Yes, we can ... no matter what
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Political Waves
May 2, 2008, 12:40:40 PM5/2/08
to politic...@googlegroups.com
I grew up in a multi-generational household; I've
lived in one, off and on, most of my life. My folks were Depression babies,
teens of the 40's, young adults of the 50's -- the stories and influence of the
lean years came to me not from my upwardly-mobile parents, but the Grands and
Great-Grands. In that potent brew of attitudes and age ranges, I learned not only that the world was my oyster, but a
number of skills that have served me well all my life; I can make something out
of nothing in the kitchen, ask my friends -- I know how to can, quilt, and
garden not only for the sheer joy of it but for the common sense it makes. I can
swing a hammer, pour concrete and repair furniture; I can paint, patch and make
what is modest feel warm and cozy, bright and beautiful. I can ... ultimately
... "make do."
More, I feel responsible for 'stuff'; I am patently unable to throw it away, I have to find a home for it with someone who needs it. I have stood back in abject horror as in-laws bought a swanky new home and ripped up lovely tile in their kitchen [destined to seldom be used] because it wasn't "pretty enough." In my mind, the dollar signs flying out the window in that project might have saved the lives of starving children somewhere on the planet -- and that, of course, never crossed theirs. [They didn't spend enough time with their Grands, obviously ... they had no familiarity with the concepts of stewardship and sustainability. They're learning about that now.]
Now, all of this has been both blessing and burden on my life path. It's impeded my ability to be a free spirit, but it's also provided me a link to both the past and the present, a larger view of the possibilities and a sense that no matter how tough times get, we can outlast them -- indeed, navigate them with a kind of graciousness and certainty. There is ALWAYS a way around the situation we're in; decisions and choices changing the picture and bringing new options moment by moment.
More, I feel responsible for 'stuff'; I am patently unable to throw it away, I have to find a home for it with someone who needs it. I have stood back in abject horror as in-laws bought a swanky new home and ripped up lovely tile in their kitchen [destined to seldom be used] because it wasn't "pretty enough." In my mind, the dollar signs flying out the window in that project might have saved the lives of starving children somewhere on the planet -- and that, of course, never crossed theirs. [They didn't spend enough time with their Grands, obviously ... they had no familiarity with the concepts of stewardship and sustainability. They're learning about that now.]
Now, all of this has been both blessing and burden on my life path. It's impeded my ability to be a free spirit, but it's also provided me a link to both the past and the present, a larger view of the possibilities and a sense that no matter how tough times get, we can outlast them -- indeed, navigate them with a kind of graciousness and certainty. There is ALWAYS a way around the situation we're in; decisions and choices changing the picture and bringing new options moment by moment.
And, at the base of all this -- our human
condition -- is love ... of friends, family, pets, humanity at large, self and
God/dess; love leads the way through it because it's always BIGGER than our
circumstance, the thing that flickers through the Illusion, lifts us into hope
and reminds us why we came.
We're in tough times, as the reads indicate; don't lock up your energy in fear -- we'll navigate them. It's the balancing of energies we're experiencing ... we've been off kilter for a long time. Panic won't help, but prudence will -- and a positive attitude. Cultivate one; that's a moment-by-moment choice and self-edit of fear-tapes.
The first three reads are about the times and finances; the Morford, as usual, playful -- there's a link below them to a book you can access on-line called Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress & a Civilization in Trouble by Lester R. Brown; it comes highly recommended. That's more than a "weekend read" but worthwhile; you might want to bookmark the link.
If you're in the mood for something shorter, I've included a bonus section on the "interesting coincidences" of the crime wave that's plagued the attorneys Rove scattered to the wind, and the "apparent" suicide of the DC Madam -- the articles are full of further links, and worth your time as well. Part of navigating the times is [my purpose in Political Waves] connecting the dots.
The flurry of misdirection we're enduring at the moment is crazy-making, and each new article on the primary race makes veins pop out in my neck -- as Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post:
This is supposed to be an election, not a casting call. If we vote on the basis of who can best play "populist-lite" -- who can more convincingly furrow his or her brow in empathy with the struggle of "ordinary" Americans -- then we'll be electing an actor in chief, not a president. And we'll get what we deserve.
Getting what we deserve means actually thinking for ourselves and summoning our Higher Angels to whisper truth into our ear. Whoever we vote for can't be a decision we make with our heads ... full of PR smoke, clouds of fear and herd-consciousness, leveraged news and public opinion polls ... it has to come from our hearts, the seat of our soul.
As always, this period in time is wheat and chaff together, grist for the mill, grinding slowly and frustrating our desire for things to look easier, but it's taking us where we need to go -- hope and love are our touchstones. Makes me think of this bit:
"I never said it would be easy -- I said it would be worth it."
Have a good weekend. Celebrate May and Beltane ... and allow yourself sensual, heart-expanding moments of love, and its by-product, hope.
Jude
Crumbcatchers
Joyce Marcel, CommonDreams
Thursday, May 1, 2008
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/01/8651/
In the Roaring Twenties my grandfather, Diamond Ben, was a flashy guy. He had a taste for Cadillacs. He owned a tux and a diamond stickpin. He had a big house by the beach, and two garages on Broadway. He hung out with celebrities.
But my grandfather lost the house and the two garages and the flashy life in the early Thirties, and my mother's family was forced to move into a tenement apartment in the Bronx.
Diamond Ben turned out to be a standup guy. First he tried to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door, but the doors were mostly slammed in his face. Who could afford a new appliance?
He ended up in the basement of a bakery. Above, in the retail shop, when crumbs of bread and cake fell onto the floor, they were swept down into a hole. The hole had a funnel attached to it. My grandfather stood under it, catching and bagging the crumbs for resale. He was the crumbcatcher.
My mother, who couldn't go to college because she had to help to support the family, often talked about going to cafeterias during lunch to make catsup soup out of hot water and free condiments.
Her fears became my fears, and her values became my values. The first time someone showed me a hat with the words, "He who dies with the most toys wins," I thought he came from another planet.
Now, as overweight America lumbers into its crumbcatcher phase, those values — saving money, avoiding debt — are starting to make sense again.
No one can explain why the price of gasoline is going up — it seems to be a combination of increased demand, competition for resources, lessening supplies and wide-scale speculation. (As the dollar sinks and only commodities are gaining in value, investment dollars are flocking there, driving up prices).
Our entire economy is predicated on cheap oil, so it's just a matter of watching the building blocks tumble, one by one. And even if we could stop gasoline prices from escalating, there's China, flush with cash, building an automobile industry. And did you know that last month an Indian car company bought Jaguar?
Yes, America is no longer the big cheese standing alone. What happens elsewhere in the world is going to hurt us here.
We're hearing about food riots on just about every continent. In Africa, there have been recent protests in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. On Tuesday, the United Nations' secretary-general said he was setting up a task force to tackle the global food crisis in an attempt to avert "social unrest on an unprecedented scale."
In the United States, there has been a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months.
Those most-toys-wins Americans, with their sense of entitlement, are starting to feel the pain. If they haven't already lost their houses, they're feeling threatened now. They're selling their antiques, their jewelry and grandma's tea kettle to make the mortgage. This could be a banner year for flea markets.
Make no mistake, the rich are still with us, and they're still filthy rich. At the top, CEO and star salaries are inflated to the skies, and corporate profits are huge. The middle class, which should be the cushion on which the wealthy class rests — well, there's almost no middle class left. The fat backsides of the wealthy are resting on all our shoulders now.
What will Americans do? How will they react? In the Depression, extended families banded together. Tent cities grew up on the outskirts of towns. People sold apples on the street, or begged, or caught crumbs in the basements of bakeries to help support their families. Soup kitchens and bread lines were people's lifelines.
People sacrificed. They also elected Franklin Roosevelt, who put the government to work for them. Then, when America entered World War II, people sacrificed more and worked even harder for the common good.
Today there is no common good. We've been taught that government is bad. We've been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for seven years and we've barely noticed it at home. George W. Bush took office with a budget surplus, and we're a debtor nation now. No one here seems to care.
We're isolated, each in our own nuclear family, in our own private homes, with our own entertainment centers and our own gyms and our own offices. Or we're out driving in our big cars — again alone. Or we're exhausted, working two jobs to keep a roof over our heads.
We are so disconnected that we suffer from all sorts of rage when we encounter other people — road rage, parking lot rage, airport rage, gas line rage, high school massacres — and who knows what's next.
American politics has encouraged us to scapegoat. We've been taught to fear people who are different and to blame them for our problems. So we beat up African-Americans, or immigrants, or gay people, or Muslims, or atheists, just to get a little relief from our own anger. I have a horrible feeling that this will only escalate as resources become more scarce.
We don't riot. Instead, we act as if we're drugged. We don't join together to protest and fill the Washington Mall. We don't get angry at politicians and demand results. Bush may have lower approval ratings than a cockroach, but we just shrug and wait for the next election. Maybe the next president will save us. Maybe that person will also wear a cape and be able to fly.
Or at least blow something up and give us a moment's release from our pain.
