[cia-drugs] Steve Kubby returns to jail. Medi-pot patient, Prop 215 coauthor, with cancer.
For background, info, photos, and many links; go here:http://gallery.marihemp.com/auburn2006jan31 andhttp://gallery.marihemp.com/prisons andhttp://www.kubby.com Please forward. Article below is full of links. Go to the first web address below, if necessary, to get to the article with the clickable links. ---MarijuanaNews.com article begins- http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=889 Top Story: Kubby to Return to Jail. Survival Depends on Marinol. Two and Half Years Probation to Follow. Triumph of Prosecutorial State. Special to MarijuanaNews. Posted by Richard Cowan on 2006-03-14 16:20:00 Source: Posted March 14, 2006 Special to MarijuanaNews.com Having no choice, Steve Kubby pled guilty today to violating his probation and will have to return to Placer County jail for up to 60 days; however, it is expected that he will be released after serving just 20 days, inasmuch as the jail remains overcrowded. SeeKubby Out of Jail, But Not Yet Free. (Are any of us?) Must Return to Court On March 14 On Probation Violation Charges. Exclusive to MarijuanaNews Moreover, it is unlikely that Placer County would want to hold him beyond 20 days, because Steve has just enough Marinol to last him for that period. If Placer were to hold him longer they could then be confronted with a demand that they start paying for life-saving medicine for their prisoner, and we all know that would send the wrong message to children. After he is released, he will then have to serve two and half years of felony probation, but no added time, and he will be allowed to use whole cannabis during probation. Of course, he will be homeless, his life in tatters, and he will be almost 60 years old with terminal cancer. The State of California and Canada will have spent huge sums to have brought him to this point. What a triumph of stupidity and evil! As I have previously said, I think that it is unfortunate that this case is however understandably seen as just being about medical marijuana. Kubby needs cannabis to live, and the whole case began with an anonymous letter alleging that he was selling marijuana, but this case really should [stand out] as a complete failure of the California legal system. (And a disgrace to Canada, as well.) SeeSteve Kubbys Life Is In Danger Because Immigration Canada and California Law Enforcement Broke the Law. andSteve Kubby Is the Only One In This Story Who Has NOT Broken The Law, But He Faces the Death Penalty. It is difficult to evaluate all of the individual cases such as Kubbys to quantify the problem with prosecutors and the courts, but the facts about the states enormous prison system are there for all to see. The prisons are both the means and the end of the criminal justice system. The system is responsible for the prisons and the prisons are the systems ultimate tool. (The death penalty has only limited utility.) The February 24th 2005 edition of the The Economist reported, The state's (Californias) imprisonment rate455 out of every 100,000 people were inside in 2003is a little below the national average and well behind Texas (702) and Louisiana (801); but it is still several times that of Britain or indeed any other developed country. California's jails now house 163,000 prisoners (each at an annual cost of $31,000); that is more than France, Germany and the Netherlands combined. In an American context, California's prisons stand out for two things: overcrowding and recidivism. The state has only 32 prisons, which hold twice as many people as they were designed for. By contrast, New York state has 65,000 inmates in 70 prisons and Florida has 82,000 in 121 facilities. Worse, California's correctional facilities singularly fail to correct: three in four prisoners will be convicted of another crime within three yearsand three out of five will be back in prison. (Nationally, a quarter are back in prison for new crimes and another quarter are back in prison for parole violations.) The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), which represents 31,000 guards, has been a generous donor to governors from both partiesand has been well looked after itself. The average guard's salary rose from $14,400 in 1980 to $54,000 in 2002, almost twice the national average for a prison officer. On October 11, 2005, an article in the LA Times By Maura Dolan, reported,"There is almost no aspect of California corrections, adult or juvenile, that is not subject to a court order, and almost all of those are the result of suits brought by the Prison Law Office," said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency . Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson reported that at least 34 inmates had died recently because of neglect, incompetence and "even cruelty" by medical staff. Henderson's action followed a lawsuit by the Prison Law Office. On a
[cia-drugs] Fwd: Think about it !
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."-- William Pitt(1759-1806) British Prime Minister (1783-1801, 1804-06) during the FrenchRevolutionary and Napoleonic wars.Source: Speech, House of Commons, 18 November 1783http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/William.Pitt.Quote.D262 "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radicalConstitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount ofindividual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who hadthat freedom would use it responsibly [However, now] there's a lot ofirresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. Whenpersonal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."-- Bill Clinton[William Jefferson Blythe III] (1946- ), 42nd US PresidentSource: MTV's "Enough is Enough" 3-22-94http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Bill.Clinton.Quote.7332 "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."-- Henry Kissinger(1923- )http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Henry.Kissinger.Quote.F3B5 Share these quotes -- spread them around!Many have sacrificed their lives for our Liberty.Let us renew our commitment to Freedom. Liberty Quotes - http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca --- End Message ---
[cia-drugs] Warfare?
