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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- Please send as far and wide as possible.Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com Bush Okayed Warrantless Searches - Oregon Lawyer Says His Office Was Illegally Searched Posted by Jon Ponder | Mar. 19, 2006 http://www.pensitoreview.com NSA Is Being Sued for Alleged Illegal Surveillance US News says President Bush's authorization of warrantless domestic spying went beyond wiretapping to include physical searches of businesses and residences inside the United States an apparent violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits "unreasonable" searches and seizures by the government. Call me suspicious, but knowing the high fivin' frat boys at the White House, it's hard to imagine they haven't used this powerful tool to gather intelligence on their political enemies as well.The decision to authorize so-called "black bag jobs" was made by President Bush's lawyers in the months after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks at the same time the president authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to wiretap phones of American citizens without obtaining warrants. An attorney in Oregon told the magazine that he believes someone, probably the FBI, has conducted multiple warrantless searches of his law offices and possibly his home: At least one defense attorney representing a subject of a terrorism investigation believes he was the target of warrantless clandestine searches. On Sept. 23, 2005nearly three months before the Times broke the NSA storyThomas Nelson wrote to U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut in Oregon that in the previous nine months, "I and others have seen strong indications that my office and my home have been the target of clandestine searches." In an interview, Nelson said he believes that the searches resulted from the fact that FBI agents accidentally gave his client classified documents and were trying to retrieve them . Nelson's wife and son, meanwhile, repeatedly called their home security company asking why their alarm system seemed to keep malfunctioning. The company could find no fault with the system. Nelson said the classified documents appear to show that his client was the subject of warrantless eavesdropping by the NSA. He filed a lawsuit against the NSA on March 2 in Portland: [The suit alleges that] the NSA illegally wiretapped electronic communications between the chapter and Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, both attorneys in Washington, D.C. The complaint, which also names President Bush as a defendant, seeks "an order that would require defendants and their agents to halt an illegal and unconstitutional program of electronic surveillance of United States citizens and entities." The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the two Washington attorneys and the Al-Haramain chapter by three Portland civil rights lawyers: Steven Goldberg, Zaha Hassan and Thomas Nelson. "This case will show how the illegal program was implemented and used to the injury of United States citizens and charities," Nelson said. Two unidentified officials told US News that lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department approached the FBI about conducting the physical searches, but that top officials at the Bureau appeared to have been worried the scheme: "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions aboutif [the searches] happenedwhere would the information go, and would it taint cases." The FBI had good cause to be worried. It has been down this road before: For the FBI, the very mention of the term "black-bag jobs" prompts a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. In 1975 and 1976, an investigative committee led by then Sen. Frank Church documented how the FBI engaged in broad surveillance of private citizens and members of antiwar and civil rights groups, as well as Martin Luther King Jr. The committee's hearings and the executive-branch abuses that were documented in the Watergate investigation led to numerous reforms, including passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] in 1978. Whether the searches were conducted by the FBI or the NSA, if this story bears up, you can bet that there were many illegal searches, maybe hundreds and they could be continuing today. And call me suspicious, but knowing the high fivin' frat boys at the White House, it's hard to imagine they haven't used this powerful tool to gather intelligence on their political enemies as well. *** March 19, 2006 John Yoo; Enemy of Democracy by Rob Kall http://www.opednews.com A former Bush deputy assistant attorney general, Yoo has bee one of the major minds behind the Bush claims that he can do ANYTHING, including violate laws, because he is a war president. Yoo played a major roll in "paving the legal road to torture." Yoo, early, before the war, was building a case, advising Alberto Gonzalez that Bush "that there are effectively "no limits" on the president's authority to wage wara sweeping assertion of executive power that some constitutional scholars say goes considerably beyond any that had previously been articulated by the department." Newsweek seems to have a good fix on the powerful role of Yoo in the Bush administration's disregard of the nation's laws and the constitution. Just do a search of the Newsweek website and you'll find dozens of references to his nefarious inputs. Yoo's "theory" even goes so far as to justify the legality of torturing children-- say the child of a suspect in custody. Yoo has been one of the prime drafters of the theory that Bush, as president can ignore any laws, do anything he wants. He is, alone, one of the greatest