Recovered history
News items from the Review

INDEX

Bilderberg conferences 2007 BILDERBERGERS EVEN KEEPING LOCATION SECRET THIS YEAR WORLDNET DAILY - The super-secret Bilderberg Group, an organization of powerful international elites, is set to meet this week somewhere in Turkey - but even the precise location is a mystery. The meeting begins Thursday and continues through Sunday. Those expected to attend include Donald Graham, chairman and chief executive officer of the Washington Post, Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, John Vinocur, senior correspondent of the International Herald Tribune, Paul Gigot, editor of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Beytout, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro, George David, chairman of Coca-Cola, Martin Feldstein, president and chief executive officer of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Vernon Jordan, senior managing director of Lazard Freres & Co., Anatole Kaletsky, editor at large of the Times of London and General William Luti, the new "war czar." According to reports from Turkey, Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions and global energy issues will be on the agenda - but only invitees know for sure. How important are events like this weekend's Bilderberg conference? It may not make any difference now, but in 2004, according to the New York Times, it was the standout "performance" of Sen. John Edwards at the super-secret Bilderberg meeting in Italy that sealed the deal on his nomination as John Kerry's vice presidential running mate. Though no one knows for sure who will be at this weekend's gathering, among those attending the 2004 meeting in Italy, according to a list obtained by WND, were Edwards, Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.; Henry Kissinger; Richard Perle; Melinda Gates (wife of Bill Gates); David Rockefeller; Timothy F. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Donald Graham, chairman and CEO of the Washington Post Company; and Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55917 2006. . . . PROMINENT FIGURES NO SHOWS AS BILDERBERG ATTRACTS MORE ATTENTION THOSE WHO WONDER whether press coverage of the top secret Bilderberg meetings makes any difference should check this year's guest list. Despite coverage being almost totally blacked out in American major media, a handful of journals - including the Progressive Review, Alex Jones and Daniel Estulin - have steadily reported on the bizarrely concealed annual gatherings of over a hundred of the world's most powerful people. This year they were joined by Canadian media which treated the event as a news story rather than - as in the case of the American media - something to hide from their readers. Most prominent absentee from this year's guest list is Donald Graham of the Washington Post who has attended a number of past sessions. Also missing this year from the list of past attendees: anyone from the NY Times, the LA Times, all the major networks, James Hoagland of the Post, and names like Leslie Stahl, Bill Clinton, George Soros, Mortimer Zuckerman and Bill Moyers. No members of Congress showed up to fill seats previously occupied by such as Senators Corzine, Edwards, Dodds, and Hutchinson. In fact, the only elected politician we found on the list was Governor Pataki who would probably accept any invitation that would make him seem more useful. The only American journalist was Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal which only cares what the 100 most powerful people think, anyway. It may be stretching it a bit to say that the coverage of the Bilderberg confederacy by independent media such as the Review has scared at least some of the powerful away from this disreputable exercise in anti-democratic power, but we at least have the comfort that no one from Bilderberg's can argue about this with us in public. TOM SPEARS, OTTAWA CITIZEN - Four days after they arrived quietly at a Kanata, Ont., hotel, the world's rich and powerful left just as mysteriously, in limos and SUVs with blacked-out windows. The Bilderberg Group, a secretive organization of politicians and business leaders from around the world, gave no public statements. With private security guards and metal barriers keeping outsiders on the street, the Bilderbergers met in secret and then whisked themselves away in ones and twos, mostly to the airport. GUEST LIST http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/110606Attendees.htm BILDERBERG http://prorev.com/recovered7.htm THE MEETING OF WORLD LEADERS THE AMERICAN MEDIA WON'T TELL YOU ABOUT [Reports from five Canadian media] OTTAWA CITIZEN - The world's political elite, top thinkers and powerful business folk gathered here for an annual, ultra-secretive Bilderberg conference as heavy security kept conspiracy theorists [sic] and curious onlookers at bay. Global luminaries such as former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, US banker David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands were greeted at the airport by limousine drivers holding single-letter "B" signs late Thursday, said local reports. They were quickly whisked away to the Brookstreet Hotel in a serene suburb of Ottawa for three-day talks on oil markets, security concerns tied to Iran's nuclear ambitions, terrorism, and immigration, the Ottawa Citizen reported. . . Richard Perle, former US defense policy advisor, upon his arrival in Ottawa, denied allegations the group crafts public policy behind closed doors. "It discusses public policy," he stressed to a Citizen reporter. A statement from the group said the meetings were private to encourage "frank and open discussions." . . . Other attendees seen arriving in Ottawa on Thursday included former Canadian ambassador to Washington Frank McKenna, Royal Dutch Shell chairman Jorma Ollila, former World Bank president James Wolfenson and Scandinavian Airlines chairman Egil Myklebust, according to reports. Former New York governor George Pataki [sic], Iraq's deputy prime minister Ahmad Chalabi, the heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada, several media moguls, and cabinet ministers from Spain and Greece, were also expected to attend. CANADIAN PRESS - Those who follow the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a common currency, got Bill Clinton to support NAFTA, and is spending this week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ottawa police officers are standing guard outside a dozen metal gates that serve as security checkpoints a half-kilometre from the hotel. But Ottawa's finest are clearly not in charge here. To approach the hotel property, even these uniformed police officers are required to show their credentials to the half-dozen black-suited men working for Globe Risk, a private security firm. "This is pretty unusual," one Ottawa cop said. The Bilderberg group is a half-century-old organization comprising about 130 of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people. The group is named after the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954. . . CTV - Canadian writer Daniel Estulin, who has been following Bilderberg for years, describes it as a "powerful" group of politicians and business people with one objective: "To create a one-world government where you don't have individual nations -- you have one region, one religion, one constitution, one church, one currency and one country. And you're seeing it right now as you have NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and you have the European Community," Estulin, author of Club Bilderberg, said Friday on CTV's Mike Duffy Live. The author claims he has several "intimate friends" who are Bilderbergers, who are constantly feeding him information about the proceedings. Journalists are banned from the proceedings, except in special cases, and attendees never speak about what took place inside the meetings. "No one is allowed to talk about it -- but you have within the conference itself the members of the Bilderberg press," said Estulin, adding that members of The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek magazine, The Financial Times and Time magazine are in attendance. Other guests at the Ottawa hotel were asked to check-out before Thursday, cars left in the parking lot will be towed, and members of the hotel gym were told it would be inaccessible for four days. . . There are no real members of the group. Instead, a secret steering committee sends out invitations to mainly business and political leaders each year. The group has headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, at a building where phone calls are met by a recorded voice with instructions to leave a message, and calls are reportedly never returned. Critics such as Estulin say the group is sinister and elitist, and that it operates entirely through self interest. If the group's motives are legitimate, they ask, why keep their meetings so secret? "Now you have 125 of the most powerful people in the world, and no one seems to want to know what these people are talking about. If this is not a conspiracy, I don't know what is," he said. The group, however, claims secrecy is necessary in order to stimulate discussions. GLOBE AND MAIL, CANADA - "Some people say that I advocate a conspiracy theory. That's not true. I recognize a conspiracy fact," said James P. Tucker. The 74-year-old American journalist has been following the Bilderberg group for decades. . . OTTAWA SUN - The Washington, D.C.-based Tucker and his fellow Bilderberg-watchers will be hunting for helicopters and limousines. "I've chased these kids all over Europe and North America for over 20 years now," said Tucker, 71, in his southern drawl. "History has verified everything I've ever written." . . . Even mainstream critics say they are elitist, undemocratic and unaccountable. Others finger Bilderbergers as building a self-serving world government, pulling strings behind the scenes and planting their candidates in politics and other positions of power to serve their needs. This year, they'll again be talking oil prices, Tucker said. "Last year we reported on plans for oil prices to increase dramatically," he said. "At that time, oil was as low as $40 a barrel. Then it shot up to $70 a barrel. . . Conspiracy is fact when you have 120 of the world's most powerful men and they conduct public business behind closed doors with armed guards." THE THINKER'S GUIDE TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES Sam Smith - A conspiracy does not have to be illegal; it can merely be wrongful or harmful. - The term 'conspiracy theory' was invented by elite media and politicians to denigrate questions or critical presumptions about events about which important facts remain unrevealed. - The intelligent response to such events is to remain agnostic, skeptical, and curious. Theories may be suggested - just as they are every day about less complex and more open matters on news broadcasts and op ed pages - but such theories should not stray too far from available evidence. Conversely, as long as serious anomalies remain, dismissing questions and doubts as a "conspiracy theory" is a highly unintelligent response. It is also ironic as those ridiculing the questions and doubts typically consider themselves intellectually superior to the doubters. But they aren't because they stopped thinking the moment someone in power told them a superficially plausible answer. Further, to ridicule those still with doubts about such matters is