The story behind the story .....
There has been a creeping infiltration of local law enforcement by FBI agents.
This would seem to be ok under normal circumstances until you realize how FBI agents collaborated with the Dallas Police to allow Jack Ruby to walk up to Lee Harvey Oswald and shoot and kill the only living
piece of evidence connected to President Kennedy's assassination see http://www.markccollins.com/jfk_jack_ruby.htm

People remember James Earl Ray as the
convicted assassin of Martin Luther King.
Memphis Police Lieutenant Earl Clark was the real assassin who fired the rifle that killed Dr. King. The Memphis Chief of Police at the times was former FBI agent Frank Holloman.
Lets jump to November 2009 and look at a partial list of former FBI agents heading up major city police departments. FBI agent Jody Weis now heads up the Chicago Police Department. Click link to see evidence for
FBI agent Jody Weis helping coverup 911 attacks http://grassley.senate.gov/releases/2004/p04r07-14.htm

San Diego County Supervisors recently appointed FBI agent William Gore as Sheriff.
Gore was involved in the FBI Ruby Ridge standoff coverup of the murder of Vicki Weaver who was shot through the head while she was standing on her front porch holding her young baby. see http://www.fff.org/freedom/0198d.asp also see http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... ?uniontrib

Another member of the Ruby Ridge FBI coverup team was FBI agent Larry Potts who has been identified as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's handler before the bombing occured.
see http://intelwire.egoplex.com/documents.html and also see http://bombing.newsok.com/article/3016643/

1st read




Class struggle in Puerto Rico

November 5, 2009

An October 15 general strike in Puerto Rico marked the biggest upsurge of struggle on the island since the 1998 "Peoples Strike" against privatization of the government-owned telecommunications company.

Privatization is again a key issue in the current struggle, along with the move by Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Fortuño of the right-wing New Progressive Party (PNP) to lay off more than 25,000 public sector workers. Under the island's Law 7, the right-wing governor claims the right to tear up public-sector workers' union contracts. He also seeks to organize public-private alliances in order to sell off the island's public services and lands to corporations.

But the resistance to this program has been far bigger and more militant than Fortuño and his allies expected. Student protests at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) forced administrators to close the campus for a week, and the general strike call, initiated by militant unions, was backed by all of Puerto Rico's unions. The main demonstration in the capital city of San Juan attracted at least 200,000 people, making it one of the biggest protests in recent Puerto Rican history.

Héctor Tarrido-Picart spoke with three Puerto Rican socialists about the prospects for the emerging movements: Sahir Pujols, a graduate student in philosophy at UPR and a member of the Committee against Homophobia and Discrimination (CCHD, according to its initials in Spanish); Rafael Feliciano, a founding member of the Socialist Workers Movement (MST) and president of the Federation of Puerto Rican Teachers (FMPR); and Giovanni Roberto, a member of the International Socialist Organization (OSI) and activist in the Committee in Defense of Public Education (CEDEP) at UPR.

A mass march during Puerto Rico's one-day general strike drew tens of thousands (Mairym Ramos)A mass march during Puerto Rico's one-day general strike drew tens of thousands (Mairym Ramos)

SINCE HE took office in January, Gov. Fortuño and his administration have been restructuring the way the state operates. As a result, there has been a rapid and drastic change in consciousness. Could you talk about how past events have led up to this?

Sahir: Our committee [CCHD] understands that the government of Fortuño has been so far one of the most homophobic governments that Puerto Rico has had so far. We saw that in the debates prior to the election, and in the statements made by representatives of his party, the PNP, that they did not believe in the rights of the LGBT community.

Right now, for example, there is a proposed bill in the Puerto Rican House of Representatives, House Bill 1725, which potentially prohibits discrimination in the workplace against anyone based on sexual orientation. It's a bill that's very important, and we've been pushing for an amendment that would include transsexual people, because they're one of the marginal groups that face the most discrimination because of their physical appearance.

What's happened? Nobody in the Puerto Rican Senate or House of Representative wants to work with the legislation. They ignore it. Fortuño and the legislative branch are also opposed to a revision of the island's Civil Code that would recognize civil unions, so that same-sex couples could enjoy the same legal protections and labor benefits as everyone else.

We've also seen how the government has conceded political terrain and space to [Christian] fundamentalist, right-wing sectors when it comes to relating to the LGBT community. For example, we have had multiple demonstrations and debates, yet they [the PNP] have only responded to the interests of the fundamentalist movements.

The fundamentalists threaten with their votes and by mobilizing their people. For example, in many municipalities and schools, the fundamentalists want to impose a period of religious reflection. This would allow these groups to impose their beliefs and win over political terrain. They are intent on showing that homosexual people are an abomination and don't deserve rights.

Giovanni: You asked about the change in consciousness and the fast-paced nature of this development. The reality is that, yes, this has happened at a rapid pace. Last semester, when we organized protest against the budget cuts, the protests were small--they didn't exceed 200 people. On the other hand, every other protest throughout the whole island since Fortuño came into office has been steadily increasing in size.

IT'S CLEAR that the question of class is recurrent. Rafael, you are part of a militant union where these issues might crystallize. How do you see this developing within the union?

Rafael: Before we start talking about the union, I want to talk a little bit about what the compañeros have said. In 2006, Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vilá of the Popular Democratic Party [PPD, the island's liberal party] proceeded to close down the government for two weeks, during a budget crisis. He did this in coordination with Fortuño, who used to be the Residential Commissioner in Washington.

But there were only a handful of militant groups that were willing to stand up to such an intimidating act. They were on the streets with the slogan, "The rich should pay for the crisis," and that this was class warfare. But the whole state apparatus was against the mobilizations--in particular, the Popular Democratic Party.

This battle was hard, but it was important because it created a level of consciousness among the handful of militants. It planted a seed, even though a lot of people didn't mobilize. Then, the FMPR's teachers' strike of 2008 crystallized as a mass movement with a clear class content, where the socialist sectors--specifically the MST--were one of the forces that was leading the process.

Again, the whole state apparatus was mobilized against the strike. But the people in general were receptive to the class content of our struggle, even though they were not willing to join the fight. But once there was a change of administration, from Acevedo Vilá to Fortuño, various factors came together.

For its part, the PPD now assumes a supportive attitude towards things they would have been against before, trying to capitalize on the situation. As a bourgeois party, we know how far the PPD is going to get with its opportunism. But this is part of the struggle [in the leadership of the movement] that's developing.

Now to address your second question, I would say that in the FMPR, there has been a massive reactivation. We are talking of 26,000 [government employees] laid off already. It's apparent that the families of the workers are being affected.

When I have asked in my classroom, "How many people have been affected?" I have seen five, six or seven students raise their hands per classroom. A similar thing happened in the UPR, where a student stated that he didn't care about layoffs because they didn't affect him. But immediately afterwards, another student stood up in class and said that both his parents were laid off.

With examples like these, one can start seeing how the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie is losing its hegemony. People don't think that this is the best that this world has to offer. In truth, they suspect that there's a group of vandals who are trying to steal from the people. This is key. Even though it's not a revolutionary mood, this loss of hegemony opens up a space.

I want to address another difficulty that we face as workers--that is, how we can elevate consciousness to its highest level possible through action. In addition to labor struggles, there are developing fights around landless people's rights, including part of the Dominican immigrant population. All this is starting to accumulate, which creates the possibility for actions at a grander scale.

Even with this, there is a limit to making socialist arguments and having a revolutionary framework. Nevertheless, this struggle will reach farther than any in the past in Puerto Rico, even though it's limited by not having a long-term vision. We have to take the greatest advantage of the situation so that we can advance to the next step. Things are very fluid, even though we face great obstacles.

THE GLOBAL economic collapse has lowered of standard of living of workers worldwide. The ruling classes internationally have responded by blaming this on vulnerable sections of society. In Puerto Rico, I would imagine, they would try and blame Dominican immigrants.

Rafael: I think they're using the façade of fighting crime in order to justify the withering of civil rights, and thereby establish a repressive force. They're trying to use crime to justify their economic restructuring.

The bourgeoisie of Puerto Rico, which is part of the American bourgeoisie, has developed by extracting its wealth from the government's budget in a very parasitic form. In Puerto Rico, there's no longer a strong agricultural economy, and heavy industry is not under the control of the local bourgeoisie.

At the moment, there's an international capitalist crisis--[economic] warfare going on between foreign capitalists and local capitalists. They need to devour other local capitalists before bigger capitalists eat them. How can they, then, obtain the extraordinary profits that will allow them to jump ahead? Well, by taking a larger portion of the governmental budget.

Because in agriculture, they're not going to find those rates of profit, nor in heavy industry. And when you consider that these massive layoffs are directly related to this section of local capitalists trying catapult itself ahead [through privatization], you start to realize their real intentions. This dynamic is fully exposed now. It is unmasked.

But for now, I haven't seen that the government and the local capitalists have blamed the crisis on certain sections of society.

Sahir: I can say what the reflection of the LGBT community is. This right-wing government has a commitment to the Christian fundamentalist groups in Puerto Rico. By withholding legislation that would protect the LGBT community, they're basically using the community as a scapegoat. But we're not the only ones. I agree also with Rafael's statement that the government uses crimes as a façade.

CRIME IS being used as a smokescreen to implement repression. One of the most obvious examples came on August 21, 2009, in the Avenida Universidad near UPR, where police attacked groups of students.

Giovanni: Fortuño already had a plan in place before he won the elections. Part of that was reinforcing the state police, which they openly talked about. They knew that all the measures they were planning would create resistance.

They decided, therefore, to appoint FBI agent José Figueroa Sánchez as State Police Superintendent of Puerto Rico. He was the second in command for the FBI's 2005 assassination of [Puerto Rican independence leader] Filiberto Ojedas Ríos, and he was the first in command when the FBI attacked the press in 2006 in the midst of a raid against pro-independence activists. So the former sub-director of the FBI in Puerto Rico now directs the police.

The project of the police department is to integrate itself regionally--which implies that both local municipal cops and state police are in cooperation with the FBI, which reinforces repressive aims.

Crime in Puerto Rico, one has to acknowledge, is very high. It's a country that has a high rate of murders per year, one comparable to countries that are in the middle of a civil war. But the murder rate has been high for the past few decades.

What's changed has been the state propaganda and the agitation it is trying to evoke. Every time there's a murder, the government tries to exaggerate it. It appears in the headlines, newspapers get more sensationalist. All this plays a role in trying to convince a terrorized group of people that repressive tactics like curfews are their only hope.

The media talks about a crime wave as if it is uncontrollable. But what's not mentioned is how crime is related to deep social problems--how crime is related to the lack of adequate mental health care and the lack of adequate access to stress release for a group of people. The levels of violence at a national level are higher every day, and this obviously will have an effect in how people relate to one another. The youth are obviously part of that contradiction, and are under attack.

That said, I agree with the other compañeros that crime prevention is being used as a façade. They're trying to connect crime with alcoholic beverages and the consumption of drugs, using civil order laws that before were never enforced by the police. They're trying to use today's context to justify more police presence on the streets, and to try and hold back university students from organizing. The best thing to come out of this has been the student reaction.

WHAT CONTINUITY do you see between the student strike of 2005 and the strike process developing now?

Giovanni: One of the things that characterized the strike of 2005 was that not a week passed between the announcement of a tuition hike and the approval of a general strike in the university. There was no time for socialist and non-socialist sections of the left to prepare the base of the movement for a strike that was projected to be long and arduous--which was not far from what happened. There was no organization at the base. The strike was declared, and it was only in the midst of the strike that the university department committees and strike committees started to form.

Now, we are not doing it like that. We all learned our lesson that before going into a long process like an indefinite general strike, one needs to have connections with the student masses that are concrete and tightly knit. There's also the task of doing intense propaganda and information for people to be conscious of not only the particular attack, but also how it is connected to its social content.

WHAT IS the relationship between the process among students in UPR and the teachers in the FMPR?

Rafael: A positive development is happening, which is a flux of ideas, suggestions and different forms of organization between the rank and file [of the union] and the main hub for the UPR system. We need to find the best way for that dynamic to extend to the public high school system, where young adults have the capacity of developing student organizations and actively talking politics.

