The , a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.
S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret.
The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money s origins.
Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman s former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.
S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives.
The former president of the U.
S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay s vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy.
Blair Watch broke the story about US/British complicity in torture in Uzbekistan by publishing documents from former Ambassador to that nation, Craig Murray.
They printed these documents at considerable legal risk to themselves too.
and are Ground Zero here. Go to their sites for the latest in this fast-breaking story.
It s bloggers who broke this story and bloggers who spead it across the planet in less than a day. The documents are now on servers planetwide and mainstream media is now running the story. We did good!
Let s keep pushing.
Image from the always wonderful who also has multiple posts about the documents.
Should get interesting when 350,000 Irani army members come swarming across the border into Iraq as a counterpunch.
This is why you don t start frivolous wars, so you re ready and able to fight the ones that matter. I don t necessarily have a problem taking out Iran s nuclear facilities, but for one itty bitty catch. Iran s army was half a world away, now it s literally on our border (i.
e., Iraq).
There s just so much wrong with this post from the normally excellent AmericaBlog.
Invading based on claims of WMD is what got the US into the Iraq War quagmire. And, of course, all those claims were made-up lies. You think it ll be any different with Iran?
AmericaBlog also seems to say it s ok for the US to invade countries at will, but maybe y know, just do it in a kinder, gentler, more sensible way. An odd view for a progressive blog to take, and just more of the imperialist mindset that got the US into Iraq in the first place.
Plus, Iran isn t literally on our border.
It is on the border of Iraq, a country we invaded based on lies. To say it is somehow our border gives legitimacy to the invasion and simply isn t true.
Recent reports in the German media suggest that the United States may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike against facilities that are part of Iran s suspected clandestine nuclear weapons program.The attack, if it comes, will probably start with a missile strike on Iran s alleged nuke facilities, and I ll bet it will be launched by the US proxy in the Middle East, Israel.
1) Friday morning, today, we go flying in a private plane, down the Hana Highway, then to the Big Island to view, among other things, lave flowing from a crater, and out of a cliff into the ocean. I should have some spectacular photos up by Saturday.
Then, sadly, it s back to LA. Sigh
2) We saw Barry Flanagan of and at Mulligans on the Blue, a small supper club Thursday night. They play there twice a week when in town.
It holds maybe 60 people, an intimate setting indeed to see these superb musicians play amazing Hawaiian music. Flanagan is one of the best slack key guitarists on the planet. Gilliom played rhythm guitar, and both sang.
Songs were in English and Hawaiian.
Mulligans has lots of of them.
Hapa plays Santa Barbara in February, and we ll be there to see them.
This lengthy details Abramoff s life of fixing and sleaze quite admirably. A few tidbits:
The nonprofit Capital Athletic Foundation, for example, allowed him to schmooze with Washington s movers and shakers at charity affairs.
The foundation was ostensibly created to help inner-city children through organized sports.
There is no evidence money went to city kids, but the foundation did fund some of Abramoff s pet projects: a sniper school for Israelis in the West Bank, a golf trip to Scotland for Ohio congressman Ney and others, and a Jewish religious academy in Columbia that Abramoff founded and where he sent his children to be educated.
Even more serious, Abramoff and Kidan were targets of a Florida federal grand jury investigating the SunCruz wire transfer. And local authorities were probing the gangland-style slaying of the man who had sold them the cruise line, Konstantinos Gus Boulis.
Two things. First, if mainstream media is running stories like this, Abramoff is dead meat. He s going down.
Good, may he take the rest of the corrupt DC establishment with him. 2) Much of what Abramoff did concerned creating a string of casinos. Was he an independent or are there organized crime ties, was he just the hired help?
After John Giotti was convicted, I recall reading a NYC newspaper article saying Giotti s real mistake was being so public, so blatant. The article then mentioned the name of the boss of bosses in NYC, the head of the families, saying he lived quietly and stayed out of the headlines, and that you d probably never heard of his name, right? He, as I recall, has never even been arrested.
Maybe the neocon sleaze in DC thought they had it all wired and they couldn t fall. They were wrong. Wrapped in patriotism and religiosity, at heart they re greedy, not too bright thugs.
And about to take a fall.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $685 million loan for Iraq on December 24. Now the country rsquo;s war torn economy will be fully integrated into the global economy mdash;indefinitely.
The reconstruction of Iraq will soon be open to even more industrialized nations and interests.
Iraq will not be sovereign or independent in the near future, even if President Bush says so. The country rsquo;s financial future will instead be dictated by a new colossal economic occupation, complete with ground forces, tanks, foreign military bases and the like mdash;all thanks to the United States, Britain and the IMF.
That s why the US will never leave Iraq, they want the oil - unless they lose the war, that is. But then, they lost in Vietnam too.
now has documents online showing British and US government complicity in torture in Uzbekistan.
