Authoritarian political leaders, contemptuous of an informed electorate, will gain greater power. That, in turn, could endanger not only the future of the United States as we have known it, but the survival of the planet.
©2001 Robert Parry

Bush Family Finances: Best Democracy Money Can Buy
By Greg Palast

Last week, I mailed my overseas ballot for the US presidency - and you can wipe that smug little grin off your face. I won't put up with condescending comments about America's democratic rituals from a nation with an unelected House of Lords occupied by genetic fossils and, soon, Chris Woodhead.

In fact, you could think of the $3 billion spent in the US campaign in positive, New Labour terms. Call it 'the efficient privatisation of the democracy' - though an outright auction for the presidency would be more efficient still.

If the guy who lost the vote, George W Bush, nevertheless wins the White House, he'll have surfed in on a crushing wave of nearly half a billion dollars ($447 million), my calculation of the suffocating plurality of cash from corporate America, a good 25 per cent more than Al Gore's take.

George W could not have amassed this pile if his surname were Jones or Smith. The key to Dubya's money empire is Daddy Bush's post-White House work which, incidentally, raised the family's net worth by several hundred per cent.

Take two packets of payments to the Republican Party, totalling $148,000, from an outfit called Barrick Goldstrike. That's quite a patriotic contribution from a Canadian company. They can afford it. In 1992, in the final hours of the Bush presidency, Barrick took control of US government-owned property containing an estimated $10bn in gold. For the whole shooting match, Barrick paid the US Treasury only $10,000.

Barrick made deft use of an 1872 gold rush law meant to allow pan-and-bucket prospectors to gain title to their tiny claims. In 1992, Clinton's newly elected administration was ready to prevent Barrick's stunning grab. But Barrick is a lucky outfit. Bush's Interior Department expedited procedures to ram through Barrick's claim stake before Clinton's inauguration.

Ex-Pres George Bush was lucky, too. When the electorate booted him from the White House, he landed softly - on the Barrick Goldstrike payroll, where he comfortably nested until last year. Who is Barrick? Its founder, Peter Munk, made his name in Canada in the 1950s as the figure in an infamous insider stock-trading scandal. Munk headed a small speaker manufacturer that went belly-up, just after he sold his stock. This is not quite the expected pedigree for an international minerals mogul.

If we look in the shadows behind Munk we can see the more accomplished player who provided the capital to set up Barrick - Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.

During Bush's presidency, Khashoggi was identified as conduit in the Iran-Contra conspiracy. He had already run into trouble with US lawmen when, in 1986, he was arrested and charged - but not convicted - of fraud. He was bailed out of the New York prison by Munk, who provided the $4m bond. Bush performed an even bigger favour for Khashoggi: as his last act in office, the president pardoned Khashoggi's alleged co-conspirators, key members of Bush's own cabinet. As a result, no case could be made against Khashoggi.

In 1996, a geologist prospecting in Indonesia, Mike de Guzman, announced his discovery of the world's richest gold field. Munk rapidly deployed his president. Bush, on behalf of Barrick, contacted officials of the former dictator Suharto who were in control of mining concessions. Thereafter, De Guzman's company was told it would have to turn over 68 per cent of its claim to Barrick.

Barrick didn't have long to gloat. Jim-Bob Moffett, the tough, old, Louisiana swamp dog who heads Freeport-McMoRan Mining, had a private meeting with his old benefactor Suharto. At the end of the meeting, Jim-Bob and the dictator stood on the steps of the presidential palace to announce that Freeport-McMoRan would replace Barrick. (Ironically, Barrick lucked it again. The gold find was a hoax. After Jim-Bob learnt he'd been suckered, his company invited geologist De Guzman to talk it over. Sadly, on way to the meeting, De Guzman fell out of a helicopter.)

While Mr Munk's president did not pay the cost of his rental in Indonesia, Bush could redeem himself in Africa. In 1996, as genocide in Rwanda fomented civil war in Zaire, Barrick smelt opportunity. We have learnt that, at that time, Bush spoke with his old golfing buddy, Mobutu Sese Seko (then dictator of Zaire) about diamond concessions.

I don't know what ex-CIA director Bush told the panicked dictator, but we do know that Mobutu granted Barrick exclusive rights to mine gold in north-west Zaire.

Maybe Bush talked about Barrick's mining experience in neighbouring Tanzania where, according to Amnesty International, Barrick's subsidiary carried out 'extra-judicial killings'. Amnesty reports that 50 independent miners who refused to move off the Barrick unit's concession were buried alive in the pits by company bulldozers. Barrick denies the allegations.

Beyond Barrick, Daddy Bush has many other friends who filled up his sonny-boy's campaign kitty while Bush performed certain lucrative favours for them. In 1998, Bush père created a storm in Argentina when he lobbied his close political ally President Carlos Menem to grant a gambling licence to Mirage Casino corporation.

Bush wrote that he had no personal interest in the deal. That's true. But Bush fils did not do badly. After the casino flap, Mirage dropped $449,000 into the Republican Party war chest.

The ex-president and famed Desert Strormtrooper-in-Chief, also wrote to the oil minister of Kuwait on behalf of Chevron Oil Corporation. Bush says honestly that he, 'had no stake in the Chevron operation'.

Following this selfless use of his influence, the oil company put $657,000 into Republican Party coffers. Most of that loot, reports the Center for Responsive Politics, came in the form of 'soft money' That's the squishy stuff corporations use to ooze around US law which, you may be surprised to learn, prohibits any donations to presidential campaigns in the general election.

Not all of the elder Bush's work is voluntary. His single talk to the board of Global Crossing, the telecoms start-up, earned him $13m in stock. The company also kicked in another million for his kid's run.

And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas of US church leaders, Daddy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organisations run by Rev Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheat - and formerly, the guest of the US federal prison system.

