-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=12348
>>>I especially found interesting the note about different versions of magazine articles appearing in domestic and foreign editions. See the > Brzezinski speaks part. This also has a little to do with our appearance in the SW Asian theatre of operations once more. A<>E<>R <<< }}}>Begin A non-war update Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange 11.16.01 - Since September 11, our information world has revolved around terrorist attacks, bombs over Afghanistan, the hunt for Osama bin Laden and anthrax deaths and discoveries. Here are some other news items you may have missed. Disney acquires Robertson's "700 Club" The Walt Disney Co. finally closed the deal to buy the Fox Family Network from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and Saban Entertainment. The booby prize in the $5.2 billion deal is Pat Robertson's "700 Club," which comes along with the territory. Disney is obligated to run the "700 Club" because "the provision keeping Robertson on the air dates back to News Corp.'s original buyout of CBN [Christian Broadcasting Network] and applies in perpetuity" reports CBS.MarketWatch.com. The Disney Co., which has often come under fire from Robertson, is currently the target of a several-year boycott organized by many of Pat's Christian Right comrades. The Religious Right objects to the company's gay-friendly employment policies, gay days at Disney's Orlando theme park, and the so-called sexually explicit and violent content of films distributed by Disney subsidiaries. Pat's piety excludes dictators On September 13, televangelist/entrepreneur and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson, nodded in agreement, muttering "I totally concur" while the Rev. Jerry Falwell affixed blame for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on the anti-God actions of pagans, abortion rights activists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way. Soon after, both Robertson and Falwell were raked over the coals and issued "apologies." Barely one month later, Robertson was back at it, telling an audience at the 40th anniversary celebration of his Christian Broadcasting Network that: "The Lord is getting ready to shake this nation. We have not yet seen his judgment in America. This thing that happened in New York was child's play compared to what's going to happen." Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King suggests that if the Lord "is going to get us for what we've done -- or failed to do -- as a nation, what in the world might God have in store for Pat Robertson and his friend and business partner, Liberian President Charles Taylor, the plague of West Africa." In 1999, Robertson signed an agreement to allow one of his for- profit companies, Freedom Gold Ltd. based in the Cayman Islands, "to start a mining venture in southeastern Liberia." The deal "gives Taylor's regime a 10 percent ownership of the company, not including royalties and rental fees that it will pocket when the mining venture gets rolling." According to the American Atheists Flashline, a 1999 Human Rights Watch World Report notes, "The newly elected government of Charles Taylor in Liberia showed an intolerance of losing factions in that country's civil war." Liberia is also mentioned as a country that although "rich in oil or precious minerals such as diamonds, [the] wealth appeared ... to buttress dictatorial regimes characterized by a lack of respect for human rights than to promote development." Human Rights Watch notes "huge profits earned in royalties" have gone to foreign corporation. Orange County Republican Rep. and House Africa subcommittee chairman Ed Royce recently accused Taylor of "wag[ing] a continuous assault on the democratic dreams of the Liberian people. He rules by decree, he suppresses the press and he sanctions, if not directs, the murder of political opponents. He and his so-called 'inner circle' control virtually all of the nation's significant trade Liberia has been described as Charles Taylor Inc. This corporation is corrupt to its core." When Robertson inked the deal, he wrote to Taylor: "I pray that this investment may become a wonderful blessing to the people of Liberia and will be one of many significant investments that will be made under your administration in the nation of Liberia." Defunding the Left According to Paul Bedard's October 11th U.S. News & World Report "Washington Whispers" column, the "defund the left" crowd was at it again. Under the headline "War protests: Your tax dollars at work?" Bedard reported on an effort afoot to "defund" groups involved in the antiwar effort. " Bedard writes: "Labor unions and independent groups aligned with the antiwar effort sparked by President Bush's retaliation campaign against Osama bin Laden will come under attack this week in the House as lawmakers seek to cut off their federal grants. GOP sources tell Whispers that an amendment to block grants to the groups will be offered to the appropriation bill for the Labor and Health and Human Services departments up for consideration as early as Thursday. (For more, see "Ashcroft opponents targeted on taxes.") "A new analysis of federal grants to groups involved in the antiwar effort identifies union locals from the United Auto Workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union. The Heritage Foundation analysis from census documents also found grants to independent groups that have blasted Bush's war. 