Preston Peet
Disinformation
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These are the collected writings by Preston
Peet
for Disinformation.
All were published
between 1999 and 2001, (although nearly
all
have dates indicating their later reposting
instead of their original publication).
There
are an abundance of links to related
information following each report, enabling
the reader to further investigate each story
for
themselves. Conspiracies, government and
corporate crime, culture, drugs,
all this and more can be found in this diverse
compilation.
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Drug
War- An Interview With Dan Russell
"Nixon's 1970 Controlled Substances Act criminalized
any herb or concentrate with a 'potential for abuse.' That 'potential'
is defined by the general consensus of industrial nations that drugs
are worth far more illegal than legal, and that without the international
Inquisition their own internal fascism would be harder to justify,
and finance."
Dan Russell wrote the passage above, with brutal
clarity in his landmark book Drug War: Covert Money, Power and Policy
(Camden, NY: Kalyx, 2000). Know a parent, friend or co-worker who
believes in the War on Some Drugs with a patriotic and puritanical
fervour? Buy them a copy of Russell's book.
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US
Drug Running Capers
There is an ongoing Congressional investigation
into the allegations raised in Gary Webb's August 1996 series of
articles in the San Jose Mercury News, entitled 'Dark Alliance',
that detailed the relationship between one crack kingpin in South
Central Los Angeles and his CIA/Contra connected supplier. All across
the country there were reports in many of the major mainstream newspapers
that Webb was fanning the flames of black paranoia, that there was
nothing to the story. But that was not the truth, far from it, which
these so-called reporters, the nay-sayers and denigrators, should
have realized had they known their history, or had they not been
spouting an official Drug War propaganda line. A source inside the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has confirmed the
continuing investigation. According to a letter that the committee
sent to Mike Ruppert, founder of Crack the CIA Coalition, back in
May 1999, the committee is in the final stages of evaluating the
evidence that they have already received.
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Biological
Warfare in New York City
Germ Warfare. The very phrase sends a shiver
up the spine, invoking images of plague, open running sores, loss
of civil order, chaos of the most extreme type. It is the nightmare
stuff of numerous books, movies, and secretive government agencies
lurking in hermetically sealed rooms inside government labs, plotting
takeovers, and population control using the panic of unchecked,
never-seen-before
epidemics. New York City is a good case in point.
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The
US, Kosovo, and Criminal Drug Cartels
The United States Government, the US military,
and US Intelligence forces have a history of being involved with
drug runners, killers, and dictators the whole world over. Laos,
Panama, Afghanistan, Haiti, these are but a few of the places where
the US has actively worked hand in glove with Drug Armies. But almost
nowhere has this been as blatant, and at the same time been as suppressed
in the mainstream media, than in Kosovo.
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Turning
Cops Into Soldiers
Military styled attacks, utilizing all the trademark
flashbang, battering ram, dynamic entry methods of the special forces,
carried out on private homes, and citizens, is rapidly becoming
more and more prevalent in America today. Unfortunately, these home
invasions are not by hooded criminals, ruffians of the hooligan
type, they are more often by the police themselves, all in the name
of the Drug War.
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The
Ad Campaign to Wash Your Brain
The Clinton Administration and the Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) are conducting a war on your
mind and the way you think. By using 'social marketing' tactics,
"a strategic, behavior change approach," they are aiming to program
the population to think the way they desire it to. But evidence
suggests that it may not be what you think they would like you to
think.
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Colombian
Viet Salvador
In the last three years Colombia has moved into
the number one spot as the United States' premier cocaine supplier,
and the number one supplier of heroin to the US Eastern Seaboard.
This is despite an ever increasing anti-drug expenditure by the
US Government over the same time. Initially he was speaking of a
US$1 billion package, but now Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the US Drug
Czar, wants to give another 'emergency aid' supplement of US$1 to
US$2 billion to the Colombian National Police (CNP) and the Colombian
military, over a three year period.
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PACT
With the Devil
In a nightmarish scenario that conjures up memories
of Nazi Germany circa 1930-40 and other supposedly 'civilized' Western
nations that endured eugenics and sterilization crazes during the
early Twentieth Century, there are individuals currently in the
US who are being deemed dangerous - "mentally ill" - a threat to
themselves and others, and who are therefore not entitled to the
same Constitutional guarantees that "normals" enjoy. Mandated into
involuntary medicatings, their doors are kicked in by hostile care
workers, and they are given no chance to refuse treatment without
risking severe, long-term involuntary incarceration inside a psychiatric
hospital.