There are so many more tales of the Bush family daisy chain of favours, friendship and campaign funding. None of it is illegal - which I find troubling. But I don't want to seem ungrateful. After all, the Bushes helped make America the best democracy money can buy.

Blackout in Florida

Vice-President Al Gore would have strolled to victory in Florida if the state hadn't kicked up to 56,000 citizens off the voters' registers five month ago as former felons.

In fact, only a fraction were ex-cons. Most were simply guilty of being African-American.

A top-placed election official (not a Democrat) told me that the government had conducted a quiet review and found - surprise! - that the listing included far more African-Americans than would statistically have been expected, even accounting for the grievous gap between the conviction rates of blacks and whites in the US.

The source of this poisonous blacklist: Database Technologies, a division of ChoicePoint, and under the direction of Governor Jeb Bush's frothingly partisan Secretary of State, Katherine Harris. My thanks to investigator Solomon Hughes for informing me that DBT, a division of ChoicePoint, is under fire for mis-use of personal data in state computers. ChoicePoint's board is loaded with Republican sugar daddies, including Ken Langone, finance chief for Rudy Giuliani's aborted Senate run against Hillary Clinton.
©2001 Greg Palast

The Florida Puzzle

Coming soon…The Florida Puzzle, Part II…Escambia County: If the Pieces Don’t Fit, Get Out the Scissors.
©2001 Carol Schiffler

Exporting Corporate Control:
A gold company with ties to the Bush family tries to muzzle a muckraking journalist.

Globalization's glad prophets tell us that when the golden arches of McDonald's finally encircle the world, liberty will flourish beneath them. But so far, the evidence that open economies promote open societies is hardly conclusive -- and today there is a case pending in the courts of the United Kingdom that suggests a far less happy prospect: that the suppression of free speech and independent journalism suffered in other countries may someday cross international borders as easily as a shipment of frozen hamburger.

The plaintiffs in this case are Barrick Gold Mining, a huge firm based in Canada, and Barrick's chairman, Peter Munk, a Toronto multimillionaire with many powerful friends such as former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and former U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush. The defendants are Guardian Newspapers, London publisher of the Guardian (which I have occasionally written for), Britain's premier liberal daily, and the Observer, its Sunday paper.

On Nov. 26, 2000, the Observer published "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," a column by investigative reporter Gregory Palast (who has written for Salon) that outlined the cozy relationship enjoyed by the Bush family and the Barrick interests. Palast, who happens to be an American citizen, pointed out that Barrick's U.S. subsidiary, Barrick Goldstrike, had donated over $100,000 to Republican committees in recent years; that Goldstrike had previously obtained a very sweet deal to mine gold on public lands in Nevada, pushed through during the final days of George H.W. Bush's presidency; and that the former president had landed on Barrick's payroll after leaving office, to peddle his influence with foreign leaders in exchange for a salary and stock options.

Palast's column went on to discuss other Barrick ventures in Indonesia, Zaire and, most controversially, Tanzania, where he mentioned a report by Amnesty International alleging that in 1996, a company later bought by Barrick had participated in the "extrajudicial killing" of dozens of small-scale artisanal miners, in order to clear the Bulyanhulu gold pits, a rich site to which the company claimed title. The story behind that alleged incident is long and somewhat murky, but this much is clear: Several independent newspapers in Tanzania reported in August 1996 that as many as 52 miners were buried alive when bulldozers operated by Kahama Mining Co. Ltd., a firm later acquired by Barrick, filled in the pits, assisted by armed troops. The miners had until then successfully resisted KMCL's attempt to evict them from the land, a tract some 30 miles south of Lake Victoria.

Those appalling stories, since buttressed by eyewitness accounts, were denied by the repressive Tanzanian government, which had sided with the company against the local miners in a legal dispute over the property, and later refused to mount an official inquest into the charges. Survivors and volunteers were reportedly prevented by the government from attempting to exhume bodies from the site.

While steadfastly repeating similar denials that anyone was killed when the miners were removed from Bulyanhulu, Barrick disowns any responsibility for the disputed events of 1996 because the Canadian company didn't acquire KMCL until three years later in 1999.

The company's own documents indicate, however, that its officials were well aware that its prospective subsidiary was using aggressive methods to rid the site of thousands of native miners. Those so-called artisanal prospectors had to be removed to facilitate extraction of what is now conservatively estimated to be $3 billion worth of gold ore.

In a speech to shareholders last May, Barrick's president and CEO boasted that "prior to our acquisition, we followed the progress at Buly for five years, remaining in close contact with the [KMCL] senior management team. We did our homework -- and when the opportunity presented itself, we moved quickly to acquire the property. But we did it with discipline: For an attractive price, and only after we became comfortable with Tanzania as a place to invest."

A Barrick corporate spokesman was unavailable for comment. In court filings, Barrick representatives have suggested that the atrocity charges were fabricated by local miners and political opponents of the multinational in Tanzania.

The explosive charges of mass murder reached Amnesty International, which reported briefly on the incident in its 1997 report on world human rights and in its two subsequent annual reports. Under pressure from Barrick and the Tanzanian government, Amnesty revised its report on Bulyanhulu in its 2000 report. Because the Tanzanian authorities have persistently stonewalled Amnesty's request to conduct an investigation, the human rights organization's rules prevent it from saying that the charges have been verified. But human rights lawyers and parliamentary dissidents in Tanzania provided Palast with evidence of the live burials that he found compelling.

How many miners, if any, may have died to make the Bulyanhulu mine safe for Western exploitation remains unknown. But Palast was certainly accurate in citing Amnesty's original reports. Unfortunately for him, though, there is no right under British libel law to repeat previously published material, as there is in most instances under American law.