intellectually dishonest. - There is the further irony that many who ridicule doubts about the official version of events were typically trained at elite colleges where, in political science and history, theories often take precedent over facts and in which substantive decisions affecting politics and history are presumed to be the work of a small number of wise men (sic). They are trained, in effect, to trust in (1) theories and (2) benign confederacies. Most major media political coverage is based on the great man theory of history. This pattern can be found in everything from Skull & Bones to the Washington Post editorial board to the Council on Foreign Relations. You might even call them conspiracy theorists. - Other fields - such as social history or anthropology - posit that change for better or evil can come as cultural change or choices and not just as the decisions of "great men." This is why one of the biggest stories in modern American history was never well covered: the declining birth rate. No great men decided it should happen. - Homicide detectives and investigative reporters, among others, are inductive thinkers who start with evidence rather than with theories and aren't happy when the evidence is weak, conflicting or lacking. They keep working the case until a solid answer appears. This is alien to the well-educated newspaper editor who has been trained to trust official answers and conventional theories. - The unresolved major event is largely a modern phenomenon that coincides with the collapse of America's constitutional government and the decline of its culture. Beginning with the Kennedy assassination, the number of inadequately explained major events has been mounting steadily and with them a steady decline in the trust between he people and their government. The refusal of American elites to take these doubts seriously has been a major disservice to the republic. - You don't need a conspiracy to lie, do something illegal or to be stupid. WHY THE MEDIA ISN'T REPORTING THE BILDERBERG STORY The Bilderberg Conference is an ideal example of how the American elite turns its back on facts even as it denigrates those who wonder what the hell is going on. As of Saturday night, no major American media had reported the meeting of 130 of the world's most powerful and wealthiest individuals, a meeting so secret that one reporter was arrested for merely flying into the host city and the Ottawa police had to show credentials to private security guards to be permitted on the premises. The invited also include some nasty individuals such as Richard Perle and Ahmad Chalabi. You don't invite such types to a secret meeting if you plan to do anything worthwhile. There are no reports of any person of known moral standing being invited. How does one explain the utter lack of journalistic curiosity about all this? One could come up with a conspiratorial explanation but the answer is probably even more troubling: no conspiracy was needed at all. Like a well trained child, the media doesn't even want to know what is going on. Well, that isn't completely true since past participants have included the likes of Don Graham of the Washington Post and Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal. Many city councils in America operate under some sort of freedom of information and/or sunshine law. Why is it so important that we know what our town council is talking about behind our backs and so irrelevant what 130 of the most powerful individuals in the world are talking about secretly? Sorry, the American media is not cleared to give you an answer. 2005 THE BILDERBERG HUNTERS report that this year's session of the over-powered and under-sensible will be held at Rottach-Egern, Germany, about 40 miles from Munich. According to James P Tucker Jr: Bilderberg is gathering at the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Ueberfahrt, a five-star conference and business hotel with 188 luxury rooms. It is on a lake and near a golf course, typical Bilderberg requirements. High officials of the U.S. government and possibly a few congressional leaders will participate in three days of secret meetings to plan global policy. Heads of state and other high officials from Europe and Britain will participate, along with world financiers. David Rockefeller and his valet, Henry Kissinger, are longtime Bilderberg regulars. Donald Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, and associate editor Jimmy Lee Hoagland regularly attend, upon their promise to report nothing. The New York Times, LA Times and all major networks' ABC, CBS and NBC have participated. All participants are sworn to secrecy. Bilderberg denies its existence, and all the resorts at which they hold their meetings require their employees to lie and deny they are present. Three times the Dorint told AFP they were fully booked but that Bilderberg was not there. All but Bilderberg participants and their staffs, wives or, in some cases, someone else's wife, will be required to leave. The hotel staff will be warned to reveal nothing of what they see and hear. Armed guards will patrol not only the main entrance but the perimeters. Exposing Bilderberg meetings has provided advance warning months ahead of the mainstream media of U.S. wars, tax increases, and the downfall of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister of Britain, among other exclusives. 2004 JONATHAN DUFFY, BBC - The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organization marks its 50th anniversary, rumors are more rife than ever. Given its reputation as perhaps the most powerful organization in the world, the Bilderberg group doesn't go a bundle on its switchboard operations. . . Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted. SOME OF THE ATTENDEES - Honorary Secretary General - Taylor, Martin - International Adviser, Goldman Sachs International - Boot, Max - Neoconservative, Council on foreign Relations, Features Editor, Wall Street Journal - Corzine, Jon S. - Senator (D, New Jersey), Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs - Donilon, Thomas L - Vice-President, Fannie Mae, Council on Foreign Relations - Edwards, John - Senator (D. North Carolina) - Feith, Douglas J. - Undersecretary for Policy, Department of Defense - Gates, Melinda F. - Co-Founder, Gates Foundation, wife of Bill Gates - Geithner, Timothy F. - President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York - Graham, Donald E. - Chairman and CEO, Washington Post Company - Haas, Richard N. - President, Council on Foreign Relations, former Director of Policy and Planning staff, State Department - Holbrooke, Richard C - Vice Chairman, Perseus, former Director, Council on Foreign Relations, former Assistant Secretary of State - Issacson, Walter - President and CEO, Aspen Institute - Jordan, Vernon E. Senior Managing Director, Lazard Freres & Co LLC - Kagan, Robert - Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Kissinger Henry A. - Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc. - Kravis, Henry R. - Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., acquisitions financier - Kravis, Marie Josee - Senoir Fellow, Hudson Institute Inc. - Mathews, Jessica T. - President, Carnegie Endowment for International War Peace - McDonough, William J. - Chairman and CEO, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, former president, Federal Reserve Bank of New York - Perle, Richard N. - Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, former Likud policy adviser, former chair Defence Policy Board, former co-chairman, Hollinger Digital - Phillipe, HRH Prince - Rockefeller, David - Member JP Morgan International Council, Chairman, Council of the Americas - Ross, Dennis B - Director, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy - Thornton, John L. - Chairman, Brookings Institution, Professor, Tsinghua University 2003 On May 21, Financial Times published a feature article mentioning Bilderberg by Martin Wolf. But the Wall Street Journal, which is always represented [at Bilderberg] by Paul Gigot, editorial page editor, is standing fast to its pledge of secrecy. AFP called Gigot at WSJ's New York office. He was "unavailable" said his secretary, identified only as "Marianne." She sounded surprised by the question but acknowledged that Gigot was at the Bilderberg meeting in Versailles. Why does WSJ never report on Bilderberg? "He's a participant, not a reporter," she said. "Participants don't report on this." "But it is a major story being ignored," AFP said. "Why is it a story?" she challenged. "When you have 120 world leaders in international finance, political leaders, including heads of state and high officials of the U.S. government, how can that not be a story?" AFP asked. A pause followed, then AFP added: "Bilderberg meetings are sealed off, reporters are not allowed in." "That's their problem." "And Mr. Gigot will report nothing?" "I told you, he is a participant and participants don't report on these meetings." In fact, "participants" are ordered to give no interviews and report nothing on what transpires. "When your paper, The Washington Post and all three major networks participate and promise to not report, is this not a conspiracy?" "I told you, you have to ask them," she said, terminating the conversation. - AMERICAN FREE PRESS WEEKEND EVENTS REGIME CHANGERS OF THE WORLD HOLD ANNUAL SECRET MEETING BBC - The Bilderberg meeting will be held in Versailles just before the start of the Group of Seven meeting of finance ministers in nearby Paris. Henry Kissinger is believed to be attending this year Bilderberg, which was founded in the 1950s by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, is said to steer international policy from behind closed doors. Its critics say that it is a capitalist organization which operates entirely through self interest. By anyone's standards, it is a bit of a mystery. There are no members as such - instead, an invitation list is comprised each year by an unknown steering committee, but participants are mainly leading and powerful figures in the fields of business and politics. . .The meetings are cloaked in secrecy and participants rarely reveal their attendance, although this year's list is rumored to include the American banker David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger. What the group actually does is no clearer either, although it's known to be an extremely influential lobbying group with a good deal of political clout on both sides of the Atlantic. . . Critics accuse Bilderberg of being sinister and conspiratorial - if what the delegates are discussing is really for the good of ordinary people they ask, then why can't they publicist it? BILDERBERG SITE - The hotel has been cordoned off in such a way as to be completely impossible to see. Friendly staff say all the windows have been blacked out to stop photographers who get inside the riot barriers from snapping secret guests inside. The conference agenda is supposed to be secret but leaks strongly indicate management of the Iraq and Palestine invasions as well as a final push for a European Army are top of the list this year. . . BBC Radio 4 are making a documentary . . . and independent journalists from Iceland, Norway and Turkey too. Journalists from London magazine, The Economist, are inside Bilderberg every year but since one curious 'mistake' in the 1980's never mention the conference in their pages. The anti-globalisation French daily newspaper, 'Liberation', says it might cover the Bilderberg conference in a few weeks time. Many journalists are afraid of the power the Bilderbergers wield. WORLDNET DAILY - The Bilderberg Group has been described as "50 people who run the world and 20 hangers-on." It's actually a slightly bigger conspiracy. In the words of another observer, it is comprised of "120 or so of the most influential men in Europe and North America." Since 1953, the Bilderberg Group has convened government, business, academic and journalistic representatives from the U.S., Canada and Europe. The locations and agendas of the conferences are closely guarded secrets. Last year, the BBC described the annual meetings this way: "It's officially described as a private gathering, but with a guest list including the heads of European and American corporations, political leaders and a few intellectuals, it's one of the most influential organizations on the planet." British journalist Jon Ronson, who is the author of a book on Bilderberg, had this to say: "I'm a sort of semi-conspiracy theorist when it comes to Bilderberg because I think they wouldn't go to that much trouble of having this incredibly expensive international conference every year and they'd go to all this trouble to keep themselves out of the press and be really secret and invite the world's most powerful people if it was just a chat and a game of golf, which is basically what they say it is. So I do think they have some impact on world affairs." 