Now, from the point of view of the labor movement, we still are a little stuck. The majority of the labor unions in Puerto Rico don't have an effective participatory process. Unfortunately, the bureaucratized leadership is sometimes more interested in members' dues than in the struggle. They say: "Well, they laid off half of the union, but at least I have the other half." One can notice that an important faction of the leadership of the labor movement is afraid to organize its masses and generate the democratic process.

In a way, sections at the base of these unions have the capacity of surpassing their bureaucratic leadership, and that's one of the challenges that we have today. Certainly, there are a couple of unions mobilizing and doing their actions, but if we take out the FMPR, what remains is very limited. A lot of unions have talked about the general strike, but it has been at the higher level and not at the base. That is one of the weakest links the labor movement in Puerto Rico, and we need to figure out how to overcome it.

HOW DO you see those issues in relation to the Peoples' Strike of 1998, where a lot of these questions were also present?

Rafael: In the case of the People's Strike of '98, there was an assembly called with delegates from different unions. It was that joint assembly, convened in Loiza, Puerto Rico, which was key towards gathering strength.

This has not happened yet. I believe that in this moment, the organizational development, the disposition for people to fight, the level of consciousness in general is right now above the Peoples' Strike. But we still have the same fundamental problem--the fact that the bureaucratic sectors in the labor movement fear the development of autonomous actions in self-defense, and they want to control the process from the top. And that kills the momentum--it castrates it. But I think one has to plow with the oxen one has.

One of the other great difficulties we have is the involvement of women in these processes. The difficulties that compañeras have in the class struggle in Puerto Rico are immense. Remember, good portions of the people laid off are women. Good portions of those laid-off women have husbands who don't work, and good portions of them are very conservative. That's a specific problem that pertains not only to the base of the FMPR, but relates to the whole public sector were working class women are heavily employed.

I would add one more detail, and that is the element of us as socialists. It's essential to have the ability to identify the most advanced sections of the working class and make an extraordinary effort to give it a basic form in the least amount of time possible. We have a lack of a revolutionary framework, but we need to take advantage of this massive opening to give it an ample social perspective.

We have fertile ground right now. I would compare it to that 1905 revolution [in Russia], where there was a massive opening that allowed a revolutionary framework to be formed for future struggles.

As socialists, we have a huge task to be able to identify those most advanced sections and inject the much-needed socialist content of class with a vision for social transformation, because this lays the basis for the process to move forward without losing its orientation. Without this revolutionary framework, the movement can easily be co-opted by the Popular Democratic Party or by any other populist movement.


2nd read

Who Killed Martin Luther King?

by Maria Gilardin / April 4th, 2008

This article is based on the work of a remarkable man. Dr. William Pepper is an attorney, author, and friend of Martin Luther King and his family. In February 1967 King had asked to meet a young man whose work as a journalist in Vietnam showed the terrible impact on the civilian population. King wept and never wavered in his opposition to the war. That young man was Bill Pepper. He became James Earl Ray’s lawyer and assembled the evidence that exonerated Ray — some of which is described below.

Six-oh-one p.m., April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King has been felled by a single shot.

In 1977 the family of Martin Luther King engaged an attorney and friend, Dr. William Pepper, to investigate a suspicion they had. They no longer believed that James Earl Ray was the killer. For their peace of mind, for an accurate record of history, and out of a sense of justice they conducted a two decade long investigation. The evidence they uncovered was put before a jury in Memphis, TN, in November 1999. 70 witnesses testified under oath, 4,000 pages of transcripts described the evidence, much of it new. It took the jury 59 minutes to come back with their decision that Loyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill, had participated in a conspiracy to kill King, a conspiracy that included J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Richard Helms and the CIA, the military, the Memphis Police Department (MPD), and organized crime. That verdict exonerated James Earl Ray who had already died in prison.At the trial, a series of African-American police officers and firefighters testified how each of them had been pulled from duty in the vicinity of King's room at the Lorraine Motel, and how normal security had been withdrawn from Dr. King in the hours preceding his assassination on April 4, 1968. The Memphis police and fire director responsible for this systematic stripping of King's security was the now-deceased Frank Holloman, a retired FBI agent. During his twenty-five years in the FBI, Holloman had served as head of the Memphis field office and as J. Edgar Hoover's appointments secretary.

The news of the verdict, in one of the most important national security trials in modern history, was suppressed. And to this day — with very, very few exceptions — the public does not know that this trial took place and what the outcome was.

William Pepper’s 2003 book, An Act of State, The Execution of Martin Luther King, published by Verso, gave a detailed report of the trial. The book was systematically ignored. Pepper said in February 2003 that he had been personally turned down by reviewers for major media. They did not want to put their jobs and reputation on the line.

The New York Times refers to Pepper’s work as “nonsense” in the context of their favorable reviews of Gerald Posner’s book on the King assassination, Killing the Dream. Richard Bernstein praised Posner for stating once and for all that: “James Earl Ray murdered the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

In a new attempt to break the silence Verso has just issued An Act of State in paperback. Also, for the first time, parts of the never before seen video record of the 1999 trial are being released on Youtube.

What was so dangerous about the 1999 Memphis trial that it had to be suppressed? The evidence presented — under oath and on the record — made it abundantly clear that the reports of the 1997 House Select Committee on Assassinations, of the Civil Rights Commission appointed by Clinton’s AG Janet Reno, and the New York Times were all wrong. James Earl Ray did not murder King.

With the guilty verdict for Loyd Jowers the jury came closer than anybody before to the identity of the real killer. Jower’s actions in preparation of the assassination and on the day itself, together with the testimony from witnesses who had never been heard before, allowed a minute by minute reconstruction of how and why the crime was committed.

Apparently nobody, not the Mafia, the Memphis Police, the FBI, the CIA, or the Army Military Intelligence teams were taking any chances. If the Mafia contract had not succeeded, someone else was prepared to kill King. When King stepped out on that balcony at the Lorraine Motel he did not know that he was under complete surveillance and that more than one gun was aimed at him.

On December 8, 1999, Dr. William Pepper made his closing statement to the jury in Memphis. Martin Luther King, he said, had become more than a civil rights organizer, and more even than a voice against the war on Vietnam. Pepper explained why King had become so dangerous to the ruling powers that a decision was taken at the highest level that he was not to leave Memphis alive.

Pepper said:

I put it to you that his opposition to that war had little to do with ideology, with capitalism, with democracy. It had to do with money. It had to do with huge amounts of money that that war was generating to large multinational corporations that were based in the United States.

When he threatened to bring that war to a close through massive popular opposition, he was threatening the bottom lines of some of the largest construction companies, one of which was in the State of Texas, that patronized the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and had the major construction contracts at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. (Brown and Root was the contractor for the dredging of Cam Ranh Bay – M.G.) This is what Martin King was challenging. He was challenging the weapons industry, the hardware, the armament industries, that all would lose as a result of the end of the war.

The second aspect of his work that also dealt with money that caused a great deal of consternation in the circles of power in this land had to do with his commitment to take a massive group of people to Washington and there to encamp them in the shadow of the Washington memorial for as long as it took. For as long as it took, they would make daily trips to the halls of Congress and they would try to compel the Congress to act, as they had previously acted in terms of civil rights legislation, now to act in terms of social legislation.

Now, he begins to talk about a redistribution of wealth, in this the wealthiest country in the world that had such a large group of poor people, of people living then and now, by the way, in poverty. That problem had to be addressed. And it wasn’t a black-and-white problem. This was a problem that dealt with Hispanics, and it dealt with poor whites as well. That is what he was taking on. That’s what he was challenging.

The powers in this land believed he would not be successful. Why did they believe that? They believed that because they knew that the decision-making processes in the United States had by that point in time, and today it is much worse in my view, but by that point in time had so consolidated power that they were the representatives, the foot soldiers, of the very economic interests who were going to suffer as a result of these times of changes. So the very powerful lobbying forces that put their people in the halls of Congress and indeed in the White House itself and controlled them, paid and bought them and controlled them, were certainly not going to agree to the type of social legislation that Martin King and his mass of humanity were going to require.

So there was a fear. What happens when they are frustrated? What happens when they don’t get any satisfaction? What would happen? They feared, the military feared, that there would be a violent rebellion in the nation’s capital. And they didn’t have the troops that could contain half a million angry poor alienated Americans. They didn’t have the troops. Westmoreland wanted another two hundred thousand in Vietnam. They didn’t have them to give to him. They didn’t have them.

They were afraid that what Mr. Jefferson had urged many, many times, that the body politic can only be cleansed by a revolution every twenty years. They were afraid that Mr. Jefferson would be listened to and that that revolution would take place.

Because of that, those factors, Martin King was not going to be allowed to bring that group of people to Washington.

Dr. William Pepper, continuing his closing argument, went on to address the planning of the King murder, pieced together by his personal decade long research as well as from the 13 volumes of background material that accompanied the 1997 House Select Committee on Assassinations Report. On those pages Pepper found much evidence that contradicted the official findings, including a detailed history of the FBI surveillance of King and the infiltration of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Civil Rights movement.

In December of 1963, less than a month after the Kennedy assassination, FBI officials met in Washington to explore ways to “neutralize King as an effective Negro leader”. In spite of that material in their files the House Select Committee declared that the FBI plaid no role in the assassination.

Looking back at the way in which Pepper summarized the evidence collected throughout the trial it becomes obvious how carefully crafted his legal approach was. Loyd Jowers was the defendant and, having been personally so close to the assassination, he was an extremely valuable witness. But his actions, the physical location of his bar and grill, adjacent to the brushy area across from the Lorraine Motel, were only a small part of a much larger picture, in the words of Pepper the wider conspiracy to kill King.

Then, as now, the onus that the right as well as the left puts on the word “conspiracy” has to be taken into account. Pepper, in his explanation to the jury, took back that word and gave it its proper legal and historic meaning. He asked the jury to find that this “constituted conspiracy, legally civil conspiracy under the law.”

Pepper developed for the jury the string of “coincidences” that constitute conspiracy, a chain of evidence backed up by 70 witnesses. All of it can be looked up in detail on 4,000 pages of transcripts or in his book, An Act of State. Here are just a few questions and examples:

The case against defendant Loyd Jowers was the best documented, partly by Jowers’ own admission. Jowers testified that he was asked by Mafia- connected produce dealer Frank Liberto to help in the murder of King. He received money and a gun to hold.

Three witnesses took the stand and corroborated Liberto’s involvement. John McFerren told the jury that, on the afternoon of the assassination, he heard Liberto shout into the phone “Shoot the son-of-a-**** when he comes on the balcony.” Liberto told Mrs. Lavada Addison, “I arranged to have Martin Luther King killed.” Addison’s son, Nathan, confirmed his remark.

However the Mafia plan would not have succeeded if it had not been for the involvement of many others: Why did King end up in the Lorraine Motel where he had never stayed before? Who made him change his room from a secluded ground floor room to the second floor balcony space? Who ordered MPD Captain Jerry Williams, who normally formed a security unit of black officers when King came to Memphis, not to form a bodyguard this time?

Across from the Lorraine Motel was Fire Station no. 2. Who ordered the only two black firefighters not to show up to work that day? Floyd E. Newsum was later told the order came from the MPD. Norvell E. Wallace was told his life had been threatened and he needed to stay home.

On the morning of the assassination Carthel Weeden, captain of Fire Station no. 2, testified that he was approached by two U. S. Army officers carrying briefcases who indicated they had cameras and wanted the roof of the station for a lookout on the Lorraine Motel. They left after the assassination.

Members of the Army’s 111th Military Intelligence Group, based at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia, had come to Memphis and were keeping King under 24 hour a day surveillance. MPD intelligence office Eli Arkin testified at the trial that they worked out of his office.

About 10 minutes before the assassination of King, Guy Canipe, owner of the Canipe Amusement Company, observed a bundle being dropped in the Main Street doorway of his company, one block from the Lorraine. The bundle consisted of a 30.06 Remington Gamemaster rifle and unfired bullets — the rifle James Earl Ray was supposed to have used for the assassination.