'Should tax dollars be going to groups that protest the war? I don't think so,' says an architect of the plan to end the grants." (A list of war protest groups can be found at the web site of International A.N.S.W.E.R. -- Act Now to Stop War & End Racism.) Brzezinski speaks In the following transcript of a 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor, originally published in Le Nouvel Observateur (France), ZB cavalierly dismisses the threat posed by "some stirred up Moslems." (This version comes from The Oread Daily, an online newszine. It originally appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur, January 15-21, 1998, p. 76*. ) Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct? Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until n ow, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the preside nt in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it? B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today? B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralizat ion and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [intégrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists? B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: fundamentalism represents a world menace today. B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion o f the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unite s the Christian countries. * There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was no t included in the shorter version. Source: Antifa Info-Bulletin, The Nonviolence Web. Remembrances of germ warfare - Eighteenth Century "Prophetic" ministry leader Steve Shultz is calling for prayer "over British forces' distribution of smallpox-contaminated blankets among Native Americans during the 1760s in an effort to prevent uprisings," reports Chari sma News Service. Schultz, who learned of this sordid episode at a recent conference celebrating Native American ministries, is urging Americans to pray for forgiveness and to ask God to "restore your favor to this land a nd restore your protection on this which is called one nation under God." A March 1998 article titled "Native Americans: Weapons of Mass Destruction" describes the rationale for these early acts of domestic terrorism. "An English general named Jeffery Amherst in April 1763 offered a reward for Pontiac who had banded the tribes together against the British invasion. Amherst states, 'Could it not be contrived to send a smallpox among tho se disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them. You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets to try and extirpate this execrable race.' The tribes 'inoculated' in this campaign were the Shawnee, Odawa and the Onondaga tribes. One native remarked afterwards, 'terrible sickness among us, nothing but dead bodies among us.' "Speaking of the smallpox plague among the natives, Laurie Garret in her book, 'The Coming Plague,' adds in a footnote that 'smallpox may have been the most useful weapon of biological warfare in world history.' When one views the amount of desolation from this one disease in North America alone, it is not hard to come to the same conclusion." Remembrances of germ warfare - Twentieth Century In the October 28th edition of San Francisco Chronicle, science editor David Perlman writes that "at least three times in the past, San Franciscans and other Americans have been inadvertent victims of efforts designed to help shield citizens against [bioterrorist] attacks." Perlman describes three separate experiments: The 1950 Army spraying "supposedly harmless bacteria over the entire city and its outskirts," resulting in eleven people sickened and one death. The CIA's "secret behavior modification program called MK-ULTRA," conducted between 1956 and 1961 that was aimed at testing the effects of "mind-altering drugs such as LSD and synthetic mescaline on unsuspecting people in San Francisco, Mill Valley and other cities across the country." Many victims became sick and at least two deaths were reported. >From 1944 to 1974, the Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission "conducted >hundreds of secret experiments in San Francisco [and elsewhere] that exposed >unsuspecting patients to dangerous does of radiation, incl uding injections of plutonium." Eugene Scalia's controversial Labor Dept. nomination moves forward While practically no one except for a slew of labor organizations and a few Senate Democrats were paying attention, the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee voted 11-10 to send the nomination of Eugene Scalia (son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia) to the full Senate for consideration. According to an Associated Press report, Senator Jim Jeffords, "tipped the party-line vote in Scalia's favor." If confirmed, Scalia, who consistently opposed a Clinton-era ergonomics regulation aimed at enhancing workplace safety -- repealed by Congress in March -- will become the Labor Department's top lawyer. AP reports that as "labor solicitor, Scalia would be charged with enforcing nearly 200 labor laws. He would provide legal advice and guidance on virtually every initiative of the department in areas such as safety and health, minimum wage and pension security." 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