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No
Pill for the Gulf War Ill
Did the US Government intentionally give 'Pyridostigmine
Bromide' (PB) to nearly 250 000 US troops (and other Allied troops
as well) because it was expected that Saddam Hussein would use the
nerve agent 'Soman'? Or was it to test the long-term effects of
this 'investigational new drug'? Did the FDA approve a waiver of
the requirement for 'informed consent' because they knew it was
dangerous to give to the troops, and wanted to avoid troublesome
explanations, or to minimize the paper trail? How many of the myriad
'Gulf War Illnesses' (GWI) is PB responsible for?
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Is
China Spying or Buying?
China is spying on the US, stealing its technology!
This is a hot story in the press and for some politicians. This
seems a rather archaic hysteria-generating tactic to get more money
guaranteed to the Military-Industrial Complex for more heavy weaponry
to out-destroy everyone else's big guns and missiles. Those big
guns and missiles that corporations like Lockheed Martin are bragging
about designing on prime-time television, equating their new fighter
planes with "looking to the future." Especially when US, European,
and Israeli governments and corporations have been selling China
super-sophisticated technology for years.
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Mexico
Mayhem
Mass graves that Authorities say have been recently
uncovered on ranches owned by vicious drug gangs just South of the
border are bringing to light a problem that must be faced. The United
States has consistently re-certified Mexico as a cooperating partner
in fighting the Drug War. This in spite of US law-enforcement officials'
long-time knowledge of murder, corruption and drug trafficking regularly
carried out by Mexican law enforcement and military agents.
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Still
Killing After All These Years
Right wing, drug smuggling, anti-Castro exiles,
based mainly in Miami, Florida, have worked at trying to kill Cuban
leader Fidel Castro for years, ever since right after he took power
in 1959. Plots involving bombs, poisons, bullets, needles, diseases,
the list of assassination attempts runs on for pages. The ends justified
the means, whether it meant working with Mafia hit-men, or a variety
of US government agents. Castro has repeatedly levelled charges
accusing the US of harbouring known terrorists, even helping to
finance and train them. While chilly US-Cuba relations seem to be
to be in a state of thaw as the 20th Century draws to a close, there
have been other instances in the past where overtures of peace were
made behind the scenes to Cuba and Castro by US administrations,
while simultaneously plans were under way to kill Castro. Castro
has survived an estimated 600 assassination attempts.
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King's
Killers Still at Large
On Wednesday December 8th 1999, a jury of six
whites and six blacks in Tennessee's Shelby County District Court
took three hours to find that Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered
by conspiracy, not by a lone-nut assassin. But the US government
will file no charges.
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Sexist
Fundamentalist Army Growing Drugs (in
Afghanistan)
UN anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan seem to
have enabled the opium cartels there to reap their largest poppy
crop ever recorded, nearly doubling last year's haul. Rising from
2600 tons in 1998 to 4600 tons in 1999, according to the UN's International
Drug Control Program, Afghanistan's poppy crop currently accounts
for an astonishing 75% of opium produced globally, more than Laos,
Thailand, and Burma (the legendary Golden Triangle).
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Nature's
Destruction, Humanity's Extinction
Humanity is busy killing off the most important
eco-systems on the planet at break-neck speed, ignoring all the
warning signs, all the evidence of imminent self-destruction. We
are choosing instead the short-term profits garnered by razing the
rainforests and old growth forests around the world to the ground.
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The
CIA Fights for the Right to Violate Human Rights
Former Central Intelligence Agency Director
(1993-1995) James Woolsey revealed during an appearance on the Fox
News 'Sunday' show (December 26th 1999) that the rules governing
how the CIA recruits its foreign assets should be loosened, highlighting
the current barring of hiring human rights abusers.
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Perception
Management and Domestic Propaganda
Public opinion is heavily influenced by what
the media reports. This has not escaped the notice of the CIA, who
have been working actively to direct world opinion using global
media outlets and reporters for decades.