Almost immediately after Palast's column appeared, Barrick’s litigious chairman, Munk, filed a libel action in the British courts, where the laws are notoriously restrictive of press freedom, and where truth alone is not a defense. His legal advantage is amplified by the mismatch in resources between Barrick -- one of the five largest firms on the Toronto stock exchange -- and the trust that publishes the Guardian. Under the circumstances, both Palast and the Observer have little choice but to try to settle the case, as investigative journalists in Britain are so often forced to do.

But the Barrick attorneys, who have denounced the Observer column as "false and defamatory," are demanding much more than a mere retraction or correction. They are making another, much more ominous, demand. As a condition of settling the case, Barrick insists that Palast must remove the offending column from his U.S.-registered Web site.

In other words, Barrick is cleverly using the libel statutes of a nation without a Bill of Rights to suppress an unfavorable article in the United States, where Palast (and his Web site) would be protected by the First Amendment.

And Barrick has gone still further, by threatening litigation against both Palast and a courageous Tanzanian human rights lawyer named Tundu Lissu, who has dared to gather evidence of the Bulynahulu atrocity -- including witness statements and names of the deceased -- on behalf of a Tanzanian environmental and human rights group.

Even more outrageously, Barrick is attempting to force Palast and the Observer to acknowledge publicly that an "independent investigation" by Amnesty International established that the horrific burial never happened. Yet what Amnesty actually said in its last report on Bulyanhulu was that the government had rejected Amnesty's call to "open an independent judicial inquiry," and that the organization thus "was unable to substantiate the allegations of deaths." On the advice of their British lawyers, Amnesty officials will no longer comment on this matter. Their prudent silence is abetting Barrick's libel suit, and jeopardizing the ability of journalists and human rights monitors to report on corporate malfeasance.

Barrick's lawyers have various other quibbles with Palast's column, few of which would be entertained by a fair-minded judge in the United States. Their chief concern involves Bulyanhulu, perhaps because their client's venture is financially supported by the World Bank, whose regulations prohibit lending to projects tainted by armed violence. And the embarrassment caused by further circulation of the Bulyanhulu story might frighten away figures such as Bush, Barrick board member Vernon Jordan and other eminences who have promoted the company's fortunes abroad.

So far, Barrick has avoided any such consequences. The official opening of its huge mine at Bulyanhulu, attended by Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and other dignitaries, proceeded as scheduled on Wednesday, despite local protests and some unfavorable coverage in the Tanzanian media. Aside from the Observer column, Western news outlets have taken little notice of the controversy.

According to Palast, he remains perfectly willing to publish Barrick's side of the story. "If there's an error, I'll correct it; a misinterpretation, I'll clarify it. I'm a reporter, I'm not the pope, I'm not infallible. What I can't do is cover up evidence or say a lie is the truth. If Barrick has a case to make, evidence to present, I'll print it."

What Greg Palast dared to expose were a few of the most unappetizing aspects of globalization, from the employment of former heads of state as corporate fixers to the dispossession (or worse) of native populations when they pose an obstacle to corporate profit. What the award-winning journalist didn't anticipate, however, was that he and his writing would provoke a dangerous experiment in the globalizing of corporate "information management."
©2001 Joe Conason

Quotable Quote

"I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe -- I believe what I believe is right." … Emperor Smirkus Maximus in the Forum

The snakes that truly "run things" have been around for a long time. And they are poisonous.
©2001 By Larry Chin

And the GOPMedia would have been pumping up another sex scandal
©2001 Tamara Baker

The Profitability Of An Early Death
By Robert Lederman

Perhaps you’ve seen their heart-warming public service ads on TV about renovating a drug rehab center and how much they care about kids despite being a cigarette manufacturer. Here’s something they left out of those 60 second announcements.

The tobacco giant Phillip Morris just suffered an embarrassing public relations gaffe by inadvertently revealing a fact economists, actuaries and eugenicists know but rarely speak publicly about.

Governments save huge amounts of money when citizens die prematurely.

Phillip Morris, one of the world’s wealthiest corporations, recently commissioned a study intended to highlight this fact as a selling point to the Czech government, which is considering legislation to regulate cigarette smoking. Phillip Morris controls almost 90% of the rapidly-growing Czech tobacco market.

The study described premature deaths from cancer and emphysema as, "indirect positive effects" of smoking, leading to "savings in public health care costs and state pensions due to early mortality of smokers."

Responsible for millions of deaths in the U.S. due to smoking and the decades spent hiding the truth about its dangers from the public, Phillip Morris is by no means unique in its coldly-calculating bottom line approach to business. Automobile, pesticide, chemical, food, biotech, pharmaceutical and health care corporations all factor in similar statistical selling points as they lobby the Congress to prevent legislation from being passed that would protect human life.

Ever wonder why U.S. technology can get us to the moon but can’t manufacture cars that don’t blow up when hit or that kill an average of 50,000 Americans each year? Why do 500,000 Americans die each year from nothing more than taking prescription drugs? Did it strike you as peculiar when our "compassionate" President GW Bush wanted to prevent new restrictions on how much arsenic - a deadly poison - would be allowed in our drinking water?

Are you curious as to why in this modern age of refrigeration there’s a steady increase in deaths from food poisoning or why our food supply is more disease-ridden than at any time in the past fifty years? Is the government’s rush to release thousands of untested genetically-altered plants, animals and organisms into the environment scientific over-confidence, or might it be an indication of a more sinister purpose than helping feed the multitudes?

As you watch the news each night, do you ever wonder why so many people are getting cancer, are infertile, have disabling learning disabilities or psychological problems and thus need a lifetimes worth of expensive prescription drugs in order to function - drugs which will directly shorten their lives?

Is it possible our government wants people to die prematurely?