Bush Explains, Americans Skeptical On Monday the president laid out the first in a series of speeches this month to convince Americans that the United States is on the right path in Iraq. As the United States enters its fourth year of conflict in the country, the public has become increasingly skeptical of U.S. deployment in Iraq. In the links below, Foreign policy experts comment on the importance of implementing an exit strategy to get out of Iraq. Opinion and Commentary "Who Will Decide When We Leave Iraq?" by Christopher Preble, February 24, 2006. "U.S. Allies Bring Little to Table in Iraq, Afghanistan," by Ted Galen Carpenter, Chicago Sun-Times, February 11, 2006. "How to Exit Iraq," by Christopher Preble, National Post, January 12, 2005. Books "Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War Against Al Qaeda" (2004). Over-Criminalization in an Age of Corporate Scandals Since Enron's collapse in 2002, the federal government has stepped up its campaign against white-collar crime. In doing so, contemporary federal criminal law has created a "Catch-22," in which businesspeople are forced to act either unethically or illegally. In the new Cato book Trapped: When Acting Ethically Is against the Law, Georgetown University business professor John Hasnas examines the ethical dilemmas raised by over-criminalization. Big Brother Getting Bigger Public debate over a national ID card will heat up this summer, as states grapple with regulations coming out of the Department of Homeland Security. Though a national ID has been promoted as curing many evils, such as illegal immigration and terrorism, Jim Harper, the Cato Institute's director of information policy studies, disagrees. For Harper, a national ID does, however, represent a massive transfer of power from individuals to governments. Harper comments: "With the passage of the REAL ID Act last year, an American national ID is on the march. People should think of identity cards as the visible front end of surveillance systems. When an institution collects identity information, this is solely so it can track people and keep records about them. With the growth of databases and automatic information capture technologies, more and more information is permanently tied to us. A national ID ties all this data back to one single identity. Jim Harper discusses the impact of the REAL ID Act on motorists on FOX News, July 18, 2005 [Real Media]. "Understanding Privacy -- and the Real Threats to It," Policy Analysis no. 520, August 4, 2004. Kenya's Watergate On March 29, John Githongo, former Kenyan anti-corruption chief, comes to the Cato Institute to discuss why he fled Kenya. Githongo will speak about government corruption in Kenya, its effect on development, and the implications for foreign aid donors. Appointed within days of the opposition's election victory in the 2002 polls, Githongo spent two years as permanent secretary for ethics and governance. Under Mwai Kibaki's rule, however, graft in Kenya continued unabated, which led Githongo to implicate Kenya's vice president and three senior ministers in a corruption racket. He resigned his position in 2005 and is now in exile in London. This will be Githongo's first time speaking in the United States since fleeing Kenya. "Corruption in Kenya: A Whistleblower's Account" will be held on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 at 4 pm. In the 2005 Cato Policy Analysis, "Underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of the Private Sector and Political Elites," Moeletski Mbeki, the brother of South Africa President Thabo Mbeki, blames African poverty on mismanagement and exploitation by political elites that control the state and see it as a source of personal enrichment. Classical Liberalism for the Middle East Intellectual isolation is a widespread Arab phenomenon, not just an Iraqi one. In a recent Reason Online article, author Jonathan Rauch describes how the Internet has become a historical opportunity for Arab liberalism. Rauch cites how sites like MisbahAlHurriyya.org -- also called LampofLiberty.org -- a new Arabic-language website, can change the world by publishing classical liberal books. Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your gro
[cia-drugs] Fwd: CIA Wins 2006 "Rosemary Award
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- CIA Wins 2006 "Rosemary Award" for Worst Freedom of Information Performance by a Federal Agency National Security Archive Update, March 13, 2006 For more information: Barbara Elias or Thomas Blanton - 202/994-7000 http://www.nsarchive.org Washington, D.C., 13 March 2006 - The Central Intelligence Agency has won the second annual Rosemary Award, recognizing the worst performance by a federal agency in complying with the Freedom of Information Act. The Award is named after President Nixon's secretary Rosemary Woods and the backwards-leaning stretch which she testified resulted in her erasing eighteen-and-a- half minutes from a key Watergate conversation on the White House tapes. National Security Archive director Thomas Blanton announced today that this year's Rosemary goes to the Central Intelligence Agency, for what he called "the most dramatic one-year drop-off in professionalism and responsiveness to the public we have seen in 20 years of monitoring federal government compliance with the freedom of information law." President Bush ordered agencies in his December 14, 2005 Executive Order to take a "citizen-centered and results- oriented approach" that "will improve service and performance, thereby strengthening compliance with the FOIA, and will help avoid disputes and related litigation." The CIA, under the direction of chief FOIA coordinator Scott Koch, has taken the opposite tack and has escalated its disputes and related litigation over the past year. Here are the CIA's performance markers that clinched the 2006 Rosemary: 1) CIA handles only 0.08% of the total number of FOIA requests received by the government, but has achieved 40% of the ten oldest still unanswered requests government-wide. CIA's oldest requests are so old they are eligible for drivers' licenses in most states. 2) After stalling for 15 years a request from a Lancaster, Pennsylvania newspaper for records on a convicted arms dealer with ties to the intelligence community (a former director of the National Security Agency had served on the dealer's board), CIA finally answered the request in 2005 with a "no records" response. 3) More creatively, CIA responded to a 2005 request for records on the relationship between Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Osama bin Ladin by claiming the Agency could "neither confirm or deny" the existence of any such documents. Hundreds of such documents have been released by other agencies, including transcripts of official conversations with Omar, and the 9/11 Commission report provides extensive detail on the relationship. 4) At the same time that CIA's chief information reviewer, Terry Buroker, was swearing under penalty of perjury in federal court that not a word of a 40-year- old President's Daily Brief given by the CIA to President Johnson could be released without serious damage to current U.S. national security, Mr. Buroker cleared for release two such LBJ-era Briefs because they were in cable format instead of PDB letterhead (he didn't recognize them as PDBs). When Mr. Buroker actually reviewed their contents (which were innocuous), he released the documents, but when he saw letterhead, he claimed damage. 5) Beginning in August 2005, Mr. Koch reversed 15 years of CIA compliance with the FOI statute and began telling graduate students that they would have to pay search and review fees for any FOIA request they undertook for thesis or dissertation research, despite the law's clear provision that the "educational" category of requester would pay only photocopying fees. No doubt this will reduce Mr. Koch's workload by intimidating young scholars from filing requests in the first place, although some may well litigate the matter. 6) Also in August 2005, Mr. Koch reversed 15 years of CIA compliance with the unanimous 1989 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that settled the search and review fee question for journalists, and began telling representatives of the news media that it was up to CIA to decide whether the subject of their requests was newsworthy; otherwise, they would pay too. CIA judged