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Betrayal
of Public Trust
US officials in all branches of the Government
have been working to pass more and more draconian laws that the
common masses must abide by, or face stiff, repressive sanctions,
enforced by machine-gun toting, flack-jacket wearing stormtroopers
who selectively enforce the laws. Yet rumors, allegations, and evidence
abound of misconduct, and even criminal behavior within the hallowed
halls of the US Congress and Officialdom in general.
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Radiation
is Your Friend?
The US government has conducted atomic and nuclear
experiments on a large proportion of the military and civilian population
within the United States, and elsewhere, and is responsible for
many accidents as well. These are facts that cannot be disputed.
The US government has even begun paying claims to victims of some
official US nuclear policy.
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The
First Native Americans Are Still Here
In the United States of America there are people
who are not often mentioned when the press talks of genocide. These
people were not mentioned when the Kosovar Albanians were being
expelled from their homes by Serbs, and by NATO bombs. When the
pundits speak of the treatment of civilian Chechens by Russian military
forces, these people are never remembered. Who remembers the American
Natives, the indigenous people of North America, who now make up
one percent of the US population? If the US violates its own internal
treaties, what does this say to the rest of the world?
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Waco
Killers Cover Up Crimes
It's not a glitch in the camera. It's not the
sun striking something. It's not swamp gas reflecting off the planet
Venus, this is somebody shooting, said the expert in weapons and
infrared imagery on '60 Minutes II', after watching government tapes
of the final assault at
Waco.
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Vince
Foster- The Unsolved Mystery
Vince Foster was found shot in the mouth in
Fort Marcy Park in Washington, DC, July 1993. Though some who say
he shot himself, and that the case is closed, there are still those
who are just as convinced that Vince Foster was murdered, and there
is an ongoing cover-up.
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Where's
Osama Bin Hidin'?
Wanted for two 1998 US embassy bombings in East
Africa (Kenya and Tanzania), Osama bin Laden has declared his own
version of Holy War on the US. Former CIA Director George Tenent
told Congress on Wednesday, 2nd February 2000 that bin Laden is
seeking to acquire radiological, chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons, and, "despite some well-publicized disruptions, he can
still strike without additional warning." Considering that bin Laden
has declared his intentions to "kill all Americans," loud and clear,
this is a worrisome situation for the US. That is, if bin Laden
survives much longer with his failing kidneys.
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Who
Was John Deutch Spying For?
Ex-CIA Director John M. Deutch has admitted
taking home "enormously sensitive material," to his unsecured home-computer,
and his hand picked successor to the job told Congress that it is
impossible to know if the computers were hacked into, or if secrets
were lost. Nearly ignored in the reports is the fact that Deutch
was apparently using Citibank's private banking service.
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Who
is Attacking the World Wide Web?
Is the recent spate of Internet attacks part
of a nefarious plot to justify tightening of security, and increasing
intrusive government snooping rights? Or is it simply a bored college
student, playing the part of the angry anarchist? Is it cyber-terrorists,
or black-hat hackers? Who is attacking the World Wide Web?
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CRASH
Into Crime
The Rampart scandal may be the most serious
man-made disaster our city has ever faced, stated Los Angeles City
Councilman Joel Parks in the 'Daily News of Los Angeles' newspaper
(February 16th, 2000). "Think about the horrors. People killed,
framed, imprisoned, beaten by the very people we've entrusted to
protect us from such criminal behavior. The Rampart scandal has
scarred the city, and tarnished the reputations (sic) of an internationally
renowned department."
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Scientific
Racisim
Since World War II, various world governments,
the CIA, and assorted military programs have all experimented with
ways of controlling the mind, and with population control. This
has included race-specific experimentation.
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Disinfo.con-Tents
Under Pressure
Start of the day. Running late. We arrived at
the Hammerstein Ballroom for Disinfo.Con 2000 (dubbed Cyberpalooza'
by the media) extravaganza (February 19th, 2000), in plenty of time
to just catch the end of Peter Giblin and Vyass Houston, but I didn't
pay much attention, trying to get settled. Then Richard Metzger
gave the invocation for the day, informing us that 'They' have surrendered,
with his take on the Counter-culture now being the source of mainstream
culture.