Americans are used to plenty. What crumbs, I wonder, will this country be catching as it wakes from its long, low dream. ++
The Fire Bell in the Night and Our Real Terror
While We Debate Reverend Wright, the Economy Goes to Hell
Danny Schechter, CommonDreams
5/1/08
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/01/8636/
New York, May Day: Thomas Jefferson used a phrase in a letter that is still ringing all these years later. Here's his thought, a candidate for "THE WORD," segment on the Colbert Report;
"I had for a long time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant, but this momentous question like A FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT (caps mine), awakened and filled me with terror."
So many of us were content like that in the years leading up to the slow motion crash that rocked our economy in August 2007, and many still remain comatose like that today.
We were, all too many of us, confident also that we were "in good hands." On May 2, just a year ago, our President told America's general contractors — so many of whom are out of work today — "we're proving that pro-growth economic policies with fiscal discipline can work. And our budgets are shrinking [sic]. The best way to keep them shrinking is keep the economy growing and be wise about — and setting priorities with your money."
There was a fire bell ringing that very night, and he didn't hear it, that is, if he could ever hear much besides his own voice. (Now he says the economy defies a quick fix!) Wall Street was making money by the ton just a year ago, and our regulators were cheering them on while most of our media was dozing. Worthless securities were being pedaled globally with stamps of approval from credible ratings agencies. Predatory lenders scammed customers. Protests from advocates for the victims were ignored.
At the same time, Credit card debt rose 7.6% — almost $3000 a person. There were warnings of an impending collapse but few paid any heed.
A one-time Republican strategist named Kevin Phillips was already ringing a fire bell about our mounting debt. He had documented the rise of the Financialization of our economy in which a credit and loan complex — using debt as its driver — was dominant, soon controlling over 20% of GDP. He warned of the consequences, of the hijacking of our future and our economy. Our system had become, he argued, a house of cards. Who listened?
In a new book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, he documents how those cards started tumbling in painful detail.
This reality should, in Jefferson's words, wake us up and "fill us with terror." (Odd that thought of "terror," written centuries ago. How prophetic!) Perhaps we are fearing the wrong terrorists?
Yet even now, most of the media would rather debate Reverend Jeremiah's Wright's words or Miley Cyrus's photos than examine the calamity facing us and our world. Where are the investigations of the greedy and unscrupulous? That's who gave us the subcrime crisis or in Phillips words, the "reckless finance," that brought the market down, sending prices and joblessness up.
You can't really track these mounting problems by watching TV or even reading many of our newspapers who failed to cover the crisis as it was building steam from 2002 to 2006, and when it might have been stopped.
It is usually only after the fact that we realize that the official response to these crises is also making things worse.
Example: A former top Federal Reserve official now says that the Fed's bailout of Bear Stearns will come to be viewed as the "worst policy mistake in a generation."
Reported the Wall Street Journal:
"Vincent Reinhart, who used to be the Fed's director of monetary affairs and the secretary of its policy making panel, said the event would be compared to "the great contraction" of the 1930s and "the great inflation" of the 1970s.
Run that by me again — "the great contraction?" Duh? Does he mean the Great Depression? Then, we had a government that tried to end it. As of this week, only 2000 homeowners facing the threat of foreclosure have been helped by our government. As many as three million homeowners face homelessness!
If you read the financial blogs linked on essential websites like Ml-implode.com, you get a much more sobering picture. According to the RGE Monitor, we are in the THIRD year of a housing recession — did you know that?
They report: "We are in the third year of the U.S. housing recession and the bottom does not seem to be in sight yet. Housing starts (and completions) are falling but not yet fast enough to offset the sharper fall in demand (home sales) and therefore to insure a fast absorption of the rising home inventories that keep putting downward pressure on prices."
Do you realize the extent of the housing collapse? The number of vacant homes reached a record high of 18.6 million units, which was a 1 million increase in the past 12 months with a record 4.1 million vacant homes for rent, and the rental vacancy rate rising to 10.1%.
1 out of 194 US households are now in foreclosure. Housing prices are falling with expectations in some quarters that they will drop a further 20%.
Translation for a society in which realty is considered reality: This is an ongoing disaster with worse to come.
Patrick Net reports:
"Salaries cannot pay for current house prices. This means house prices must keep falling or salaries must rise much faster. You probably noticed that your salary is not rising much, and that inflation in food, energy, and medical care has been very high. This leaves less money available to pay for housing."
Another website, Minranville, sees not just a subprime crisis but a deepening consumer consumption crisis as credit gets tighter. Already the overall growth rate has fallen to 0.6% as consumer spending freezes.
"It's important to recognize that with each passing day, as credit is tightened and unemployment grows, more and more asset classes and population groups will be affected. And you need only look at the news from BMW or last week's earnings report from Harley-Davidson and Starbucks to see that consumers can no longer afford their aspirations."
Another site, Denninger.net, sounds angry, a sign of the ugly mood that is starting to go public as the only upturn appears to be a rise in the lack of consumer confidence:
"If you're operating under the premise that the losses have been (mostly) recognized and we are now going to see 'write-ups' somewhere down the road, you're more than wrong.
You're delusional."
Are we delusional or just distracted by campaign circuses? Are we even aware of the link between the housing crisis and the food crisis?
Mike Whitney argues: "The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington's economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe…."
So what now? Will the desperation so many people feel go inwards or outwards? Here are two stories on two tendencies likely to merge:
AP: A man upset over thousands of dollars in fees owed to a condominium association brandished a gun and took two association employees hostage before he was killed by a SWAT team, authorities said. Deputies "were screaming at him to put the gun down, but he didn't seem to be paying attention," said Ross Torman, 30, a resident who watched the standoff from his nearby balcony. "He just put that gun right to his head and that's when they began to shoot."
The Housing Panic blog reaches into history to remind us of an uprising that saw martial law imposed in Iowa in 1933 after "a mob of 150 farmers dragged Circuit Judge Charles C. Bradley from the bench, manhandled the 60-year-old jurist and threatened to lynch him unless he promised not to sign further foreclosure orders."
Don't think never again. If it has come to this — it can come to that. ++
10 ways to blow your tax rebate
Gas, video games, meditation, booze. What, you were planning on paying bills? As if
Mark Morford, SF Gate
Friday, May 2, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/02/notes050208.DTL
Here's the bad news: Your little recession-deflecting tax rebate? No rebate at all. Not even close.
It's more like this: You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and mutter, here sucker, have some bus fare, and then they cackle and stomp away with all your loot and dignity and hope, back to the White House from whence they came.
What, too harsh? Not really. It's a lovely feeling, made even more sweetly ironic by the fact that Congress will likely soon shove through another $108 billion in war funds like a giant gallstone through our collective fiscal urethra. Right there, that's about 500 bucks for each and every adult human in America, baristas and Baptists and NASCAR fans alike.
Do you see? Your "economic stimulus" check is meaningless, an empty gesture, a trifling crumb of recompense after robbing you blind via insane gas prices, infrastructure meltdowns, massive failed wars that aren't really wars. Thanks for the bogus check, Dubya, now where can I buy a sliver of our missing national dignity? Oh, that's right.
So then. Here are your bloody nickels, America. Think of it as a "recession whippit," because trust me, its quickie high won't last long. What will you do with it? Pay off the porn bill? Hit the Vegas strip? Stock up on water and freeze-dried meats and a nice Bowie knife in preparation for the apocalypse? Not bad, not bad. Of course, you could also spend it on:
* One share of Google. Hey, it's the most powerful company on Earth. It belches up bits of Microsoft after an organic tofu and wakame salad lunch in its massive world-class floating cafeteria in the sky. Why not buy a tiny crumb of the company that already owns a large piece of you and everything you do and play with and think about and log into every single day? Sort of like buying back a tiny, digitized, bitmapped, rebranded, YouTubed, Street Viewed piece of your own exhausted soul. Neat!
* Four tanks of gas for the Escalade. What, you're still driving that giant Saudi-blessed beast? Still loving yourself some big clunky Range Rover? Good for you (and good luck trying to trade it in). But I'm guessing even you few remaining SUV lovers out there feel a bit of a twinge now when the gas pump tips well over $100 to fill your massive tank as your tax refund merely flows straight back to Bush's cronies in Big Oil in a giant feedback loop of joyful patriotic all-American pain.
* A copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, three bottles of Stoli Vanilla, large hammer. Mmm, the Great American Fantasy, playing the role of a macho Eastern European thug antihero who lives in the seedy underworld of Hellhole City, all broken glass and bad skin and silicone boob jobs and grunged-out everything, killing and stealing and blood splattering and fire, all part of a new and rather insane blockbuster game which employs an astonishing, hyperrealistic animation engine that makes the character's movements so frighteningly lifelike, when you beat down that whore or shoot that cop in the face with an Uzi you can actually feel his facial bones pulverize as his body slams into the pavement and Death itself hovers just over your PS3, eager to go multiplayer on your ass.
Gaming tips: Slam two shots of vanilla Stoli between levels and strike self in head with hammer every time you murder a rival sociopathic thug, to acknowledge/symbolize the death of yet another hunk of any lingering compassion and/or love you may feel in this life. Dude! You're never getting laid! Cool!
