Read on the Net - SCARY (fwd)

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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 13:01:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andre Gunder Frank <franka@fiu.edu>
To: franka@fiu.edu
Subject: Read on the Net - SCARY

TOO GOOD TO MISS BUT TOO LONG TO POST HERE

The Road to Coverup Is the Road to Ruin
by
Senator Robert Byrd

source:
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 16:56:19 -0700
From: shniad@SFU.CA
Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
    <SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA>
To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA
Subject: The Road to Coverup Is the Road to Ruin
June 24, 2003
--------------------------

Ralph Nader: The US Needs Regime Change
       
source:
                                           
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 12:10:35 -1000
From: Ralph Johansen <michele@MAUI.NET>
Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
    <SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA>
To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA
Subject: Ralph Nader: The US Needs Regime Change

-----------------
Bush takes instructions form God

Note the final paragraph of the enclsoed story:

> According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to
> strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to
> strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the
> problem in the Middle East."

source:
w w w . h a a r e t z d a i l y . c o m
<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif>

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 09:10:27 -0700
------------------------------
"For many leading Republicans, dying coral reefs and melting ice caps are
welcomed as signs of the Rapture."


In his book "The Carbon Wars," Greenpeace activist Jeremy Leggett tells
how he stumbled upon this otherworldly agenda. During the Kyoto climate
change negotiations, Leggett candidly asked Ford Motor Company executive
John Schiller how opponents of the pact could believe there is no problem
with "a world of a billion cars intent on burning all the oil and gas
available on the planet?" The executive asserted first that scientists get
it wrong when they say fossil fuels have been sequestered underground for
eons. The Earth, he said, is just 10,000, not 4.5 billion years old, the
age widely accepted by scientists.

Then Schiller confidently declared, "You know, the more I look, the more
it is just as it says in the Bible." The Book of Daniel, he told Leggett,
predicts that increased earthly devastation will mark the "End Time" and
return of Christ. Paradoxically, Leggett notes, many fundamentalists see
dying coral reefs, melting ice caps and other environmental destruction
not as an urgent call to action, but as God's will. In the religious right
worldview, the wreck of the Earth can be seen as Good News!

source:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15814
"For many leading Republicans, dying coral reefs and melting ice caps are
welcomed as signs of the Rapture."
-------------------------------------

 Democratic Senator Byron L. Dorgan
of North Dakota recently commissioned a study of a week's worth of
programming by the nation's 44 top-rated radio stations and found
they broadcast 312 hours of conservative talk programming, compared
with 5 hours of liberal shows. And with conservative authors staked
out atop the nonfiction best-seller lists, the country's two largest
publishers, Random House and Penguin Group, have added conservative
imprints to their roster.     

source:
Tim Jones <deforest@austin.rr.com>
-------------------------------


(5) There has been a steep erosion of democracy and civil
liberties in the United States, driven by what former president
Jimmy Carter describes as "a core group of conservatives who
are trying to realize long-pent-up ambitions under the cover of
the proclaimed war against terrorism."[3] There is a strong
antidemocratic movement on the right wing of American politics
that would limit voting rights, reduce access to information,
prevent full disclosure of the conduct of public business, and
reduce public control of military affairs.

(6) In the 1990s, massive amounts of wealth were transferred
from the poor and middle classes to the richest. By one
estimate "the financial wealth of the top 1% exceeds the
combined household financial wealth of the bottom 95%."[4] Much
of this transfer of wealth was simply theft. In the California
energy "crisis" alone, an estimated $30 billion was diverted by
those utilities that effectively defrauded the state and its
citizens.

source:
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 16:10:08 -0500
From: Tim Jones <deforest@austin.rr.com>
To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: WALKING NORTH ON A SOUTHBOUND TRAIN

RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #766
                  Environmental Research Foundation               .
.           P.O. Box 160, New Brunswick, N.J.  08903            .
.          Fax (732) 791-4603; E-mail: erf@rachel.org           .
.                          ==========                           .
All back issues are on the web at: http://www.rachel.org in text
and PDF formats.
----------------------

Great idea for a bumper sticker. Know any place that makes them, localy if
possible?

Fwd from Bill Lear:

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber are coming out with a book by this
title.  I'd like a bumper sticker that has this title, along with logos
from Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS.  Anyone know if there exists such

source:
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 12:50:01 -1000
From: Ralph Johansen <michele@MAUI.NET>
Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
    <SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA>
To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA
Subject: Weapons of Mass Deception

------------------- 
 T. Donnolly, principal author of "Rebuilding America's Defenses"
(2000), writes again (July 2003)  to unveil a chilling plan for military
domination of the world in the 21st Century having as a blueprint
the strategy followed by the U.S. Army during "the conquest of the
West", which we all know entailed the systematic genocide of the
original inhabitants of North America.