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Amadou
Diallo is Dead!
Even if the defendant is otherwise guilty, if
he acted in self-defense, you must find him not guilty. So charging
the jury to consider lesser charges for the four cops charged in
the Amadou Diallo shooting trial February 17, 2000, Judge Joseph
C. Teresi sealed the outcome in favor of the officers.
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Malcolm
X Remembered
Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) was shot
three years before Martin Luther King Jr., yet the pattern is similar
in the way that they both had shifted their gaze from their originally
narrow focus on civil rights for blacks, expanding to a later broader
view, seeking equal rights for all the disaffected in America. They
wanted to influence the status quo as a whole. At that point they
became more than a nuisance. They became a threat. And that won't
do.
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The
Search for the Military Marine Mammalian Candidate
I am prepared to go to Allah, or even to the
Devil, as long as my animals will be OK, said the 'animal mercenaries'
squad trainer of a dolphin group that have been sold to Iran by
Crimean authorities, who can no longer afford to keep them. As reported
by the English 'Times' newspaper (March 10, 2000), the group of
twenty-seven militarily trained sea mammals, which includes dolphins,
Beluga whales, walruses, and sea lions, was flown to an Iranian
military base along the Persian Gulf. The animals have all been
trained in finding mines, or placing mines on enemy shipping, finding
lost torpedoes, and were even involved in airdrop experiments.
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Blinded
by the Sound
The US Navy is disregarding all evidence that
shows their new submarine defense system is harming, and possibly
killing whales, dolphins, and even humans who are in surrounding
waters when the Navy tests are conducted, so a lawsuit has been
filed to stop them.
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Project
X- The Search for the Missing White House E-Mail
The US 'Department of Justice' launched a criminal
investigation of the White House in March 2000 over 100 000 'missing'
e-mails of US President Clinton's and "much, if not all," of US
Vice-President Al Gore's. The attempt by high-level White House
officials to 'classify' this problematic internal information was
labeled 'Project X'.
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Murder,
Mystery and Mayhem in Mena
"We had nothing, zero, to do with it,"
stated US President Bill Clinton when asked by veteran reporter
Sarah McClendon about Mena, Arkansas drug running operations during
a White House press conference (October 7th, 1994), "and everybody
who has ever looked into it, knows that."
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Ed
Wilson Got Shafted
In 1977, Edwin P. Wilson sold Libyan dictator
Moammar Quaddaffi, 42 000 pounds (20 tons) of C-4, one of the most
powerful explosives around, and perfect for terror operations Libya
was on the US list of nations sponsoring terrorists, and was therefore
off limits to this kind of business. After a worldwide, 5-year operation
to bring Wilson to "justice," prosecutors and investigators for
the US government finally got him, and put him in prison for fifty-two
years. They committed perjury to do it.
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Bloody
Bolivia
Martial law has been declared after armed rebellion
erupted in the streets of Cochabamba, a Bolivian city of half a
million. After nearly a week of massive protests that shut down
that city, and spread across the country, President Hugo Banzer
declared martial law on Saturday, April 8th, 2000. Police and military
troops moved in. All this began over the price of water.
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Rampage
in Rwanda
The image that keeps coming to mind is the one
of machetes, chopping at arms trying to cover faces and bodies,
trying to ward of the blows of these bloody slashing blades. Up
to one million Tutsi died in just one hundred days in Rwanda, murdered
by Hutus in a real genocide that shocked the world. What should
shock even more is that the killings could have been stopped, or
at least slowed, yet virtually nothing was done to help.
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Marijuana
is Good For You!
Marijuana is a killer, if you ingests 15,000
pounds of the stuff within 15 minutes, a recent figure seen accredited
to the US Drug Enforcement Agency suggests. Regardless of this dubious
'fact', eight US States have passed Medical Marijuana laws allowing
people with a variety of ailments and medical complaints to legally
use marijuana.
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Who
Will Atone for Sierra Leone?
There are monsters loose upon the Earth. "I
often heard this story - a man had his hands amputated, he would
scream at the rebels, 'Just kill me, just kill me, you've killed
me already . . .just finish me off!' and some of them would chase
after the rebels with their bleeding stumps, just urging the rebels
to kill them. The rebels would then come around and cut off some
other part of their body, and that was either the ear, the mouth,
or the tongue because they were protesting," revealed Corrine Dufka
of Human Rights Watch, describing the madness in Sierra Leone's
civil war, carried out against civilians mainly by the rebel forces.