* IPod Touch, new Portishead album, bottle of absinthe. Because nothing says modern American irony than listening to the most beautifully bleak and gorgeously despondent album of the year on the most sleek high-tech consumer gadget currently made, all while slowly lowering your brain cells down into the black cavelike dungeon of bittersweet anise-flavored bliss. Or maybe that's just me.
* Three excellent meals at upscale sushi restaurant, attempting with each and every bite not to be painfully reminded of the depleted fish stocks and mercury poisoning and how just about every single game fish on the menu is overfished or horribly endangered or dying out or full of tiny little plastic pellets from the Pacific garbage patch. Oh well. At least the sake is still safe to drink, right? I mean, except for the potential global rice shortage? And the rioting?
* Spiffy new Flip Video camera, copy of iMovie, small vial of unchecked insanity. Dash through airport security waving a small pink Swiss Army knife and screaming "Behold my tiny one-inch pocketknife scissors of terror! I also have large metal nipple rings!" Film wacky reaction from Homeland Security agents. Have spouse upload videos to YouTube. Use remaining portion of tax refund for attorney fees/hospital bills.
* Ticket to latest Judd Apatow flick, one dozen homemade pot brownies, never-used (but still active) gym membership from 1998. Chortle at the wondrous fantasyland of these mindless inverse RomComs, how most every male is a flabby wise-cracking doofus stoner loser who still manages to somehow get the sweet hottie girl because he's such a loveable stoner doofus and she's apparently just not all that bright. Reserve a small amount of money for 10-pack of XXL wifebeater logo T-shirts from CollegeHumor.com and a Black Jesus bobblehead for your cubicle because you're all, like, meta-ironic, and stuff.
* Ten-day silent meditation course/retreat. Do you love that recent study that essentially proves, yet again, what monks and gurus and yogis and wise ones have known for roughly 1 billion years? It's this: Meditation can actually make you more compassionate, can induce states of empathy, can calm the turgid roil and boil of the Grand Theft Auto IV that is you and your badass 1998 Honda Civic and your cube-farm life. It's a breakthrough! Or, you know, not.
Goes well with all the other studies from years past, proving how meditation boosts brain activity, helps focus attention, improves sleep, relieves stress, licks your heart, and helps you realize organized religion is absolutely silly and inane and dangerous because, hey look, close your eyes and breathe deeply and there's the divine, right there, floating just on front of your third eye like a free bonus hooker from Level 9 of GTA-IV! Awesome! BYOZP, SFOS. (Bring Your own Zazen Pillow, Secret Flask of Scotch.)
* Party supplies for the massive bonfire/cleansing ritual we shall have at the beach on 01-20-09. I mean, obviously. ++
Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress &
a Civilization in Trouble (2003)
Lester R. Brown
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PlanB_contents.htm
Weekend Reads
DC Madam Predicted She Would Be Suicided
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet
Thursday, May 1, 2008
http://www.infowars.com/?p=1862
[open article for various links - Thanks, Christine]
Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.
DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be "suicided" on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago - comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today.
"If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized," she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, "Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me," said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her.
During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder.
Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation's capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them.
"We now know it goes at least as high as a United States Senator," Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show, "I'm hearing rumors now from other people that there are other possibilities in that stratosphere so to speak, on that level."
"No I'm not planning to commit suicide," Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show on her last appearance in July, "I'm planning on going into court and defending myself vigorously and exposing the government," she said.
"Blanche Palfrey had no sign that her daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication that alcohol or drugs were involved, police Capt. Jeffrey Young said," according to an AP report.
Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.
Click here to listen to the entirety of the last interview with Palfrey.
UPDATE: In an almost uncanny development, as soon as this article started to go viral on the Internet, Time Magazine released a story claiming that Palfrey told author Dan Moldea that she would rather commit suicide than go to jail. What a funny coincidence!
Links:
RELATED: Palfrey Considered Call Girl's "Suicide" Possible Murder
FLASHBACK: D.C. Madame: "Big Names" May Be On Client List [... like Uncle Dicks, for instance - J] ++
Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys
Larisa Alexandrovna, Muriel Kane and Lindsay Beyerstein, Raw Story
Thursday May 1, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/43y4dn
The Permanent Republican Majority Part VI
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA – In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson.
These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively. Typically burglars do not break-into an office or private residence only to rummage through documents, for example, as is the case with most of the burglaries in these two federal cases.
In Alabama, for instance, the home of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman was burglarized twice during the period of his first indictment. Nothing of value was taken, however, and according to the Siegelman family, the only items of interest to the burglars were the files in Siegelman's home office.
Siegelman's attorney experienced the same type of break-in at her office.
In neighboring Mississippi, a case brought against a trial lawyer and three judges raises even more disturbing questions. Of the four individuals in the same case, three of the US Attorney's targets were the victims of crimes during their indictment or trial. This case, like that of Governor Siegelman, has been widely criticized as a politically motivated prosecution by a Bush US Attorney.
The main target of the indictment, attorney Paul Minor, had his office broken into, while Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, Oliver E. Diaz Jr., had his home burglarized. According to police reports and statements from Diaz and from individuals close to Minor, nothing of value was taken and the burglars only rummaged through documents and in Minor's case, also took a single computer from an office full of expensive office equipment.
The incidents are not limited to burglaries. In Mississippi, former Judge John Whitfield was the victim of arson at his office. In Alabama, the whistleblower in the Don Siegelman case, Dana Jill Simpson, had her home burned down, and shortly thereafter her car was allegedly forced off the road.
While there is no direct evidence linking these crimes to the US Attorneys' office targeting these individuals, or to the Bush administration, there is a distinct pattern that makes it highly unlikely that these incidents are isolated and unrelated.
All of these crimes remain unsolved.
A FIRE IN ALABAMA
On Feb. 21, 2007, a private residence located at 1429 West Main Street in Rainsville, Alabama caught fire. The house belonged to whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson, a long-time Alabama Republican lawyer and political opposition researcher who was then preparing to come forward in connection with the conviction of former Alabama Democratic governor Don Siegelman and his co-defendant, Republican fundraiser and businessman, Richard Scrushy.
According to the police report obtained by RAW STORY, the east side of the building was completely damaged and the entire structure sustained damages of roughly 30 percent. (See attached report.) The cause of this fire is unknown and there has been no formal investigation to date. Simpson was not home at the time of the incident.
According to Simpson's attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, Priscilla Duncan, the timing of the fire at Simpson's home should raise questions.
Jill "was talking to Siegelman's attorneys about what she was witness to, discussing going public," said Duncan in a conversation late last week. "On February 15 she also sent a letter to Art Leach [Scrushy's attorney]."
Six days after Simpson sent the letter to Leach, her house caught fire.
According to Simpson's subsequent May 7, 2007 affidavit and her sworn testimony before the US House Judiciary Committee Sept. 14, Siegelman's prosecution was allegedly orchestrated by senior officials in the Bush administration, primarily former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.
Simpson testified that two weeks after the November 2002 election in which Siegelman was defeated by Republican Bob Riley, Republican operative Bill Canary -- who was serving as Riley's campaign advisor -- held a conference call with Riley's staffers about "how to handle Siegelman." As reported in Part I of RAW STORY's investigative series, Simpson alleges that during this call, Canary stated that "his girls" would "take care of Siegelman."
Simpson says she understood "his girls" to be a reference to Canary's wife, Leura Canary, the US Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and the couple's long-time friend, Alice Martin, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Both women had been appointed by George W. Bush in 2001 and had been investigating Siegelman since taking office. Siegelman would later be indicted in Leura Canary's district.
Karl Rove has publicly denied any involvement in the investigation and prosecution of Siegelman but refuses to testify to this under oath. Neither Bill nor Leura Canary has offered a comment for any of our articles in the investigative series.
THE CAR ACCIDENT
Less than two weeks after her house caught fire, Simpson's car was allegedly forced off the road. She was rushed to Marshall Medical Center South and was treated for bruising on her arms and chest. According to the police report of the accident, Simpson was heading northbound on U.S 431 when a "non contact" vehicle made an improper lane change into her lane. Simpson swerved to avoid hitting the vehicle, almost going into the ditch, and struck a car parked in a driveway. (In the police sketch of the accident below, Simpson's car is marked #1. The parked car is marked #2.)
According to the police report, the driver of the non-contact vehicle was Mark Roden of Rainbow City, Alabama.
Ms. Simpson told RAW STORY several weeks ago that a state trooper interviewed Mr. Roden at the scene of the accident, and "when the trooper asked him for his employment information, Mr. Roden said that he was a officer with the Attalla police department. He was then allowed to leave without a citation."
The city clerk for the city of Attalla, Alabama confirmed to us that Mark Roden was indeed a former police officer with the Attalla Police Department, but she could not provide additional information. Calls left for the Attalla police chief were not returned.
Repeated attempts to reach Mark Roden at the residence listed on the accident report have been unsuccessful.
According to Priscilla Duncan, on the day of the car accident Simpson had met with Richard Scrushy, the co-defendant in the Siegelman case, to discuss coming forward as a whistleblower.
"It is definitely coincidental," Duncan said.