2002 The 48th Bilderberg meeting took place in Brussels earlier this month. The Bilderbergers are a sort of elite version of a militia -- a covert organization dedicated to self-defense, the self in this case being the powerful of the world. They might also be called a hate group, since they hate public exposure of their activities. The Bilderbergers are more a manifestation than a cause of our troubles. After all, you can't destroy the economy of whole continents, poison the planet, or dismantle democracy in just one three-day get-together. Still, the Bilderberg globapolists -- along with their allies on the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations -- exercise a large, unexamined, and undemocratic influence on events and should be regarded with a beady eye whenever they assemble in dangerous numbers. Here are some of the individuals present at this year's meeting. Note particularly the prominent media figures involved: Honorary Secretary General: J. Martin Taylor, Chairman, WH Smith Group, Adviser, Goldman Sachs Allaire, Paul, USA, Chair, Xerox Betz, Hans-Georg, Columbia & NY Unis. Black, Conrad, CDN, Chair, Telegraph Group Deutch, John M, MIT Dodd, Christopher J, USA, Senator, D, Connecticut Donilon, Thomas E, USA, FannieMae Dyson, Esther, USA, EDventure Frum, David, CDN, National Post Graham, Donald E, USA, Washington Post Hagel, Chuck, USA, Senator, R, Nebraska Hutchison, Kay bailey, USA, Senator, R, Texas Johnson, James A, USA, Johnson Capital Jordan Jr, Vernon E, USA, Lazard Frères Kissinger, Henry A, USA, Kissinger Associates Kravis, Henry R, USA, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Kravis, Marie-Josée, USA, Hudson Institute Mathews, Jessica T, USA, Carnegie Endowment McDonough, William J, USA, Pres. Federal Reserve Bank of NY Moore, Mike, INT, WTO Richardson, Bill, USA, Energy Secretary Rockefeller, David, USA, Chase Manhattan Bank Solana Madariaga, Javier, INT, Sec Gen, Council of the EU Soros, George, USA, Soros Fund Management Steinberg, James B, USA, Dep Asst to the President for National Security ffairs Tarullo, Daniel K, USA, Georgetowm Univ. Thornton, John L, Goldman Sachs Vink, Lodewijk JR de, USA, Warner Lambert Wolfensohn, James D, World Bank Wolfowitz, Paul, USA, John Hopkins Univ. Mickelthwait, R. John, GB, United States Editor, Economist Wooldridge, Adrian D, GB, Foreign Correspondent, Economist 1999 BILDERBERG NEWS [Portugal]: A massive security operation was launched in Sintra on Wednesday, in preparation for the arrival of some of the world's most powerful people. A special unit from the [Judicial Police] was reported to be sweeping Penha Longa for listening devices late Wednesday. A film crew from the UK's Channel 4 were being trailed by a team of plain clothes police and security men after they attempted to film inside the hotel on Tuesday afternoon .... In the last four days the [News's] site has accumulated over 368,000 hits .... The BBC Worldwide Monitoring Service this week printed a text of a report by the Yugoslav News Agency, Tanjug, which said the plan to bring about a Balkan Vietnam was drawn up secretly back in 1996 and reactivated at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group held in Scotland last year, citing the May 27 edition of the Yugoslav newspaper "Vojska." THE NEWS http://www.the-news.net/ Archeologists have found the remains of a banana on a heap of soggy Tudor rubbish that is almost a century older than any recorded banana in Britain. According to the guardian, "It was thrown into one of the more revolting stretches of the south bank of the Thames around 1560. The earliest recorded bananas in Britain were in a bunch imported in 1633 from Bermuda and hung up in Thomas Johnson's herbalist shop on Snow Hill, central London. Regular imports only came with steam ships in the 19th century." THE MEETING YOU WON'T HEAR ABOUT It is unlikely that you will hear elsewhere about what possibly could be the most important meeting of important people this year. It is the meeting of the Bilderberg Group, gathering in early June in Sintra Portugal. In fact, the location of the annual gathering of the barons and baronesses of the New World Order was secret until broken by Portugal's English language paper, The News. Even in that country, and after the national press agency decided to distribute the News' report, the rest of the media kept it a secret from readers. Writes the News: "A quick search of the internet on the single keyword Bilderberg, will bring up some of the most extraordinary claims regarding the objectives and activities of this powerful group of industrialists, financiers and ex-politicians. It will also reveal many reports of the lengths to which this organization will go to maintain full secrecy over its meetings. Much of the information could be seen as scurrilous, even far fetched, with claims that these people are part of what is described as the New World Order. An hour or so of research will be enough to find the names of most of the members, details of their past meetings and claims of what has been discussed. It is not for this newspaper to become part of this speculation, yet it is extraordinary that even in a democracy such as Portugal, the very presence of what can only be described as one of the most prestigious meetings of powerful men and women from around the world, could remain unreported anywhere." In this country, for a journalist to even mention the Bilderbergers is considered evidence of paranoia. So far this year, once again, none have taken the risk. THE NEWS [PORTUGAL]: The tentative agenda for the Bilderberg meeting scheduled for June 3 to June 6 at the Penha Longa resort in Sintra [includes]global governance, including a review on the progress in the formation of an Asian bloc under the leadership of Japan; The Kosovo war, including the formation of an "independent" Kosovo; The ultimate replacement of NATO with a Western European Army and the appointment of a Y2K Czar (Mikhail Gorbachev could be a front runner for this post) to oversee global passage through the Y2K Emergency which they feel will be much worse than expected. .... Bilderbergers are said to be extremely concerned about the global impact of, and opportunities offered by, the Y2K problem (which the Bilderbergers believe to be far worse than many people have realized). The alleged presence of Bill Gates at the Sintra meeting may substantiate this claim. .... With the meeting now only a few days away, nothing has appeared in the Portuguese, European or international media, though the internet is 'alive' with speculation. One international press agency in Lisbon is reported to have said that it has been waiting for the international press to request stories or photos, yet so far not one single request has been received from anywhere. MORE FUN FACTS ABOUT THE BILDERBERGERS -- The Bilderberg Society last met on May 14, 1998. By its own press release, the group gathered to "discuss the Atlantic relationship in a time of change. Among others the Conference will discuss NATO, Asian Crisis, EMU, Growing Military Disparity, Japan, Multilateral Organizations, Europe's social model, Turkey, EU/US Market Place [sic]." -- As Parascope has reported, all Bilderberg discussions are conducted in absolute secrecy. "To guarantee solitude, the group customarily books an entire hotel in a secluded location. The hotel is protected by a tight security grid of heavily armed guards from the U.S. Secret Service, various European secret service agencies and the local police." -- According to the Bilderberg's press release, "Participants have agreed not to give interviews to the press during the meeting. In contacts with the news media after the conference it is an established rule that no attribution should be made to individual participants of what was discussed during the meeting." -- Bilderberg founder Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands himself once said, "It is difficult to re-educate people who have been brought up on nationalism to the idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supra-national body." -- Writes Parascope: "Many members of the group are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and other secretive supra-national planning forums. Topics on the Bilderberg's agenda have been smoothly integrated into discussions at G-8 meetings, at the World Economic Forum's annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, and at other global policy venues. The seeds of consensus from these various meetings are then carried home to national governments and corporate boardrooms." -- In 1975 C. Gordon Tether, long-time London Financial Times columnist wrote in a 1975 column "If the Bilderberg Group is not a conspiracy of some sort, it is conducted in such a way as to give a remarkably good imitation of one." Every subsequent word that Tether wrote about Bilderberg was cut by his editors. Two years later he was dismissed. -- At the 1998 conference, freelance journalist Campbell Thomas was detained for eight hours by local Scottish police after he began asking too many questions. "The holding cell I was put in was in a disgusting state, with excrement on every wall, and I was in that cell for the best part of five hours." -- The Bilderberg's advisory committee includes Chase-Manhattan chairman David Rockefeller. Henry Kissinger and Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. are listed among the Group's steering committee. Past attendees include President Clinton (who attended in 1991 just before entering the scene as a possible White House contender), World Bank president James Wolfensohn, U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, International Monetary Fund managing director Stanley Fischer, and Ford Motor Company president Alexander Trotman, to name just a few participants. PARASCOPE http://parascope.com THE REVIEW LIST Media types who were guests at the Bilderberg conference and failed to tell their readers or viewers what happened there. Compiled by Parascope Henry Grunwald Mortimer Zuckerman Robert L. Bartley Peter Robert