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Big
Brother Wants to Implant You
There are all kinds of ways that a ruling System
can exert its control over the sheeple: propaganda on a massive
scale, the politics of fear, and sheer intimidation. Probably the
most repulsive, most invasive method that should raise hackles amongst
every segment of society, is the internal Implant, used either for
surveillance or mind control.
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US
Torture
The UN 'Committee Against Torture' (UNCAT) has
for the first time issued a report critical of the US and the many
incidents of what can only be called torture that seem to be official
policy against certain segments of US society.
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Who
Says Crime Doesn't Pay?
There are those in America who are busy proving
the old adage "Crime Doesn't Pay" is flat out wrong. Because today
in America, where there are currently around 2 million people incarcerated
in prison, crime most certainly does pay, extremely well. For those
who own a piece of the private prison-industrial complex anyway!
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CIA-Drugs
Symposium- A Glimpse Behind the Veil
"Whatever system we are living under, it is
not a democracy, and we are not protected by the Rule of Law", said
Catherine Austin Fitts, the former US Assistant Secretary of State
for Housing & Urban Development. The US Government has known about
drug trafficking among its assets, protected those assets helpful
to whichever cause the US Government was backing at the time, and
will never legalize any of the currently illicit substances as there
is too much money being made from the War Against Some Drugs.
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Suicides
and Other Odd Deaths
The Staff Director of the US House Select Committee
on Intelligence was found dead of a gunshot wound in a fleabag motel
in Vienna, Virginia on June 3, 2000. Several weeks earlier, the
Committee had released their latest whitewash exonerating the CIA
of drug trafficking during the 1980s. Is there a connection?
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Haiti-
Drug Warriors are Certifiable
One definition of insanity is to do something
over and over again and expect different results. So why does the
US keep recertifying Haiti? The US News & World Report (May 29th,
2000) reported that Armand Jean-Robert, chief of Haiti's US-trained
and supported anti-drug force, fled Haiti for Miami on May 7th,
2000. Jean-Robert had been accused of stealing drug-bust cash, and
"ripping off another trafficker." He is but one in an unbroken line
of corrupt law enforcement and political figures to flee Haiti because
of their criminal behavior. But this is only part of the story.
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Surviving
Big Brother
In what seems like a blatant move to inure the
public to being watched and kept under surveillance 24 hours a day
by anonymous voyeurs and keepers of the Law, television networks
have unleashed a frightening new trend upon the masses: Reality
TV. And the sheeple follow blindly along.
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Feed
of Fight- Eritrea-Ethiopia at War
Since May 1998 a horrific war in the Horn of
Africa has been waged between Ethiopia and Eritrea. One gruesome
war picture showed thousands of dead Ethiopian bodies, mowed down
as their insane leaders ordered them to attack Eritrean positions
in human waves. Where are these two poor, famine-ravaged countries
getting their arms to fight this bloody conflict? Just who is it
profiting off one of the largest land wars since World War II?
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Hemingway
the Spy, Hemingway the Spied Upon
Ernest Hemingway was one of those bigger than
life figures, looming over the literary world with a grizzled macho
reputation, and the hard fisted, hard drinking lifestyle he so loved
to portray. Toward the end of his life, those around him, watching
him drink the massive amounts of alcohol, naturally assumed that
Hemingway was loosing his mind, suffering a case of psychosis, or
going "increasingly delusional." But he wasn't. In fact, there were
Feds constantly after him, for over a decade, watching his every
move.
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Cars
and Conspiracies
Racing up the deserted late-night beachfront
highway, with the T-tops removed, in my old hometown in Florida,
in what had been my big 4.9 Litre Turbo Trans Am, I felt alive.
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Occhipinti
Got Too Close
The INS officer thought he had busted the biggest
drug-gang in the Northeastern United States, and he had. He thought
he would get another medal, maybe a raise, but what he got was framed,
arrested, convicted, and put away in the very same prison where
some targets of his own previous criminal investigations wound up
serving their sentences.