The British government doesn t want these documents made public. Blair Watch, at some risk to themselves, has published them and is asking other blogs to do the same and to host them on their servers, thus lessening potential risk to Blair Watch.
The UK government has been quick to deny that we practice, or tolerate the practice of Torture.
So it is perhaps not suprising that they are determined that you should not see the following documents:
Craig Murray was the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, untill his complaints and protest at the use of intelligence gained by torture got too much for Jack Straw and the Foreign Office, who set about attempting to unsuccessfully smear him, and to successfully remove him from office.
The first document is a series of Telegrams that Craig sent to the Foreign Office, outlining his growing concern and disgust at our use of intelligence passed to the UK by the Uzbek security services.
Faced with this heavy handed censorship by the FCO, in an attempt to cover up our use of and complicity in torture, Craig has decided to fight back, and has asked us all to publish this information, so it cannot be suppressed.
Craig Murray stood up for what many of us believe, and it cost him his Job, his health, and his professional reputation. The least we can do his stand by him as he defies the UK government s attempts at censorship, and possible prosecution.
The Bishop Museum in Hawaii is a respected museum run by non-natives (haoles) with collections of native Hawaiian artifacts.
They often lend them out to native Hawaiian groups for use in ceremonies. Five years ago they lent 82 priceless items to a native group, Hui Malama, who then claimed the artifacts were stolen by the museum, buried them in a cave, and refused to tell a judge where they were. The leader of the group, Edward Halealoha Ayau, has just been jailed for contempt.
- A nexus of religion, politics, and law.
Ancient Hawaiian religious and cultural artifacts originally found in caves near human bones were removed by explorers and ended up in Bishop Museum. Here are some questions at the core of the Forbes Cave controversy.
(Read on, this is an excellent explanation.)
Other native groups may or may not agree with Hui Malama, and may also claim ownership of the artifacts. However, the artifacts no doubt were stolen from the native culture, Hui Malama does have a valid point there.
This court battle demonstrates in a microcosm the ongoing clashes and interplay between native Hawaiians, the current legal system, religion, and the Anglo culture at large. Ayau has taken a strong, principled stand, and has shown he s willing to go to jail for his beliefs. Out of such struggle, movements grow and are strengthened.
Defense lawyers in some of the say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.
The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.
The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency s domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration s most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.
When Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground surfaced from ten years underground and turned themselves into the FBI, the FBI was forced to drop all charges against them because the FBI had broken so many laws trying to find them that none of their evidence could be used in court.
Not really. If you fly by private plane, there are no inspections and searches by TSA.
Just walk up to the plane and fly away. The pilot might be asked to show ID, pilot license, and maybe a list of passenger names (with no addresses and ID needed for passengers.) That s it.
Private flights get a free pass from TSA inspections.
Even international private flights aren t inspected by TSA. Customs, yes.
But no TSA. What an idiotic system. Subject regular passengers to long waits and security searches, but anyone with the money to fly private gets no searches.
Thus, the system isn t even slightly secure.
We shall be returning those 2551 miles too soon (see photo.) I am becoming dangerously relaxed here in Hawaii.
This photo was taken in Lanai City, a tiny town on the rural island of Lania, formerly the Dole pineapple planation. A book on the island says most of the native inhabitants were relocated while this was happening, forced from their ancestral lands so an invader could fatten himself with wealth..
The history of imperialism in Hawaii is omnipresent and continues to this day. Currently, Lanai is being remade as an upscale rural tourist island with plans for suburbanization. So, then what happens to the locals?
Sometimes they get forced out. Property taxes here are based on assessed value and are re-assessed every year. Take a family that s been here for generations on five acres at the beach growing their own food.
Taxes are tiny. Oprah buys the three acres next door for 2 million. Property taxes for everyone in the area then soar, maybe to the point where the long-time family can t afford it.
Some counties in Hawaii, like Maui, have a circuit breaker, i.e., property taxes can be no more than 3% of gross income.
But other counties have no such protection. Remember, these are families that may have been here for generations and who have little income.
Lanai is still mostly uninhabited.
I d like to come back and spend a few days here hiking and swimming (before the burbs come.) More and more, Los Angeles seems a life out of balance.
The spiraling cost of among war veterans has triggered a politically charged debate and ignited fears that the government is trying to limit expensive benefits for emotionally scarred troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.The article points out the spiraling costs are due to Vietnam War vets having troubles decades later. It does not include the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq War vets who will be needing help.
But help won t be coming if the neocons have their way.
Too expensive. Hey, it s not their kids getting maimed, so these pond scum could care less what happens to someone else s children.
PS I recently learned that a college friend passed a few years ago.
Don t know the details, but his wife and friends said, Vietnam is what killed him, all these years later. How many more will die before their time from that war, and from all other insane imperialist wars waged since, wars that need never have been waged at all.
will continue.
Blogdom came through and now Jeanne will be able to replace her dying computer and thus save her blog, a blog treasured by many.