Just think of it in these simple terms. If millions of today’s senior citizens were to die a mere one year sooner, the U.S. government would save hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs, social security and other social services. If they died five years sooner the savings might amount to trillions of dollars. Viewed in that context, causing even a minor increase in premature death in the American population would be the single most cost-effective economical measure the government could ever take.

New York City often represents the cutting edge of U.S. governmental efforts concerning human health. Whether it’s throwing children off welfare, issuing the police hollow-point bullets, closing public hospitals or spraying the entire population with toxic pesticides, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani can be counted on to be at the forefront of any government efforts to downsize the population.

Take his enthusiasm during the past three years for spraying poisons invented by the Nazis on eight million New Yorkers.

Was it an oversight or an error that the Mayor consistently lied to the public about the well-known negative health effects of being repeatedly exposed to the organophosphate and pryrethyroid nerve gasses Malathion and Anvil? Was it an accident that products whose labels specifically state they are not to be sprayed on people under any circumstances were directly applied to children in parks, to shoppers and to millions of workers going to and from their jobs? [2]

My eight years of research on Mayor Giuliani shows him to be ideologically linked in numerous ways to the science of eugenics or population control - as is his pal GW Bush. Both men claim to get their ideological inspiration directly from the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank founded by Reagan’s CIA chief William Casey after he brought thousands of former Nazi experts in eugenics to the U.S.

If understanding Giuliani’s Nazi-connection requires one to research the maze-like corporate, think tank and CIA connections behind his administration, GW Bush’s are a simple matter of documented American history. Until their assets were seized by the U.S. Congress in 1942, President Bush‘s family operated banks and shipping companies that were fronts for the Third Reich. Their Nazi-connection is the source of the Bush family fortune and continues to this day. [3]

Bush and Giuliani’s policies euphemistically code-named, "compassionate conservatism" and "quality of life", share a common but never publicly stated objective - the efficient shortening of our lives.

The poor, children, minorities, the elderly and the environment must all be sacrificed in order to increase the profitability of corporations - the same corporations which put these elected officials in office or which in Bush‘s case, he, his family and his administration members are major stock-holders in.

The increase in disease creates fantastic economic opportunities for drug manufacturers and health providers while at the same time lessening the long-term total in social benefits that the government must pay out. Disease is rapidly becoming the driving force behind the entire U.S. economy. It may prove even better than war as a profit-driving engine.

What more cost-effective way to cut government spending than to massively apply chemicals to the population which reduce fertility, worsen chronic illnesses such as asthma (which is at epidemic proportions among minorities in N.Y.C.) and lead to terminal diseases such as cancer?

The reason many people balk at accepting this view of Giuliani or Bush as eugenicists is that they don’t see people immediately dying in large numbers as a result of their policies. What isn’t understood is that we are dealing with death rates as analyzed by an actuary. Like geology, the effects can only be observed over a long period of time.

Learning from the mistakes of the past century, immediate death - as in rounding up millions of people and shipping them to gas chambers - is an unworkable solution from this viewpoint. Reducing life expectancy by as little as a single year or reducing fertility so that one less child is born to each family or so that an additional 15-30% of people become infertile is all that’s needed in order to save vast amounts of government money while creating a huge economic boon for pharmaceutical, chemical and medical companies.

These savings on social programs can then be passed along in the form of tax write-offs and corporate welfare - exactly as Giuliani and Bush have done to the delight of their wealthiest patrons.

Another factor which makes it hard to comprehend what’s really going on is that today’s eugenics agenda is not necessarily about targeting Jews, Blacks or some other minority. In this madness, no one is to be spared. Giuliani’s enthusiastic use of Malathion may have even given himself prostate cancer, which is a known effect of repeated Malathion exposure.

Before you say this proves he could not have known it was harmful, ask yourself if Phillip Morris executives didn’t allow their family members, children and friends to smoke, knowing as they did that tobacco was a definite cause of cancer?

Ask yourself if Ford executives allowed their friends to drive cars they knew were defective and might shred their tires at high speeds or overturn?

Ask yourself if the drug manufacturers that have every study at their disposal and know the long-term effects of taking their products don’t allow their own friends, family and relatives to take these dangerous medications or if chemical company executives aren’t aware that they and their children are being slowly killed by air pollution and chemical contamination of the environment?

Perhaps this is what is meant by the saying, money is the root of all evil.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to whoever at Phillip Morris commissioned the benefits of an early death study. Perhaps as a result more Americans will realize that our corporations and the government they own and operate may not be the public servants and public benefactors their glossy commercials and service announcements would lead us to believe they are.

Public enemy #1 might actually be a far more apt description for them.

-------------------------------------

[1] CBS Evening News 7/17/2001 Philip Morris: Dead Smokers Cheaper

Tobacco Co. Outlines Savings To Czech Gov't From Smokers' Deaths

Company Is Lobbying Against Stricter Anti-Smoking Regulations

July 17, 2001 AP

(CBS) "Sick smokers may burden a country's health care system, but dead smokers save governments money. That's the conclusion of a study on the financial cost of smoking that was commissioned by tobacco giant Philip Morris. The company is lobbying the Czech government against stricter health regulations on cigarettes with a study of "indirect positive effects" of smoking, detailing "savings in public health care costs and state pensions due to early mortality of smokers...The study by research company Arthur D. Little International concluded that the financial benefits to the Czech government from duties and taxes paid by consumers, importers and tobacco businesses outweighed the costs of health care, lost working days and fires caused by cigarettes. "

[2] For the latest article on Giuliani’s West Nile Virus fiasco see:

http://www.villagevoice.com/

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0129/baard.shtml

Village Voice 7/18-24/2001

Mutant Malathion: How New York’s mosquito spray campaign spawned a deadly neurotoxin

[3] For numerous documented articles about the Bush/Giuliani-Nazi connection, the CIA’s Manhattan Institute, eugenics and West Nile Virus information see:

http://baltech.org/lederman/

Street artist information

http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html

Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.

(Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics)

robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net (718) 743-3722
©2001 Robert Lederman

The Thought Police Have Arrived
By Bob Herbert

The thought police have arrived. An Ohio man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for thinking bad thoughts about children and writing them down in his private journal. In Ohio, that's against the law.

It didn't matter that the man never wanted anyone else to see the journal, or that the children he fantasized about were entirely fictional. What mattered to authorities in Ohio —the only thing that mattered —was that the thoughts were vile. The fantasies written down by Brian Dalton, who is 22 years old, involved the sexual abuse and torture of children.

Mr. Dalton made up names for the children and said they were 10 and 11 years old.

This should not be an issue in the United States of America. This is a country in which you ought to be able to write down in private whatever you are thinking, no matter how awful the thoughts. This is not China, or Afghanistan under the Taliban. This is a country in which freedom is supposed to matter.

Mr. Dalton, a resident of Columbus, was charged under a state law that prohibits the creation of obscene material involving minors. Such a law sounds reasonable. But the local prosecutor believed (along with others) that the statute covered not only images of real children, but printed or written words involving fictional children. And not only words involving fictional children, but words that were never intended to be shown to anyone. This is as close as it's possible to get —short of ESP —to criminalizing thought.

Mr. Dalton had been convicted in a child pornography case in 1998. He served a few months in jail and then was released on probation. His probation officer discovered the journal some months ago during a routine search of Mr. Dalton's home.

There was no question that the journal entries were grotesquely pornographic. The prosecutor put the matter before a grand jury, which returned a two-count felony indictment against Mr. Dalton. He pleaded guilty to one count and was sentenced to seven years in prison. And he received an additional 18 months for violating probation.

So here we have a fellow sentenced to prison in the United States for merely sitting down and putting his thoughts on paper.

"While the thoughts themselves may have been reprehensible and deeply disturbing," said Raymond Vasvari, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, "it needs to be stressed that they were arrived at and recorded in the privacy of this man's home for no one's consumption but his own."

Seven years in prison. In America.

The fundamental idea behind the criminalization of real child pornography —that is, images of real children engaged in sexual activity —is that the images themselves are the proof that some real child was abused. A real child. Not an imagined child.

Ann Beeson, a lawyer with the national A.C.L.U., said she and other First Amendment scholars believed that "the constitutional limit of child pornography laws is in criminalizing the actual exploitation of children, which is important."

But beyond that —if only words are involved, or drawings, or images created by a computer with no child involved —"then you no longer have the rationale to suppress it under the First Amendment," said Ms. Beeson.

The A.C.L.U.'s president, Nadine Strossen, said she was outraged by the idea that someone could be sent to prison for something he'd written in a private journal. "I think this is completely protected free speech," she said. "I'm just horrified by this case."

Ohio's laws regarding minors and sexual activity are not limited to patently obscene material. The state prohibits the creation, reproduction and dissemination of any material that depicts a minor engaged in sexual activity. If you apply that to written materials, as in the Dalton case, then books like Judy Blume's "Forever," Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" and Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" would be banned, and their writers and publishers subject to criminal penalties, presumably prison.

Sexual hysteria has given the thought police the opening they've craved. Politicians, afraid of being accused of favoring child pornography, will not stand up for that most fundamental of freedoms —freedom of thought.

©2001 Bob Herbert

Dead Letter Office

Heil Bush,

Dear Propaganda Ansager Coulter,

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 Frau Coulter! Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Deputy Fuhrer Cheney

Heil Bush

Immigration Policy Is Complicated
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN -- Immigration policy is one of those subjects, like taxes, that really is complicated, and it's a disservice to simplify it, no matter which side you're on. President Bush's new plan to offer amnesty to 3 million illegal Mexican workers has both an upside and a downside. It would probably work better if it were part of an overall immigration reform program.

The upside is that it would help the illegal workers already here who have no rights and are consequently exploited to a degree that would make your jaw drop. All Americans should read the current issue of Mother Jones, which has a stunning article on conditions in the meat-packing industry: "The Most Dangerous Job in America." "In some American slaughterhouses, more than three-quarters of the workers are not native English speakers," reports Eric Schlosser.

Although injures in the industry are notoriously underreported, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics more than one-quarter of America's meatpackers suffered a job-related injury or illness in 1999. The workers are injured and then discarded by their companies in one of the most shameless and repulsive systems imaginable.

To use Upton Sinclair's approach in "The Jungle," what happens to all those severed fingers, severed hands and severed arms if, as Schlosser reports, "The chain never stops," no matter who gets hurt or how badly? This article is truly "must-read" for anyone in a policy-making position.

The exploitation of illegals after they are here creates curious political bedfellows. The nativist, Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party comes up against the business wing of the party. Put your money on the business end. Entire industries -- especially agriculture, restaurants and those that need service workers -- now depend on illegal workers. At one time, we were supposed to have solved this problem by putting heavy penalties on employers for hiring illegals, but as you can imagine, that was quickly gone. Amnesty for 3 million Mexican workers also helps Karl Rove in his dedicated pursuit of the Hispanic vote, dovetailing nicely with business interests.

Meanwhile, the labor unions, which once opposed immigration on the theory that it cost Americans jobs, have been having some success organizing illegal workers. Unions that concentrate on workers at the bottom end of the payscale, like Service Employees International Union (SIEU), have been especially effective. It is critical that these workers be legalized and unionized if they are not to become a permanent serf class. There are already alarming reports on the failure of working-class Hispanics to find much social mobility in this country.