[cia-drugs] Fwd: Dubai: Home Base For Cold War
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- Dubai: Home Base For Cold War by Ira Chernus Published on Monday, March 13, 2006 by CommonDreams.org Surely the Bush administration wants to help Dubai for lots of reasons. "Follow the money" is always a useful rule in such cases. But there is another piece of the puzzle that may prove more important in the long run. According to the Washington Post, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns recently said that the State Department will "add staff in Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, as well as other embassies in the vicinity of Iran, all assigned to watch Tehran. He called the new Dubai outpost the '21st century equivalent' of the Riga station in Latvia that monitored the Soviet Union in the 1930s when the United States had no embassy in Moscow." The Riga station was far more than a listening post, as Burns knows very well. It was where George Kennan and a group of U.S. diplomats laid the seeds of the ideology that would drive the U.S. cold war effort for four decades. In a March 3 briefing, spokesman Adam Ereli announced that "the State Department will be establishing a department of Iranian affairs. We have also created a number of new positions in the field -- for Foreign Service officers to work on Iran-related issues." These new officers will be trained Farsi-speakers placed in strategic capitals. Such as? You guessed it: "Dubai will be the site of some," Ereli said. "The logic of putting people out in the field," Ereli continued, is "to use the language, to develop the on-the-ground expertise so that 10, 15, 20 years from now, we've got -- just like we have Arab experts ... we used to have Soviet experts -- we've got a cadre of Iran experts." To explain how it would work, Ereli chose (at random?) an analogy: "We've got programs in Russia, we've got money we spend with Russia, we've got exchanges with Russia, so you need people to run those programs, interact with NGOs and others. We're going to be doing the same thing with Iran." None of this is supposed to be secret. Burns and Ereli tell reporters only what they--and their boss, Condoleeza Rice--want the world to hear. Now they want the world to hear that the U.S. is gearing up for a new cold war, with the Iranian theocrats playing the role of the commies and Russkies. Indeed, BBC reporter Paul Reynolds claims that Rice herself is leading the charge for a new cold war against Iran. "How long Washington might wait over Iran is not at all clear," Reynolds comments. "After all, it took 50 years for the Soviet Union to fall." This could all be just a big bluff, another set of maneuvers in the war of words aimed at stopping any Iranian efforts toward nuclear weapons. But it seems more likely that it works the other way around. As with Iraq, the supposed drive to head off Iran's nukes is just an excuse for the real goal, which is, according to the Post's sources, "regime change": "The internal administration debate that raged in the first term between those who advocated more engagement with Iran and those who preferred more confrontation appears in the second term to be largely settled in favor of the latter. Although administration officials do not use the term 'regime change' in public, that in effect is the goal they outline as they aim to build resistance to the theocracy." When Vice-President Dick Cheney spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the New York Times reported, he "used blunt language that seemed to hint of military action or possibly the overthrow of the government in Tehran, though he mentioned neither option explicitly." Again, no secrets. As with Iraq, the administration is telling the world clearly, well in advance, what it plans to do. But the plan for regime change in Iran is not just a future fantasy. It's already underway. As the Times article noted, Cheney has "promoted a drive to bring Iranian scholars and students to America, blanket the country with radio and television broadcasts and support Iranian political dissidents. That $85 million State Department program is being overseen by Elizabeth Cheney,
[cia-drugs] Fwd: [SPY NEWS] SDLP leader describes MI5 spies as 'para-terrorists'
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- http://www.thepost.ie/breakingnews/breaking_story.asp?j=93219874&p=93zzxz48&; n=93220345 SDLP leader describes MI5 spies as para-terrorists 14/03/2006 - 2:16:20 PM SDLP leader Mark Durkan has described members of Britain's MI5 spy agency as "para-terrorists". Mr Durkan claimed today that the undercover internal security outfit had been involved in numerous terrorist crimes in the North, including the murder of innocent civilians in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. The SDLP leader was speaking during a House of Commons debate in London about moves to give MI5 a greater role in security in the North. He said the SDLP could not accept British government assurances that the spy agency's past misdeeds would not be repeated. Mr Durkan claimed Britain was in denial about its ugly role in the North and had acted precisely and deliberately to make sure that the truth about its activities would never emerge. -__ ___ _ ___ __ ___ _ _ _ __ /-_|-0-\-V-/-\|-|-__|-|-|-/-_| \_-\--_/\-/|-\\-|-_||-V-V-\_-\ |__/_|--//-|_|\_|___|\_A_/|__/ SPY NEWS is OSINT newsletter and discussion list associated to Mario's Cyberspace Station - The Global Intelligence News Portal http://mprofaca.cro.net/ http://osint.mywebhut.com/ CAUTION! # Since you are receiving and reading documents, news stories, comments and opinions not only from so called (or self-proclaimed) "reliable sources", but also a lot of possible misinformation collected by Spy News moderator and subscribers and posted to Spy News for OSINT purposes - it should be a serious reason (particularly to journalists and web publishers) to think twice before using it for their story writing, further publishing or forwarding throughout Cyberspace. To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE: This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Spy News is making it available without profit to SPY NEWS eGroup members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml SPY NEWS home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spynews Mario Profaca mario.profaca[at]zg.htnet.hr SPY NEWS owner, editor and discussion moderator Yahoo! Groups Links --- End Message ---
[cia-drugs] Fwd: [SPY NEWS] Spies hiding in the wheat
