in - stalled... whoa...

Bushie Baby... you want us on our knees for you.
You know that we all loathe you
For the things you do.
We've got a shrub, a shrub,
A shrub is who is blind every way.
So don't, don't, don't, don't let him get away.

Hey Bush (Baby)! Hey Bush (Baby)!
You are a big sleaze (sleaze)!
You are a big sleaze (sleaze)!
Let's weed the Shrub (let's weed the Shrub)!
Let's weed the Shrub (let's weed the Shrub)!
A stinging attack (a stinging attack)!
A stinging attack (a stinging attack)!

This hack, who won by stealing...
Yes, he won by stealing...
This hack, who won by stealing...
Supreme Court... in - stalled...
And we are appalled... whoa....

This hack, who won by stealing...
Yes, he won by stealing...
This hack, who won by stealing...
Supreme Court... in - stalled...

(repeat last verse and fade)
New lyrics by W.K.Tong