FORMER GOVERNOR'S PRIVATE RESIDENCE BURGLARIZED -- TWICE
Simpson was not the only one involved in the Siegelman case to fall victim to crimes. According to Governor Siegelman's daughter, Dana Siegelman, their family returned home from a summer trip in 2004 to find the house unlocked and the doors open. Nothing had been taken, although the home contained computers, stereos, and jewelry. Ms. Siegelman explained that the only things disturbed were in Siegelman's office, including his papers, which seemed to have been rifled and were in disarray.
Ms. Siegelman says that her family experienced this once more in the summer of 2004 and that the timing of the two burglaries appeared strange, because it was during this period that charges were brought against her father by the office of US Attorney Leura Canary.
According to Siegelman's daughter, the family did not report these incidents to the police at the time because they already felt targeted by the US Attorney's office and the FBI, as well as being uncertain as to what had actually occurred.
"It was only later, when we realized how deceitful our government really could be," Dana said, "that we suspected our house might have been bugged or Dad's files had been sifted through -- when the same thing happened to his lawyer, Susan James."
SIEGELMAN'S ATTORNEY'S OFFICE BROKEN INTO
Don Siegelman was sentenced to over seven years in a state penitentiary in June 2007. He was not allowed out on bail during his appeal, but was immediately shackled, manacled and moved out of state without his lawyers being informed. The severity of the sentence prompted 44 former state attorneys general of both parties to write a letter to Congress, asking them to investigate Siegelman's prosecution, which they describe as having "sufficient irregularities as to call into question the basic fairness that is the linchpin of our system of justice."
Montgomery attorney Susan James immediately prepared to file an appeal on Siegelman's behalf with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. James had handled much of the sentencing part of Siegelman's case and was now part of the appeal team.
On July 1, 2007, James' office was broken into. As with Siegelman's home, no computers or office equipment were taken or anything of any value. James told the Associated Press, "They went through our client files."
James expanded on the break-in in a recent interview with RAW STORY. She said the burglars went through several file cabinets with documents filed under the letter "S," which might have included Siegelman's files if she had not moved them earlier after a previous break-in.
"This burglary is unusual," said James. "File cabinets were left open. Drapes were closed and the blinds were pulled down."
James said that the only reason that someone would need to close the drapes and pull down the blinds was if they wanted to turn the lights on to look for something. She asserted that the office next door to hers was not burglarized, even though it also had computers and equipment.
When asked what she made of the cases described in this article, James said she'd not been aware of the number of break-ins and the similarities between them.
"The entire scenario appears to be a pattern unrelated to just random burglaries and random crimes," James said. "Our break-in was treated as a routine burglary but when you add the facts of what appear to be other similar burglaries together, this is something that definitely bears further investigation."
Dana Siegelman says that her family now has "little doubt as to why or who was behind it," but did not elaborate.
ALABAMA BUSINESSMAN'S OFFICE APPEARS BURGLARIZED - WHILE HE IS UNDER INVESTIGATION BY US ATTORNEY
Sometime between Sunday, March 2 and early the next morning, the office of Montgomery insurance executive and life-long Republican, John Goff was vandalized by persons unknown.
"We came in to work one day and the window was knocked out," Goff told Raw Story in a phone interview. Goff explained that the $400 window described in the police report was the sliding glass front door of his office. According to the police report obtained by Raw Story (See attached report.), a large pane of glass was smashed.
At the time the of the incident at his office, Goff was the subject of what he alleges is a politically motivated prosecution orchestrated by the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama, Leura Canary, in retaliation for a politically embarrassing lawsuit he filed against the State's well-connected Republican governor, Bob Riley, last year.
Leura Canary's husband, Bill Canary, served as a campaign advisor to Riley when he ran against Siegelman in the 2002 election. In essence, the US Attorney appears to bringing charges against the perceived enemies of her husband's client.
A month after the incident at Goff's office, a grand jury indicted Goff on charges of embezzlement, mail fraud, and conspiracy. The charges stem from a dispute between Goff and two reinsurance companies over insurance premiums Goff collected from clients. The original dispute was settled by arbitration and litigation several years ago. The arbitration panel agreed that Goff had failed to pay what he owed.
Goff reached a settlement with the Alabama Department of Insurance for complaints arising from the same dispute in the spring of 2005.
It is not clear why federal prosecutors decided to revisit the matter in 2007 and launch a criminal investigation against Goff, indicting him in 2008.
Goff and his lawyers maintain that federal prosecutors with close ties to Riley are rehashing settled business in order to punish Goff for blowing the whistle on an alleged attempt at extortion by lobbyists for Riley.
They alleged that US Attorney Leura Canary has a conflict of interest because her husband, Bill Canary, is on the list of witnesses to be deposed in Goff's lawsuit against Riley and others in his administration.
The US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama did not return repeated calls and emails seeking comment.
MISSISSIPPI SUPREME COURT JUSTICE'S HOME BROKEN INTO
The break-ins and arson are not, however, restricted to Alabama. In Mississippi, there was another alleged political prosecution, a bribery case
brought by the Bush-appointed US Attorney for the Southern District, Dunnica Lampton, against attorney Paul Minor and three judges, including Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver E. Diaz Jr., Minor and two of the judges have also fallen victim to break-ins and arson.
On May 14, 2004, while Judge Diaz and his family were out of town, a neighbor noticed an intruder and called the police. According to the police report, the front door of the Diaz home appeared to have been kicked in and a window broken. (See attached police report.)
In a striking similarity to the Alabama cases, the Diaz burglars appeared not to have been interested in valuables of any sort.
"Our door was kicked in and our documents were rummaged," Diaz said in an extensive interview for Part V of our investigative series. "Televisions, computers and other valuables were not taken, despite the fact that we were out of town for several days and the home was left open by the burglars. We could not figure out a motive for the burglary and reported it to the Biloxi Police Department. The crime was never solved."
A FIRE IN MISSISSIPPI
In the early morning of Sept. 15, 2003, the Biloxi, Mississippi office of another of the defendants in the Paul Minor case, former Mississippi judge John Whitfield, was set on fire.
At approximately 3:30 am, Whitfield's secretary, Michele Herman, was awakened by a call from the fire alarm company informing her that the office was ablaze. Herman was the first of Whitfield's associates to arrive at the scene. Her boss and other colleagues joined her soon after.
Herman described what happened after she arrived.
"I rushed to the office to watch the fire department put the fire out. It was contained to my office because we close doors between offices when we leave," Herman wrote in an email. "Just about everything I had was destroyed -- over 20 years worth of my research and books and photos and paintings and such."
From the outset, the Biloxi fire and police departments treated the fire as a case of arson. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms were also involved, as were investigators from the US Attorney's office. However, the only suspect in the arson case was Whitfield himself.
"It was us, me and John [Whitfield] and a former cop that worked with us, and Mike [Crosby, Whitfield's attorney] that kept telling the fire officials that it looked like something was splashed all over the wall of the outside of the house that we used as an office," Herman stated. "They ignored us until John hired an independent fire inspector/arson expert."
According to Herman's recollection, local authorities announced that same day that they intended to confiscate files and documents that had survived the blaze. Whitfield's lawyer, Mike Crosby strongly objected to this, since he was concerned that privileged information -- including Whitfield's defense file and the case files of his clients -- would fall into the hands of the FBI and the ATF and be used against Whitfield in his upcoming trial.
In a letter obtained by RAW STORY, dated Sept. 19, 2003, Crosby wrote to the judge overseeing the seizure of files and hard drives to register his strenuous objections. The files and disks contained information that was critical to the operation of Whitfield's law practice as well as his defense file for the Diaz/Minor case. Crosby explained that he'd offered to make copies of all the materials for the investigators, if only he could have the originals back. The authorities refused. (See attached letter.)
Repeated attempts to reach Crosby for comment have been unsuccessful.
"No one has ever been charged with the crime, as far as we know," Herman added. "They dropped it after they investigated John -- he was their suspect, you know. Only problem was, he didn't own the building, had nothing to gain -- no motive for destroying the building."
YET ANOTHER MISSISSIPPI BREAK-IN
Also charged by US Attorney Dunnica Lampton was Paul Minor, a successful trial lawyer and the largest individual Democratic campaign donor in Mississippi. Minor was convicted of bribery and mail fraud and is now serving time in a federal penitentiary in Florida.
In the summer of 2003, Minor's Biloxi, Mississippi law office was allegedly broken into. According to his secretary, Janet Miller, a brick was used to shatter her office window and the break-in targeted only her office.
"I panicked because they took my whole computer -- it had all of my bookkeeping on it and I had an old back up that I had not updated since March," Miller said.
"It had a lot of Paul [Minor]'s personal stuff on it, his business, and of course it had all of the accounting for the law firm on it from 2000 forward."
Miller said that files were also rummaged through, but she could not say for sure if anything was taken because it was so chaotic. No other office in Minor's suite of offices were disturbed.
This crime, like the others, remains unsolved.
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?
John C. Villines, ICPS, CPP, has studied crime causation and crime prevention for 30 years. As a security consultant, he has provided services to private industry, the United States Government, law enforcement agencies, community organizations and others. He is the Director of John C. Villines LLC, often appears as an expert witness criminal cases, and was up until recently the Chairman of the Georgia Board of Private Detective and Security Agencies.