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,18465788-5001021,00.html Spies hiding in the wheat March 15, 2006 THE spy community has been drawn into the AWB scandal, with claims it may have known $300 million in bribes was going to Saddam Hussein. The extraordinary development came as the first in a line of senior diplomats took the witness box in the Cole inquiry yesterday. Counsel assisting the inquiry John Agius SC said Australia's top spooks had handed over documents on possible breaches of the UN oil-for-food program. It was through that program that the former wheat board did business with Saddam's regime. "There will, I anticipate, be a body of evidence ... to the effect that agencies within the Australian intelligence community obtained some potentially relevant information in relation to the functioning of the oil-for-food program, and possible circumvention of it," Mr Agius said. Commissioner Terence Cole kept the documents, plus three statements from unnamed senior government officials, top secret in the interests of national security. AWB's lawyers were not allowed to see the papers, prompting one to declare a "breathtaking denial of natural justice". It was not revealed which of the spy agencies -- ASIO, the Office of National Assessments, ASIS or the Defence Intelligence Organisation -- provided the papers. Mr Agius said he wanted to determine how much of the information was made available to foreign trade officers working with AWB -- "whether they had access to and did in fact access information from intelligence agencies." The first person he quizzed was Bronte Moules, the senior diplomat from Australia's UN mission who forwarded concerns about AWB's Iraq dealings as early January 2000. In an unusual line of questioning, Mr Agius showed all 15 spy documents to Ms Moules, told her not to mention their contents and asked if she had ever seen them. She said she had never seen any but recognised the contents of just five "in broad terms". Ms Moules also gave an unexpected account of the role played by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade during her 1999-2002 UN stint, calling it "essentially a post box" for processing trade contracts. This was at odds with a May 1996 DFAT briefing paper on Iraq shown by Mr Agius which, he said, "makes plain that the responsibility to comply with the [UN sanctions] regime lay with Australia". The inquiry has requested documents from the offices of Prime Minister John Howard, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer, Trade Minister Mark Vaile, Treasurer Peter Costello, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, and Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran. -__ ___ _ ___ __ ___ _ _ _ __ /-_|-0-\-V-/-\|-|-__|-|-|-/-_| \_-\--_/\-/|-\\-|-_||-V-V-\_-\ |__/_|--//-|_|\_|___|\_A_/|__/ SPY NEWS is OSINT newsletter and discussion list associated to Mario's Cyberspace Station - The Global Intelligence News Portal http://mprofaca.cro.net/ http://osint.mywebhut.com/ CAUTION! # Since you are receiving and reading documents, news stories, comments and opinions not only from so called (or self-proclaimed) "reliable sources", but also a lot of possible misinformation collected by Spy News moderator and subscribers and posted to Spy News for OSINT purposes - it should be a serious reason (particularly to journalists and web publishers) to think twice before using it for their story writing, further publishing or forwarding throughout Cyberspace. To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE: This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Spy News is making it available without profit to SPY NEWS eGroup members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We
[cia-drugs] Fwd: [THS] Howard Zinn: Lessons of Iraq War Start With US History
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031406D.shtml Lessons of Iraq War Start With US History By Howard Zinn The Progressive Tuesday 14 March 2006 On the third anniversary of President Bush's Iraq debacle, it's important to consider why the administration so easily fooled so many people into supporting the war. I believe there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture. One is an absence of historical perspective. The other is an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. If we don't know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. But if we know some history, if we know how many times presidents have lied to us, we will not be fooled again. President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn't that Mexico "shed American blood upon the American soil" but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico. President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that he really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to "civilize" the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that. President Wilson lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to "make the world safe for democracy," when it was really a war to make the world safe for the rising American power. President Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was "a military target." And everyone lied about Vietnam - President Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, President Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin and President Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia. They all claimed the war was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanted to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent. President Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States. The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country. And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991 - hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait, rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East. There is an even bigger lie: the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior. If our starting point for evaluating the world around us is the firm belief that this nation is somehow endowed by Providence with unique qualities that make it morally superior to every other nation on Earth, then we are not likely to question the president when he says we are sending our troops here or there, or bombing this or that, in order to spread our values - democracy, liberty, and let's not forget free enterprise - to some God-forsaken (literally) place in the world. But we must face some facts that disturb the idea of a uniquely virtuous nation. We must face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which the U.S. government drove millions of Indians off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations. We must face our long history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation and racism. And we must face the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not a history of which we can be proud. Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted the belief in the minds of many people that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate the world. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties have embraced this n
[cia-drugs] Fwd: [THS] Chile: Condoleezza Rice Presented With Coca Leaf-Inlay Guitar