Loyd Jowers testified that immediately after the killing, MPD Lieutenant Earl Clark, now deceased, came out of the brushy area and gave him a smoking rifle at the rear door of his restaurant, Jim’s Grill. Jowers did not see who killed King, but claimed it was Clark, the MPD’s best marksman.

Criminal Court Judge Joe Brown, who later presided over two years of hearings into the evidence, stated, “It is my opinion… that this is not the murder weapon… 67% of bullets from my tests… did not match the Ray rifle” The rifle’s scope had not been sited; therefore the Remington from Canipe’s door could not have been properly aimed.

Several witnesses at the 1999 trial testified that they saw two men running away from the brushy area, one burning tires as he drove away in a green 1965 Chevrolet past a police car that took no notice, another getting into a police car and being driven away. Nevertheless, the official story has always been that nobody shot from the bushes but that James Earl Ray fired from a bathroom window of the rooming house.

Why then did Maynard Stiles, a senior official in Memphis Sanitation Department, receive a call from MPD Inspector Sam Evans at 7 am on the morning after the assassination “requiring assistance clearing brush and debris from a vacant lot near the site of the assassination.” Stiles assembled a crew and cleaned the site under the direction of the police department.

This is just part of the evidence covered by the 1999 trial. Much of it had been assembled to be presented in the trial that James Earl Ray fought to have for almost 30 years. Given the nature of the evidence it is not surprising that it was never allowed to take place.

The major media and most authors have perpetuated the myth that James Earl Ray confessed. William Pepper, who represented Ray until he died, says that Ray pleaded guilty on advice of his lawyer who told him that this would be the best avenue for a trial — but that Ray never confessed.

There were several attempts to bribe Ray into a confession. One of Ray’s lawyers, Jack Kershaw, was asked by a publishing company to offer Ray $50,000, parole and a new life if he finally confessed. Ray refused. Ray’s brother Jerry was contacted with the same offer with a higher monetary amount ($200,000). Ray, again, refused.

Just before Ray’s death MPD officer Tim Cook, in the presence of William Pepper, leaned heavily on Ray to admit his guilt. He promised Ray that in return he would be released and could die surrounded by his family. Ray refused and died alone on April 23, 1998.

One year and 8 months after his death a jury listened to the closing statement of Ray’s former lawyer, William Pepper, testing the evidence that should have freed Ray.

Pepper’s closing words were:

Let me close by saying to you that long after people forget what has been said in this courtroom, all the words that you’ve heard from witnesses and lawyers, and long after they have forgotten about accounts that they have read about this case, they are going to remember what was done here. They are going to remember what action you took, what decision you came to.

You have got to understand the monumental importance of your decision. (The public) are going to forget everything I said, everything defense counsel has said, everything the witnesses have said. They are going to remember one thing, the ruling of this jury, the verdict of this jury because you have heard evidence that has never before been put on in a court of law.

That is why your decision at this point in time is the most significant decision that will have been taken in thirty-one years in terms of this case. Please don’t underestimate the importance of it.

In our view, what has happened in this case, the injustice that has happened in this case … is representative of the failure that symbolizes to me the failure of representative democracy in this country. Isn’t it amazing that one could say that over a simple murder case? But when you look at the wealth of evidence that has come forward and you understand how this case has been conducted and you understand how it has been covered up, and when you see how unresponsive elected officials and government have been and how complicit they have been, you can come to no other choice.

Governmental agencies caused Martin Luther King to be assassinated. They used other foot soldiers. They caused this whole thing to happen. And they then proceeded with the powerful means at their disposal to cover this case up.

You know, these things do not happen as a rule without the involvement of other people and in this case, this type of murder, without the involvement of seriously prominent individuals in government. So it is in my view a failure of democracy and this Republic that it has not been able to bring this forward.

What we’re asking you to do at this point in time is send a message. We’re asking you to send a message, not just right a wrong. That’s important, that you right a wrong and that you allow justice to prevail once and for all. Let it prevail.

But in addition to that, we’re asking you to send a message, send a message to all of those in power, all of those who manipulate justice in this country that you cannot get away with this. Or if you can get away with it, you can only get away with it for so long.

Send that message. You, you twelve, represent the American people. You are their representatives with respect to justice in this case. They cannot be here. The media will keep the truth from them forever. You represent the people of this land. You must speak for them.

You have this duty to yourselves, this obligation to your fellow citizens, and you have an opportunity to act in a most significant way that perhaps you can ever imagine, because your verdict of conspiracy in this case, your verdict of liability for the defendant and his other co-conspirators, means history is rewritten, means textbooks have to be rewritten, means the actual result of this case and the truth of this case now must come forward formally.

On behalf of the family of Martin Luther King, Jr., on behalf of the people of the United States, I ask you to find for the plaintiff and find that conspiracy existed and that those conspirators involved not only the defendant here but we’re dealing in conspiracy with agents of the City of Memphis and the governments of the State of Tennessee and the United States of America.

We ask you to find that conspiracy existed and once and for all give this plaintiff family justice and let’s cleanse this city and this nation of the ignorance that has pervaded this case for so long.

After less than an hour the jury returned with the verdict, read by Judge James E. Swearengen.

THE COURT: In answer to the question did Loyd Jowers participate in a conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther King, your answer is yes. Do you also find that others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant? Your answer to that one is also yes.

Memphis, TN, December 8, 1999.

Their verdict finally lifted responsibility for the murder from James Earl Ray and should have opened the investigation of organized crime, the FBI, the CIA, the military, and the Memphis Police Department.

Postscripts:

1. Given all the new evidence presented in the trial, the King family approached President Bill Clinton and asked for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Clinton refused and turned the matter over to AG Janet Reno who appointed a civil rights commission.

In June 2000 the United States Department of Justice published their conclusion that quote: “the trial’s evidence fails to establish the existence of any conspiracy to kill Dr. King… we found no credible evidence to disturb past judicial determinations that James Earl Ray killed Dr. King.”

2. In February 2008 news from New York: Dr. Pepper makes the case for the NYC 911 Ballot Initiative and the re-investigation of 9/11 by an independent citizens commission.

Sources:

The transcripts of 1999 Memphis trial.

The video of major parts of the court proceedings on Youtube can be reached via the following site.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/who-k ... ther-king/
The audio recording of Pepper’s closing argument.