Villines was asked in the most general terms what he makes of this series of crimes. He was not provided with the names of the individuals or any information that would identify the Alabama and Mississippi cases.
"I would avoid drawing conclusions based upon the amount of information you have provided," Villines wrote in an email response. "But it would be reasonable to expect that the burglar or burglars is seeking information."
RAW STORY asked Villines if these crimes could be identity theft-type crimes or something similar.
"Certainly, identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States," Villines responded. "However, a series of burglaries and arsons such as you have described would not be the primary crimes I would expect to see associated with attempts to steal personal identifiers."
"It would seem more reasonable to expect that the burglar(s) have targeted information related to specific individuals, and that the value of the information is related to a personal motivation (either on the part of the burglar(s) or someone who has contracted their services, as in the famed Watergate burglary). Possible motives (speculation): acquire damaging information about a third party, or recover personal information to keep it from being discovered by others."
The pattern of break-ins and other crimes in Alabama and Mississippi and the serious questions surrounding possible intimidation tactics are not without precedent. From the 1960's to the 1980's, similar tactics were used by the Nixon and Reagan administrations to spy upon and demoralize their political opponents.
In 1971, a group of anonymous activists broke into FBI headquarters in Media, Pennsylvania and made off with more than a thousand documents, which were then mailed to major newspapers and politicians. The documents revealed the existence of a secret counterintelligence program -- known as COINTELPRO for short -- dedicated to investigating, undermining, and discrediting anti-war and civil rights groups. As part of this program, violent attacks against activists by right-wing groups were sometimes allowed to go forward or even incited by FBI informants within those groups.
The death of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1972 and strict new guidelines passed by Congress in 1976 were believed to have put an end to such abuses. Two high FBI officials were even convicted in 1980 of having ordered agents to break into the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground, including the sister of Bernadine Dohrn.
These safeguards, however, broke down during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who pardoned the two officials and had their convictions expunged. The FBI was once again a political tool, which not only investigated liberal members of Congress, such as Rep. John Conyers and Sen. Christopher Dodd, but also paid right-wing groups, including the followers of Reverend Moon, to spy upon and disrupt individuals and organizations opposed to the Reagan administration's support for right-wing dictators in Latin America.
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ross Gelbspan wrote in Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI (1991) about "the mystery of the little-publicized epidemic of low-grade, domestic terrorism. It includes break-ins, death threats, and politically motivated arson attacks which have plagued hundreds of activists and organizations across the country for the past seven years. While the FBI has repeatedly denied any role in these activities, the Bureau has, at the same time, refused scores of requests to investigate what is clearly an interstate conspiracy to violate the civil liberties of the victims.
"From 1984, when the first reports of mysterious political break-ins and death threats began to surface, the list of such episodes has continued to escalate. ... Of nearly 200 political break-ins and thefts of files reported by Central America and Sanctuary activists, not one has been solved."
Whether or not the recent cases in Alabama and Mississippi actually represent the reemergence of COINTELPRO tactics from the past remains unclear. There is no solid evidence tying any of the cases to one another. But there does appear to be a common pattern, both in who is being targeted and also in how the burglars have conducted their operations.
#
The Permanent Republican Majority Series and Related Raw Story Articles
Part One – The Political Prisoner
Part Two – Exclusive interview with jailed governor's daughter, Dana Siegelman
Part Three – Running Elections from the White House
Part Four – How Bush pick helped prosecute top Democrat-backed judge
Alabama station drops 60 Minutes expose on Don Siegelman prosecution
Interview with Dana Jill Simpson and alleged Rove smear campaign
Karl Rove's Next Move: A million dollar home on Florida's Emerald Coast
Part Five – Mississippi Justice: Bush US Attorney targeted my wife, supporters and friends ++
We're in tough times, as the reads indicate; don't lock up your energy in fear -- we'll navigate them. It's the balancing of energies we're experiencing ... we've been off kilter for a long time. Panic won't help, but prudence will -- and a positive attitude. Cultivate one; that's a moment-by-moment choice and self-edit of fear-tapes.
The first three reads are about the times and finances; the Morford, as usual, playful -- there's a link below them to a book you can access on-line called Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress & a Civilization in Trouble by Lester R. Brown; it comes highly recommended. That's more than a "weekend read" but worthwhile; you might want to bookmark the link.
If you're in the mood for something shorter, I've included a bonus section on the "interesting coincidences" of the crime wave that's plagued the attorneys Rove scattered to the wind, and the "apparent" suicide of the DC Madam -- the articles are full of further links, and worth your time as well. Part of navigating the times is [my purpose in Political Waves] connecting the dots.
The flurry of misdirection we're enduring at the moment is crazy-making, and each new article on the primary race makes veins pop out in my neck -- as Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post:
This is supposed to be an election, not a casting call. If we vote on the basis of who can best play "populist-lite" -- who can more convincingly furrow his or her brow in empathy with the struggle of "ordinary" Americans -- then we'll be electing an actor in chief, not a president. And we'll get what we deserve.
Getting what we deserve means actually thinking for ourselves and summoning our Higher Angels to whisper truth into our ear. Whoever we vote for can't be a decision we make with our heads ... full of PR smoke, clouds of fear and herd-consciousness, leveraged news and public opinion polls ... it has to come from our hearts, the seat of our soul.
As always, this period in time is wheat and chaff together, grist for the mill, grinding slowly and frustrating our desire for things to look easier, but it's taking us where we need to go -- hope and love are our touchstones. Makes me think of this bit:
"I never said it would be easy -- I said it would be worth it."
Have a good weekend. Celebrate May and Beltane ... and allow yourself sensual, heart-expanding moments of love, and its by-product, hope.
Jude
Crumbcatchers
Joyce Marcel, CommonDreams
Thursday, May 1, 2008
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/01/8651/
In the Roaring Twenties my grandfather, Diamond Ben, was a flashy guy. He had a taste for Cadillacs. He owned a tux and a diamond stickpin. He had a big house by the beach, and two garages on Broadway. He hung out with celebrities.
But my grandfather lost the house and the two garages and the flashy life in the early Thirties, and my mother's family was forced to move into a tenement apartment in the Bronx.
Diamond Ben turned out to be a standup guy. First he tried to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door, but the doors were mostly slammed in his face. Who could afford a new appliance?
He ended up in the basement of a bakery. Above, in the retail shop, when crumbs of bread and cake fell onto the floor, they were swept down into a hole. The hole had a funnel attached to it. My grandfather stood under it, catching and bagging the crumbs for resale. He was the crumbcatcher.
My mother, who couldn't go to college because she had to help to support the family, often talked about going to cafeterias during lunch to make catsup soup out of hot water and free condiments.
Her fears became my fears, and her values became my values. The first time someone showed me a hat with the words, "He who dies with the most toys wins," I thought he came from another planet.
Now, as overweight America lumbers into its crumbcatcher phase, those values — saving money, avoiding debt — are starting to make sense again.
No one can explain why the price of gasoline is going up — it seems to be a combination of increased demand, competition for resources, lessening supplies and wide-scale speculation. (As the dollar sinks and only commodities are gaining in value, investment dollars are flocking there, driving up prices).
Our entire economy is predicated on cheap oil, so it's just a matter of watching the building blocks tumble, one by one. And even if we could stop gasoline prices from escalating, there's China, flush with cash, building an automobile industry. And did you know that last month an Indian car company bought Jaguar?
Yes, America is no longer the big cheese standing alone. What happens elsewhere in the world is going to hurt us here.
We're hearing about food riots on just about every continent. In Africa, there have been recent protests in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. On Tuesday, the United Nations' secretary-general said he was setting up a task force to tackle the global food crisis in an attempt to avert "social unrest on an unprecedented scale."
In the United States, there has been a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months.
Those most-toys-wins Americans, with their sense of entitlement, are starting to feel the pain. If they haven't already lost their houses, they're feeling threatened now. They're selling their antiques, their jewelry and grandma's tea kettle to make the mortgage. This could be a banner year for flea markets.
Make no mistake, the rich are still with us, and they're still filthy rich. At the top, CEO and star salaries are inflated to the skies, and corporate profits are huge. The middle class, which should be the cushion on which the wealthy class rests — well, there's almost no middle class left. The fat backsides of the wealthy are resting on all our shoulders now.
What will Americans do? How will they react? In the Depression, extended families banded together. Tent cities grew up on the outskirts of towns. People sold apples on the street, or begged, or caught crumbs in the basements of bakeries to help support their families. Soup kitchens and bread lines were people's lifelines.
People sacrificed. They also elected Franklin Roosevelt, who put the government to work for them. Then, when America entered World War II, people sacrificed more and worked even harder for the common good.
Today there is no common good. We've been taught that government is bad. We've been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for seven years and we've barely noticed it at home. George W. Bush took office with a budget surplus, and we're a debtor nation now. No one here seems to care.
We're isolated, each in our own nuclear family, in our own private homes, with our own entertainment centers and our own gyms and our own offices. Or we're out driving in our big cars — again alone. Or we're exhausted, working two jobs to keep a roof over our heads.