Kann Katharine Graham Jim Hoagland Osborn Eliot Peter Jennings Lesley R. Stahl Sharon Percy Rockefeller; William F. Buckley Joseph Kraft James Reston Joseph Harsch George Will Flora Lewis Donald C. Cook Albert J. Wohlstetter Thomas L. Friedman Hedley Donovan Bill Moyers William Kristol PARASCOPE http://www.parascope.com/mx/articles/bilderberg.htm THE REVIEW LIST Some of the people who attended last year's Bilderberg Conference ~ Carrington, Peter (GB): Former chairman of the Board, Christies International PLC; Former Secretary General, NATO ~ Agnelli, Giovanni (I): Honorary Chairman, Fiat S.p.A. ~ Allaire, Paul A (USA): Chairman, Xerox Corporation ~ Black, Conrad (CDN): Chairman, The Telegraph plc ~ Bonino, Emma (INT): Member of the European Commission ~ Brittan, Leon (INT): Vice President of the European Commission ~ Browne, John (GB): Group Chief Executive, British Petroleum Company plc ~ Chubais, Anatoli B. (RUS): Former First Vice Prime Minister; Chairman RAO EES ~ Clarke, Kenneth (GB): Member of Parliament ~ Deutch, John M. (USA): Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry. Former Director General, Central Intelligence Agency; Former Deputy Secretary of Defense ~ Fischer, Stanley (INT): First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund ~ Grossman, Marc (USA): Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of State ~ Guetta, Bernard (F): Editor in Chief, Le Nouvel Observateur ~ Hoagland, Jim (USA): Associate Editor, The Washington Post ~ Hoge, Jr., James F. (USA): Editor, Foreign Affairs ~ Hogg, Christopher (GB): Chairman, Reuters Group plc ~ Holbrooke, Richard C. (USA): Former Assistant Secretary for European Affairs; Vice Chairman, CS First Boston ~ Issing, Otmar (D): Member of the Board, Deutsche Bundesbank ~ Johnson, James A. (USA): Chairman and CEO, FannieMae ~ Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. (USA): Senior Partner, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP (Attorneys-at-Law) ~ Kissinger, Henry A. (USA): Former Secretary of State; Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc. ~ Kravis, Henry R. (USA): Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. ~ Kravis, Marie-Josee (USA): Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute Inc. ~ Matthews, Jessica Tuchman (USA): President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ~ McDonough, William J. (USA): President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York ~ Ollila, Jorma (FIN): President and CEO, Nokia Corporation ~ Prestowitz, Clyde V. (USA): President, Economic Strategy Institute ~ Rhodes, William R. (USA): Vice Chairman, CitiBank, N.A. ~ Rockefeller, David (USA): Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank International Advisory Committee ~ Roll, Eric (GB): Senior Advisor, SBC Warburg Dillon Read ~ Rothschild, Evelyn de (GB): Chairman, N M Rothschild and Sons ~ Schremp, Jurgen E. (D): Chairman of the Board of Management, Daimler Benz A.G. ~ Solana Madariaga, Javier (INT): Secretary General, NATO ~ Summers, Lawrence H. (USA): Deputy Secretary for International Affairs, U.S. Department of the Treasury ~ Sutherland, Peter D. (IRL): Chairman, Goldman Sachs International; Chairman, British Petroleum Company plc. ~ Thoman, G. Richard (USA): President and CEO, Xerox Corporation ~ Vink, Lodewijk J.R. de (USA): President and CEO, Warner Lambert Company ~ Whitman, Christine Todd (USA): Governor of New Jersey ~ Wolfensohn, James D. (INT): President, the World Bank ~ Yost, Casimir A. (USA): Director, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington Convention protests 2000 PROTESTERS SEEN MORE DANGEROUS THAN BOMBS PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: The Secret Service is checking rooftops. The FBI is monitoring the Internet. And city police are getting ready to play cat and mouse with protesters. Unnoticed by most Philadelphians, security preparations for the Republican National Convention are moving into high gear about 10 weeks before the July 31-Aug. 3 event. Thousands of law enforcement officers will land in the city for an operation made particularly complex by the likelihood of civil disobedience and surprise protests. "Virtually every resource that the FBI has available will be put into play," said Thomas J. Harrington, the assistant special agent-in-charge in the FBI's Philadelphia office. "After the Atlanta Olympics it was bombings that were the main focus. . . . Now protesters have become more of a focus." . . . Taking their cue from recent protests in Washington, DC, and Seattle, police intend to be ready to rush officers to potential flash points around the city in "mobile field forces," said Deputy Commissioner Robert Mitchell. They could travel in either marked or unmarked vehicles, he said, but he gave no details . . . Some activists have hinted at their plans on the Internet, where groups often publicize and discuss their events using e-mail systems called listservs. The FBI regularly reads the listservs, the agents said. "E-mails are like leads," Harrington said. "We've had a lot of experience with them, whether it's stock fraud or child porn." PHILADELPHIA [As of Aug 7] ARRESTS Total Arrests: 480 Released: 155 Still in Jail: 325 Felony cases: 36 Now on Hunger Strike: 149 MEDICAL o 32 counts of excessive force, of which 7 are accounts of severe hog ties. o 2 officer's names and badge numbers come up repeatedly. One is responsible for dragging a man in the nude, grabbing a protester's penis, stepping on necks, jumping on a man's back with the help of 2 other officers, slamming a face into a cell door. The other officer's activities include saying "I'll fuck you up the ass and make you my bitch," slamming a man against wall repeatedly, punching a prisoner in the stomach, holding a prisoner's face in the trash with his knee in the prisoner's neck, throwing a prisoner against the wall. o 4 cases of denial of access to medication: 1 person with HIV denied for 2 days, received on third day. 1 person with migraine, vomiting, denied all medicine including over the counter pain meds. 1 hypoglycemic person denied access to adequate food. o 4 counts of sexual abuse: dragging a man naked, wrenching a man's penis, twisting a person's nipples, man subjected to random search of genitals. o 2 threats of rape from Commanding Officers. A leader of the Ruckus Society has been arrested while walking along a city street and charged with with possession of an instrument of crime, obstruction of justice, obstructing a highway, failure to disperse, recklessly endangering another person and conspiracy. A judge set an extraordinary $1 million bail for John Sellers as the mistreatment of protesters at the GOP convention continues. The bail was later reduced to $100,000. . NY TIMES: Protest leaders argued that the city was bent on detaining defendants beyond the Democratic National Convention next week in Los Angeles. But they vowed that demonstrations planned for that convention would be stronger because of the arrests in Philadelphia. R2K NETWORK: Joseph Rogers, a Quaker peace volunteer and President of the Mental Health Association of Southeast Pennsylvania, was detained on Tuesday evening. Rogers witnessed correctional officers tightening the handcuffs of protesters until their hands became blue. When Rogers asked the guards to loosen the cuffs, the guards retorted "This will teach them a lesson, this will teach them to come to Philly." After further protest, Rogers was removed from his cell and cuffed from his left hand to his right ankle. "I told them I was diabetic but they threw me to the ground so they could cuff me. I was told to hop but my damaged knee prevented me. They dragged me to my cell." Malcolm Emerich, another recently released arrestee, stated, "The arrest process was chaotic and no police could honestly state where and when I was arrested. As a result, I had five different officers, at five different times, falsely assert they had seen me, and I am now facing six separate misdemeanor counts. Because of the chaotic arrest procedure and the inability of the police to ascertain where and why people were arrested, by the time I left the jail, some protesters had gone up to 72 hours without being arraigned. I met two protesters who had broken fingers from their arrests. The jail conditions were nothing short of Kafkaesque." Guards, police, and administrators continue to attack protesters in jail, seeking to demoralize and divide. Recently released prisoners have reported eyewitness accounts of widespread abuse that can only be described as torture. There are numerous accounts of arrestees who have been isolated, verbally abused, punched, kicked, thrown against walls, bloodied, and dragged naked across floors, in one instance through a "trash trough" containing refuse, spittle and urine. There has been a reported sexual assault by a female officer who pulled and twisted a prisoner's penis. Seven witnesses saw one woman dragged naked and bleeding. Diabetics, epileptics, and asthmatics continue to be denied medication. Trauma and psychological stress are evident. Paul Davis, from ACT UP Philadelphia, reports his eyewitness accounts of brutality inside the Philadelphia jail. "I saw a man handcuffed to his cell door in a crucifixion position. He groaned and bellowed for 20 minutes that they were using metal handcuffs to smash his hands. I heard women screaming and being dragged along the floor. I saw a woman screaming in pain as a police officer said, "You want more?! You want more?!" Arrestees have now been held for over 60 hours without arraignment, some without phone calls or contact with their lawyers. Detainees report missing paperwork, and arraignments with incomplete or slipshod records. Philadelphia continues to restrict R2K Legal Committee lawyers, allowing only a total of three lawyers access to all six detention sites, and hundreds of defendants. Prosecutors have set unprecedented high bail for non-violent civil disobedience. Most bails range from $15,000 to $30,000, while others are much higher. Two individuals have bail of $1,000,000, an amount typically reserved for serial killers, not community organizers, non-violence training facilitators artists and puppet makers charged with misdemeanors. DAVEY D, FNV NEWSLETTER: Chuck D, Professor Griff and Kyle James of the new group Confrontation Camp brought some serious heat to the Republican Convention the other night. They performed at a function outside the convention hall that was hosted by the owners of Ben and Jerrys Ice Cream. One of the tracks they performed was new cut called 'Son of a Bush' which takes aim at Presidential candidate George W Bush. I spoke to Chuck the day before the group's scheduled performance . . . He noted that the group intended to repeat the chorus 'Son of a Bush' a few hundred times and remind people the Texas Governor is a 'serial killer.' . . . Chuck D also referred to this past week's event in Philly as the Re-Pimp-lican Convention. This had a lot to do with the part parading all these Black and Brown faces on TV while keeping their platforms and policies in opposition to many of our collective interests. Chuck noted that both political parties leave a lot to be desired, but it was important for the Hip Hop generation to stay informed and up to date. *** ACT UP: Philadelphia demonstrators are being held using bails as high as $450,000 -- this is unprecedented in the history of US demonstrators. We are being held so that we do not exercise our constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly during the Republican Convention. People have been picked off the streets while walking alone and have not been heard from in days. Calls to their cell phones reach police officers who try to lure the caller to meet them by posing as a Jefferson Hospital staff member caring for the person, who has been "injured." 