The downside to the proposed amnesty is that it isn't fair and will in all likelihood cause a rush of illegals at the border. There are approximately 3 million more illegal Hispanic workers in this country who aren't Mexicans, most of them from Central American countries. Nor is the program fair to the lines of people in other countries who wait patiently for permission to immigrate legally. In addition, past amnesty programs have caused radical increases in illegal immigration on the U.S.-Mexican border. Expanding visa programs seems a sensible compromise.

Americans are mostly ambivalent about Mexican immigration. Sometimes it is portrayed as dread menace, a sea of brown feet moving north, imposing nothing but a staggering burden on us (medical care, education, welfare -- poor us, think of the taxes). Other times we recognize the more complicated truth that much of our economy, not to mention our comforts and luxuries, rests on the brown backs of exploited illegal workers, who do, in fact, pay taxes.

As many experts have pointed out, the only real solution is the economic development of Mexico. As long as we are a rich nation bordering on a poor one, we're going to have this problem. Desperate Africans are now literally swimming into Spain.

Meanwhile, many of our institutions are drowning, as well. The federal court system is swamped. Between 1994 and 2000, border drug prosecutions doubled and immigration cases increased seven-fold. The five federal court districts on the borders of California, Arizona and Texas handle 27 percent of all federal court criminal filings in the United States. That's just 6 percent of the judicial districts with more than a quarter of the work.

Meanwhile, those who benefit most from the current mess are American employers. At least one part of the answer is to put agricultural workers under the aegis of the National Labor Relations Act, which would at least allow them to get the minimum wage.

The old labor argument was that immigrants take jobs away from Americans. Now, "Taking jobs Americans don't want" has become a commonplace of immigration discussion. The reason Americans don't want them is because they pay so little. According to Schlosser's article, "Thirty years ago, meatpacking was one of the highest-paid industrial jobs in the United States, with one of the lowest turnover rates."

In the 1960s, employers broke the unions, brought in Mexican workers and wages fell by as much as 50 percent. Today meatpacking is one of the nation's lowest paid industrial jobs, with one of the highest turnover rates. Nativists, meet the unions.
©2001 Molly Ivins

The Long Run
By Tally Briggs

What do you suppose they are thinking? By they, I mean the collective GOP. The entire Bush Tree, Cheney, Rove, Rice, ET AL. As Gary Oldman said in The Professional, EVERYONE.

The ‘bringing back’ of ‘honor and dignity to the White House’ list is endless, but lets just name a few ‘changes in policy’ that have a major impact.

Let’s see…. So far they have said "No" to: Kyoto, CO2 emissions controls, overseas Planned Parenthood, the limit of Arsenic in drinking water, ABM, Patients Bill Of Rights (which Smirk has been paid to veto no matter what), Ergonomics Regulations, Campaign Finance Reform, EPA Standards, Energy Price Caps, tighter gun control laws, the Anti-Germ Warfare treaty, just to name a few.

Now, apart from the obvious immediate corporate monetary, political, and power benefits for the already colossal-wealthy, how else do all these things help anyone? Seriously. Have these people thought about the ramifications these policies will have in the future? What is their "Long Term Plan"? They must have one, so what on Earth could it possibly be?

All of the above ‘policies’, while making the corporations they favor enormously wealthy, will also be just as costly for not only the country as a whole, but also the entire planet in the long run. For in making these obscene wealth caches, they are destroying everything in their paths to do so. Then where will they be?

Will someone please explain to me exactly how having air to breath will hurt the economy? I’d gladly give my $300 windfall to cleaner air and water technology. So we get rid of fossil fuels? So? There are many alternatives, and the research alone will create numerous jobs. God forbid we all learn something new.

The arrogance of this group is astounding. While Cheney refuses to pay his own utility bill in spite of having one of the highest private incomes in the world, there are millions who, in attempting to pay theirs, will lose their retirement and savings accounts, not to mention perhaps their homes, attempting to keep themselves off the street due to losing their jobs. I actually have friends who have cashed out their 401k just to pay their mortgage and feed themselves and the one child they still have living at home because, thanks to Dubya’s magical economy, have both lost their jobs due to corporate buyouts and companies moving out of state and off continent. I really don’t give a damn whether Al Gore and all of the previous VPs didn’t pay their electric bills while in the VP Mansion; none have had near Cheney’s net worth. And why isn’t he setting an example with all that "honor and dignity" that’s been thrown all over the place by picking up his own damned tab? Poor Cheney, living dividend to dividend; it’s got to be so stressful.

How about every single thing that has come out of Dubya’s twisted mind, his complete denial of all facts, and his "I’m taking my toys and going home" attitude. From refusing to negotiate on the Kyoto Protocol, and the Anti-Germ Warfare treaty, to his pathetic tax-cut, he seems hell-bent on single-handedly destroying every decent thing this country has put into place since it’s inception. Does he think he is the reincarnation of Nero?

Maybe he thinks that the Holocaust really was magically expunged from history just because some people said it didn’t happen, and the same thing will happen if he denies global warming.

The deeper reason he refuses to negotiate on most detailed policies is that he can’t, plain and simple. The Kyoto Protocol? Come on, do you really think he understands the intricacies and long term effects of the package? Please.

Bush also continually makes incoherent and insane choices for the members of his own team. Take Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton, someone with almost as bad an environmental record as Bush himself. And the latest joke, Mary Sheila Gall to head the US Product Safety Agency? Her qualifications? How about helping stop a ban on infant bath seats that has resulted in dozens of babies drowning? I guess that makes fewer consumers out there to get hurt in the first place. The way Bush selects someone for a post? Whomever is the least qualified or who has screwed up the position the most. With the exception of himself of course, he is far too busy napping. In a recent article from www.hillnews.com, Alexander Bolton writes, "Republicans fear that their Democratic colleagues would be prejudiced by knowledge of a nominee's past political activities."