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- Pubdate: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 Source: New Zealand Herald (New Zealand) Copyright: 2006 New Zealand Herald Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/300 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) CONDOLEEZZA RICE PRESENTED WITH COCA LEAF-INLAY GUITAR VALPARAISO, Chile - Condoleezza Rice knew coca would top the agenda in her meeting with Bolivia's new president, but she likely wasn't expecting to get the real thing. At the end of their 25-minute meeting, President Evo Morales presented the US secretary of state with an Andean guitar that bore a coca-leaf inlay. "The gift was well received. We will just have to check with our customs to see what rules apply. We certainly hope we can bring it back (to Washington)," said a senior State Department official who attended the meeting. Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, came to prominence as a leader of coca farmers who want more freedom to grow coca, which is the main ingredient in cocaine but is also used legally for traditional medicines and in teas. The fight against cocaine is the main source of bilateral friction between the United States and Bolivia, the world's third-biggest cocaine producer. Rice told Morales, "I'm a musician you know," and strummed the instrument, a typical Bolivian lacquered handicraft with five pairs of strings. It was unclear whether she immediately realised what adorned it. - REUTERS __ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84Pze.cj3nmp.cm9hZHNl Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For Topica's complete suite of email marketing solutions visit: http://www.topica.com/?p=TEXFOOTER --^ --- End Message ---
[cia-drugs] Fwd: [SPY NEWS] Allen Leaves CIA to Lead Homeland Security Intelligence Shakeup
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=1087&sid=aSgw7_IMnvJw Allen Leaves CIA to Lead Homeland Security Intelligence Shakeup March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Charlie Allen, the 47-year CIA veteran now charged with organizing the Homeland Security Department's intelligence service, says the job is daunting: People who are supposed to be on the same team don't even talk to each other. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wooed Allen from the CIA to Homeland Security in August to meld nine separate intelligence operations into one cohesive unit to avoid overlap and coordinate better with local law enforcement agencies. ``The challenges are a little more difficult'' than any he faced at the CIA, Allen said in a recent interview. The Homeland Security Department is a forced marriage of 22 agencies that Congress mandated following the Sept. 11 attacks. Allen said the intelligence efforts still aren't coordinated and time is running out. ``We have miles to go,'' he said. ``We've got to move rapidly.'' The department's intelligence services stumbled within weeks of Allen's arrival. In October, they publicly contradicted New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, saying his warnings of a potential attack on the city's subways were overblown. Then, later that month, there was trouble coordinating with the FBI on a possible threat to Baltimore's tunnels. Allen ``has to solve the internal problem of getting 22 units working together,'' said Loch Johnson, a political science professor at the University of Georgia who has written often about the CIA. ``It's a job probably for three people.'' Needed Skills Mike Rogers, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and a former FBI agent, said Allen's stark assessments and organizational skills are just what the Homeland Security intelligence operation needs. ``If I had to trust anybody with that mission, it would be Charlie,'' said Rogers, a Michigan Republican. Allen's performance in his new job will be critical. Intelligence experts said the 2005 London bombings by home-grown Islamic radicals plus taped messages released last month by Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader, and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, show the threat of attack is still strong. Allen, 71, had a hand in some of the CIA's greatest achievements and cleaned up some of its biggest messes. In 1990, he forecast Iraq's invasion of Kuwait -- a prediction that was largely ignored -- and in 1998 then-CIA Director George Tenet asked him to settle turf wars within the agency after it failed to anticipate five underground nuclear tests by India. Nixon's Briefer Allen has spent most of his career warning of threats or defusing them. He prepared daily intelligence briefings for President Richard Nixon, and in 1985, then-CIA Director William Casey tapped him to become one of the CIA's top counterterrorism officials. Allen was sitting in the operations room at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in 1998 when he received word of al-Qaeda's bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The simultaneous attacks killed more than 224 people and brought Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network to the world's attention. Allen was immediately assigned to head up the effort to collect more information on al-Qaeda. An independent commission's report on the Sept. 11 attacks, while criticizing the CIA and FBI, in general praised Allen as ``indefatigable'' in his efforts to round up information on bin- Laden and his network. Allen also was not tarred with the agency's failures leading up to the war on Iraq. Iraq Report Ignored Author James Risen in his 2006 book ``State of War'' said Allen oversaw a program to contact relatives of Iraqi scientists to learn whether the country was developing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Allen discovered that Saddam Hussein had abandoned these weapons programs. His superiors ignored this information, according to Risen. They ``refused to even disseminate the report from the family members to senior policy makers in the Bush administration,'' Risen wrote. T
[cia-drugs] Fwd: [THS] Marc Emery Thinks 60 Minutes Profile Has Increased Support
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- Begin Message --- Pubdate: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Webpage: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id8fcb48-f7ad-413d-bb56-7676414284f2 Copyright: 2006 The Vancouver Sun Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477 Author: Jeremy Hainsworth, Associated Press Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) MARIJUANA ACTIVIST THINKS 60 MINUTES PROFILE HAS INCREASED HIS SUPPORT A marijuana activist wanted by U.S. authorities to face drug charges said Thursday he thinks being profiled on CBS's 60 Minutes has increased support for dropping the charges against him on both sides of the border. "It's my job as leader of the cannabis culture to thwart the United States government," Marc Emery, Canada's so-called Prince of Pot, said outside the B.C. Supreme Court. "The American government and their war on drugs has got to Kafkaesque extremes." Emery is charged in the U.S. with conspiracy to launder money and distribute marijuana and marijuana seeds. Conviction on the charges would carry a sentence of at least 10 years in prison. He appeared at the B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday to set a date for the start of extradition proceedings, but the hearing was adjourned to April 6. During the 60 Minutes episode last Sunday. John McKay, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, said Emery was the "biggest purveyor of marijuana from Canada into the United States." Emery told Simon that while he's fighting his extradition to the United States, he's resigned to the possibility of prison and being a martyr for the legalization struggle. "I am blessed by what the DEA has done," Emery said. "I'd rather see marijuana legalized than me being saved from a U.S. jail." Emery says he has made $15 million over the past decade selling marijuana seeds online and by mail, along with equipment for growing operations and instructions on raising pot plants. __ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84Pze.cj3nmp.cm9hZHNl Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For Topica's complete suite of email marketing solutions visit: http://www.topica.com/?p=TEXFOOTER --^ --- End Message ---
[cia-drugs] Montel Williams joins the Patriot Movement***911 Truth coming out?