10:45 am Thursday--We just got reports that cops are holding gloves soaked in pepper spray near (but not against) the eyes of demonstrators to get them to agree to be arraigned -- they are practicing jail solidarity to ensure the safety of all of them . . . Some demonstrators have been held for up to 14 hours hog-tied with handcuffs. There were screams from the area where the men are being held of "torture! " and "medic!" When the women called out to find out what was going on, they were denied bathroom privileges. *** INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER: There are unconfirmed reports that two separate one million dollar bails have been set for John Sellers, coordinator of the Ruckus society, and a member of ACT UP . . . One man, who had stripped naked to protect himself from being identified, was sexually assaulted. There has been extremely limited access to one particular cell block of men. An R2K lawyer was allowed to see them only once, very briefly. In the brief contact, however, they indicated that intense brutality had occurred . . . Impostors pretending to be attorneys from R2K Legal have tried to convince detainees to break jail solidarity . . . 150 men and women are still on hunger strike . . . Two cars of undercover police patrolling the area around the Friends Meeting House. Four plainclothes cops jumped out of one car and began harassing two people who had left the meeting house. The two fled on foot . . . The Quakers have opened their doors for the night to anyone staying on for jail solidarity. The police have surrounded the meeting house and are threatening anyone in the area not in transit with arrest. More than 60 activists are camped outside the Roundhouse at 8th and Race streets, demanding the release of over four hundred prisoners held there. The Roundhouse, as the police headquarters is called, is an imperious cement building with no corners, where protesters arrested on Tuesday await arraignment in basement cells. At the park across the street at 8th and Vine, protesters with tents and drums have joined in solidarity with the prisoners inside who, in an effort to be released together without being charged, have refused to give their names to authorities . . . We have received reports that police toilet-papered one of their own squad cars, photographed it with the protesters in the background, and then moved into the park as if to break up the campsite. However, the stunt seemed designed simply to intimidate the group, as no arrests were made . . . At nightfall, spirits were high. Tents were going up and people were grilling food while the drum circle kept a steady beat. Jerry from Ashville, North Carolina, who has been arrested before for protesting and was hospitalized for the beating he received during questioning, said that "we've got work to do too. As much fun as were having here, we've got to make sacrifices to get our people out." Arrested protesters have told their legal contacts harrowing stories of beatings, solitary confinement, refusal of bathroom privileges and denial of medication. Prisoners suffering from problems like anxiety, asthma, hemophilia, and injuries incurred during their arrests are not receiving the treatment they need. Seven witnesses report seeing a woman dragged down the hallway, naked and bleeding. *** JAMES RIDGEWAY, VILLAGE VOICE: In a phone call at 1:30 this morning, Rebecca Hill, a New York City graduate student, told her stepmother, Penny Hill, that she was being held in a five-by-seven cell with five others in Roundhouse. Hill said jailers have been providing two cheese sandwiches and iced tea per day. Some of her cell mates were badly hurt, Hill said, including one woman with an open gash to the head. The woman had not received any medical attention, Hill said. The women had allegedly been held with no outside contact since Tuesday, when they were arrested. They have not been arraigned, and no have charges been filed. Hill said there is talk of bail being set at $15,000. This morning the Philadelphia Inquirer, in two news columns, congratulated the police for tireless restraint and vigilance, noting that the cops had performed top-flight intelligence work before the convention by eavesdropping on chat rooms and building portfolios on activists. According to the Inquirer, what appeared to out-of-town visitors as a virtual melee Tuesday in Center City was in fact a carefully choreographed script . . . Buried in the Inquirer story was this comment from an irate cop who said the demonstrators were squirting liquids in the faces of police officers: "You can't react, but it pisses you off," the officer said. "I hope they really nail a lot of those guys who did that. And you know a lot of them aren't from around here. They probably live with Mommy and Daddy in some $250,000 house in Connecticut and don't have anything better to do. I just wish I could kick their asses." MARTIAL LAW DECLAN MCULLAGH, WIRED: US Army is prepared to respond to disruptions ranging from civil disobedience to nuclear explosions at the Republican National Convention, a confidential government document says. The terrorism response plan includes flying giant C-5 Galaxy cargo planes loaded with military gear into Willow Grove Naval Air Station, about 25 miles outside the city, and assembling troops at three National Guard armories near the downtown protest areas. "Preparedness for nuclear, biological, chemical, and civil disturbance events, as well as potential weather-related disaster events, must be considered," says the Federal Emergency Management Agency document, obtained by Wired News from a source who asked to remain anonymous. A FEMA spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the document, but said he did not have any information that a terrorist attack was likely to happen during the GOP convention . . . The document, created by FEMA to supplement its usual procedures, says that the US First Army will, if necessary, execute Operation Garden Plot to quell any serious civil disturbances. Operation Garden Plot has long been an object of speculation by conspiracy theorists, but the watchdog group Federation of American Scientists describes it as the military's overall plan for "support related to domestic civil disturbances" that was last used during the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union have protested the recent trend to use military troops for law enforcement purposes. If a terrorist attack happens, FEMA is responsible for aiding the FBI. But if the president declares martial law in response to looting, vandalism, or civil unrest, FEMA works with the Defense Department. [NOTE: There is no basis for martial law under the Constitution and no constitutional basis for the role that FEMA intends to assume under such circumstances. -- TPR] R2K: Thousands of activists protesting the "criminal injustice" system created major non-violent disruptions around this city today, occupying a dozen intersections, taking over many streets, and blocking several buses transporting delegates to the Republican National Convention. Throughout the day, at least 450 people were arrested at various locations. Activists demanded abolition of the death penalty and the prison-industrial complex, an end to police violence, and freedom for award-winning death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners. The convention's evening session was delayed because of the protests. Today's massive protests were met by pepper-spraying, beatings with batons -leaving at least one activist unconscious and hospitalized - and arrests of people not committing civil disobedience who were perceived by police to be "leaders." Observers noted that police appeared to single out people of color for harsher treatment. In addition, an hour before the protests began, police raided the "Ministry of Puppetganda," a studio where puppets were being assembled, trapping over 70 activists inside for about four hours before arresting everyone. UNITY 2000: One of the more outrageous police actions of the day started before the actions got underway. At 2 PM this afternoon scores of police officers surrounded the building being used to create puppets and other creative props. The Puppetistas call this location the home of puppetganda and it was here that folks have been busy for weeks creating the puppets and other items used in the demonstrations over the past few days. Arriving with no search warrant, the legal team forced the cops to go to court to get a warrant before they could enter the building. While the legal process was unfolding, the police kept a solid line of officers around, and on top of, the building for several hours. And they took the 75 people in the space into custody, keeping them in buses in the hot sun. (Yes, it was yet one more very hot and humid day here.) Eventually the police got the warrant and searched the place...supposedly looking for weapons and for a plastic explosive called C4. According to one of the lawyers, the last time C4 was used in Philadelphia was when the police bombed the Move house and set a whole block of houses on fire, killing a number of adults and children. As you might imagine, there was no C4 and nothing else resembling a weapon. The raid on the puppet space was pure intimidation.   FEEDBACK |||| HIDDEN STOCK MARKET CRASH? A READER - The dollar has lost up to 30% of its value over the last 6 months, as measured against other major world currencies, especially the Euro. The stock market has been steady to slowly rising, hovering near 8000-8500, plus or minus a few hundred points. Most Americans look to the DJIA as a measure of prosperity, without considering the value of the dollar. If we factor in the reduced value of the dollar on the market, there is a very big drop in the real value of the DJIA. Suppose an investor sold off his US stocks today, at the same price as 6 months ago, for say $8,500. Factoring in the reduced value of the dollar today, the $8,500 has only about 70% of its buying power remaining, or $8,500 x .7 = $5,950. This amounts to a silent market crash of considerable proportions: today's DJIA market value, adjusted for inflation, is really about 5600-5950 as compared to the value it had 6 months ago. The plunge protection team can play this game forever, keeping the market around 8000-8500, by intentionally devaluing the dollar to make the market appear steady, when it is, in fact, crashing at a considerable rate. New World Order 1912 President Woodrow Wilson: "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U. S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." 1921 Col Edward House reorganizes the Institute of International Affairs into the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). 1922 Philip Kerr in Foreign Affairs: "Obviously there is going to be no peace or prosperity for mankind as long as [the earth] remains divided into 50 or 60 independent states until some kind of international system is created...The real problem today is that of the world government." 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt in a letter to Col. Edward Mandell House: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government every since the days of Andrew Jackson..." 