Ya think???? Now why ever would they feel that way? Suppose it just might be the five United States Supreme Court CRIMINALS??? Nahhhh! They would never act politically! Would they?

Seriously, have they thought about the long-term effects? It doesn’t take a JPL scientist to know that ergonomic regulations are cheaper in the long run than costly surgeries, loss of production, workforce, and training replacements.

So what’s in it for them in the long run? I KNOW!

The Neiman-Bush-Marcus Wish Book Holiday 2001

What to get that person who has everything? Why not buy them a position in the Bush Administration? You too can be appointed to the 9th Circuit Court bench for $20,000! Or, how about the 6th Circuit? Just a mere $7,000. You name it, every position has its price!

It's the money stupid.
©2001 Tally Briggs

The Cartoon Corner

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of Tom Toles

Ari, You Lie

Sung to the tune of "Louie Louie
With apologies to The Kingsmen)

(instrumental intro)

Ari, you lie... oh, no
You gotta go
Lie, lie, lie, lie, we say
Ari, you lie
Bush Baby and you gotta go

He lies to the world gracelessly.
Catchin sh*t on policy.
Made up sh*t about damaged phones
By Clinton staff, just hear him moan.

Ari, you lie... oh, no.
You gotta go!
Lie, lie, lie, lie... we say
Ari, you lie!
Bush Baby and you gotta go!

The right wing's crazed; they failed to see.
That the world won't agree:
To brinkmanship in foreign affairs.
Bush tells the world, "I don't care!"

Ari, you lie... oh, no.
You gotta go!
Lie, lie, lie, lie... we say
Ari, you lie!
Bush Baby and you gotta go!

Okay, let's give it to 'em, right now!

(instrumental solo)

See the Faker - the loon named Shrub.
When Bush is wrong, press spins his flub.
Ari's grim; Bush bombed again.
Liars who never reveal their plan.

Ari, you lie... oh, no
You gotta go!
Lie, lie, lie, lie... we say
Ari, you lie!
Bush Baby and you gotta go!

Let's take it on outa here now...
Let's go!
New lyrics by WK Tong

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." ... Edmund Burke

July 31, Tue, 6 PM, New York City, Midtown Manhattan Penthouse, Vincent Bugliosi, Guest Speaker at Voter March Event

Voter March (New York City) will have as our guest speaker, Vincent Bugliosi, legendary prosecutor and author of the New York Times Best Seller "The Betrayal of America - How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President," with forewords by Molly Ivins and Gerry Spence. Vincent Bugliosi's Nation article about the 2000 election, "None Dare Call It Treason," generated more inquiries and online hits than any other article in the magazine's history. See reviews by Molly Ivins, Gerry Spence and Lou Posner of Voter March from the American Politics Journal at http://angelfire.com/hi3/pearly/htmls2/vincent1.html. See also Amazon.com reviews at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/.

This Voter March summer evening reception will be held on Tuesday, July 31st at 6 PM at a fashionable midtown Manhattan penthouse and roof garden at the Buchanan, Penthouse U, 160 East 48th Street (corner 3rd Ave.), Manhattan. Attendees will meet Vincent Bugliosi, participate in a question and answer session after his speech, and may buy a personally autographed copy of this book for only $10. Hors d'oeuvres will be served and there will be an open bar. Entertainment will include S'Doun performing on the grand piano. The cost is $45 per person. You may send a check to Voter March LLC, P. O. Box 731, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163-0731, or pay with PayPal, by clicking on the button at http://www.votermarch.org/events.htm

For these who are unable to attend, signed copies of Bugliosi's book is available at: $50, unsigned copies: $11 (shipping and handling included) at VoterMarch West at http://www.voterwest.org/bugliosi.html.

Supreme Injustice
by STEVE COBBLE

Lest we forget--just over six months ago, the Rehnquist Court stole an election in broad daylight. In fear of the truth, the Scalia Five intervened to block all votes from being counted, an action "unprecedented" (both historically and judicially) in US history. Though the June 12 "anniversary" went unnoticed by the media, we must never forget.

Was it the worst Supreme Court decision in US history, as American University Constitutional scholar Jamin Raskin has suggested? Considering that Raskin is a staunch civil rights advocate, the very thought that he would rank Bush v. Gore lower than both the Dred Scott and Plessy rulings is instructive. Nor does Raskin stand alone in his opinion of this judicial coup.

Justice John Paul Stevens: "One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. I respectfully dissent."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent." And related is the unsigned per curiam decision of the Scalia 5, a transparent attempt to try to avoid history's scarlet letter.

Hendrik Hertzberg, former presidential speechwriter: "The election of 2000 was not stolen. It was expropriated."

David Kairys, Temple University: "We had a constitutional crisis, and it was Bush v. Gore. History will not be kind."

Suzanna Sherry, Vanderbilt University: "There is really very little way to reconcile this opinion other than that they wanted Bush to win."

Jeffrey Rosen, legal scholar: "They have...made it impossible for citizens of the United States to sustain any kind of faith in the rule of law as something larger than the self-interested political preferences of William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Sandra Day O'Connor."

Randall Kennedy, Harvard University: "But we should also insist that there be no confirmation for Scalia-like champions of the right-wing agenda. The Supreme Court has hurt its own reputation by wrongly intervening to ensure the victory of George W. Bush. Those who abhor what the Court did should say so and say so loudly and clearly."

Jesse Jackson and John Sweeney: "But if it comes down for justices to the 14th amendment and the promise of equal protection, one can only hope for the sake of the country that they consider how not counting all the votes mirrors too closely the habits of heart and mind that brought us slavery and segregation--the original sins of our nation that the equal protection clause sought to repair."