Who Killed Martin Luther King?
by Philip Melanson
Odonian Press, 1993, paper

p5
Murder in Memphis
In March 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. made a decision that may have cost him his life. He and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) denounced the war in Vietnam as "morally and politically unjust" and promised to do "everything in our power" to stop it.
In King stepped up his attack. At a speech at the Riverside church in New York City, he called the US "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and compared American practices in Vietnam to Nazi practices in WWII. He challenged all young men eligible for the draft to declare themselves conscientious objectors.
Before this, King had kept his civil rights work separate from the peace movement, partly on the advice of other black leaders who felt racial justice should be his first goal. But he increasingly saw that "the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism" couldn't be separated. The war was siphoning off money desperately needed for the poor and racially oppressed at home.
So King planned "civil disobedience on a massive scale" in order "to cripple the operations of an oppressive society." There would be sit-ins of the unemployed at factory entrances across the country, "a hungry people's sit-in' at the Department of Labor" and a Poor People's March on Washington, where thousands of demonstrators of all races would pitch their tents in the nation's capitol and stay until they'd been heard. There were even rumors (though King denied them) that he might run in the 1968 presidential election on an antiwar, third-party ticket with Dr. Benjamin Spock.
King's actions brought sharp criticism from all sides, black and white alike. Life magazine called the Riverside speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." It charged King with "introducing] matters that have nothing to do with the legitimate battle for equal rights here in America."
Even the more moderate National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) agreed: "To attempt to merge the civil rights movement with the peace movement," they said, "will serve the cause neither of civil rights nor of peace."
From the government there wasn't just hostility-there was fear. King had already demonstrated the ability to instigate massive unrest, and his rumored presidential candidacy would appeal to those appalled by the war.
For years the FBI had wiretapped King's home and office, intercepted phone conversations and planted paid informants within the SCLC; now it stepped up its surveillance. President Lyndon Johnson is said to have admitted privately, "That goddamn **** preacher may drive me out of the White House."
Tensions were high and King's list of enemies was long when, the following spring, he came to Memphis to support a strike by (mostly black) sanitation workers who were demanding job safety, better wages and an end to racial discrimination on the job.
The murder
King visited Memphis twice in March 1968. On the 18th, he addressed a crowd of 17,000 supporters of the strike. He promised then that he'd return on March 28 to lead a citywide demonstration of sympathy for the workers.
The March 28 event erupted in violence. As demonstrators marched through the city, rampaging black youths broke store windows and looted. King tried to curtail the escalating violence by requesting that the demonstration be cut short. But by the time it was over, police had moved on the crowd, wielding mace, nightsticks and guns. One black youth was shot and killed, and 60 persons were injured. Nevertheless, King promised to return on April 3 to plan another demonstration; this time, he hoped, Memphis would see the power of his nonviolent approach.
King spent the last day of his life, April 4, 1968, closeted inside the Lorraine Motel on Mulberry Street, in one of Memphis' seedier neighborhoods. Alter a long day conferring with aides about the upcoming event, he was looking forward to a prime rib and soul food dinner at Rev. Samuel B. Kyles' home that evening.
Just before 6 pm, King and Kyles stepped out onto the second-floor balcony overlooking the motel's courtyard. King exchanged greetings with several persons who stood below, waiting to join him for dinner. Kyles headed downstairs to get his car. King stood alone on the balcony.
At 6:01 a single shot from a high-powered rifle cracked through the evening air. The bullet tore into the right side of King's face, sing him violently backward.
p9
It wasn't until April 19 that investigators identified fingerprints on the gun thought to be the murder weapon. They knew then for the first time that the man they sought was James Earl Ray not Eric S. Gait) Even so, Ray eluded capture until June 8, when he was caught in London trying to board a plane for Brussels.
Ray spent the next nine months preparing to go to trial. Then, unexpectedly, on March 10, 1969, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
p56
Who was involved?
When the HSCA exonerated the government of any role in a King assassination conspiracy, their conclusion was based on a less-than-thorough review of only two government groups-the Memphis Police Department and the FBI. The evidence indicates that these groups shouldn't have been dismissed so readily, and that other government agencies may also have had a motive to kill King.
The Memphis Police Department
The Memphis Police Department (or MPD) had prepared for King's visit in three ways. First, several officers from the intelligence unit were stationed in the firehouse across from the Lorraine Motel to spy on King. Second, a four-man security detail was assigned to protect King. Third, tactical (TACT) units for "emergency or riot situations" were created to control any violence that might erupt as a result of King's presence.
The MPD made two changes in security arrangements in the early days of April: the four-man security detail assigned to King was withdrawn 25 hours before the assassination, and three to four TACT units were pulled back from the Lorraine Motel the morning of the assassination.
The first change probably wasn't conspiratorial. King's entourage didn't want the MPD security-they perceived it as part of the hostile white power structure and so refused to divulge the details of King's itinerary. Inspector Donald Smith claimed he got tired of "tagging along" without knowing where King was headed and asked permission to withdraw the detail.
But the shift in TACT units is more disturbing. These units, each consisting of three vehicles and twelve officers, had been formed alter violence erupted during King's March 28 visit to Memphis. From King's arrival on April 3 to the morning of the assassination, the units (a total of nine to twelve vehicles) were patrolling within the five to six block area "immediately surrounding" the Lorraine. On April 4, the units were pulled back to five blocks away.
The MPD's explanation-that the units withdrew because an "unidentified" member of King's entourage "instructed" them to do so-is suspect. Unlike the security detail, these units weren't there to protect King, but rather to protect the city of Memphis from the violence that might accompany King's visit.
While it's possible that King's staff would want the TACT squads kept at a distance, it's highly improbable that the MPD would comply. If anything, such a suggestion would lead police to suspect King's group was up to something. If the TACT units were in fact responding to a request that they stay out of sight, there was no need to have moved back five blocks. A distance of, say, two blocks would have been sufficient.
If the TACT vehicles had remained in place, or at least closer to the Lorraine, it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to escape the crime scene. As it was, only one unit-TACT 10-could respond quickly to news of the shooting. That's because it was taking a break in the firehouse near the Lorraine at the time King was shot.
p60
More important actions were taken too late For-not at all. The dispatcher's order to seal off the two-block area around the Lorraine wasn't given until 6:06, three minutes after the shooting was reported. The dispatcher never issued a "signal Y," a code indicating that all main exits from Memphis should be blocked. He also never issued an APB, an all-points bulletin describing the suspect for the neighboring states of Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. As a result, Ray (and any others involved) slipped through each law-enforcement net that ordinarily would have trapped him.
Lt. Kallaher, the "shift commander of communications" on April 4, tried to explain these failures of communication as a result of the "massive confusion" after the assassination. But this doesn't explain why the dispatcher ordered certain procedures and not others, and the confusion wasn't reflected in police transcripts.
The FBI
In 1968, there wasn't any good evidence that the FBI had a motive to murder King. But subsequent revelations made clear FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's hatred of King and the Bureau's attempts to destroy "the Black Messiah" personally and politically through what it called COINTELPRO ("counterintelligence program"). Yet the HSCA's investigation of the FBI employed logic so questionable it might have been lifted from a primer issued by the Warren Commission. Here are some examples.
The HSCA reasoned that if the FBI had set up the assassination, it would need to have had control over Ray. By control, the committee seems to have meant that Ray would be checked in at a motel near the Lorraine. Since Ray stayed at a distant motel his first night in Memphis and didn't move to Brewer's boarding house until the next day, the HSCA concluded that the FBI must not have had control over Ray's movements and thus didn't mastermind the assassination.
Evidently it never occurred to the committee that in a well-planned assassination, the conspirators might elect to keep their trigger man away from the target area for as long as possible to reduce the chances that he could be identified after the shooting. The committee never defended the logic that a hit man must be dispatched to the crime scene as soon as he arrives in town.
With similarly dubious reasoning, the HSCA decided that since the FBI continued its dirty tricks against King right up to the time of the assassination, the Bureau was exonerated. After all, the committee deduced, it would hardly have been necessary to continue a nationwide program of harassment against a man soon to be killed. In a review of all COINTELPRO files on Dr. King, the committee found substantive evidence that the harassment program showed no signs of abatement as the fateful day approached. In other words, the HSCA didn't consider that the Bureau might be providing a cover for its complicity, or that the agents who ran COINTELPRO might not be the ones who plotted the assassination.
p65
The CIA
The HSCA's failure to investigate the CIA' stems in part from the impression the agency sought to project-that it had only a cursory interest in King and the SCLC, and that this interest was largely satisfied by whatever data Hoover shared with the agency. The CIA describes its own King file material as routine, oriented toward matters of foreign policy and centered on world reaction to King's death. A November 28, 1975 internal memorandum even states, "we have no indication of any Agency surveillance or letter intercept which involved King."
Not many documents are publicly available to challenge this claim, but those that are tell a different story. In January 1984, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, I obtained 134 pages of heavily-deleted CIA documents on "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." and the "Southern Christian Leadership Conference." These documents indicate that the CIA not only received FBI data on King, but that in at least two instances, it passed data to the FBI.
The documents also indicate surveillance of King; for example, there's a July 10, 1966 dispatch containing photocopies of several scrawled notes, apparently made by King or members of his staff. There are also lists of phone calls placed from his Miami hotel during a two-day period, photocopies of receipts, a page from an appointment calendar with a message for King and an assortment of business cards. There was no indication who collected the data or how it was obtained.
It's likely that much more information exists about the CIA's interest in King. In December 1990, I interviewed an ex-CIA agent who'd been a high-ranking officer and field agent. Unfortunately, I can't describe the agent, the entire interview or even why he was willing to talk to me, since these facts could reveal his identity. I also have no way to verify his allegations, but I believe his story for two reasons: the interview was arranged by a person trusted by both of us, and the source's bona fides as a CIA agent have been validated by a non-agency source I trust, by a major corporation and by a network news organization (on a story unrelated to the King case).
This ex-agent confirmed that the CIA's publicly released King file is deceptively brief. Although there were very few cables in the file, he claimed that cable traffic on King was extensive, and went back as far back as 1963. He confirmed that in the spring of 1965, CIA agents worked directly with FBI agents to bug King's Miami hotel room, but this information wasn't filed with the CIA's Office of Security (which ran domestic operations). It was filed instead with the "Western Hemisphere desk," which was responsible for the agency's vast anti-Castro operations, including the Bay of Pigs invasion.
This deceptive filing assured that the agency's politically sensitive, if not illegal, bugging of King would never pop up in domestic-surveillance files. Instead it would be cloaked by the top security of clandestine, anti-Castro operations.
Why was the CIA so interested in King? Because of its attitude toward "black power groups" and their alleged communist connections. Jay Richard Kennedy, a highly respected CIA source with close ties to the civil rights movement, warned the agency about this alleged infiltration:
The Communist left is making an all out drive to get into the Negro movement .... Communists or Negro elements who will be directed by the Communists may be in a position to, if not take over the Negro movement, completely disrupt it and cause extremely critical problems for the Government of the United States.
Kennedy believed that this wasn't simply a domestic problem, to be handled by the FBI alone, but should be considered an "nternational situation." So the CIA targeted black political groups with zeal.
p77
Solving the case
In 1978, the HSCA turned its findings over to the Justice Department and suggested further investigation. A decade later, the Justice Department claimed that all known leads had been checked arid that further investigation appears to be warranted... unless new information... becomes available."
Further investigation is warranted, for several reasons. First, the HSCA inquiry was glaringly inadequate. It's shameful that an investigation into the death of a man as important to this country's past and future as Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whom we now honor with a national holiday, was conducted so shabbily. He and his family-as well as the nation-deserve the full truth.
Second, the case has new leads, people and topics to be probed. If they're pursued, the question "who killed Martin Luther King?" may now be answerable.
p79
* The National Security Agency, Defense\ Department, Air Force and CIA should be formally queried about any information they might have concerning Ray's aliases.
* The FBI and CIA should be required to produce all documents concerning their attempt to influence history or public opinion about the King case.
* The HSCA's files should be released to the public. Despite the committee's failures, their key documents and interviews could help to pursue the above leads. The film JFK evoked public pressure to release the HSCA's Kennedy files, but Congress still intends to keep its King files secret until the year 2028.
Who should conduct the investigation? It shouldn't be the FBI-even after two decades, the Bureau has at least a historical conflict of interest. Nor should the Justice Department have a primary role, due to its secrecy and inactivity during the decade following the HSCA's investigation. And another congressional effort would very likely become mired in the web of politics and personalities spawned by the previous committee.
The best alternative-although not without pitfalls-is to appoint a special prosecutor.

November 5, 2009 6:00 AM
Caught on Tape: Minneapolis Cop Tasers Unarmed Man
Posted by Edecio Martinez
(WCCO/Minneapolis Police Dept.)
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO)

On April 30, 2009, Rolando Ruiz was arrested near the Minneapolis 2nd Precinct near Central Avenue.

In the video, you can't see what happens before Ruiz is told to put his hands on the hood, but what's causing the complaint is what comes next in the video.

"(The officer) takes that Taser and puts it to the back of his neck and shocks him until he's incapacitated, on the ground, slumped before the squad car," said Albert Goins Sr., an attorney.

Goins said the officers meant to hurt Ruiz.

"It's clear that the only purpose for that officer's conduct was to inflict pain and inflict agony on Mr. Ruiz," said Goins.

The police officer who tasered Ruiz is Todd Lappegaard. Lappegaard was involved and reprimanded once before for using deadly force.

Back in March 2002, Lappegaard was involved in a deadly chase. The SUV he was chasing ran off the road and hit a jogger. The jogger died at the scene.

Springs police claim FBI informant's hidden recorder caught him in act of shooting

November 5, 2009
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Police claim an FBI informant's hidden tape recorder captured the sound of him firing eight rounds into a Colorado Springs house.

Authorities say seven people were in the house during the Feb. 14 attack but none were hurt.

Forty-four-year-old Robert Rodarte (roe-DAHR'-tay) is being held on suspicion of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and a weapons violation.

His attorney, Cynthia McKedy (mick-KEE'-dee), declined to comment Thursday.

An arrest warrant affidavit says Rodarte was a gang member who agreed to wear the hidden recorder for an FBI-led task force investigating alleged drug trafficking by gangs.

Police say the attack on the house was in retaliation for an earlier assault.

Authorities say the FBI has severed its ties with Rodarte.

please note I am reposting the links an unauthorized person had changed the links


Ray Levasseur was a vet who returned to Maine see http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/1 ... ml?print=1
after serving in Viet Nam. He was arrested for possession of pot and sent to prison in the late 1960's. Upon release from prison he returned to Portland Maine and co-founded an organization called SCAR , (STATEWIDE CORRECTIONAL ALLIANCE FOR REFORM) in 1972 with another fellow prisoner Alan Caron see http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/42698 ... -activism/ also see http://www.growsmartmaine.org/staff_bios.asp. This occurred at the same time as the Attica Prison rebellion in upstate New York. The goals of the organization where to reform the prison system in Maine through the legislative process.SCAR was immediately infiltrated by FBI agent provacteurs who encouraged the members to make change through the barrel of the gun and bombs.Fast forward to 2009.
2 reads one with some FBI spin
1st read
Outrage over terror speaker
Cops, widow blast governor on response
Michele McPhee By Michele McPhee
Friday, November 6, 2009


Gov. Deval Patrick pulled the plug on a planned UMass speech by a convicted terrorist yesterday after a plea delivered by the Herald from the outraged widow of a gunned-down state trooper - angering cops who protested the event for weeks.

“It was absolutely disgusting that we had to go through what we had to go through to get this canceled,” said widow Donna Lamonaco. “Police groups have been complaining for weeks. We organized a protest.

“We got nothing until the newspaper calls the governor?” she said. “It’s a disgrace.”

Lamonaco’s husband, Phil, a New Jersey state trooper, was shot dead by members of the United Freedom Front in 1981.

The radical group, also cited for the attempted assassination of two Massachusetts troopers and a rash of bombings and robberies, was led by Raymond Luc Levasseur.

Levasseur - now living under federal parole in a halfway house in Maine and still hailed by followers as a political prisoner - was set to speak at a “Colloquium on Social Change” at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst next Thursday.

“They were treating a terrorist as a hero. The governor was going to let him educate college students at a public school, a guy who represents an organization that killed my husband, that tried to execute two troopers in Massachusetts,” said Lamonaco, mother of three.

“The United Freedom Front stood for violence and anarchy against the United States. The governor seemed like he wanted to celebrate that?”

After the Herald sought comment from Patrick on the widow’s plea yesterday, UMass canceled the speech and the governor issued a statement applauding the decision as “the right thing to do out of respect to the families of the victims of these acts and our law enforcement community.”

Tom Nee, president of the National Association of Police and the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, said Patrick bowed only after the threat of public embarrassment from a Herald story.

“The governor should be ashamed,” Nee said. “Once again, there was an utter disregard shown for law enforcement.”

A spokesman for the governor said Patrick’s office first contacted UMass about the speech Wednesday, then followed up with a call yesterday. The spokesman said the governor was not aware of the widow’s plea until the Herald call - and was never contacted by a police union about the controversy.

Police union officials said Patrick ignored their requests that the convicted terrorist not be allowed into Massachusetts.

“It’s hugely offensive that a state school that receives tax dollars would invite Lavasseur,” said Richard R. Brown, president of the State Police Association of Massachusetts. “This guy committed atrocities against our country and the talk was only canceled under pressure.”