Montel Williams joins the Patriot Movement***911 Truth coming out? Please forward everywhere When I saw his show yesterday I could not believe what I was hearing Lou Dobbs and several others joined Montel and all were all fuming and telling it like it is... They touched on everything...All bush administration atrocities, some including 911...I believe he is leading up to 911 Truth because our activists contacted him last week and then for him to come out smoking like this, I know he's just begun If he's allowed back on the air, next Tuesday will be the day he'll speak out for America again A blonde was pro bush and it was like watching the o'reilly show, only in reverse...She had a hard time getting words in but when she did it was bs and she was over talked and/or ridiculed, big time, which, unlike those on o'reilly, she deserved I already thanked him for joining our ranks>>> Click here: Montel Williams http://www.montelshow.com/ I signed off with >>> "We The People United Movement" We are many Political and Patriot Groups joining together, to help right the wrongs in America..."United We Will Stand" As I did, when I sent the plea for 911 Truth exposure He specified the "We The People" phrase on his show with saying>>>When are "We The People" Oh shoot...I forget the exact words and already erased the show but he did say a whole lot...You could almost see the smoke Oprah's still a shill, though...Maybe when she hears about Montel, she'll get brave and allow truth>>> Click here: Click here: Oprah.com is your leading source for information http://tinyurl.com/ohzys The last time Tony Danza spoke out with truth, they made him tape all his live shows...He could use some encouragement too>>> Click here: The Tony Danza Show http://tinyurl.com/gdbrl ~~ Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[cia-drugs] On the demonization of Milosevic (Part 1 of 2)
On the demonization of Milosevic: How and why it's done; why it's nonsensePart 1 of 2 partsby Jared Israel(Posted 3 March 2001, revised 15 March 2006) ** This article was written five years ago, when the KLA terrorists were attacking southern Serbia and Macedonia, and somehow this was being blamed on Milosevic. Now, in March 2006, with the death of Milosevic, and with the media rehashing all the attacks on him, which means, in effect, on the Serbs, the points made here are, alas, timely.-- Jared Israel, 15 March 2006 ** The Western media is preparing us for yet another terrorist war which NATO claims it is helpless to prevent, although NATO is training the terrorists. "Western special forces were still training the guerrillas, as a result of decisions taken before the change of government in Yugoslavia." (BBC, Jan. 29, 2001) (1)The 'guerrillas' in question are members of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA. You remember the KLA, don't you? They're the people NATO installed in power in Kosovo in June 1999 after which they dutifully drove out almost all Serbs, 'Gypsies', Jews, non-Albanian Muslims (known as 'Gorani'), and Albanians who opposed the KLA. Or just killed them. (2)The KLA has, we are told, been dissolved, yet under new names it continues to start new terrorist wars. (3)Aside from an invasion of southern Serbia, which it started a year ago, the KLA is also attacking Macedonia.The KLA, by whatever name, has supposedly been fully disarmed except that somehow it has heavy weapons and somehow there are NATO combat helicopters providing air cover. (4)** Mass Media Prepares Us for War **The way the mass media gets us ready for new terrorist wars is by marinating our heads in lies.Consider an article that appeared in the February 24th London 'Telegraph'. The body of the article concerns the KLA's latest terrorist attacks. But the headline reads: "NATO Forces Face New Threat In Balkans"Huh? Is somebody threatening NATO? No, nobody is threatening NATO.The point of the title is to give readers the proper attitude prior to breaking the news that NATO's prize pet, the KLA, is again attacking Serbia and Macedonia.Readers must be directed away from unacceptable (if perfectly logical) speculations such as that maybe the UN, which renamed the KLA the 'Kosovo Protection Corp,' and NATO, which has been training the terrorists attacking Serbia and Macedonia, are behind these attacks. Oh no no no, says the title, these attacks threaten NATO, and gently nudges us away from treacherous waters.Now for your consideration, here is the article's first sentence: "The Kosovo war was fought to defeat Slobodan Milosevic and his dream of a 'Greater Serbia.'"Amazing. This article is supposedly about recent terrorist attacks. News reports are supposed to start by telling us who did it, what happened, where it happened, when and why.Did Milosevic go out last night and launch terrorist attacks on Macedonia and southern Serbia?By starting with this sentence, the 'Telegraph' dredges up our memories of anti-Serb media stories past. It gives us the impression that whatever happens now stems from Milosevic.This is important for two reasons.First, this suggests that the Serbian people are violently nationalist. Why? Because Milosevic was an elected leader, so if this characterization were true, it would mean that most Serbs supported a violently expansionist policy. Thus while the sentence focuses on Milosevic, he is really just a symbol. The real attack is on the Serbs as a whole.Second, NATO and the pro-NATO leaders, who took over in Belgrade after the coup a year ago, are trying to build public support for arresting Milosevic. They want to stage a show trial to convince the world that NATO is innocent and the Serbs are guilty for the breakup of Yugoslavia.At the same time, the opening sentence: "The Kosovo war was fought to defeat Slobodan Milosevic and his dream of a 'Greater Serbia'"tells readers that NATO is supposedly innocent of wrongdoing. The implication is that if NATO had not bombed Yugoslavia and occupied Kosovo it would have failed to: "defeat Slobodan Milosevic and his dream of a 'Greater Serbia'"Thus, like the headline,"NATO Forces Face New Threat In Balkans,"the first sentence puts us in the proper mental state for a constructive news experience: pro-NATO and on the lookout for Serbian dreams of expansion.But wait a minute. Is the 'Telegraph' seriously saying NATO bombed Yugoslavia to stop a Milosevic dream?Or did this dream take some earthly form? Was Milosevic trying to expand Serbia into Kosovo?That must be the idea, but there is a wee glitch. In spring of 1999, when NATO attacked Yugoslavia, Kosovo was a province of Serbia.In fact Kosovo has been an internationally recognized province of Serbia since before World War I.The border between Kosovo (that is, Serbia
[cia-drugs] Dubai company to sell port operations in 4-6 months
Dubai company to sell port operations in 4-6 months A Dubai-owned company today said it plans to sell all its U.S. port operations within four to six months to an unrelated American buyer and laid out new details about how it plans to pursue the sale under pressure from Congress. DP World said that until the sale is finalized, its U.S. businesses will be operated independently. The announcement was the first time DP World described its plans for the U.S. operations as a sale and indicated it would retain no stake in them. An expedited sale process is under way and with the cooperation of the port authorities and joint venture partners, it is expected that a sale can be agreed within four to six months, the company said in a statement. DP World said it will provide information about its business to interested parties, which it did not identify, and said it will assess offers based on what it described as value, deliverability and the continuity of management, employees and customers. The new disclosures by DP World responded to questions raised since its announcement last week about how it intends to transfer to an unspecified American company all the U.S. operations it acquired when it bought London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. for $6.8 billion. The British company handles significant operations at ports in New Jersey, New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia plus lesser dockside activities at 16 other ports in this country. DP World has said those U.S. operations are worth roughly $700 million. DP World said until the sale is complete, its U.S. operations will be managed independently by P&O Ports North America Inc., the wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of the British company it bought. Since DP Worlds announcement last week, Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress have questioned whether the company planned a full divestiture or whether it would retain some stake in the U.S. operations. Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
[cia-drugs] Was Milosevic Poisoned?