, more than 100 donated, using a metaphor of her love for the blubbery movie It s a Wonderful Life.
In the meantime, I just wanted to let you know that I will always think of the community of liberal bloggers and readers with the blubbery love I ve reserved until now for the riff-raff of Bedford Falls.The monarchy of Hawaii was overthrown in 1893 by armed thugs backed by the US government and commercial interests.Thank you. I really believe together we can save the world from Mr. Potter.
by a relatively small group of men, most of them American by birth or heritage, succeeded in wresting control of the Islands with the backing of American troops sent ashore from a warship in Honolulu Harbor.The which is working its way through Congress would express the policy of the United States regarding the United States relationship with Native Hawaiians and to provide a process for the recognition by the United States of the Native Hawaiian governing entity. If this passes, and it could, it would be a seriously big deal for Hawaii.
Sugar and a coerced constitution played roles in the drama intertwined themes of economics and politics.
I introduced this legislation with Hawaii rsquo;s Congressional delegation to extend the federal policy of self-governance and self-determination to Native Hawaiians.The Hawaiian independence movement, like any nationalist movement, has many currents.We have been working to enact this legislation since 1999. I have made clear to my colleagues in Washington, D.C.
that this is a nonpartisan issue. This is a team effort and we greatly appreciate the efforts of everyone involved who is working to enact this bill.
Some want nothing to do with the invaders, they want the invaders gone, period. Others favor limited sovereignty rather than independence and will work with anyone working towards their goals.
The , which I m active in, has a stated position on independence movements.
An oppressed people has the right to self-determination. Outside groups should support whatever path is chosen. Most especially, outside groups should refrain from telling them what to do, for that decision is theirs alone to make.
Solidarity is what is important, backing them in whatever path they choose.
Sloppy use of cell phones, other missteps help police unravel cleric s 2003 abduction.But wait, the CIA was even more brain-dead than that.
The trick is known to just about every two-bit crook in the cellular age: If you don t want the cops to know where you are, take the battery out of your cell phone when it s not in use.
Had that trick been taught at the CIA s rural Virginia training school for covert operatives, the Bush administration might have avoided much of the current crisis in Europe over the practice the CIA calls rendition
The list of mistakes made here is long, but it begins with the operatives indiscriminate use of their cell phones, not only to communicate with one another but with colleagues in the U.S.There appears to have been little effort to maintain a wall between the abductors and the CIA s facilities in Milan and Rome a violation of the primary principle that deep cover operatives should never have contact with CIA officers posing as diplomats in U.S.Consulate in Milan, in northern Virginia where the CIA has its headquarters, and in some cases even with the folks back home.
embassies and consulates abroad.
Bumbling boys with expensive toys. And no clue.
All of which would be comical until you realized they kidnapped someone and took him to Egypt where he was no doubt tortured. These inept thugs need to be indicted here in the US too, as do their higher-ups in the CIA, all the way to the bloodstained top. They are all criminals, period.
to lobbyist Jack Abramoff and California Rep. Pombo.
The Mashpee Wampanoags, famed for greeting the Pilgrims at Plymouth, will be named a nationally recognized tribe mdash; a designation they sought for 30 years so that they could benefit from federal aid programs.
Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist embroiled in a Washington corruption scandal, and his firm championed the Indians cause and pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in tribal money.
And Rep. Richard W.
Pombo (R-Tracy), chairman of the influential House Resources Committee, landed a lucrative source of political donations: the small group of Native Americans whose ancestral lands are about as far from his Northern California district as one can get in the United States.
I m guessing the Abramoff investigations, which will go supernova when he starts testifying against former colleagues and friends early in January, will show an interlocking web of corruption and payoffs that go way beyond Indian tribes.
The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim rights organisation in the United States, has described the revelation that Muslim gatherings and homes around Washington have been electronically sniffed for radiation as disturbing.
In a statement on Friday, CAIR said, This disturbing revelation, coupled with recent reports of domestic surveillance without warrant, could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights. All Americans should be concerned about the apparent system, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims.
This is racial profiling.
Orwellian too. Not to mention being idiotic. Like anyone who had radioactive devices would be dumb enough to store them at home.
Like there couldn t be vastly more intelligent ways to look for possible threats.
This seems absurd until you realize such surveillance demonstrates that our government is out of control. It s time for regime change in DC.
Federal appeals court judges around the nation have repeatedly excoriated immigration judges this year for what they call a pattern of biased and incoherent decisions in asylum cases.
In one decision last month, Richard A. Posner, a prominent and relatively conservative federal appeals court judge in Chicago, concluded that the adjudication of these cases at the administrative level has fallen below the minimum standards of legal justice.
The federal appeals court in Philadelphia said in September that it had time and time again been forced to rebuke immigration judges for their intemperate and humiliating remarks. Citing cases from around the country, the court wrote of a disturbing pattern of misconduct in immigration rulings that sent people back to countries where they had said they would face persecution.
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