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The
Untouchable Black Dalits
What they want today is not jobs, but to live
without being humiliated and harassed, said the Uttar Pradesh, India,
official to the Time magazine reporter, describing the situation
of his country's Dalits, or Black Untouchables.
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War
is Hellishly Profitable
There is a new breed of cold-blooded soldier-of-fortune
fighting in a multitude of countries in Africa and other hot war-zones
around the world, a corporate version, which kills for a much higher,
somewhat legal price tag.
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CIA
Hits and Misses
One urban legend tells it like this: There was
a man who flew for a CIA airline in the 1960s in South-east Asia.
One day an agent working paramilitary ops in the region for the
CIA threw a box into the plane, and told the pilot to deliver it
to "Landry in Udorn." While flying, a noxious odor began seeping
through the box, getting so overwhelming that the pilot opened the
box, and found a fresh human head. It was a "joke," to see how "Landry
in Udorn" would handle getting a head on his desk.
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Black
Helicopters Come in All Shapes and Colors
If I was to be on a marijuana eradication mission
with all these large, armed people in heavy field clothing and magnificent
thundering equipment, I wanted to see me some pot, man - I mean
I wanted vast waving fields of green instead of this wilted, hacked
up bunch of what could have been $3 worth of basil from Wellspring,
wrote Peter Eichenberger in the North Carolina Spectator (July 26th,
2000), commenting on his 'disappointment' at not finding action
while accompanying a crew of helicopter-transported drug cops for
a day.
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US
Election Fraud and Scams
With the US Presidential election bearing down
once again (2000), thoughts turn not only to the choices for President,
but also to the question, how does one know there isn't cheating
going on within the election system?
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Rotten
Roots- the US, Nazis and the CIA
"He's on our side, and that's all that matters,"
chuckled Allen Dulles, a US Intelligence officer during the war
who later headed the CIA. "Besides, one need not invite a Gehlen
to one's club," wrote the late, great conspiracy researcher Mae
Brussell in 1983, quoting Dulles. A mystery many Americans ponder
now at the dawn of a new millennium is how an agency such as the
CIA, which purports to work for the furthering of Truth, Justice
and the American Way, could have gone so far astray. Or has it gone
astray at all?
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Chicken
Run on Shrooms
Not being much of a go-to-the-theater type anymore,
more preferring to rent my movies and watch them at home, for my
last birthday I made an exception. My girlfriend took me to see
the first full-length Nick Park/Aardman film, Chicken Run, on mushrooms.
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A
Peruvian Spy Chief Stumbles
"As Peruvian General Cisneros once explained,
'It is necessary to kill 10 peasants to kill one guerrilla,'" quotes
Dan Russell in his scathing book Drug War: Covert Money, Power,
and Policy (Kalyx.com, 2000), describing the US War Against Some
Drugs that is being conducted in Peru. Now yet another powerful
and repressive CIA-ally, a shining example of US Drug Czar General
Barry McCaffery's favorite type of fiend, has fled his country.
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Death
and Disease From Your Doctor
That Christmas I almost died. Not from the injuries
I sustained, which did almost kill me at various other times, but
rather from the Hyper-L needle the doctor had stuck into my chest,
along with some kind of lethal virus.
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Who
Put a Hole in the USS Cole?
The little boat seemed harmless to the US sailors
on deck as the craft pulled alongside their mighty warship. The
sailors waved down at the two men inside, who returned the gesture,
then stood at attention, just before they and their little boat
blew into smithereens, driving human bodies and shrapnel across
the 66 foot-wide interior of the USS Cole, killing 17 US sailors,
and injured 39.
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Washing
Dirty Dollars
"What are we going to do? We've got the Fortune
500 involved in the drug money laundering-process," said former
Drug Enforcement agent and current government advisor on drug
trade economics, Greg Passic, to the New York Times (October
10th, 2000).
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Going
After Agusto Pinchet With a Gusto
Whoever can forget the pictures of "I'm-too-sick-to-stand-trial"
General Augusto Pinochet as he was wheeled out of his plane onto
the tarmac in Chile? Pinochet miraculously rose from his wheelchair
and strode forward to meet his cheering supporters, who had waited
for the bloody ex-dictator's return.
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Can
Pagens Celebrate Christmas?