We are so disconnected that we suffer from all sorts of rage when we encounter other people — road rage, parking lot rage, airport rage, gas line rage, high school massacres — and who knows what's next.
American politics has encouraged us to scapegoat. We've been taught to fear people who are different and to blame them for our problems. So we beat up African-Americans, or immigrants, or gay people, or Muslims, or atheists, just to get a little relief from our own anger. I have a horrible feeling that this will only escalate as resources become more scarce.
We don't riot. Instead, we act as if we're drugged. We don't join together to protest and fill the Washington Mall. We don't get angry at politicians and demand results. Bush may have lower approval ratings than a cockroach, but we just shrug and wait for the next election. Maybe the next president will save us. Maybe that person will also wear a cape and be able to fly.
Or at least blow something up and give us a moment's release from our pain.
Americans are used to plenty. What crumbs, I wonder, will this country be catching as it wakes from its long, low dream. ++
The Fire Bell in the Night and Our Real Terror
While We Debate Reverend Wright, the Economy Goes to Hell
Danny Schechter, CommonDreams
5/1/08
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/01/8636/
New York, May Day: Thomas Jefferson used a phrase in a letter that is still ringing all these years later. Here's his thought, a candidate for "THE WORD," segment on the Colbert Report;
"I had for a long time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant, but this momentous question like A FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT (caps mine), awakened and filled me with terror."
So many of us were content like that in the years leading up to the slow motion crash that rocked our economy in August 2007, and many still remain comatose like that today.
We were, all too many of us, confident also that we were "in good hands." On May 2, just a year ago, our President told America's general contractors — so many of whom are out of work today — "we're proving that pro-growth economic policies with fiscal discipline can work. And our budgets are shrinking [sic]. The best way to keep them shrinking is keep the economy growing and be wise about — and setting priorities with your money."
There was a fire bell ringing that very night, and he didn't hear it, that is, if he could ever hear much besides his own voice. (Now he says the economy defies a quick fix!) Wall Street was making money by the ton just a year ago, and our regulators were cheering them on while most of our media was dozing. Worthless securities were being pedaled globally with stamps of approval from credible ratings agencies. Predatory lenders scammed customers. Protests from advocates for the victims were ignored.
At the same time, Credit card debt rose 7.6% — almost $3000 a person. There were warnings of an impending collapse but few paid any heed.
A one-time Republican strategist named Kevin Phillips was already ringing a fire bell about our mounting debt. He had documented the rise of the Financialization of our economy in which a credit and loan complex — using debt as its driver — was dominant, soon controlling over 20% of GDP. He warned of the consequences, of the hijacking of our future and our economy. Our system had become, he argued, a house of cards. Who listened?
In a new book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, he documents how those cards started tumbling in painful detail.
This reality should, in Jefferson's words, wake us up and "fill us with terror." (Odd that thought of "terror," written centuries ago. How prophetic!) Perhaps we are fearing the wrong terrorists?
Yet even now, most of the media would rather debate Reverend Jeremiah's Wright's words or Miley Cyrus's photos than examine the calamity facing us and our world. Where are the investigations of the greedy and unscrupulous? That's who gave us the subcrime crisis or in Phillips words, the "reckless finance," that brought the market down, sending prices and joblessness up.
You can't really track these mounting problems by watching TV or even reading many of our newspapers who failed to cover the crisis as it was building steam from 2002 to 2006, and when it might have been stopped.
It is usually only after the fact that we realize that the official response to these crises is also making things worse.
Example: A former top Federal Reserve official now says that the Fed's bailout of Bear Stearns will come to be viewed as the "worst policy mistake in a generation."
Reported the Wall Street Journal:
"Vincent Reinhart, who used to be the Fed's director of monetary affairs and the secretary of its policy making panel, said the event would be compared to "the great contraction" of the 1930s and "the great inflation" of the 1970s.
Run that by me again — "the great contraction?" Duh? Does he mean the Great Depression? Then, we had a government that tried to end it. As of this week, only 2000 homeowners facing the threat of foreclosure have been helped by our government. As many as three million homeowners face homelessness!
If you read the financial blogs linked on essential websites like Ml-implode.com, you get a much more sobering picture. According to the RGE Monitor, we are in the THIRD year of a housing recession — did you know that?
They report: "We are in the third year of the U.S. housing recession and the bottom does not seem to be in sight yet. Housing starts (and completions) are falling but not yet fast enough to offset the sharper fall in demand (home sales) and therefore to insure a fast absorption of the rising home inventories that keep putting downward pressure on prices."
Do you realize the extent of the housing collapse? The number of vacant homes reached a record high of 18.6 million units, which was a 1 million increase in the past 12 months with a record 4.1 million vacant homes for rent, and the rental vacancy rate rising to 10.1%.
1 out of 194 US households are now in foreclosure. Housing prices are falling with expectations in some quarters that they will drop a further 20%.
Translation for a society in which realty is considered reality: This is an ongoing disaster with worse to come.
Patrick Net reports:
"Salaries cannot pay for current house prices. This means house prices must keep falling or salaries must rise much faster. You probably noticed that your salary is not rising much, and that inflation in food, energy, and medical care has been very high. This leaves less money available to pay for housing."
Another website, Minranville, sees not just a subprime crisis but a deepening consumer consumption crisis as credit gets tighter. Already the overall growth rate has fallen to 0.6% as consumer spending freezes.
"It's important to recognize that with each passing day, as credit is tightened and unemployment grows, more and more asset classes and population groups will be affected. And you need only look at the news from BMW or last week's earnings report from Harley-Davidson and Starbucks to see that consumers can no longer afford their aspirations."
Another site, Denninger.net, sounds angry, a sign of the ugly mood that is starting to go public as the only upturn appears to be a rise in the lack of consumer confidence:
"If you're operating under the premise that the losses have been (mostly) recognized and we are now going to see 'write-ups' somewhere down the road, you're more than wrong.
You're delusional."
Are we delusional or just distracted by campaign circuses? Are we even aware of the link between the housing crisis and the food crisis?
Mike Whitney argues: "The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington's economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe…."
So what now? Will the desperation so many people feel go inwards or outwards? Here are two stories on two tendencies likely to merge:
AP: A man upset over thousands of dollars in fees owed to a condominium association brandished a gun and took two association employees hostage before he was killed by a SWAT team, authorities said. Deputies "were screaming at him to put the gun down, but he didn't seem to be paying attention," said Ross Torman, 30, a resident who watched the standoff from his nearby balcony. "He just put that gun right to his head and that's when they began to shoot."
The Housing Panic blog reaches into history to remind us of an uprising that saw martial law imposed in Iowa in 1933 after "a mob of 150 farmers dragged Circuit Judge Charles C. Bradley from the bench, manhandled the 60-year-old jurist and threatened to lynch him unless he promised not to sign further foreclosure orders."
Don't think never again. If it has come to this — it can come to that. ++
10 ways to blow your tax rebate
Gas, video games, meditation, booze. What, you were planning on paying bills? As if
Mark Morford, SF Gate
Friday, May 2, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/02/notes050208.DTL
Here's the bad news: Your little recession-deflecting tax rebate? No rebate at all. Not even close.
It's more like this: You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and mutter, here sucker, have some bus fare, and then they cackle and stomp away with all your loot and dignity and hope, back to the White House from whence they came.
What, too harsh? Not really. It's a lovely feeling, made even more sweetly ironic by the fact that Congress will likely soon shove through another $108 billion in war funds like a giant gallstone through our collective fiscal urethra. Right there, that's about 500 bucks for each and every adult human in America, baristas and Baptists and NASCAR fans alike.
Do you see? Your "economic stimulus" check is meaningless, an empty gesture, a trifling crumb of recompense after robbing you blind via insane gas prices, infrastructure meltdowns, massive failed wars that aren't really wars. Thanks for the bogus check, Dubya, now where can I buy a sliver of our missing national dignity? Oh, that's right.
So then. Here are your bloody nickels, America. Think of it as a "recession whippit," because trust me, its quickie high won't last long. What will you do with it? Pay off the porn bill? Hit the Vegas strip? Stock up on water and freeze-dried meats and a nice Bowie knife in preparation for the apocalypse? Not bad, not bad. Of course, you could also spend it on:
* One share of Google. Hey, it's the most powerful company on Earth. It belches up bits of Microsoft after an organic tofu and wakame salad lunch in its massive world-class floating cafeteria in the sky. Why not buy a tiny crumb of the company that already owns a large piece of you and everything you do and play with and think about and log into every single day? Sort of like buying back a tiny, digitized, bitmapped, rebranded, YouTubed, Street Viewed piece of your own exhausted soul. Neat!
* Four tanks of gas for the Escalade. What, you're still driving that giant Saudi-blessed beast? Still loving yourself some big clunky Range Rover? Good for you (and good luck trying to trade it in). But I'm guessing even you few remaining SUV lovers out there feel a bit of a twinge now when the gas pump tips well over $100 to fill your massive tank as your tax refund merely flows straight back to Bush's cronies in Big Oil in a giant feedback loop of joyful patriotic all-American pain.