1945 President Truman: "It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for us to get along in a republic of the United States." 1954 Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands establishes the Bilderberg conference at which international politicians and bankers will meet secretly on an annual basis. 1963 J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "The case for government by elites is irrefutable...government by the people is possible but highly improbable." 1973 The Trilateral Commission is established by banke David Rockefeller. Zbigniew Brzezinski is named director. 1979 Barry Goldwater: "In my view The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power -- political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future." 1984 James McGregor Burns : "The framers of the U.S. constitution have simply been too shrewd for us. The have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified by mechanical linkages, frail bridges, tinkering. If we are to 'turn the Founders upside down' -- we must directly confront the constitutional structure they erected." 1992 Former Citicorp Chairman Walter Wriston : "A truly global economy will require ...compromises of national sovereignty...There is no escaping the system." 1992 Strobe Talbott, Time Magazine: "All countries are basically social arrangements...No matter how permanent or even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary...Perhaps national sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all...But it has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible century to clinch the case for world government." 1993 Henry Kissinger on NAFTA: "What Congress will have before it is not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system...a first step toward a new world order." 1993, Council on Foreign Relations president Leslie Gelb on The Charlie Rose Show: "...you [Charlie Rose] had me on [before] to talk about the New World Order. I talk about it all the time. It's one world now. The Council [CFR] can find, nurture, and begin to put people in the kinds of jobs this country needs. And that's going to be one of the major enterprises of the Council under me." 1993 Washington Post ombudsman Richard Harwood does an op-ed piece about the role of the CFR's media members: "Their membership is an acknowledgment of their ascension into the American ruling class [where] they do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United States; they help make it." - Compiled by by D.L. Cuddy Faking evidence AMERICA'S RECORD OF FAKING EVIDENCE - VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY - The U.S. has a long history of fabricating evidence to justify foreign adventures. Faked evidence was a hallmark of post-World War II U.S. covert operations in Latin America. In 1954, for example, it was instrumental in overthrowing the Arbenz government in Guatemala. Arbenz, who was suspected of having Communist leanings, had tried to make the United Fruit Company comply with Guatemalan law. At President Dwight D. Eisenhower s direction, the CIA organized and armed a force of malcontent Guatemalans living in Nicaragua to invade their home country. The invasion was explained and justified when a cache of Soviet-made weapons planted by the CIA was discovered on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. Washington alleged that the weapons were intended to support an attempt by Arbenz to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. One of the more egregious and embarrassing uses of fake material evidence occurred on the eve of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, when Alabama National Guard B-26 bombers attacked a Cuban Air Force base in Havana. When Cuba's UN ambassador protested, US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (himself misinformed by the White House) insisted that the attacking planes were those of defecting Cuban Air Force pilots. Two of the aircraft were shot down in Cuba, however, and others were forced to land in Miami where they could be examined. When it became clear that the planes were not Cuban, Washington s hand was shown and Stevenson was in high dudgeon. The war in Vietnam is replete with examples of fabrication and/or misrepresentation of intelligence to justify U.S. government policies and actions. The best-known case, of course, is the infamous Tonkin Gulf incident the one that did not happen but was used by President Lyndon Johnson to strong-arm Congress into giving him carte blanche for the war. Adding insult to injury, CIA current intelligence analysts were forbidden to report accurately on what had happened (and not happened) in the Tonkin Gulf in their daily publication the next morning, on grounds that the President had already decided to use the non-incident to justify launching the air war that very day. The analysts were aghast when their seniors explained that they had decided that they did not want to wear out their welcome at the White House. With William Casey at the helm of the CIA during the Reagan presidency, the planting of evidence to demonstrate that opponents of governments in Central America were sponsored by the USSR reached new heights or depths. The following are representative examples: (a) In January 1981 four dugout canoes were discovered on a Salvadoran beach. The U.S. claimed that the boats had carried 100 armed Sandinista guerrillas from Nicaragua to support leftist insurgents in El Salvador. Neither weapons nor Nicaraguans traceable to the boats were ever found, but Washington drew attention to the fact that the wood from which the boats were made was not native to El Salvador. (b) In February 1981, the State Department issued a sensational white paper based on alleged Salvadoran rebel documents. Authored by a young, eager-to-please Foreign Service officer named John Glassman, the paper depicted damning links between the insurgents, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. A smoking gun. Unfortunately for Glassman and the Reagan administration, Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny got access to the same documents and found little resemblance to what was contained in Glassman's paper. Glassman admitted to Kwitny that he had made up quotes and guessed at figures for the Soviet weapons supposedly coming to the Salvadoran insurgents. (c) Certainly among the most extraordinary attempts to plant evidence was the Barry Seal affair, a complicated operation designed to incriminate the Nicaraguan Sandinista government for international drug trafficking. The operation began in 1982, when CIA Director Casey created the position of National Intelligence Officer for Narcotics. Casey's handpicked NIO wasted no time telling representatives of other agencies that high priority was to be given to finding evidence linking both Castro and the Sandinistas to the burgeoning cocaine trade. Coast Guard and Drug Enforcement Agency officers protested that this might be counterproductive since Cuba was the most cooperative government in the Caribbean in the fight against drugs and there was no evidence showing that the Nicaraguan government played any significant role. Never mind, said the NIO, the task was to put black hats on our enemies. In 1986 Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who had trained Nicaraguan Contra pilots in the early eighties, was facing a long sentence after a federal drug conviction in Florida. Seal made his way to the White House's National Security Council to make the following proposition to officials there. He would fly his own plane to Colombia and take delivery of cocaine. He would then make an emergency landing in Nicaragua and make it appear that Sandinista officials were aiding him in drug trafficking. Seal made it clear that he would expect help with his legal problems. The Reagan White House jumped at the offer. Seal's plane was flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where it was fitted with secret cameras to enable Seal to photograph Nicaraguan officials in the act of assisting him with the boxes of cocaine. The operation went as planned. Seal flew to Colombia and then to Nicaragua where he landed at a commercial airfield. There he was met by a Nicaraguan named Federico Vaughan, who helped with the offloading and reloading of boxes of cocaine and was duly photographed not very well, it turned out, because the special cameras malfunctioned. Though blurred and grainy, the photos were delivered to the White House, and a triumphant Ronald Reagan went on national TV to show that the Sandinistas were not only Communists but also criminals intent on addicting America s youth. Again, the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Kwitny played the role of skunk at the picnic, pointing out substantial flaws in the concocted story. Vaughan, who according to the script was an assistant to Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomas Borge, was shown not to be what he claimed. Indeed, congressional investigators found that the telephone number called by Seal to contact Vaughn belonged to the U.S. embassy in Managua. It was yet another fiasco, and Seal paid for it with his life. His Colombian drug suppliers were not amused when the Reagan administration identified him publicly as a US undercover agent. As he awaited trial on other narcotics charges in Louisiana, Seal was ambushed and killed by four gunmen who left his body riddled with 140 bullets. Fabricated evidence also played an important role in the first President Bush's attempt to secure congressional and UN approval for the 1991 Gulf War. (a) Few will forget the heart-rending testimony before a congressional committee by the sobbing 15 year-old Kuwaiti girl called Nayirah on October 10, 1990. No congressperson, no journalist took the trouble to probe the identity of Nayirah, who was said to be an escapee from Kuwait but was later revealed to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington. With consummate skill, the story had been manufactured out of whole cloth and the 15 year-old coached by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, which has a rich history of being imbedded in Republican administrations. Similar unsubstantiated yarns made their debut several weeks later at the UN, where a team of seven witnesses, also coached by Hill & Knowlton, testified about atrocities in Iraq. (It was later learned that the seven had used false names.) And in an unprecedented move, the UN Security Council allowed the U.S. to show a video created by Hill & Knowlton. All to good effect. The PR campaign had the desired impact, and Congress voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq on January 12, 1991. (The UN did so on November 29, 1990.) Nayirah's true identity did not become known until two years later. Interestingly, the General Manager of Hill & Knowlton's Washington, DC office at the time was a woman named Victoria Clarke. She turned out to be less successful in her next job, as Press Secretary for the re-election campaign of President George Bush in 1992. But she is now back in her element as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. There was a corollary fabrication that proved equally effective in garnering support in Congress for the war resolution in 1991. The White House claimed there were satellite photos showing Iraqi tanks and troops massing on the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, threatening to invade Saudi