And, of course, Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor of Charles Manson and author of several bestselling true-crime books, in The Betrayal of America: ". . . the Court committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of the law.... [The Court searched] mightily for a way, any way at all, to aid their choice for president, Bush, in the suppression of the truth, finally settling, in their judicial coup d'État, on the untenable argument that there was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause..."

Recent polls indicate the public's growing dissatisfaction with the results of the Scalia Five's decision. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and Princeton Survey Research Associates (June 13-17) showed George W. Bush's job approval rating at just 50 percent, down six points from March; the New York Times survey with CBS News (June 14-18) put the rating at 53 percent, down seven points from March. And Democracy Corps's Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll (June 11-13) found that 48 percent of likely voters think the nation is currently on the "wrong track." Perhaps most tellingly, 25 percent of voters in the Democracy Corps poll said that the phrase "not really elected President" describes Bush "very well," with another 15 percent saying that it describes him "well"--in other words, six months after the Scalia Five coup, 40 percent of likely voters still believe Bush was not really elected President.

What then, is to be done?

The least we can do is know our own history, and to understand that what the Injustices did was an insult to the dreams and ideals of Lexington and Concord, Valley Forge and Jefferson and Paine, Gettsyburg and Lincoln and Douglass, Selma and King, Seneca Falls and Anthony, Delano and Chavez, Flint and Debs and Lewis. We can bear witness to injustice, in the nonviolent protest tradition of Thoreau, Gandhi, King, Havel, Robinson, Chavez.

The Scalia Five's judicial coup came down on the second Tuesday last December. So, on the second Tuesday of July, July 10, 2001, the Tuesday after the Pro-Democracy Convention in Philadelphia, the Tuesday between Independence Day and Bastille Day, the Institute for Policy Studies and friends are calling for a peaceful, nonviolent vigil at the Supreme Court building, at noon.

On July 10--and each Tuesday at noon from then on--let's gather at the scene of the crime, and bear witness to the truth. The Scalia Five won't be there; but we should be.

Bring a candle or a bell, like the Czechs a decade ago. Bring a copy of the Voters' Bill of Rights, or the US Constitution. Send an e-mail to all your friends, with your favorite quote from this list. Bring Pablo Neruda's and Marge Piercy's poems. Bring the next generation, so they will never forget. Bring your commitment to restore, rebuild, and expand American democracy. The Supreme Court cheated. Democracy lost. For now.
©2001 STEVE COBBLE

Send $100 or $1000 to The Heritage Foundation or Other Right-Wing Groups

This ultra-conservative group needs donations! Lend them a helping hand by sending them a few $100 or $1000 bills ... Confederate ones! Click here to print or download the bills. Send them to other right-wing groups as well!

And if you still want to annoy the Heritage Foundation, you can always go to their online donation form as soon as you try to leave the page, a pop-up window appears asking why you decided not to donate. Give them an explanation, but remember to be polite!

TO OUR REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS IN THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS

We, the undersigned voters, know that our cherished democracy is endangered from within by the grave and potentially fatal flaws in our voting systems exposed by the Presidential Election of 2000.

As our elected representatives, you have the duty, the opportunity, and the privilege to correct these flaws and to restore fair and honest elections throughout our nation. To this end, we charge you to construct and pass a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS, which shall include:

Strict enforcement and extension of the Voting Rights Act to prevent the disenfranchisement of voters and require full investigation and criminal prosecution of any offenders;

Standardized, easily understandable federal election ballots

Funding to replace old and unreliable voting machines to ensure that every vote is counted fairly and accurately

Genuine campaign finance reform that bans campaign contributions from special interests

Replacement of the Electoral College with a majority-rule election, or substantial reform of the Electoral College to allow for proportional representation

Measures to increase voter participation by eliminating bureaucratic hurdles to voter registration and turnout, including language barriers, physical barriers, archaic equipment, and lack of resources

Enactment and enforcement of a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS will restore trust in our government and encourage participation in our democratic processes. The linchpin of a democracy is the process by which we select our representatives and leaders. The right to vote is our defining right as citizens of this nation. We call upon our elected representatives to protect our Constitution from abusive exercise of government power by enacting a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS.

We pledge our full and constant support for enactment of a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS.

A Note of Protest:

It is likely that 50% of the U.S. population is strongly dissatisfied with the ascendancy of George W. Bush to the office of President. There are three likely reasons:
1. Bush won the election under questionable circumstances;
2. Bush has espoused a reactionary platform that places him far to the right of mainstream America;
3. Bush has demonstrated none of the intellectual attributes expected of a president.

In the interest of democracy, one could discredit election gripes (point number one) as being unfair to our longstanding electoral college process.. Also, one might disregard Bush’s agenda (point number two) because the hallmark of the United States Constitution is tolerance for divergent political and moral beliefs.

However, point number three leads to a more egregious problem, namely that a rather anonymous man, with no distinguishing ambition or vision has, by virtue of family wealth and connection, been installed as President of the United States. Even the most cursory glance at George W. Bush’s history and character builds a strong case for charges of nepotism and cronyism. Such a glaring display of favoritism, to benefit an individual with no considerable talent, runs counter to the spirit of competition and fair play that has driven the engine of American capitalism for more than two hundred years.

There is a way to tangibly and immediately raise a voice in protest of George W. Bush as President. For the remainder of his term, conscientious Americans should simply write "George W. Bush is an Idiot" on all U.S. currency that passes through their hands.

This protest has already begun. The first bills were marked and spent in San Francisco as of January 26, 2001. What is important, though, is to not only begin marking all currency (and to continue the effort throughout the Bush presidency), but to forward this memo as much as possible so as to replicate the message throughout our money supply.

In an effort to mark money more industriously, many of us have ordered a BUSH IS A FRAUD rubber stamp; these self-inking rubber stamps are useful for marking the "Fraud" message in red ink.

Make your voice heard,
Steven Capozzola
San Francisco, California