I can even vaguely remember the Sunday School
discussions about the origin of Christmas, the stories of the angels
and the shepherds, and the primal manger scene under the Star of
Bethlehem. What the clergy never discussed with us little kids was
the fact that Christmas fell at the same time of year as many other
religious celebrations throughout history, and even has many of
its roots firmly imbedded in the pagan holiday rituals.
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Joy's
Division
Ever find yourself feeling gloomy and depressed,
or want to pretend you are? Put on some Joy Division and turn it
up loud.
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Hoover's
Ghost- the FBI and Other Official
Paparazzi
Celebrities attract a lot of attention. They
learn to live with the pointing tourists and the constant irritation
of paparazzi snapping photos at them, while the celebrities are
out in public, doing mundane and everyday things. Celebrities don't
expect to have the attention of the U.S. government and law enforcement
agencies, yet there is a long list of celebrities from myriad fields
who have come under the jaundiced glare of officialdom. Federal
Bureau of Investigation chief J. Edgar Hoover led the hounding pack.
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Modern
Slavery- Who Will be the Emancipator?
"Here's what he said to me: he has my life,
he can do as he pleases with it. He can choose to send me to school,
he can choose not to. I was being told if I did tell someone I would
go to jail," a former Cameroon slave named PB told Newsweek magazine
(December 18th, 2000). PB was enslaved for four years by a naturalized
U.S. couple, also from Cameroon, in Detroit's affluent suburb of
Farmington Hills. Slavery did not vanish from the Earth when the
Northern States won the American Civil War, contrary to what Americans
may believe. Modern slaves are entrapped in child labor, debt bondage,
servile marriage and prostitution. Today an estimated 27 million
people have no idea what "Emancipation" means.
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The
DU Years- Death and Destruction by Heavy
Metal
How do you dispose of the nuclear waste that
remains from nuclear power and weapons-grade material? This question
has been posed by opponents of nuclear power and weapons technologies,
which create byproducts that emit harmful radiation for thousands
of years. The US Pentagon has come up with a sure-fire way to get
rid of US nuclear waste: fire it as ammunition, whilst engaged in
foreign conflicts.
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Warpigs
Gorge on Military Pork
"Generals
gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses, Evil
minds that plot destruction, sorcerer of death's construction. In
the fields the bodies burning, as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind, poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Politicians hide themselves away, they only started the war. Why
should they go out to fight? They leave that all to the poor. Time
will tell on their power-minds, making war just for fun, Treating
people just like pawns in chess, wait till the judgement day comes."
~~ War Pigs/Luke's Wall,
Black Sabbath (Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward), 1970
Trying to describe this topic to someone
over a New Year's dinner, I used the common term "military pork"
to give an overall impression of over-billing practices by Defense
Industry contractors, who are awarded military contracts by Congress
worth huge sums of money, that end up costing taxpayers billions,
while making themselves rich. This guy launched into an "explanation"
of what he said the real causes of "military pork" were.
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John
Ashcroft- An Empty Suit With the Deepest
Pockets
The Anointed one will be cut off, and will have
nothing. The people of the ruler will come, will destroy the city
and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood . . . ~ ~ Daniel
9:26 (quoted by Ken Friedman) I've been really sad since I realized
most peoples opposition to the nomination of John Ashcroft, former
Governor of Missouri, former Missouri Senator, and now President-elect
George W. Bush's choice for US Attorney General, is due to his outspoken,
repressive, self-described "Christian" values. Ashcroft's apparent
feelings on certain other issues, such as his anti-gay, anti-civil
liberties stance, and his pro-War Against Some Drugs view, have
prompted many people to voice their concern about his nomination.
But something that really bugs me, something that (probably) epitomizes
his entire being: John Ashcroft anointed himself with Crisco cooking
oil.
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Columbus
Wasn't First Across the Ocean
Every year on October 12, in the US, the Caribbean,
and Latin America, there are memorial celebrations that commemorate
the "discovery" of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. These celebrations
proclaim Columbus as a great navigator, and the first Outsider to
set foot on the Americas' shores, since the migrations across the
Bering land bridge in prehistoric times. But what if this wasn't
true? What if he were only following in the footsteps of others
What if the exploring went both in and out of the "New World"?