The United Freedom Front was responsible for roughly 20 bombings, including one at the Suffolk County Courthouse in Boston, and for the attempted murder of two Massachusetts State Troopers, Mike Crosby and Paul Landry, in a blazing North Attleboro gun battle in 1982.
see link for full story
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/v ... position=0

2nd read
Promoting human rights at home
The enemy within
By LANCE TAPLEY | April 2, 2008

On Monday at the Woodbury Campus Center, 25 students and others viewed the 1974 documentary film Attica, about the 1971 prisoner rebellion at the overcrowded Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. A thousand mostly African-American inmates took over part of the prison and held 38 white guards hostage — all 383 Attica guards were white — and demanded an end to “slave labor,” uncensored communication with the outside world, the rights to political activity and free religious practice, and better food and medical care.

While negotiators tried to arrange a peaceful end to the confrontation, Republican governor (and later US vice-president) Nelson Rockefeller ordered police to storm the prison. They killed 31 prisoners and nine guards in a hail of gunfire. The film shows guards beating surrendering prisoners.

Former federal prisoner Ray Luc Levasseur of Brunswick, who spoke after the film’s showing, said the widespread establishment of solitary-confinement “supermax” prisons began in part as a response to the Attica uprising — as places for prison activists and “jailhouse lawyers.” Supermaxes, he said, have had a “profound impact” in tamping down the prisoner-rights struggle. He called prisons “the front line of class war” and of “white supremacy.”

He asked of human-rights proponents, “What of torture in this country? . . . Everything that’s happened at Guantánamo has been exported from American prisons,” including the use of solitary confinement — whose isolation is a gnawing pain like hunger, he said. Levasseur did 20 years, largely in solitary, for blowing up corporate offices in a campaign against South African apartheid and US-government-sponsored Latin American terrorism.

At the USM session, David Bidler, of the Portland-based prisoner-rights organization Black Bird Collective, said his group has collected 500 signatures on an anti-torture petition that eventually will be submitted to the Portland City Council. It asks that torture be outlawed in Maine prisons, including the “prolonged periods of isolation” at the Maine State Prison’s 100-man Supermax or Special Management Unit.

The prison conditions the Attica inmates rebelled against aren't “ancient history at all,” Levasseur said — they are still the norm.

November 06, 2009
Breaking with Former Employer, Actor and Self-Described Insurance Industry “Spokesjerk” Andy Cobb Calls for Public Healthcare
Cobbad-web


Guest:

Andy Cobb, Actor and comedian. He was the former television spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida.



JUAN GONZALEZ: As House Democrats prepare to vote on their version of a healthcare reform bill this weekend, a man who used to be the face of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida decided he’s had enough with the way the health insurance industry is impeding reform. Actor and comedian Andy Cobb used to promote Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. But now he’s broken with his former employer and is speaking out against the entire private health insurance industry that has strongly opposed any, quote, “government-run health plan.”

Andy Cobb teamed up with Brave New Films to create this video, released Thursday.

ANDY COBB: Hey, Stretchy, what are you paying for health insurance?

Well, how much are you paying a month in diapers?

Do you have twenty bucks in your pocket? Then you can afford our Blue Options insurance policy.

DIRECTOR: And cut. Now slate.

ANDY COBB: Hi, my name’s Andy, and I sell health insurance.

Blue Options has just added a bunch of lower…

I was a spokesman for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida. Call me a “spokesjerk.” We’re people who make money by selling you things that you don’t need, and we’re telling you lies.

It’s cheaper than your cell phone bill.

Sure, if your cell phone bill is $400 a month. American healthcare is a mess, and everybody knows it. But no matter how bad it gets, insurance companies trot out their spokesjerks to charm into buying their insurance and avoiding a public option.

ASSISTANT: We’re ready for Andy.

ANDY COBB: They, by which I mean “I,” make money by standing in the way of reform. It’s time for change. That’s why I’m calling on leaders of the spokesjerk industry—the freecreditreport.com guy, the ShamWow dude, and Senator Bill Nelson, recipient of big money from insurance companies—to lead us, to walk away from their cash cows and tell the American people the truth.

And us spokesjerks, we’ll be fine. There’s plenty of room in entertainment for someone who once tried to sell you the worst product in American history: private health insurance.


AMY GOODMAN: That says “Fired” after, for our radio listeners. A new video released Thursday by Brave New Films, featuring the former spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida.

Well, Andy Cobb joins us now from Los Angeles.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Talk about your time—your first experiences, why you became the Marlboro Man of Blue Cross Blue Shield, and how you changed.

ANDY COBB: Well put. You know, actors are people who lie to you. That’s our job. And what one does is one auditions for work, and one hopes one gets work. And one doesn’t really spend much time, generally, thinking about what you’re advertising.

I did do work for Blue Cross for quite awhile. It became apparent, eventually, that it was something that I needed to disassociate myself from, for reasons both political and personal. Politically, I think we’re at that time, aren’t we? Dennis Kucinich, the adorablest little congressman of them all, said it very well recently. He said, “This is the time when we have to say, ‘Which side are you on? The insurance companies or the American people?’” And for too long, I’ve been on the wrong side of that. And if Senator Lieberman can change his mind to go from the right side of this issue to the wrong side, I figure a schmuck actor like me can change his mind and go from the wrong side to the right side.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’m interested, the reaction of Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Did you get a chance to tell them directly about your change of heart? And what their reaction was?

ANDY COBB: We have not spoken. We don’t have that sort of a relationship. But I’m guessing that I won’t be invited to the holiday party this year.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Did your agent try to dissuade you about the lost revenue?

ANDY COBB: There was some discussion along those lines. And, you know, he’s—and my agent is a good guy. And, you know, I didn’t meet any bad people at Blue Cross, to be honest. It would go a lot better with sort of the progressive narrative, I suppose, if it did—if I had, but that’s not the case. You know, I met nothing but nice folks. But they’re in a monstrous system that really doesn’t work for Americans.

I’ve had a lot of personal contact with this recently, this year. As a comic, I did a benefit for my friend Alicia, who had breast cancer and, because she made the mistake of getting breast cancer while being covered by Blue Cross of California, needed comics to raise money for her healthcare. My friend James, whose mother was—got breast cancer while she was covered by Blue Cross of California, is now going bankrupt, so we had a benefit for them. So we’re essentially relying on comics to do the work of a medical insurance industry. And I wouldn’t trust comics with a lawn mower, much less a medical system. So it became very apparent that I had to disassociate myself.

AMY GOODMAN: So, why should we believe you now, Andy?

ANDY COBB: Well, it’s a good question. I was well paid by Blue Cross, of course, to say what was scripted for me. To write what I wrote, which was that piece, and to do it for Brave New Films, I was—I was paid. I was paid the union minimum, which is minimum wage. And suffice it to say, it’s a significant pay cut.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And speaking of comics, what’s your reaction to how the healthcare legislation is proceeding in the House and Senate?

ANDY COBB: Well, it’s comical. It’s unfortunate right now that we’re in a situation where it doesn’t look like we’ve got a real robust public option on the table, although it’s unfortunate, I think, that we’re calling it a “robust public option.” It sounds like we’re being sold TV dinners. My friend John Aravosis had a funny line; he said, “The only other thing that they focus-tested was a ‘buxom public option,’ and that didn’t test well.” But hopefully we’ll get a robust public option. That seems to be the thing that can give us a real option other than these private insurance companies that are doing America and their clients absolutely no good.

AMY GOODMAN: Andy Cobb, the conversations you had with Blue Cross Blue Shield, or did you, when you were actually doing the commercials, did they come in? And did actually any say to you, when you’re just sort of behind the scenes, that they didn’t believe what you were saying, either?

ANDY COBB: No. You know, it’s—to be honest, there was no discussion like that. It’s a very sort of surface conversation. There was very little discussion about the issues. One could say these are people doing their jobs. And, you know, it’s—as I say, I don’t think these people who work for Blue Cross are monsters, but it’s a monstrous system, and it has to be changed.

I would invite my fellow spokesjerks to stop what they’re doing and cross the line, as I said in the video. I would like for other people to do the same. Maybe it’s time for people like myself, Joe Lieberman and the Aflac duck to find honest jobs.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Is there an association of spokesjerks, as you say? Do they have conferences regularly?

ANDY COBB: The ASJ? Yeah, me and the GEICO lizard and that guy who goes, “That’s Allstate’s stand,” get together every now and then and have drinks, but no formal organization.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Andy Cobb, we want to thank you for being with us, actor and comedian, former television spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, has now crossed the line.

America The Betrayed
Walt Whitman: "Poet of the People"

by Richard C Cook

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Global Research, November 6, 2009
Richard C. Cook

If you want to get an idea of what America once was like, read the poems of Walt Whitman. Whitman was born on Long Island in 1819 and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. His family was poor, but even though he left school at the age of 11 he gave himself an education by reading and working in the printing shop of a newspaper until he gradually became a published writer. He worked as a teacher and news reporter and owned his own newspaper by the age of 20.


In 1848 Whitman was a delegate to the founding convention of the Free Soil Party. During the Civil War he worked as a nurse in Union military hospitals and held several government jobs, including interviewing Confederate prisoners for pardons. Some of his greatest poems came from his war experiences, including his famous elegy upon the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, “Oh Captain! My Captain!” His great collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, was self-published. He died a national hero in 1892 in Camden, New Jersey, where thousands of people came to pay their respects.


Whitman has always been viewed as a poet of the people, in contrast to the pretentious dandies from academia who have controlled official American culture for much of our history. He wrote of workmen, farmers, sailors, soldiers, lovers, criminals, and prostitutes.


In the text of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, he wrote of himself as, “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest.” He had discovered a great secret, one that is known to everyone who is young at heart: that the free individual, always potentially a “kosmos,” stands at a much higher level in the scale of creation than any man-made collective.


Thus was Whitman a hero to the Beatniks of the 1950s who tried to rediscover an authentic American voice in the streets and on the roads and highways of this great land. The spirit of Whitman was surely present through the rebellion of the 1960s, when America’s young men and women rose up and fought the Establishment to stop the Vietnam War and bring civil rights to racial minorities.


The Establishment fought back with a vengeance and, through the most egregious betrayal in history, reduced the world’s greatest industrial democracy to the pathetic shadow of its former self we are today.


The first thing the Establishment did was destroy the industrial job base by shipping millions of good jobs to China and other Third World nations, where slave laborers could be forced to churn out consumer products at a fraction of the cost of similar work done by American workers.


Acting through the CIA and organized crime, the Establishment flooded the cities and college campuses with illegal drugs in order to rot the minds and souls of our youth.


They dumbed down education to the point where young people who graduate today know little and can do less of a practical nature. Vocational training is dead. A high school graduate is worth virtually nothing in the job market, and many college graduates are semi-literate and self-absorbed, often lacking backbone, skills, or initiative. Some high school and college graduates are even drug addicts or alcoholics.


They turned the economy over to thieves from Wall Street and created a military machine that turns youth into murderers and assassins whose job it is to conquer the world for the fat cats of global capital.


They ruined the arts, literature, and music through crass commercialization, making it almost impossible for any real original creativity to be produced or communicated. The one bright light in this darkness is the internet, which is being threatened by commercial suppression of freedom of expression by the ambitions of big communications companies. Thank goodness too for the rare creative genius like Michael Moore who has the courage to hold up a mirror to this deeply diseased society.


Then they wrecked people’s health with processed food and constant inducements to a sedentary lifestyle while pumping us full of dangerous vaccines and prescription drugs. They drummed it into everyone’s head that we are basically weak, ill, helpless creatures who can only survive by taking pills and making constant trips to doctors, hospitals, and clinics.


They induced us to fight over our possessions and freedoms in law courts with the aid of greedy lawyers in front of rapacious judges who have built up the largest prison population in the world.


They pulled money and credit out of the inner cities and rural areas leaving those segments of the nation and their populations to rot.


The list could go on and on and on.


Today we are in the midst of not just a recession but a terminal depression. Getting the banks to lend again so people can buy homes at what are still over-inflated prices or so they might compete with immigrants to get construction jobs through building of more useless office buildings or military bases is not a recovery. The “greening of America” is a myth. There is no resurgence of alternative energy investment or new public infrastructure apart from a few highway projects.