Monday, March 13, 2006 Was Milosevic Poisoned? Lisa Pease Would you believe that looking into Milosevic's death led me to a strong link between the US government and al Qaeda, sharing common goals in Kosovo? That's why history is always relevant, and the truth always matters.Here's where I started.ABC News is reporting the "swirl of suspicion" regarding the death of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevich: Among the scenarios being floated: Drugs smuggled into prison, a poisoning plot and the possibility Milosevic was undermining his own treatment in hopes of being sent to Moscow, where his wife and son live in exile. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow did not fully trust the autopsy report and would send its own pathologists to examine the body. The U.N. war crimes tribunal had said a heart attack killed Milosevic, according to preliminary findings from Dutch pathologists who conducted a nearly eight-hour autopsy. ... Milosevic was found dead in his prison cell in The Hague on Saturday, just hours after writing Russian officials a letter alleging that an "extremely strong drug" was found in his bloodstream. Zdenko Tomanovic, his family lawyer, said Milosevic was "seriously concerned" he was being poisoned. I almost blogged about this when I first heard he had died. I was immediately suspicious because a former associate of Milosevich's, who had later testified against him, was found dead in the same facility just six days earlier. The sentiments expressed by Marija Darijevic in this Chicago Tribune piece echo my own: Six days before Milosevic's death, Milan Babic, 50, leader of Serb rebels in Croatia and a convicted war criminal, committed suicide in the same prison. Babic had provided key testimony against Milosevic and was back in The Hague testifying in another case."First Babic, now Milosevic. This is not an accident," said Marija Darijevic, 34, a Belgrade lawyer. "I suffered under Milosevic and I don't feel any regret at his death, but I think that even the worst criminal has the right to proper medical treatment."The suspicious death, labeled officially "heart failure," took place in a city that bills itself as the "City of Peace and Justice." Saddam Hussein had just last year asked that his own trial be moved there, believing he would get a fairer deal. I imagine he's having serious second thoughts on that front now.I'm surprised how people just accept at face value that Milosevich was, as the press called him, the "Butcher of the Balkans." As is often the case in historical matters, the victor's account of history is only one side of the story. Ramsey Clark, a former Attorney General of the United States, wrote a letter to Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, in which he stated: The Prosecution of the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is scheduled to end its presentation of evidence to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on February 19, 2004, more than two years after its first witness testified.Over 500,000 pages of documents and 5000 videocassettes have been placed in evidence. There have been some 300 trial days. More than 200 witnesses have testified. The trial transcript is near 33,000 pages.The Prosecution has failed to present significant or compelling evidence of any criminal act or intention of President Milosevic. In the absence of incriminating evidence, the Prosecution apparently hoped to create a record so massive that it would be years, if the effort was ever made, before scholars could examine and analyze the evidence to determine whether it supported a conviction. Is it possible Milosevic was not the monster the press told us about? Is it possible it was necessary to paint him as such as an excuse to go to war, much as the WMD lie had to be invented?After some searching tonight, I found this interesting article from Jurist. Author Marjorie Cohn, an associate professor of law, a Court TV commentator, and a news consultant for CBS, presented facts that make me think my suspicions are justified: The most significant international war crimes trial since Hitler’s henchmen were tried at Nuremberg is scheduled to begin on February 12. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will appear in the dock at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague to answer charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.But Milosevic, often referred to in Western circles as the “Butcher of the Balkans,” maintains it is really the leaders of NATO who should be tried for their crimes against the people of Yugoslavia. In 1999, thousands of Yugoslavs were killed or wounded by NATO’s bombs, allegedly to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo.As The New York Times said on February 9: “When Mr. Milosevic snee
[cia-drugs] Bush Official Calls Reviews for Deals Adequate
This is an important article. The New York Times takes the lead in setting forth the propaganda line to be followed by the left (including the left in the media) and the useful idiots in Congress whose only concern is getting reelected. Henceforth, those who put national security ahead of foreign "Investment" will be denigrated as "isolationists" who are putting the national economy at risk. JR http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/politics/15port.html?pagewanted=print March 15, 2006 Bush Official Calls Reviews for Deals Adequate By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and PATRICK HEALY WASHINGTON, March 14 The Bush administration pushed back Tuesday against Republican lawmakers' plans to change the review process for foreign acquisitions, saying national security was already the top concern of the committee that approved a Dubai-owned company's aborted takeover of several port terminals in the United States. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, speaking to a bankers' trade group, said the administration supported some revisions to the review process for such foreign acquisitions, but he also warned against changes that might discourage foreign investment. "This is not a question of a trade-off between investment and security," Mr. Snow said. "We have never made that trade-off. It is vital that we avoid taking steps in the name of national security that instead are , isolationist having the effect of choking off vital investments in America." Mr. Snow's comments countered the arguments of many in Congress that the approval of the Dubai ports deal exposed deep flaws in the review process, which lawmakers in both parties have said weights commercial considerations too heavily and domestic security not heavily enough. He spoke as Republican lawmakers were preparing conflicting proposals to expand the roles of the Department of Homeland Security, intelligence agencies and members of Congress in the review process. Reviews are currently conducted in secret by a panel within the executive branch that is headed by the