In his paper "Toward a Global Cavalry"  Donnolly argues:

"In sum, the strategic imperative of patrolling the perimeter of the
Pax Americana is transforming the U.S. military, and those few
other forces capable and willing of standing alongside, into the
cavalry of a global, liberal international order. Like the cavalry of the
Old West, their job is one part warrior and one part policeman--both
of which are entirely within the tradition of the American military".
 source:
(available from PFPC at
http://www.rrojasdatabank.info/pfpc ),

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

Take the case of John Clarke, an organiser with the Ontario Coalition
Against Poverty (OCAP). In February 2002 he was crossing into the US from
Canada to speak at Michigan State University. He was taken into the
immigration offices and asked what anti-globalisation protests he had
attended and whether he 'opposed the ideology of the United States'. His
car was searched and he was frisked. He was denied entry to the US, then
interrogated by a special agent with the State Department's Diplomatic
Security Service. He was asked if the OCAP was a cover for anarchism and
if he was a 'socialist'. The agent had a file on the OCAP, leaflets from
public-speaking engagements Clarke had taken part in and the name of a man
Clarke had stayed with in Chicago. Clarke was accused of being an
'advocate for violence' and threatened with jail. Astonishingly, the
interrogator asked him questions about Osama bin Laden.

Sounds like a rogue agent? Not if you take into account the six French
journalists who arrived at Los Angeles Airport this May to cover a video
games conference. They were detained -- three of them in cells for 26
hours -- interrogated, subjected to body searches and then forcibly
repatriated .

source:

The Sunday Herald
29 June 2003
--------------------------
Rage. Mistrust. Hatred. Fear. Uncle Sam's enemies within - 

A report by the ACLU called Freedom Under Fire: Dissent In Post-9/11
America says: 'There is a pall over our country. The responses to dissent
by many government officials so clearly violate the letter and the spirit
of the supreme law of the land that they threaten the underpinnings of
democracy itself.'

The words of Justice Antonin Scalia, an avid Bush supporter and member of
the Supreme Court, seem to support these fears. In March, during a lecture
at John Carroll University in Ohio, Scalia told his audience: 'Most of the
rights you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.' He added
that in wartime 'the protections will be ratcheted down to the
constitutional minimum.'

Under current laws, anyone even suspected of terrorism can be held
indefinitely without charge or access to a lawyer. A new proposed law
would lead to anyone deemed a sympathiser of an organisation classed as
terrorist having their US citizenship revoked; they would also be
deported. The Pentagon's Total Information Awareness plans will allow the
state to analyse every piece of data held on each US citizen.


Or how about Jason Halperin? This March he was in an Indian restaurant in
New York when it was raided by five police officers with guns drawn.
Halperin says they kicked open the doors, then pointed guns in the faces
of staff and made them crawl out of the kitchen . Ten other officers from
the Department of Homeland Security then entered. One patron said the
police had no right to hold him; he was told the Patriot Act allowed his
detention without warrant. Halperin asked if he could see a lawyer; he was
told only if he came to the station, and then in 'maybe a month'. When he
told police he was leaving, an officer walked over, his hand on his gun,
saying: 'Go ahead and leave, just go ahead.' Another officer said: 'We are
at war and this is for your safety.'

source:-
Sunday  Herald, 29 June 2003
-------------------         
 Bad dudes and boneheads by Stephen Gowans 


But even though Rumsfeld and his merry band of velociraptors would, by
any reasonable standard, seem to be in trouble, they're not. A
Washington Post/ABC poll says that 60 percent of Americans say the war
was justified, even though weapons of mass destruction -- the ostensible
reason for the war -- haven't been found. {2}

More alarmingly, 56 percent are in favor of going to war against Iran (a
growing possibility as the next target in Washington's global
blitzkrieg) versus 38 percent opposed.

So, what's going on? Do Americans get a kick out of seeing the Pentagon
kick the shit out of other countries?

The answer, it seems, is yes -- if they can feel sanctimonious about it.
And there a whole lot of people telling them they should. 

source:
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 20:47:58 -0400
From: Richard Fidler <rfidler@CYBERUS.CA>
Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
    <SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA>
To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA
Subject: FW: Bad dudes and boneheads (Stephen Gowans)
--------------------
Expert said to tell legislators he was pressed to distort some evidence
By James Risen and Douglas Jehl

Washington weapons told Congressional committees in closed-door hearings
last week that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and
other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views, several
Congressional officials said today.

The officials described what they said was a dramatic moment at a House
Intelligence Committee hearing last week when the weapons expert came
forward to tell Congress he had felt such pressure.

By speaking out, they said, the senior intelligence expert, identified by
several officials as Christian Westermann, became the first member of the
intelligence community on active service to make this sort of admission to
members of Congress.
  
source:
New York Times     June 25, 2003
Expert said to tell legislators he was pressed to distort some evidence
By James Risen and Douglas Jehl
-----------------------
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~