American family farming is practically dead and is under a new assault from speculators who are undercutting prices and forcing foreclosures. The local manufacturing sector never came back after the calamitous decline produced by the Paul Volcker recession of 1979-1983, when interest rates were deliberately raised to over 20 percent to kill off family-owned businesses so that global corporations could step in and take over. Since then we had the “Reagan Revolution” when the banks took over the economy, the Clinton dot.com bubble of the 1990s which crashed in 2000, and the George W. Bush/Alan Greenspan housing bubble which blew up in 2008. Now Main Street lies shattered and shuttered as a result of the crimes and treacheries of the last 30 years.


True, there is a rebellion brewing, including a monetary reform movement that has attacked the power of the Federal Reserve, as well as a few progressive voices that call for a much larger economic “stimulus” than the Obama administration has seen fit to implement.


But is there any practical plan on the part of either political party or organized movement to restore America to what it once was–a place where ordinary people could live, work, learn, and flourish? The answer is a resounding “No.” Not a chance. And “Change You Can Believe In” hasn’t changed a thing. All it has done has been to produce another financial bubble, this time using huge amounts of public debt through the sale of U.S. Treasury bonds. Business is not growing and jobs are not coming back. The only thing that has gone up has been the meeting of military recruitment quotas.


This latest bubble will fail too, because money created through lending to float the prices of assets is not wealth. Rather wealth consists of goods and services produced by labor applied to natural resources. Those who provide the labor must be recompensed fairly.


So what is to be done? The answer is that nothing can or will be done, if by that you mean whether a political savior is going to come along to rescue our nation and its people from destruction.


In fact, what they are planning is to continue to throttle and enslave us with a predatory financial establishment and a military policy that is preparing the groundwork for World War III. The war will be fought with American troops against Russia and China, after which China will take over as the world’s policeman while this country disappears from the face of the earth. It’s the ultimate plan of the New World Order, the ones American politicians, financiers, military leaders, and academics bow down to.


It is time for each and every individual who values his or her own life along with the creative potential of the human spirit to begin to work with others to create a new nation and world. The government isn’t going to do it for us. Please believe me. This is not a system that can be reformed. It is a system that must be replaced. And it must be replaced by the ordinary working men and women who have been crushed, used, and abused during the past ugly half-century.


Americans, get to work. Call your friends and family together today and begin to figure out what to do. Start with 15 minutes of prayer and meditation. You will be shown the way from within yourselves. My own view is that setting up local currency systems, as many communities are now doing, is a good place to start.



Richard C. Cook is a former federal analyst who writes on public policy issues. His latest book is “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform.” His website is www.richardccook.com.

Official US Air Force Document Reveals the True Intentions Behind the US-Colombia Military Agreement

by Eva Golinger

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Global Research, November 6, 2009

An official document from the Department of the US Air Force reveals that the military base in Palanquero, Colombia will provide the Pentagon with “…an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America…” This information contradicts the explainations offered by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and the US State Department regarding the military agreement signed between the two nations this past October 30th. Both governments have publicly stated that the military agreement refers only to counternarcotics and counterterrorism operations within Colombian territory. President Uribe has reiterated numerous times that the military agreement with the US will not affect Colombia’s neighbors, despite constant concern in the region regarding the true objetives of the agreement. But the US Air Force document, dated May 2009, confirms that the concerns of South American nations have been right on target. The document exposes that the true intentions behind the agreement are to enable the US to engage in “full spectrum military operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies…and anti-US governments…”



The military agreement between Washington and Colombia authorizes the access and use of seven military installations in Palanquero, Malambo, Tolemaida, Larandia, Apíay, Cartagena and Málaga. Additionally, the agreement allows for “the access and use of all other installations and locations as necessary” throughout Colombia, with no restrictions. Together with the complete immunity the agreement provides to US military and civilian personnel, including private defense and security contractors, the clause authorizing the US to utilize any installation throughout the entire country - even commercial aiports, for military ends, signifies a complete renouncing of Colombian sovereignty and officially converts Colombia into a client-state of the US.



The Air Force document underlines the importance of the military base in Palanquero and justifies the $46 million requested in the 2010 budget (now approved by Congress) in order to improve the airfield, associated ramps and other installations on the base to convert it into a US Cooperative Security Location (CSL). “Establishing a Cooperative Security Location (CSL) in Palanquero best supports the COCOM’s (Command Combatant’s) Theater Posture Strategy and demonstrates our commitment to this relationship. Development of this CSL provides a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters.”



It’s not difficult to imagine which governments in South America are considered by Washington to be “anti-US governments”. The constant agressive declarations and statements emitted by the State and Defense Departments and the US Congress against Venezuela and Bolivia, and even to some extent Ecuador, evidence that the ALBA nations are the ones perceived by Washington as a “constant threat”. To classify a country as “anti-US” is to consider it an enemy of the United States. In this context, it’s obvious that the military agreement with Colombia is a reaction to a region the US now considers full of “enemies”.



COUNTERNARCOTICS OPERATIONS ARE SECONDARY



Per the US Air Force document, “Access to Colombia will further its strategic partnership with the United States. The strong security cooperation relationship also offers an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America to include mitigating the Counternarcotics capability.” This statement clearly evidences that counternarcotics operations are secondary to the real objetives of the military agreement between Colombia and Washington. Again, this clearly contrasts the constant declarations of the Uribe and Obama governments insisting that the main focus of the agreement is to combat drug trafficking and production. The Air Force document emphasizes the necessity to improve “full spectrum” military operations throughout South America – not just in Colombia – in order to combat “constant threats” from “anti-US governments” in the region.



PALANQUERO IS THE BEST OPTION FOR CONTINENTAL MOBILITY



The Air Force document explains that “Palanquero is unquestionably the best site for investing in infrastructure development within Colombia. Its central location is within reach of…operations areas…its isolation maximizes Operational Security (OPSEC) and Force Protection and minimizes the US military profile. The intent is to leverage existing infrastructure to the maximum extent possible, improve the US ability to respond rapidly to crisis, and assure regional access and presence at minimum cost. Palanquero supports the mobility mission by providing access to the entire South American continent with the exception of Cape Horn…”



ESPIONAGE AND WARFARE



The document additionally confirms that the US military presence in Palanquero, Colombia, will improve the capacity of espionage and intelligence operations, and will allow the US armed forces to increase their warfare capabilities in the region. “Development of this CSL wil further the strategic partnership forged between the US and Colombia and is in the interest of both nations…A presence will also increase our capability to conduct Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), improve global reach, support logistics requirements, improve partnerships, improve theater security cooperation and expand expeditionary warfare capability.”



The language of war included in this document evidences the true intentions behind the military agreement between Washington and Colombia: they are preparing for war in Latin America. The past few days have been full of conflict and tension between Colombia and Venezuela. Just days ago, the Venezuelan government captured three spies from the Colombian intelligence agency, DAS, and discovered several active destabilization and espionage operations against Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela. The operations - Fénix, Salomón and Falcón, respectively, were revealed in documents found with the captured DAS agents. Approximately two weeks ago, 10 bodies were found in Táchira, a border zone with Colombia. After completing the relevant investigations, the Venezuelan government discovered that the bodies belonged to Colombian paramilitaries infiltrated inside Venezuelan territory. This dangerous paramilitary infiltration from Colombia forms part of a destabilization plan against Venezuela that seeks to create a paramilitary state inside Venezuelan territory in order to breakdown President Chávez’s government.



The military agreement between Washington and Colombia will only increase regional tensions and violence. The information revealed in the US Air Force document unquestionably evidences that Washington seeks to promote a state of warfare in South America, using Colombia as its launching pad. Before this declaration of war, the peoples of Latin America must stand strong and unified. Latin American integration is the best defense against the Empire’s aggression.





*The US Air Force document was submitted in May 2009 to Congress as part of the 2010 budget justification. It is an official government document and reaffirms the authenticity of the White Book: Global Enroute Strategy of the US Air Mobility Command, which was denounced by President Chávez during the UNASUR meeting in Bariloche, Argentina this past August 28th. I have placed the original document and the non-official translation to Spanish that I did of the relevant parts relating to Palanquero on the web page of the Center to Alert and Defend the People “Centro de Alerta para la Defensa de los pueblos”, a new space we are creating to garantee that strategic information is available to those under constant threat from imperialist aggression.


Eva Golinger is a Venezuelan-American attorney from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 and author of the best-selling books, “The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela” (2006 Olive Branch Press) and “Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela” (2007, Monthly Review Press). Since 2003, Eva, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and CUNY Law School in New York, has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about the US Government’s efforts to destabilize progressive movements in Latin America.

Mass Shooting Indicates Breakdown of Military

by Dahr Jamail

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Global Research, November 6, 2009
Truthout



At approximately 1:30 p.m. CST today, a soldier went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, killing 11 people and wounding at least 31 others, according to base commander Lieutenant-General Bob Cone.

Truthout spoke with an Army Specialist who is an active-duty Iraq war veteran currently stationed at the base. The soldier spoke on condition of anonymity since the base is now on “lockdown,” and all “non-authorized” military personnel on the base have been ordered not to speak to the press.

“A soldier entered the ‘Soldier Readiness Processing Center (SRP)’ with two handguns and opened fire,” the soldier, who is currently getting treatment for traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) explained. “That facility is where you go just before you deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.”

The soldier named the gunman as Major Malik Nadal Hasan, and said he was about 40 years old. According to the soldier, Hasan was a member of the base’s Medical Evaluation Board, and worked there as a counselor.

“I can confirm Major Hasan was the gunman, and I actually saw him this morning,” the soldier explained. “I was over in the area doing some paperwork, and saw him at the facility. He seemed fine to me, and I spoke with one of my friends who had an appointment with him this morning. They said Major Hasan seemed OK to them too.”

The soldier believes that at least one Killeen Police Department officer was killed before the gunman was shot. Two other soldiers with suspected involvement in the mass shooting were also taken into custody by a SWAT team, according to the soldier.

Fort Hood, located in central Texas, is the largest US military base in the world and contains up to 50,000 soldiers. It is one of the most heavily deployed bases to both Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the shooter himself was facing an impending deployment to Iraq.

The soldier says that the mood on the base is “very grim,” and that even before this incident, troop morale has been very low.

“I’d say it’s at an all-time low - mostly because of Afghanistan now,” he explained. “Nobody knows why we are at either place, and I believe the troops need to know why they are there, or we should pull out, and this is a unanimous feeling, even for folks who are pro-war.”

In a strikingly similar incident on May 11, 2009, a US soldier gunned down five fellow soldiers at a stress-counseling center at a US base in Baghdad. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a news conference at the Pentagon that the shootings occurred in a place where “individuals were seeking help.”

“It does speak to me, though, about the need for us to redouble our efforts, the concern in terms of dealing with the stress,” Admiral Mullen said. “It also speaks to the issue of multiple deployments.”

Commenting on that incident in nearly parallel terms, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the Pentagon needs to redouble its efforts to relieve stress caused by repeated deployments in war zones; stress that is further exacerbated by limited time at home in between deployments.

The condition described by Mullen and Gates is what veteran health experts often refer to as PTSD.

While soldiers returning home are routinely involved in shootings, suicide and other forms of self-destructive violent behavior as a direct result of their experiences in Iraq, we had yet to see an event of this magnitude take place in Iraq until last May.

Prior to the May incident, the last reported incident of this kind happened in 2005, when an Army captain and lieutenant were killed when an anti-personnel mine detonated in the window of their room at a US base in Tikrit. In that case, National Guard Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez was acquitted.

The shocking story of a soldier killing five of his comrades does not come as a surprise when we consider that the military has, for years now, been sending troops with untreated PTSD back into the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis, reported in the Denver Post in August 2008, more than “43,000 service members -- two-thirds of them in the Army or Army Reserve -- were classified as nondeployable for medical reasons three months before they deployed” to Iraq.

Mark Thompson also has reported in Time magazine, “Data contained in the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of US troops taken last fall, about 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq and 17 percent of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope.”

In April 2008, the RAND Corporation released a stunning report revealing, “Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan - 300,000 in all - report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment.”