Arabia. This fueled the campaign for war and frightened the Saudis into agreeing to cooperate fully with U.S. military forces. On September 11, 1990, President George H. W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, claimed 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks have poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. But an enterprising journalist, Jean Heller, reported in the St. Petersburg Times on January 6, 1991 (a bare ten days before the Gulf War began) that commercial satellite photos taken on September 11, the day the president spoke, showed no sign of a massive buildup of Iraqi forces in Kuwait. When the Pentagon was asked to provide evidence to support the president s claim, it refused to do so and continues to refuse to this day. Duke of Windsor ROB EVANS AND DAVID HENCKE, GUARDIAN, LONDON - President Roosevelt personally ordered covert surveillance on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor during the Second World War after receiving intelligence that the duchess had been passing secrets to a top Nazi with whom she was alleged to have had a tempestuous affair, according to documents released to the Guardian by the FBI. The damning dossier - released for the first time by the intelligence agency - shows that the main reason why the Americans thought the abdication of Edward VIII had taken place in 1936 was because the duchess fervently supported the Nazi regime and this was totally unacceptable to the then Conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. The official view has always been that he abdicated to marry the person he loved but could not stay on the throne because she was a divorcee. The papers show that the FBI was told by a minor German royal that Wallis Simpson was having an affair with Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was then German ambassador to Britain, while she was seeing the Duke of Windsor. The minor royal, Duke Charles Alexander of Wurttemberg, who later became a Franciscan monk, said that "he knew definitely that von Ribbentrop, while in England, sent the then Wallis Simpson 17 carnations every day. The 17 supposedly represented the number of times they had slept together." Saul Alinsky's rules for radicals From Rules for Radicals Saul Alinsky Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat. The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity. The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage. The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic. The seventh rule is: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment... The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose. The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counter side; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative... The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. you cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right--we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us." The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Who's an American? 1600s Most of various tribes scattered throughout the continent didn't know whether they were Americans as there was no one to tell them 1774 Continental Congress leaves it to each state who shall be a voting citizen 1776 Full citizenship to white male property owners, with six states granting it to all white males whether they had property or not. Some states had higher property qualifications than others and some even required membership in a specified religion 1781-89 Articles of Confederation accept in principle that the central government should regulate Indian affairs. 1789 Secretary of War is placed in charge of Indians 1790 Naturalization of foreign 'free white persons' permitted. Women carried the legal status of their husbands. 1795 Naturalization denied free whites unwilling to give up foreign titles of nobility 1812-21 Six western states join the union with full white male suffrage. Four of the original states abolish property requirements 1830 Indian Removal Act passes Congress, calling for relocation of eastern Indians to a territory west of the Mississippi River. Cherokees contest it in court, and in 1832, the Supreme Court decides in their favor, but Andrew Jackson ignores the decision. From 1831-39, the Five Civilized tribes of the Southeast are relocated to the Indian Territory. The Cherokee "Trail of Tears" takes place in 1838-39. 1853-56 United States acquires 174 million acres of Indian lands through 52 treaties, all of which it will subsequently break 1856 North Carolina becomes the last state to abolish the property requirement. Previous barred Catholics and non-Christians are enfranchised and in a few states even immigrants not yet naturalized are allowed to vote. 1857 Under Dred Scott decision, no black person can be a U.S. citizen 1858 Stephen Douglas debates Abraham Lincoln, arguing that "I believe the government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to whit men. . . instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races." Lincoln disagrees. 1866 Civil Rights Act declares all persons born in the U.S. - except Indians - to be natural citizens 1869 Territory of Wyoming grants women suffrage in state elections 1870 15th Amendment is passed: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." South deals with the amendment by instituting polls taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses that limit the vote to the offspring of the formerly enfranchised. Naturalization of black immigrants (but not Asians) is permitted 1871 Residents of the District of Columbia lose the right to vote for mayor and city council as a territorial form of government with appointed governor is installed General Sheridan issues orders forbidding western Indians to leave reservations without permission of civilian agents. 1874 Supreme Court rules that it is not unconstitutional to deny women the right to vote. 1875 Page Law bars entry of Chinese, Japanese, and "Mongolian" prostitutes, felons, and contract laborers 1878 Chinese are ruled not eligible for naturalized citizenship 1882 Chinese Exclusion Law suspends immigration of laborers for ten years Late 19th century Exclusion from naturalization of prostitutes, convicted felons, lunatics, polygamists and persons likely to be a 'public charge' Early 20th century Exclusion from naturalization of anarchists, communists, and the illiterate. 1902 Chinese exclusion is extended for another ten years. 1904 Chinese exclusion is made indefinite 1915 Eleven states have given women the right to vote 1918 Servicemen of Asian ancestry who served in World War I receive right of naturalization 1919 American Indian soldiers and sailors receive citizenship. 1920 The 20th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, is ratified 1923 Asian Indians ruled not eligible for naturalized citizenship. 1924 Congress gives the right to vote to original Americans, the Indians 1940 Congress passes Nationalities Act granting citizenship to all Native Americans without diluting tribal authority 1941 After declaring war on Japan, 10,000 Japanese-Americans along Pacific Coast states and Hawaii are rounded up and interned in Department of Justice camps. 1943 The Chinese Exclusion Act is repealed. The annual immigration quota for Chinese is set at 105. 1945 The War Brides Act permits immigration of Asian spouses and children of American servicemen in the war. 1946 Luce - Celler bill grants right of naturalization and small immigration quotas to Asian Indians and Filipinos 1949 5000 highly educated Chinese in the U.S. granted refugee status after China institutes a Communist government. 1952 One clause of the McCarran - Walter Act grants the right of naturalization and a small immigration quota to Japanese. 1957 Utah becomes the last state to permit Indians to vote 1965 Immigration Law abolishes "national origins" as basis for allocating immigration quotas to various countries - Asian countries now on equal footing. 1974 Residents of the District of Columbia regain the right to vote for mayor and city council lost over a century earlier but still lack voting representation in Congress or real power over their budget and criminal justice system. Hoagies Ralph Vigoda, PHILADELPHIA - Augie DiCostanza's left hand is overflowing with Genoa salami, which he is about to deposit on a 10-inch roll, already prostrate on the counter in front of him, sliced open from top to bottom and covered in sharp provolone. . . DiCostanza is the third generation in a family that has been making the sandwich the same way in Delaware County for nearly 80 years. That, the clan maintains, puts it ahead of all the pretenders who say they first introduced the world to the hoagie. . . . But it's unlikely that DiCostanza, or anyone else, will ever be able to prove his claim. What about Al DePalma and the "hoggies" he first served in his eatery at 20th and Mifflin Streets in 1931? "If there was a way to patent food, everything would have been OK," DiCostanza said. "But you can't, so you're fighting that battle all the time. . . . "They were probably the originators in Chester, but that's it," said Howard Robboy. Robboy is in a position to know; he has printed two scholarly papers on the hoagie - "The Socio-Cultural Context of an Italian-American Dietary Item," and "The Submarine Sandwich in America: Lexical Variations in a Cultural Context." He also may be the only person ever to testify in a courtroom as an expert hoagie witness. It happened around 1973, when a sandwich man in Tucson who made hoagies sued 7-Eleven after the corporation introduced a pre-wrapped version. Robboy testified the word hoagie was likely first mentioned in the 1930s and could not be copyrighted; the man lost. Now 57 and a sociology professor at the College of New Jersey near Trenton, Robboy was at Temple University in the late 1960s when he turned in a term paper on hoagie origins to his professor and eventual coauthor, Edwin Eames. "I wondered why it had so many names," he said recently. "Hoagie. Submarine. Hero. Grinder. Poor boy. I mean, grilled cheese is grilled cheese wherever you go." . . . Could an Irishman have been behind the hoagie name? Only if you believe that a man named Hogan asked an Italian coworker on Hog Island if his wife would bring one of the big sandwiches for him. The Italian told his wife to "make one for Hogan," and the name quickly became attached to the sandwich. It's a short jump from "hogans" to "hoagies." Robboy gives much more credence to the Al DePalma yarn, which goes like this: In 1928 (or 1929), DePalma was walking down Broad Street with a friend when two men approached holding huge sandwiches. "You have to be a hog to eat one of those," the friend said. A few years later, DePalma remembered the men when he opened a luncheonette. He called his Italian specialty "hoggies," and himself "King of the Hoggies." Soon, shops all over the city were selling hoggies. THE MISSING HOAGIE LINK Marshall Island bomb tests MARSHALL ISLANDS EMBASSY - 1954: Despite weather reports showing that winds are blowing in the direction of inhabited islands, the March 1 Bravo hydrogen bomb test is detonated at Bikini. At 15 megatons, it is 1,000 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb. Within hours a gritty, white ash is enveloping islanders on Rongelap and Ailinginae Atolls . . . Those exposed experience nausea, vomiting and itching skin and eyes. March 3 Rongelap islanders are evacuated 48 hours later, and Utrik is evacuated 72 hours after Bravo. Both groups are taken to Kwajalein for observation. Skin burns on the heavily exposed people begin to develop, and later their hair falls out. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission issues a statement to the press calling Bravo a "routine atomic test," and stating that some Americans and Marshallese were "unexpectedly exposed to some radioactivity. There were no burns. All were reported well." . . . April - A Project 4.1 memo recommends that the exposed Rongelap people should have "no exposure for (the) rest of (their) natural lives." . . . 1956: A total of 17 nuclear tests, including several hydrogen bombs, are detonated. November U.S. officials give the Enewetak Islanders living on Ujelang $25,000 cash and a $150,000 trust fund as compensation. Bikini Islanders living on Kili are given $25,000 cash and a $300,000 trust fund (yielding about $15 per person annually). Throughout the 1950s, both the Bikinians and Enewetakese face food shortages and repeated bouts of near starvation, as their "temporary" islands prove difficult and inhospitable . . . 1963: The first thyroid tumors begin appearing among the Rongelap people exposed to the Bravo test in 1954. Also, a higher than normal incidence of growth retardation among young Rongelap Islanders is noted by U.S. doctors . . . 1973: AEC draft report, not publicly released, concludes that Bravo fallout may have contaminated as many as 18 atolls and islands . . . 1975: During regular monitoring at Bikini, radiological tests show "higher levels of radioactivity than originally thought" and it "appears to be hotter or questionable as to safety," states a Department of Interior official . . . AEC surveys suggest some Bikini ground wells are too radioactive for safe use, and that the consumption of pandanus, breadfruit and coconut crabs needs to be prohibited. 1977: A Department of Energy study reports: "All living patterns involving Bikini Island exceed Federal (radiation) guidelines for 30 year population doses." About 100 Bikinians continue living on Bikini . . . 1978: Interior Department officials describe the 75 percent increase in radioactive cesium found in the Bikini people as "incredible." Plans are announced to move the people within 90 days. 1994: U.S. Rep. George Miller writes to President Bill Clinton: "The Committee has been informed that even if only 50 percent of the survey results are verified...the incidence rate is still significantly higher, by a factor of 100, than the rate of thyroid cancer found anywhere else in the world." . . . Miller and Ron de Lugo write to Dr. Ruth Faden, chairperson of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: "There is no doubt that the AEC intentionally returned (Marshallese) to islands which it considered to be "by far the most contaminated places in the world,' but which it told the people were safe. Nor is there any doubt that the AEC, through the Brookhaven National Laboratory, then planned and conducted test after test on these people to study their bodies' reaction to life in that contaminated environment." . . . 1950s KEN RINGLE WASHINGTON POST - Aging baby boomers have fostered the fiction that nothing much was happening in America in the 1950s, [Bob Newhart] says, "but I thought a lot was happening. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, comedy made an abrupt right turn. It wasn't just me. There was Shelley [Berman], Lenny [Bruce] and Mort [Sahl] and Mike Nichols and Elaine May . . . all pretty far out. And way out in the stratosphere there was Jonathan Winters." There was a growing cerebral vein, in fact, in the entire mass culture. Dave Brubeck was wowing college campuses with jazz influenced by Bach fugues. Dave Garroway and Jack Paar turned the "Today" and "Tonight" shows into thoughtful and provocative television talk shows despite a healthy undercurrent of wackiness. The emerging campaign of John F. Kennedy was putting the sort of glamorous and sophisticated face on politics that Audrey Hepburn was putting on movies. . . With college populations exploding in the wake of World War II, Newhart says, "I think all that . . . had no relevance to college kids. So they would get out their records and get some pizza and beer and play our albums. And we became their nightclubs." "We" were what were known at the time as the "sick comedians" -- drier young wits who won fame for their hip irreverence and mordant humor. . . "We were called 'sick' because of the routines. One of mine ["Lincoln at Gettysburg"] dealt with a revered dead president. Shelley dealt with some would-be suicides on a ledge. Mike and Elaine did people making funeral arrangements. . . . It was just our way of looking at life. Or maybe dealing with it." Lennie Bruce PAUL KRASSNER IN LA TIMES - In December 1962, Bruce was performing at the Gate of Horn in Chicago. He had been reading a study of anti-Semitism by Jean-Paul Sartre, and he was intrigued by the implications of a statement by Adolf Eichmann, orchestrator of the Holocaust, that he would have been "not only a scoundrel, but a despicable pig" if he hadn't carried out Hitler's orders. Bruce wrote a piece for The Realist, "Letter From a Soldier's Wife" -- namely, Mrs. Eichmann -- pleading for compassion to spare her husband's life. Now, on stage, he credited Thomas Merton's poem about the Holocaust, and requested that all the lights go off except one dim blue spot. Then he began what was perhaps his most audacious satire, speaking with a German accent: "My name is Adolf Eichmann. And the Jews came every day to what they thought would be fun in the showers. People say I should have been hung. 'Nein.' Do you recognize the whore in the middle of you -- that you would have done the same if you were there yourselves? My defense: I was a soldier. I saw the end of a conscientious day's effort. I watched through the portholes. I saw every Jew burned and turned into soap. Do you people think yourselves better because you burned your enemies at long distance with missiles without ever seeing what you had done to them? Hiroshima, 'auf Wiedersehen.' [German accent ends.] If we would have lost the war, they would have strung [President] Truman up by the balls ...." Bruce was arrested on obscenity charges that night. One of the items in the police report complained: "Then talking about the war he stated, 'If we would have lost the war, they would have strung Truman up by the balls." The head of the vice squad warned the manager of the Gate of Horn: "If this man ever uses a four-letter word in this club again, I'm going to pinch you and everyone in here. If he ever speaks against religion, I'm going to pinch you and everyone in here. Do you understand? You've had good people here. But he mocks the pope -- and I'm speaking as a Catholic -- I'm here to tell you your license is in danger. We're going to have someone here watching every show." Chicago had the largest number of Roman Catholics of any archdiocese in the country. Bruce's jury consisted entirely of Catholics. The judge was Catholic. The prosecutor and his assistant were Catholic. On Ash Wednesday, the judge removed the spot of ash from his forehead and ordered the bailiff to instruct all the others to do likewise. The sight of a judge, two prosecutors and 12 jurors, every one with a spot of ash on their foreheads, had the surrealistic flavor of a wild Brucean image. . . Jimmy Carter WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE - Carter announced in his January 1980 State of the Union Address a new US policy that came to be known as the Carter Doctrine. He warned: "An attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." He went on to explain that this policy was necessitated by the "overwhelming dependence of Western nations on vital oil supplies from the Middle East." It is essentially a more aggressive version of this same doctrine-the US right to use military force to control Persian Gulf oil-that is now being implemented by the Bush administration in its preparations for an unprovoked war to conquer and occupy Iraq. Carter first established the military means for carrying out this kind of aggression, founding the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force and reorganizing the US military for intervention in the Persian Gulf. By the time Reagan took office in 1981, this intervention force had already grown to include more than 200,000 troops. . . . In Central America, the Carter administration came up with a unique method for limiting direct security assistance to right-wing dictatorships, while assuring that they remained armed to the teeth for the purpose of suppressing popular revolt. Israel was recruited to fill the gap, supplying Galil assault rifles and Uzi submachine guns to substitute for American-made M16s. Israeli military advisers were likewise dispatched to the region, while US aid to Israel rose dramatically. . . . The Carter administration steadily increased aid to the regime in El Salvador, where in 1980-Carter's last year in the White House-the death toll reached an estimated 13,000, the vast majority peasants massacred by the army and police. At home, Carter responded to a growing economic crisis with policies aimed at slashing social services and attacking the power of the working class. The blueprint for the Reagan administration's smashing of the air traffic controllers' union, PATCO, and replacing striking controllers with scabs was drawn up by the Carter administration. This action signaled a nationwide onslaught against the working class by the employers and the government. Prior to Bush's invocation of the Taft-Hartley law against the West Coast longshoremen earlier this week, Carter was the last president to use this strike-breaking legislation. He declared an emergency under Taft-Hartley in an unsuccessful attempt to force coal miners back to work and break their 1977-78 national strike. The widening of social inequality in the US and internationally accelerated under the Carter administration, which tapped Chase Manhattan banker Paul Volcker to serve as chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board in 1979. Volcker announced that "a decline in real income" was necessary to fight inflation, and implemented a high interest rate policy that saw the prime rate hit 20 percent. The result was a deep recession in which less profitable sections of industry failed and layoffs mounted. These policies set into motion what became a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the financial aristocracy. The economic crisis and the attacks on working people eroded the Democrats' electoral support, allowing Ronald Reagan to defeat Carter and drive both foreign and domestic policy further along the rightward trajectory that has continued until this day. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/oct2002/cart-o12.shtml CIA pschological warfare [From a CIA instruction manual, "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare," written while George Bush Sr. was head of the agency] "In effect, the human being should be considered the priority objective in a political war. . . Once his mind has been reached, the 'political animal' has been defeated, without necessarily receiving bullets." "It is appropriate . . . to guide the discussion of a group to cover a number of points and to reach a correct conclusion. [The people] should feel it was their free and own decision." "Always be prepared with simple slogans in order to explain to the people, whether in intentional form or by chance, the