* A copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, three bottles of Stoli Vanilla, large hammer. Mmm, the Great American Fantasy, playing the role of a macho Eastern European thug antihero who lives in the seedy underworld of Hellhole City, all broken glass and bad skin and silicone boob jobs and grunged-out everything, killing and stealing and blood splattering and fire, all part of a new and rather insane blockbuster game which employs an astonishing, hyperrealistic animation engine that makes the character's movements so frighteningly lifelike, when you beat down that whore or shoot that cop in the face with an Uzi you can actually feel his facial bones pulverize as his body slams into the pavement and Death itself hovers just over your PS3, eager to go multiplayer on your ass.
Gaming tips: Slam two shots of vanilla Stoli between levels and strike self in head with hammer every time you murder a rival sociopathic thug, to acknowledge/symbolize the death of yet another hunk of any lingering compassion and/or love you may feel in this life. Dude! You're never getting laid! Cool!
* IPod Touch, new Portishead album, bottle of absinthe. Because nothing says modern American irony than listening to the most beautifully bleak and gorgeously despondent album of the year on the most sleek high-tech consumer gadget currently made, all while slowly lowering your brain cells down into the black cavelike dungeon of bittersweet anise-flavored bliss. Or maybe that's just me.
* Three excellent meals at upscale sushi restaurant, attempting with each and every bite not to be painfully reminded of the depleted fish stocks and mercury poisoning and how just about every single game fish on the menu is overfished or horribly endangered or dying out or full of tiny little plastic pellets from the Pacific garbage patch. Oh well. At least the sake is still safe to drink, right? I mean, except for the potential global rice shortage? And the rioting?
* Spiffy new Flip Video camera, copy of iMovie, small vial of unchecked insanity. Dash through airport security waving a small pink Swiss Army knife and screaming "Behold my tiny one-inch pocketknife scissors of terror! I also have large metal nipple rings!" Film wacky reaction from Homeland Security agents. Have spouse upload videos to YouTube. Use remaining portion of tax refund for attorney fees/hospital bills.
* Ticket to latest Judd Apatow flick, one dozen homemade pot brownies, never-used (but still active) gym membership from 1998. Chortle at the wondrous fantasyland of these mindless inverse RomComs, how most every male is a flabby wise-cracking doofus stoner loser who still manages to somehow get the sweet hottie girl because he's such a loveable stoner doofus and she's apparently just not all that bright. Reserve a small amount of money for 10-pack of XXL wifebeater logo T-shirts from CollegeHumor.com and a Black Jesus bobblehead for your cubicle because you're all, like, meta-ironic, and stuff.
* Ten-day silent meditation course/retreat. Do you love that recent study that essentially proves, yet again, what monks and gurus and yogis and wise ones have known for roughly 1 billion years? It's this: Meditation can actually make you more compassionate, can induce states of empathy, can calm the turgid roil and boil of the Grand Theft Auto IV that is you and your badass 1998 Honda Civic and your cube-farm life. It's a breakthrough! Or, you know, not.
Goes well with all the other studies from years past, proving how meditation boosts brain activity, helps focus attention, improves sleep, relieves stress, licks your heart, and helps you realize organized religion is absolutely silly and inane and dangerous because, hey look, close your eyes and breathe deeply and there's the divine, right there, floating just on front of your third eye like a free bonus hooker from Level 9 of GTA-IV! Awesome! BYOZP, SFOS. (Bring Your own Zazen Pillow, Secret Flask of Scotch.)
* Party supplies for the massive bonfire/cleansing ritual we shall have at the beach on 01-20-09. I mean, obviously. ++
Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress &
a Civilization in Trouble (2003)
Lester R. Brown
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PlanB_contents.htm
Weekend Reads
DC Madam Predicted She Would Be Suicided
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet
Thursday, May 1, 2008
http://www.infowars.com/?p=1862
[open article for various links - Thanks, Christine]
Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.
DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be "suicided" on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago - comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today.
"If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized," she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, "Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me," said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her.
During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder.
Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation's capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them.
"We now know it goes at least as high as a United States Senator," Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show, "I'm hearing rumors now from other people that there are other possibilities in that stratosphere so to speak, on that level."
"No I'm not planning to commit suicide," Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show on her last appearance in July, "I'm planning on going into court and defending myself vigorously and exposing the government," she said.
"Blanche Palfrey had no sign that her daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication that alcohol or drugs were involved, police Capt. Jeffrey Young said," according to an AP report.
Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.
Click here to listen to the entirety of the last interview with Palfrey.
UPDATE: In an almost uncanny development, as soon as this article started to go viral on the Internet, Time Magazine released a story claiming that Palfrey told author Dan Moldea that she would rather commit suicide than go to jail. What a funny coincidence!
Links:
RELATED: Palfrey Considered Call Girl's "Suicide" Possible Murder
FLASHBACK: D.C. Madame: "Big Names" May Be On Client List [... like Uncle Dicks, for instance - J] ++
Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys
Larisa Alexandrovna, Muriel Kane and Lindsay Beyerstein, Raw Story
Thursday May 1, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/43y4dn
The Permanent Republican Majority Part VI
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA – In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson.
These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively. Typically burglars do not break-into an office or private residence only to rummage through documents, for example, as is the case with most of the burglaries in these two federal cases.
In Alabama, for instance, the home of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman was burglarized twice during the period of his first indictment. Nothing of value was taken, however, and according to the Siegelman family, the only items of interest to the burglars were the files in Siegelman's home office.
Siegelman's attorney experienced the same type of break-in at her office.
In neighboring Mississippi, a case brought against a trial lawyer and three judges raises even more disturbing questions. Of the four individuals in the same case, three of the US Attorney's targets were the victims of crimes during their indictment or trial. This case, like that of Governor Siegelman, has been widely criticized as a politically motivated prosecution by a Bush US Attorney.
The main target of the indictment, attorney Paul Minor, had his office broken into, while Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, Oliver E. Diaz Jr., had his home burglarized. According to police reports and statements from Diaz and from individuals close to Minor, nothing of value was taken and the burglars only rummaged through documents and in Minor's case, also took a single computer from an office full of expensive office equipment.
The incidents are not limited to burglaries. In Mississippi, former Judge John Whitfield was the victim of arson at his office. In Alabama, the whistleblower in the Don Siegelman case, Dana Jill Simpson, had her home burned down, and shortly thereafter her car was allegedly forced off the road.
While there is no direct evidence linking these crimes to the US Attorneys' office targeting these individuals, or to the Bush administration, there is a distinct pattern that makes it highly unlikely that these incidents are isolated and unrelated.
All of these crimes remain unsolved.
A FIRE IN ALABAMA
On Feb. 21, 2007, a private residence located at 1429 West Main Street in Rainsville, Alabama caught fire. The house belonged to whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson, a long-time Alabama Republican lawyer and political opposition researcher who was then preparing to come forward in connection with the conviction of former Alabama Democratic governor Don Siegelman and his co-defendant, Republican fundraiser and businessman, Richard Scrushy.
According to the police report obtained by RAW STORY, the east side of the building was completely damaged and the entire structure sustained damages of roughly 30 percent. (See attached report.) The cause of this fire is unknown and there has been no formal investigation to date. Simpson was not home at the time of the incident.
According to Simpson's attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, Priscilla Duncan, the timing of the fire at Simpson's home should raise questions.
Jill "was talking to Siegelman's attorneys about what she was witness to, discussing going public," said Duncan in a conversation late last week. "On February 15 she also sent a letter to Art Leach [Scrushy's attorney]."
Six days after Simpson sent the letter to Leach, her house caught fire.
According to Simpson's subsequent May 7, 2007 affidavit and her sworn testimony before the US House Judiciary Committee Sept. 14, Siegelman's prosecution was allegedly orchestrated by senior officials in the Bush administration, primarily former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.
Simpson testified that two weeks after the November 2002 election in which Siegelman was defeated by Republican Bob Riley, Republican operative Bill Canary -- who was serving as Riley's campaign advisor -- held a conference call with Riley's staffers about "how to handle Siegelman." As reported in Part I of RAW STORY's investigative series, Simpson alleges that during this call, Canary stated that "his girls" would "take care of Siegelman."
Simpson says she understood "his girls" to be a reference to Canary's wife, Leura Canary, the US Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and the couple's long-time friend, Alice Martin, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Both women had been appointed by George W. Bush in 2001 and had been investigating Siegelman since taking office. Siegelman would later be indicted in Leura Canary's district.
Karl Rove has publicly denied any involvement in the investigation and prosecution of Siegelman but refuses to testify to this under oath. Neither Bill nor Leura Canary has offered a comment for any of our articles in the investigative series.
THE CAR ACCIDENT
Less than two weeks after her house caught fire, Simpson's car was allegedly forced off the road. She was rushed to Marshall Medical Center South and was treated for bruising on her arms and chest. According to the police report of the accident, Simpson was heading northbound on U.S 431 when a "non contact" vehicle made an improper lane change into her lane. Simpson swerved to avoid hitting the vehicle, almost going into the ditch, and struck a car parked in a driveway. (In the police sketch of the accident below, Simpson's car is marked #1. The parked car is marked #2.)