President Barack Obama, speaking during an event at the Department of the Interior in Washington, said that the mass shooting at Fort Hood was a "horrific outburst of violence". He added, "It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on American soil."

Victor Agosto, an Iraq war veteran who was discharged from the military after publicly refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, has had firsthand experience with the SRP at Fort Hood, where he too was based.

“I knew there would be a confrontation when I was there, because the only reason to do that process is to deploy,” Agosto explained, speaking to Truthout near Fort Hood . “So the shooter clearly intended to stop people from deploying.”

Agosto was court-martialed for refusing an order to go to the SRP to prepare to deploy to Afghanistan.

“I was court-martialed for refusing the order to SRP in that very same building. I didn’t enter the building, but I didn’t go in because I was refusing the process,” Agosto continued. “It’s a pretty important place in my life, so it’s interesting to me that this happened there.”

Dahr Jamail, is one of the first and few unembedded Western journalists to report the truth about how the United States has destroyed, not liberated, Iraqi society in his book Beyond the Green Zone, Jamail now investigates the under-reported but growing antiwar resistance of American GIs. Gathering the stories of these courageous men and women, Jamail shows us that far from "supporting our troops," politicians have betrayed them at every turn. Finally, Jamail shows us that the true heroes of the criminal tragedy of the Iraq War are those brave enough to say no.

It's Time to Rally for Financial Reform

by Danny Schechter

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Global Research, November 6, 2009


To paraphrase Marat-Sade: ‘the Election came, and the election went, and unrest turned back into discontent.’



The Dems lost two Governors, one an unpopular former high honcho at Goldman Sachs, not exactly a populist crusader, and picked up one house seat in a Congressional District no ever heard about before.



They hope that all the recovery-is-coming news will stem the tide of growing disenchantment with the centrists in Obamaland who have been swimming hard to stay in place.



As the sense of crisis seems to be abating thanks to lazy media reporting, Rahm Emamuels suggestion that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste seems itself a distant memory.



We may or may not get a health care reform but how many of us now believe it will transform much or even significantly lower costs as long as the industry is allowed to dilute proposals for both public option and single payer.



While Nancy “the Hare” Pelosi is pushing for a vote right away, Harry “the tortoise” Read says we will have to wait until next year.



So much for a sense of urgency, but at least there is some motion on that ocean.



Not so for also urgently needed financial reforms that are being blocked by our friendly financial tycoons, even as our kissing cousins across the pond move to break up their big banks.



Inaction is scary enough but even more alarm bells are bring rung by Eliot Spitzer, once the “Sheriff of Wall Street” until his pecker got in the way of his assaults on the pecking order.



George Washington of Washington’s Blog reports:

“Yesterday, Elliot Spitzer said that the White House’s defense of the financial status quo will give Republicans powerful ammunition in the 2010 elections.

Democratic cheerleader Markos Moulitsas (the “Kos” behind Daily Kos) wrote the following about the Democratic losses in several state elections:

‘Democratic turnout collapsed. This is a base problem, and this is what Democrats better take from tonight:


… If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes…

If you forget why you were elected — … financial services … reform — you will lose votes..,’


People are sick and tired of both parties’ catering to the big boys. Indeed, given last night’s election results and the Dems’ utter failure to institute any real financial reform, trend forecaster Gerald Calente’s prediction that a third party candidate will win the 2012 presidential election is sounding a little less crazy.”


Writing on New Deal 2.0 Spitzer explains why he believes the right will jump on this issue perhaps even outflanking the Obamacrats:

“Few things are as potent in politics as calling for change at a moment of fundamental dissatisfaction with the status quo. Nobody should know this better than the current White House. Gauzy words describing the possibilities for change are always more comforting than defending the current dire straits. That is why — in addition to all the substantive arguments — the current White House plan for banking reform is so troubling.


Let us fast forward a couple of months. Momentary GDP pops notwithstanding, the economy next year is likely to be in pretty sad shape. Consumer spending is sagging; foreclosures are still climbing (and may surge as ARMs re-set); unemployment is likely to be hovering in the 9.5-10.0 range; federal deficits and state deficits will be soaring; and Goldman profits will still be setting new records.



Added to this toxic political brew will be a new, and perhaps counter-intuitive, but highly successful political attack from the RIGHT: break up the banks. Imagine this: by next spring, an intellectual consensus will have emerged that the concentration in the banking sector that developed from the 1980s until the crash of ‘08 was misguided. Voices as disparate as Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, meta- investor George Soros, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page will be in agreement on this point.”


Blogger Zach Carter says it is essential for progressives to get out in front and take a stand now, writing: “If we want the economy to support all people, we have to break up the big banks and start treating the creation of good jobs as an economic priority on par with Wall Street rescues.



The editors of The Nation break the political debate over banking into three camps:



The first camp is composed of bank lobbyists, Republicans and conservative Democrats and wants to do nothing.



Camp two, endorsed by the White House and influential Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), would impose tougher regulations on too-big-to-fail banks to keep them from getting out of control.



The third camp wants to go even further: If a bank is too-big-to-fail, it is also too-big-to-regulate. Companies that pose a danger to the economy have to be split up into smaller firms that cannot induce economic ruin.”



This third camp is growing with conservatives realizing that unless they radically reform the system, it will remain volatile and unstable. Isn’t it time for those of us who still cling to the hope that real change is needed to start focusing on this issue and realize that the power of big money is standing in the way of what we want and need.



Can’t we become at least try to become champions of those confronting higher fees imposed by banksters and endless foreclosures leaving millions without homes or hope. Extraction demands reaction. Plunder demands protests and pitchforks!


Can’t we remember that catchy phrase so many of us once echoed in the glow of an earlier time just a year ago?


“YES WE CAN.”



Danny Schechter, Mediachannel’s News Dissector, is finishing a new film on the financial crisis as a crime story. His new book is THE CRIME OF OUR TIME (plunderthecrimeofourtime.com). Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

House Resolution Designates Venezuela a " State Sponsor of Terrorism"

by Stephen Lendman

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Global Research, November 5, 2009



At a time of growing US poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair, imperial wars without end, and the Obama administration even worse than its predecessor, Venezuela:

-- is a model participatory democracy;

-- holds free, fair and open elections;

-- respects the rule of law, civil liberties, and human rights;

-- doesn't intimidate its neighbors;

-- uses its resources responsibly for the people;

-- provides essential social services for the needy;

-- champions judicial fairness and the rule of law;

-- has a model free and open media;

-- wages no foreign wars;

-- doesn't torture or imprison its adversaries;

-- conducts effective operations to halt illicit drugs trafficking;

-- promotes global peace, solidarity, equality and social justice; and

-- its only threat is its good example that shames its northern neighbor.

In contrast, America:

-- is a serial belligerent and world class bully;

-- spends more on militarism than the rest of the world combined at a time when it has no enemies;

-- backs the world's worst dictators and fake democrats like Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, a man closely linked to the country's paramilitary death squads and drug cartels; and

-- through the CIA, has actively engaged in global drugs trafficking since the agency's 1947 founding; it profits hugely from its dealings with local traffickers; so do major US banks and other powerful business and financial interests.

In addition, Washington

-- serves the rich at the public's expense;

-- tolerates corruption at the highest levels;

-- subverts democracy through electoral fraud;

-- has a closed, corrupted dominant media system serving the powerful, not the greater good;

-- incarcerates hundreds of political prisoners;

-- uses torture as official policy; and

-- wages state-sponsored terrorism and global wars.

So consider the hypocrisy. On October 27, Rep. Connie Mack (Rep. FL) introduced HR 872: Calling for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to be designated a state sponsor of terrorism for its support of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP). Its sole co-sponsor was Rep. Ron Klein (Dem. FL).

Connie Mack is a notorious right-wing ideologue. In an accompanying statement he said:

"The evidence linking Venezuela's Hugo Chavez to the FARC and Hezbollah - two of the most dangerous terrorist organizations, responsible for many bombings, kidnappings, killings and drug trafficking - is overwhelming. Naming Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism will strengthen the stability of the region. The Administration must not turn a blind eye to Chavez's dangerous aggression and must add Venezuela to the state sponsors of terrorism with delay."

Fact Check

Iran hasn't attacked a neighbor in over 200 years, but has defended itself vigorously when attacked, including during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, a conflict the Carter administration triggered in an attempt to destabilize and weaken both countries.

Noted Latin America expert James Petras calls the FARC-EP the "longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world (that was) founded in 1964 by two dozen peasant activists (to defend) autonomous rural communities from" Colombian military and paramilitary violence.

Hezbollah is no terrorist organization. It's a legitimate resistance group, and, as a political party, is part of Lebanon's elected government. In addition, it's well respected for providing essential social services, including a network of schools, medical clinics, and organized relief after Israeli South Lebanon bombings in 1993, 1996, and 2006.

Also, according to Aijaz Ahmad writing in the Indian magazine, Frontline:

It's "the only entity which has, through armed resistance, forced the Israelis to relinquish any territory that the Jewish state has ever captured" through decades of regional belligerency.

Mack Attack Round Two

HR 872 is round two for Mack. On March 13, 2008, he and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R. FL) introduced HR 1049 (with eight co-sponsors) "calling for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to be designated a state sponsor of terrorism (and) condemn(ing) the Venezuelan government for it support of terrorist organizations," at that time referring to the FARC-EP. The resolution died in the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Referred there as well, the new one won't fare better. Otherwise the implications are serious as state terrorism designation means halting normal relations, prohibiting US companies from exporting and operating there, and denying America vitally needed Venezuelan oil. It's the nation's fourth largest supplier after Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico.

In its "State Sponsors of Terrorism Overview," the US States Department imposes the following sanctions:

1. "A ban on arms-related exports and sales.

2. Controls over exports of dual-use items (that may be anything, including oil), requiring 30-day Congressional notification for goods and services that could significantly enhance the terrorist-list country's military capability or ability to support terrorism.

3. Prohibitions on economic assistance.

4. Imposition of miscellaneous financial and other restrictions, including:

-- Requiring the United States to oppose loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions;

-- Lifting diplomatic immunity to allow families of terrorist victims to file civil lawsuits in US courts;

-- Denying companies and individuals tax credits for income earned in terrorist-listed countries;

-- Denial of duty-free treatment of goods exported to the United States;

-- Authority to prohibit any US citizen from engaging in a financial transaction with a terrorist-list government without a Treasury Department license; and

-- Prohibition of Defense Department contracts above $100,000 with companies controlled by terrorist-list states."

In other words, it halts virtually all normal diplomatic, political and business dealings with "terrorist-list states."

Corporate interests won't tolerate it at a time every business opportunity counts. Nor will Venezuela with strong regional support given the political, security and economic implications.

As long as Bolivarianism flourishes, expect new efforts to vilify, isolate, destabilize, and topple Chavez, no more likely to succeed than others, and here's why. According to the Venezuelan Institute of Data Analysis (IVAD), his latest approval rating tops 62% after nearly 11 years as president. Governing responsibly keeps him popular compared to Barack Obama's noticeable slippage from his post inaugural high.

According to the November 3 Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll, only 28% of voters strongly approve of his performance, 41% strongly disapprove, 46% somewhat approve, 52% somewhat disapprove, and for Congress it's far worse - 15% say its doing a good or excellent job compared to 53% ranking it poor.

Given Washington's inattention to essential needs, watch for even greater erosion compared to Chavez remaining popular by a two-to-one margin - a profile befitting a democrat, not a state-sponsor of terrorism.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Student arrested in DC Lieberman protest
By: Joseph Adinolfi
Posted: 11/6/09
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (DI-CT) refused to meet with demonstrators staging an impromptu sit-in at his office on Capitol Hill Thursday that ended with the arrest of nine individuals, one of whom was a UConn student.

"When Lieberman came out against the [health care] bill, we thought 'okay it's time to step it up,'" said Jason Ortiz, a 6th-semester communications major, president of the UConn ACLU and member of the Daily Campus editorial board. "He decided to pick profits over people and we decided to let him know what the people think about that."

Ortiz received a call Tuesday night from a member of Mobilization for Health care for All, a national movement of protesters who stage non-violent sit-ins at the offices of healthcare executives and elected officials.