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Bauhaus
and Homework
Suddenly, my companion said to me out of the
darkness to my right, just audible over the blasting stereo: "This
is not music to do my homework by." Maybe not while driving and
tripping, but Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead,"--nine-plus minutes
of rock history recorded in just one take--sure made for an amazing
soundscape to drive through tripping. Homework was just one of many
activities I'd undertake while listening to Bauhaus.
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M
is for Methadone
It should be obvious that if Methadone does
what it is advertised, than of course folks should actively support
it's dissemination. But to me, a person currently dealing with the
realization that methadone only put off the hell of kicking, with
a much harder kick awaiting me when the decision to end its use
was recently reached, it isn't obvious. Who is making the money
from the production and sales of Methadone? Why is Methadone more
preferable than simple Heroin maintenance? (Other than for the blatant
advantage of no longer taking the drug, made illegal by the same
folks who made MMT legal, that initiated the addiction in the first
place.)
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Iraq
Attack!
US President George W. Bush told reporters that
it was time to send the Chinese "an appropriate message" during
his first official press conference at the White House (February
22, 2001), when asked about US accusations China was installing
the new Iraqi radar system recently bombed by US and UK warplanes.
What message might that be, the US bombing of another Chinese embassy?
Bush bombed Iraq twice within a week (February 16-22), striving
manfully to play catch-up to Clinton's incessant bombing of Iraq
since Operation Desert Fox (December 1998).
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Traffic
Of everyone I know, I seem to be one of the
few who has not seen the film Traffic
(2000), nor have I any plans to do so. There's always something
slightly creepy to me about sitting in a crowded dark theater watching
other people pretend (or not pretend) to "do drugs" on the big screen.
And I'm not talking here about marijuana. Hell, I used to go to
the movies and would miss half the film while busy bent over trying
to catch enough light from those little floor bulbs that line the
aisles in theaters, trying see the vein I wanted to hit. I personally
don't want to watch others pretend to portray drug abuse. Steven
Soderbergh's Traffic
was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It won
Best Director (Steven Soderbergh), Best Adapted Screenplay (Stephen
Gaghan), Best Supporting Actor (Benicio Del Toro) and Film Editing
(Stephen Mirrione).
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Narco
News- Why It's Best to Always Tell the Truth
(this precident setting case has been
settled in the journalists' favor since this was published- see
www.narconews.com
for all the details.)
Akin Gump filed suit (August 9, 2000),
in the United States District Court for the Southern District, New
York City, alleging the two journalist/publishers had committed
libel against their client. The suit threatens to shut down legitimate
journalists for reporting facts, trapping them into a time consuming
harassment, charging them a high price for reporting the truth.
"They can grit their teeth and suffer Al's reporting, day after
aggravating day, as he exposes the ugly underside of this endless
war on drugs - and actually makes things happen, like real journalists
are supposed to do," wrote Gary Webb, author of Dark Alliance: The
CIA the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (Seven Stories Press,
1999), in a letter supporting the two journalists.
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Authentic
Journalism- An Interview with Al Giordano
Abbie Hoffman, in his final book Steal This
Urine Test (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), described Al Giordano
as "the best under-thirty community organizer in America."
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Where's
the Clash When We Need Them?
"You have the right not to be killed.
Murder is a crime. Unless it is done by a policeman or aristocrat."
~~ "Know Your Rights", The Clash (1982)
In the early days of the 1980s, when MTV,
could still (maybe) claim to be sort of "alternative" and new, two
of my favorite videos they would play were of the premier punk rock
icon, The Clash: "Radio Clash", and "Rock the Casbah." Other than
Rage Against the Machine, which other bands does MTV give airtime
to nowadays that bite so hard the hand that feeds them?
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Christian
Death- Throw Them to the Lions
I must admit, I not only like the music of Christian
Death, finally getting to a gig by Valor's Christian Death at Limelight
(New York City) in 1994, I also very much appreciate their style
and verve, being drawn to a group that so openly flaunts such anti-Judeo-Christian
tendencies. (My parents never have said anything about that [Christian
Death] poster of [Jesus shooting up] on my wall, though I did catch
them giving it disconcerted sidelong glances once or twice during
their visit.)
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