treasury secretary and known as the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. On Monday, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Senate homeland security committee, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the committee, introduced legislation to replace the existing review committee with a new committee that would be headed by the secretary of homeland security and include a special role for the director of national intelligence. Their bill would require the new committee to brief members of Congress on its work and would mandate closer scrutiny of acquirers owned by foreign governments. DP World, the company that had sought to acquire port terminals in the United States, is owned by the ruler of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Other Republican proposals adopt similar approaches. The Senate banking committee has jurisdiction over the existing review panel, which is led by the treasury, and the banking committee's chairman, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, is working on a proposal that would make the defense secretary co-chairman of the existing review panel and give Congress the chance to vote down any deals. Mr. Snow, however, said Tuesday that national security was already the "top priority" and "only consideration" for the current review panel. The administration favored "further integration of national and homeland security interests" and expanding "notification of decisions" to Congress. But he stressed the importance of preserving the independence of the committee and protecting the confidentiality of proprietary information that companies share during the review. Uncertainty "could chill investment," Mr. Snow said. "Clearly economic isolationism is not the way to go, as it would threaten opportunity and prosperity for Americans and billions of people all over the world." Separately, former President Bill Clinton, at a news conference in Harlem, answered questions about his role in the ports deal. He said news reports that he had worked to support approval of the deal were "not true," and said that he shared the views of his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, that the United States should block the takeover. Mrs. Clinton co-sponsored legislation that would prevent the acquisition of any port operations by companies that are owned by foreign governments. She also called for a more thorough review of the DP World deal and repeatedly inveighed against the security threat that the takeover might represent. But Mr. Clinton also confirmed that he had advised Dubai on the modernization of its economy and that he had given some advice to the country about how to respond to the uproar over the deal. "I had one phone conversation with them, in which I said I thought there would be enormous public opposition and I couldn't understand why
Re: [cia-drugs] Barry and the Boys
Read "Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed.. Terry was a pilot for the CIA and spent some time with Barry Seal. JR - Original Message - From: "jemabri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 4:41 PM Subject: [cia-drugs] Barry and the Boys >I recently read Barry and the boy's and was trully astonished my some > of the implications in the book, by no stretch of the imagination do I > find some of the info completely unlikely. However I am a complete > novice when it comes to this subject and I wanted to read up on some > of the specifics in this book. I understand the suggestions that he is > alluding to but wanted to check some of the facts. Does anyone have > any suggestions on where to find refrence material about details in > the book? > > The help would mean alot to me some of the insinuations hit very close > to home! > > > > > > Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ > > Please let us stay on topic and be civil. > > OM > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > > Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[cia-drugs] Dubai Firm Verifies Plan On U.S. Ports
" the most likely bidders are expected to be private equity firms " Can you say Carlyle Group? JR http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/16ports.html?pagewanted=print March 16, 2006 Dubai Firm Verifies Plan On U.S. Ports By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK WASHINGTON, March 15 The Dubai-owned company that acquired several port terminals in major East Coast cities confirmed Wednesday that it would sell those operations to an unrelated American buyer, ending speculation about the ambiguity in its previous statements that it would "transfer" the terminals to a "U.S. entity." Congressional critics of the acquisition said the company's statement appeared to end the matter. "It now seems clear that this deal has finally been scuttled," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who helped lead the charge against the deal. "This announcement, once it is fulfilled, is exactly what we've been asking for." The company, DP World, said in a statement that it expected to complete the sale in four to six months. The company said it has begun preparing financial information about the terminals and soliciting bids. The North American operations are valued at about $700 million. DP World last week closed its acquisition of the British company P & O Group, which ran some of the terminal operations in in New York, Newark, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami and New Orleans. DP World said it would operate the United States terminals through a special independent holding company until it spun them off to a new owner. The company, which is owned by the ruler of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, made its announcement as the House of Representatives voted 377 to 38 to retain a block on the American part of the P & O acquisition in a bill expected to be approved by the chamber on Thursday. Critics of the planned operation of the terminals by DP World had continued to attack it even after the company announced a "transfer." They argued that the company's initial wording left open the possibility that it might seek to transfer the terminals to a related entity or an American subsidiary rather than divest fully. DP World said it had retained Deutsche Bank and the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to handle the sale. The Washington law firm Alston & Bird will handle any lobbying and regulatory matters. Because there are few major terminal operators based in the United States, the most likely bidders are expected to be private equity firms who would seek to profit by reselling the terminals within a few years. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM SPONSORED LINKS United state bankruptcy court western district of texas United state life insurance United state patent United state patent search United states patent office United state flag YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