threats to democracy the nation has ever faced, because his opinions have been used by the criminals in the white house as justification for their lawbreaking. Ironically, when and if the Bush whitehouse criminals are ever brought to trial, Yoo may get off scott free, since he's been an advisor, not a perpetrator. Justice may never bring him in. His legacy could be the end of democracy and constitutional rights and law in the USA. He is, at the time of the writing of this article, at UC Berkeley Rob Kall is editor of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. *** Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children By Philip Watts http://www.informationclearinghouse.info 01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody including by crushing that child's testicles. This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel. What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat. It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush's legal policies in the 'war on terror' than John Yoo." This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo's theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world. Cassel: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him? Yoo: No treaty. Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo. Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that. The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,' no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished." What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the President's right to order the crushing of a child's testicles? This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world? It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President's legal right to torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush administration policies, based on his legal memo's, being equated to those during Nazi Germany. Yoo said, "If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves against Al Qauueda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if you're trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who committed atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too I think to equate Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible." If open promotion of unmitigated executive power, including the right to order the torture of innocent children, isn't sufficient basis for drawing such a "moral equivalence," then I don't know what is. What would be irresponsible is to sit by and allow the Bush regime to radically remake society in a fascist way, with repercussions for generations to come. We must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot wait. While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, I'll find myself along with many thousands across the country declaring "Bush Step Down And take your program with you." Philip Watts - [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Carlos Santana Speaks Out Against Bush 3-20-6 Associated Press Carlos Santana quoted his old friend Jimi Hendrix in an anti-war message here Monday and said his philosophy is the antithesis of President George W. Bush's. "I have wisdom. I feel love. I live in the present and I try to present a dimension that brings harmony and healing," the 58-year- old rock icon said. "My concept is the opposite of George W. Bush." Santana, speaking to Peruvian journalists ahead of a Tuesday concert, said young people's opposition to the war in Iraq is reaching the dimensions of the anti-Vietnam war sentiment in the 1970s. "There is more value in placing a flower in a rifle barrel than making war," he said. "As Jimi Hendrix used to say, musical notes have more importance than bullets." In 1971, Santana was prevented from performing in Peru by the military dictatorship, which deemed his music an "alienating" force. Santana returned to perform in 1995. *** Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED by Greg Palast for The Guardian 20 March 2006 Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong. On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished. But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called, "Operation Iraqi Liberation." O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF. "It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude. And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC." Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude. Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel. There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get MORE of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it. You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price. It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it. Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon. No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil. As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war- time, shot up 317%. In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was an Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil. ********** On June 6, Penguin Dutton will release GREG PALAST'S NEW BOOK, "ARMED MADHOUSE: DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE CLASS WAR." Order it today -- and view his investigative reports for Harper's Magazine and BBC television's Newsnight -- at www.GregPalast.com. Palast returns to the pages of the Guardian today with this column. Catch his commentaries weekly. *** WHY IRAN WANTS THE BOMB By Richard Reeves Fri Mar 17, 2006 Yahoo News LOS ANGELES -- Let me ask you a question: If you were running Iran, would you try to develop nuclear weapons? I would. Apparently the editors of the Los Angeles Times would also answer "Yes." The lead editorial in Friday's Times was comment on the release of the U.S. government's