A sit-in at Lieberman's office was being organized and Ortiz was asked if he and several of Lieberman's other constituents would join in the protest. Ortiz recruited two other UConn students, Brittany Florio and Danielle Nachowitz, and UConn alumnus John Mohrbacher. The four left UConn on Wednesday around 3:30 p.m., immediately after the conclusion of Wednesday's rally for health care reform on Fairfield Way.

Lieberman recently accepted a $65,200 campaign contribution from the health insurance company Aetna and its employees. Federal law prohibits corporate political action committees from giving more than $9,000 in campaign contributions to any individual candidate and from requiring that employees donate. Of the Aetna contribution, the remaining $56,200 came from company employees. The demonstrators wanted Lieberman to return the money as a gesture to show that he is not beholden to corporate interests.

Aetna has spent more than 2 million dollars lobbying against health care reform since 1989.

"All that money is coming from people getting denied claims, they're profiting off of denying people health care," said Florio, a 9th-semester agriculture and natural resources major. Florio was one of two Connecticut residents arrested at Lieberman's office. "Obviously he's going to continue to listen to insurance companies over us if they pay him to do so."

Lieberman has accepted $427,644 from insurance companies during the period from 2005-2010.

At 10:00 a.m., a group of protesters entered Lieberman's office in the Hart Office Building on Capitol Hill and demanded to meet with him.

"Whenever the rep is there the door is locked," said Ortiz. "He was probably prepping for his committee hearing."

Lieberman's staff made several counter offers, but could not satisfy the group's demands.

"The demonstrators insisted on disrupting office operations after they rejected repeated offers for meetings with both the Senator's chief of staff and legislative Director to discuss their concerns," said Marshall Wittmann, communications director and spokesman for Lieberman. "After rejecting these meeting offers, refusing to heed warnings from the Capitol Hill police and continuing the disruption, some of the demonstrators were removed by the police."

Nine people, including Florio and Mohrbacher, were arrested. Florio was released six hours later. Mohrbacher and three other arrestees are planning on remaining in jail until their demands are met.

One hundred forty one people have been arrested nationwide while participating in demonstrations sanctioned by Mobilization for Healthcare for All, including 12 who were arrested at Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's office in San Francisco on Wednesday.

"Lieberman would rather arrest his constituents then meet with them," said a demonstrator in a video posted on YouTube.

Two videos have been posted online depicting the arrests.

Afterwards several remaining members continued directly to a meeting of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, hoping that Lieberman might listen to their concerns there.

Lieberman opposes a public health care option, and has openly stated that he will participate in a fillibuster of the bill, should it come to a vote.

September 11, 2008 - Thursday

Revisiting the Murder of Federal Judge Robert Smith Vance

Pan Am 103 Bombing
UTA Flight 772
Murder of Federal Judge Robert Vance
TWA 800 Disaster

What do these supposed terrorist acts all have in common? Former Special Agent J. Thomas Thurman of the FBI Crime Lab. In each case he either manufactured or withheld evidence in order to achieve the results his supervisors wanted and support their version of the facts.

On June 28, 2007, after a four-year investigation, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission announced that it was granting "Lockerbie Bomber" Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi a second appeal against his conviction in the Pan Am 103 bombing in part due to Special Agent Thurman's actions. The Scots discovered that their American cousins at the FBI had lied and presented false evidence for political reasons.

Agent Thurman's fabrication of evidence in the VANPAC case against Walter Leroy Moody was accepted as impeachment of his testimony in the Lockerby Case because among other things FBI Agent Frederick Whitehurst's Congressional testimony accuses Thurman of fabricating evidence in the conviction of Moody.

Special Agent Thurman was dismissed from the FBI Crime Lab in 1997, by Director Louis Freeh who at the time was the US Attorney who prosecuted Walter Leroy Moody for the murder of Judge Vance, but Special Agent Thurman's pattern and practice of disregard for scientific procedure and lack of respect for the legal chain of evidence continue to haunt the search for justice in the Judge Robert Vance case and many others. Walter Leroy Moody was guilty of a lot of things, but not the murder of Judge Robert Vance.

Now, additional evidence against former Special Agent Thurman has surfaced. Who asked Special Agent Thurman to frame Walter Leroy Moody for the murder of Judge Robert Smith Vance and what were they covering up? My college professors at Faulkner University, former FBI Special Agents Louis M. Harris and Robert Thetford, an Alabama Lawyer may know a thing or two about that because they were working on the Vance case back in the 1980s at the Selma Field Office of the FBI.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., future United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was about to leave government for private law practice when the Judge Robert Vance murder case landed at the Department of Justice. Justice Department Officials and the Solicitor General's Office where Roberts was working decided to assign the case to Assistant US Attorney and future FBI Director Louis Freeh who at that time was a low-level Justice Department attorney whose career was going nowhere and who was also about to leave government.

As Freeh was preparing to prosecute Walter Leroy Moody for the murder of Judge Robert Vance, my future college professors at Faulkner University: Former Selma, Alabama FBI Special Agent in Charge Louis M. Harris and FBI Attorney and Alabama Lawyer Robert Thetford and their men were in the field in Alabama gathering the dubious evidence on Moody. Given Special Agent Harris' infamous reputation for the frame up of Roger Lippman and the Seattle 8 for terrorism and bombings in the late 1960s, I'm not so sure that Walter Leroy Moody was actually guilty of what he was charged with.

After Roger Lippman and The Seattle 8 were sent to jail, it was eventually revealed that the FBI Agents of the Seattle Field Office themselves were behind the campaigns of arson and bombings that had been blamed on the Seattle 8, Weather Underground, New Black Panther Party and other anti-war groups.

Given that FBI Special Agent Louis M. Harris was involved with the Seattle 8 frame up and that he replaced me, the former Chief of Security at Faulkner University with Alabama Attorney John P. Gray (a cousin of Allen Dulles the former Director of the CIA who was fired by President Kennedy and fellow cousin John Foster Dulles) we know who they really work for, the US Intelligence Network.

On the day Judge Robert Vance was murdered Louis Freeh was an unknown prosecutor in the state of New York. Three years later Louis Freeh was director of the FBI.

Although Judge Vance's caseload was 60% drug related, the FBI, the agency that never communicates with the CIA, immediately responded "drugs were no more prominent than several other avenues we are following," but Vance had been preparing to hear a series of cases, all pointing to the CIA as a major source of Cocaine and Vance had a reputation for absolute and dogmatic honesty. At about the same time, Neil Huntley, the CIA agent whose job it was to follow Lee Harvey Oswald in Minsk, Belarus had retired to Montgomery, Alabama. In 1997, Neil Huntley would tell me that the CIA did not have anything to do with the cocaine trade, but he was concealing the truth.

The FBI soon "discovered" that the VANPAC bombs were EXACT duplicates of bombs Walter Leroy Moody had sent years earlier. Supposedly, Moody had painted both cardboard box bombs interiors with black paint, used the exact same welded end caps etc., etc… Supposedly Moody must have been rather stupid (despite his 130 IQ) and had not known the bombs would point directly to him like a Neon sign. Another fact is that Moody did not know how to weld. Ted Banks was accused of doing the welding and a deal was struck to pin it all on Moody. A conviction was secured and the case drifted into history.

Then it all unraveled…

In Federal Appeals Court, counterfeiter turned patriot, Ted Banks, blew the whistle on then Assistant U.S. Atty. Louis Freeh. Patriot Ted Banks accepted a ten year addition to his sentence as the price of telling the truth. He pointed at Louis Freeh from the stand and said "I lied and he told me to lie, I never welded no bombs for Moody!" Then FBI Agent Whitehurst charged that the FBI had fabricated evidence, then the Vance bomb was identified in the Unabomber case as originating from Saratoga California. Then the World Court threw out the Lockerbie conviction because FBI agent J. Thomas Thurman could not be trusted, because he was not credible in their eyes after his role in the Vance debacle and the US press is still silent.

The site, Unabombers.com, provides insights into the activities of the FBI/CIA pre September 11th 2001; activities that include the manufacture and management of a series of high profile, random terrorist events and selective assassinations. The facts have been covered up, despite a wide trail of undeniable proof and multiple witnesses. They are presented at Unabombers.com

Now, Let's examine the misdeeds of Agent Thurman and the FBI in the TWA 800 disaster:

First of all, why is the FBI even involved? Usually the NTSB and FAA do these things cradle to grave, right? Well, the FBI and CIA got involved to spread disinformation and conduct political subterfuge. Yep, that's what they get paid to do folks. Otherwise, it's the NTSB and FAA investigators who get stuck with all the boring aeronautical engineering stuff. That's why I resigned from my boring job leasing offshore oil wells at the Alabama State Lands Division, too many FBI guys examining public contracts that didn't get awarded to friends of the Bush Administration.

Unlike the first three cases, it is conspiracy theorists like the John Birch Society and the late John F. Kennedy Administration Press Secretary, Pierre Salinger and not the US Government who contend that TWA 800 was an act of terrorism. The CIA and the NTSB have advanced the most plausible theory to date which is that faulty insulation in the wiring harness caused a short circuit from a high voltage wire that overloaded a low voltage wire which led to a sensor in the fuel tank that was exposed to a fuel vapor/air mixture that had reached the temperature of ignition. This scenario is easily prevented by pumping nitrogen gas into the fuel tank in order to displace the fuel vapor/air mixture (the plausible source of ignition) above the liquid fuel in the tank, but most airliners, including TWA 800 were not fitted with the nitrogen pump because of cost analysis.

Hey, It looks great on paper right? However, like the "JFK One Magic Bullet Theory," you have something turning left when it should be going right and going up when it should be falling down, figuratively speaking.

Despite the CIA and NTSB's excellent public relations campaign in arguing this theory, it has three huge holes:

1) Special Agent J. Thomas Thurman removed evidence from the TWA 800 accident reconstruction hangar which tended to prove that the aircraft was shot down by a missile.

2) Why would a jet that is about to cross the Atlantic Ocean with a final destination of Charles DeGaulle Airport, one of the world's busiest airports where it might have to circle in a holding pattern before receiving permission to land, take off on anything less than a full tank of fuel? I'd like to know what the pilots were smoking because I want some of that stuff. Was it Maui Wowie or Manilla Thrilla?

3) Before the TWA 800 disaster, the Jet-A Kerosene fuel vapor/air mixture had never exploded "in flight" due to a mechanical or electrical failure (anything other than a bomb or missile). Furthermore, the air conditioning unit on TWA 800 which was blamed for the increased temperature inside the fuel tank during the long wait for takeoff was adequately insulated. It most likely could not have been the contributing factor that raised the fuel vapor/air mixture inside the tank above the ambient temperature to the temperature necessary for ignition. Besides, the fuel/air mixture could not be compressed to the density necessary for ignition because the space inside the tank was just too large, especially if the tank wasn't full and if, as we all learned in elementary school, the density of a gas actually decreases as the altitude increases.

If the aircraft was going to explode, it should have done so on the runway where the outside temperature was greater and the fuel/air mixture in the tank was denser. You had to have the power switched on to run that air conditioner and to the start the engines. The plane did not explode on the ground when the conditions were most favorable for detonation. It exploded later when they were less favorable and electrical power to the supposedly faulty wiring harness was applied at both times.

It would have been necessary for God in Heaven to suspend the Laws of Nature, specifically Boyle's Ideal Gas Law, for the mixture to have exploded, but with today's faith based Department of Justice anything is possible. They can seemingly do all things through Christ who stregthens them, to include suspending the Laws of Nature in order to protect Wall Street investments, corporate trust funds and re-election campigns.

If the neocons can get you to believe that Walter Leroy Moody murdered Judge Robert Smith Vance who they themselves considered a communist subversive, then perhaps they can even bear witness to the death of Enron CEO Ken Lay from a heart attack, then like Jesus raise him from the dead in South America like so many Nazi business executives from World War II.

Is Walter Leroy Moody a political prisoner? Did TWA 800 really go down like they said it did? The truth may be stranger than fiction. Judge Vance may have been murdered by his own government.