latest "National Security Strategy." That's the one in which President Bush's introduction begins, "America is at war," and then goes on to specifically name Iran as an enemy of the United States. The document also reiterates the U.S. commitment to pre-emptive or preventive war. The Times puts it this way: "In invading Iraq, Bush has created his own nightmare. Iraq is now a magnet for jihadists. And Iran is even more determined to develop nuclear weapons to forestall a fate similar to Iraq's. ... A document that names as enemies Iran and North Korea ... provides all the justification those regimes need for a nuclear deterrent of their own. And it virtually guarantees a continuation of the very proliferation that Bush has identified as the greatest threat of all." In plainer language, the bomb is the symbol of maturity in the world today. Nations that have the bomb are treated as grown-ups. Nations without the bomb get no respect. To many Iranians, not all of them fanatic clerics who dress funny, building a bomb is the only protection against Americans trying to take over their world. Non- proliferation would make more sense if you are not afraid of the Americans. Again, what would you do? The United States says it is at war, you are the enemy, and it will strike first if it decides that is in its national interest. But that is not likely to happen if you have nuclear weapons. That is a lesson learned for many bad guys -- including Saddam Hussein. It seems that the reason the Iraqi tyrant was pretending to have weapons of mass destruction was not to scare the Americans, but to deter the Iranians. According to the new book by Michael Gordon and retired general Bernard Trainor, "Cobra II," Saddam was afraid that if Iran knew that Iraq no longer had stocks of poison gas -- both sides used gas in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that ended in 1988 -- then Iran might not be deterred if it had visions of moving into southern Iraq. President Bush, judging from the 49-page National Security Strategy, seems to have learned no lesson, including the fact that America is not really at war. The government and its volunteer military and the new brand of privatized paramilitary corporations are at war. But the whole thing is just television to most of the citizenry -- at least, those who do not have servicemen and women in the family, or do not have a financial stake in keeping this thing going. Besides, this adventure is not going to be paid for by us, but by our children and grandchildren, who will be the ones paying the bills. In case you do not follow such things, the national debt has increased by 50 percent during this administration. "War," to me, is not the most disturbing word in the strategy document. What scares me is the word "our." As in: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." It is not "our" world. It is "the" world, still a planet of nations wallowing in their own history, ambition, fantasies -- and self- interests. The American fantasy these days is that we are better than other people and they all want to be just like us. What other people want is what we have, "things." Things like cars and iPods, clean water and good health. And they want us to leave them alone or treat them as grown-ups. We are drowning in our own hype. If God really made us so much better than other people, we would have been able to beat the South Koreans and Mexicans in the opening rounds of the World Baseball Classic last week. *** BuzzFlash Agrees: A Cult of Bush Worshippers Has Commandeered the U.S. Posted by Jon Ponder | Mar. 19, 2006 http://www.pensitoreview.com In an editorial up this morning headlined,"BuzzFlash Now Officially Declares Bushevism a Cult," the editors of one of the most widely read liberal websites write: Let's face it, there are only three segments left to the much- vaunted GOP Base: the corporate profiteers who wouldn't care if Satan was president, as long as they got their pockets lined with taxpayer funded no-bid contracts; the Stepford Evangelicals; and the Bush cultists After all, what is a cult? It's a movement that is comprised of people who believe in a leader contrary to reality and the harm that the person does them. That sounds like people who support Bush alright, except for the corporate profiteers (who will always be hanging around for the money, no matter who is in power.) Last December, I had the same thought. It came to me while watching a glassy-eyed Ken Mehlman, the closeted gay chairman of the Republican Party, reciting GOP talking points on television. He reminded me of glassy-eyed defenders of the Unification Church back in the day when they were called "Moonies" before they began publishing the rightwing Washington Times newspaper. In Is Bush Worship a Cult, I posted a list of the traits that experts use to define a cult. Here it is again: The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. Mind-altering practices are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s). The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar - or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity). The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society. The leader is not accountable to any authorities The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members. The group is preoccupied with making money. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members. The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group. I don't know about mind-altering practices or the preoccupation with bringing in new members but the rest of it is an uncanny description of the cabal that is running our country. The Konformist must make a request for donations via Paypal, at Paypal.com. 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