According to the police report, the driver of the non-contact vehicle was Mark Roden of Rainbow City, Alabama.
Ms. Simpson told RAW STORY several weeks ago that a state trooper interviewed Mr. Roden at the scene of the accident, and "when the trooper asked him for his employment information, Mr. Roden said that he was a officer with the Attalla police department. He was then allowed to leave without a citation."
The city clerk for the city of Attalla, Alabama confirmed to us that Mark Roden was indeed a former police officer with the Attalla Police Department, but she could not provide additional information. Calls left for the Attalla police chief were not returned.
Repeated attempts to reach Mark Roden at the residence listed on the accident report have been unsuccessful.
According to Priscilla Duncan, on the day of the car accident Simpson had met with Richard Scrushy, the co-defendant in the Siegelman case, to discuss coming forward as a whistleblower.
"It is definitely coincidental," Duncan said.
FORMER GOVERNOR'S PRIVATE RESIDENCE BURGLARIZED -- TWICE
Simpson was not the only one involved in the Siegelman case to fall victim to crimes. According to Governor Siegelman's daughter, Dana Siegelman, their family returned home from a summer trip in 2004 to find the house unlocked and the doors open. Nothing had been taken, although the home contained computers, stereos, and jewelry. Ms. Siegelman explained that the only things disturbed were in Siegelman's office, including his papers, which seemed to have been rifled and were in disarray.
Ms. Siegelman says that her family experienced this once more in the summer of 2004 and that the timing of the two burglaries appeared strange, because it was during this period that charges were brought against her father by the office of US Attorney Leura Canary.
According to Siegelman's daughter, the family did not report these incidents to the police at the time because they already felt targeted by the US Attorney's office and the FBI, as well as being uncertain as to what had actually occurred.
"It was only later, when we realized how deceitful our government really could be," Dana said, "that we suspected our house might have been bugged or Dad's files had been sifted through -- when the same thing happened to his lawyer, Susan James."
SIEGELMAN'S ATTORNEY'S OFFICE BROKEN INTO
Don Siegelman was sentenced to over seven years in a state penitentiary in June 2007. He was not allowed out on bail during his appeal, but was immediately shackled, manacled and moved out of state without his lawyers being informed. The severity of the sentence prompted 44 former state attorneys general of both parties to write a letter to Congress, asking them to investigate Siegelman's prosecution, which they describe as having "sufficient irregularities as to call into question the basic fairness that is the linchpin of our system of justice."
Montgomery attorney Susan James immediately prepared to file an appeal on Siegelman's behalf with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. James had handled much of the sentencing part of Siegelman's case and was now part of the appeal team.
On July 1, 2007, James' office was broken into. As with Siegelman's home, no computers or office equipment were taken or anything of any value. James told the Associated Press, "They went through our client files."
James expanded on the break-in in a recent interview with RAW STORY. She said the burglars went through several file cabinets with documents filed under the letter "S," which might have included Siegelman's files if she had not moved them earlier after a previous break-in.
"This burglary is unusual," said James. "File cabinets were left open. Drapes were closed and the blinds were pulled down."
James said that the only reason that someone would need to close the drapes and pull down the blinds was if they wanted to turn the lights on to look for something. She asserted that the office next door to hers was not burglarized, even though it also had computers and equipment.
When asked what she made of the cases described in this article, James said she'd not been aware of the number of break-ins and the similarities between them.
"The entire scenario appears to be a pattern unrelated to just random burglaries and random crimes," James said. "Our break-in was treated as a routine burglary but when you add the facts of what appear to be other similar burglaries together, this is something that definitely bears further investigation."
Dana Siegelman says that her family now has "little doubt as to why or who was behind it," but did not elaborate.
ALABAMA BUSINESSMAN'S OFFICE APPEARS BURGLARIZED - WHILE HE IS UNDER INVESTIGATION BY US ATTORNEY
Sometime between Sunday, March 2 and early the next morning, the office of Montgomery insurance executive and life-long Republican, John Goff was vandalized by persons unknown.
"We came in to work one day and the window was knocked out," Goff told Raw Story in a phone interview. Goff explained that the $400 window described in the police report was the sliding glass front door of his office. According to the police report obtained by Raw Story (See attached report.), a large pane of glass was smashed.
At the time the of the incident at his office, Goff was the subject of what he alleges is a politically motivated prosecution orchestrated by the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama, Leura Canary, in retaliation for a politically embarrassing lawsuit he filed against the State's well-connected Republican governor, Bob Riley, last year.
Leura Canary's husband, Bill Canary, served as a campaign advisor to Riley when he ran against Siegelman in the 2002 election. In essence, the US Attorney appears to bringing charges against the perceived enemies of her husband's client.
A month after the incident at Goff's office, a grand jury indicted Goff on charges of embezzlement, mail fraud, and conspiracy. The charges stem from a dispute between Goff and two reinsurance companies over insurance premiums Goff collected from clients. The original dispute was settled by arbitration and litigation several years ago. The arbitration panel agreed that Goff had failed to pay what he owed.
Goff reached a settlement with the Alabama Department of Insurance for complaints arising from the same dispute in the spring of 2005.
It is not clear why federal prosecutors decided to revisit the matter in 2007 and launch a criminal investigation against Goff, indicting him in 2008.
Goff and his lawyers maintain that federal prosecutors with close ties to Riley are rehashing settled business in order to punish Goff for blowing the whistle on an alleged attempt at extortion by lobbyists for Riley.
They alleged that US Attorney Leura Canary has a conflict of interest because her husband, Bill Canary, is on the list of witnesses to be deposed in Goff's lawsuit against Riley and others in his administration.
The US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama did not return repeated calls and emails seeking comment.
MISSISSIPPI SUPREME COURT JUSTICE'S HOME BROKEN INTO
The break-ins and arson are not, however, restricted to Alabama. In Mississippi, there was another alleged political prosecution, a bribery case
brought by the Bush-appointed US Attorney for the Southern District, Dunnica Lampton, against attorney Paul Minor and three judges, including Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver E. Diaz Jr., Minor and two of the judges have also fallen victim to break-ins and arson.
On May 14, 2004, while Judge Diaz and his family were out of town, a neighbor noticed an intruder and called the police. According to the police report, the front door of the Diaz home appeared to have been kicked in and a window broken. (See attached police report.)
In a striking similarity to the Alabama cases, the Diaz burglars appeared not to have been interested in valuables of any sort.
"Our door was kicked in and our documents were rummaged," Diaz said in an extensive interview for Part V of our investigative series. "Televisions, computers and other valuables were not taken, despite the fact that we were out of town for several days and the home was left open by the burglars. We could not figure out a motive for the burglary and reported it to the Biloxi Police Department. The crime was never solved."
A FIRE IN MISSISSIPPI
In the early morning of Sept. 15, 2003, the Biloxi, Mississippi office of another of the defendants in the Paul Minor case, former Mississippi judge John Whitfield, was set on fire.
At approximately 3:30 am, Whitfield's secretary, Michele Herman, was awakened by a call from the fire alarm company informing her that the office was ablaze. Herman was the first of Whitfield's associates to arrive at the scene. Her boss and other colleagues joined her soon after.
Herman described what happened after she arrived.
"I rushed to the office to watch the fire department put the fire out. It was contained to my office because we close doors between offices when we leave," Herman wrote in an email. "Just about everything I had was destroyed -- over 20 years worth of my research and books and photos and paintings and such."
From the outset, the Biloxi fire and police departments treated the fire as a case of arson. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms were also involved, as were investigators from the US Attorney's office. However, the only suspect in the arson case was Whitfield himself.
"It was us, me and John [Whitfield] and a former cop that worked with us, and Mike [Crosby, Whitfield's attorney] that kept telling the fire officials that it looked like something was splashed all over the wall of the outside of the house that we used as an office," Herman stated. "They ignored us until John hired an independent fire inspector/arson expert."
According to Herman's recollection, local authorities announced that same day that they intended to confiscate files and documents that had survived the blaze. Whitfield's lawyer, Mike Crosby strongly objected to this, since he was concerned that privileged information -- including Whitfield's defense file and the case files of his clients -- would fall into the hands of the FBI and the ATF and be used against Whitfield in his upcoming trial.
In a letter obtained by RAW STORY, dated Sept. 19, 2003, Crosby wrote to the judge overseeing the seizure of files and hard drives to register his strenuous objections. The files and disks contained information that was critical to the operation of Whitfield's law practice as well as his defense file for the Diaz/Minor case. Crosby explained that he'd offered to make copies of all the materials for the investigators, if only he could have the originals back. The authorities refused. (See attached letter.)
Repeated attempts to reach Crosby for comment have been unsuccessful.
"No one has ever been charged with the crime, as far as we know," Herman added. "They dropped it after they investigated John -- he was their suspect, you know. Only problem was, he didn't own the building, had nothing to gain -- no motive for destroying the building."
YET ANOTHER MISSISSIPPI BREAK-IN
Also charged by US Attorney Dunnica Lampton was Paul Minor, a successful trial lawyer and the largest individual Democratic campaign donor in Mississippi. Minor was convicted of bribery and mail fraud and is now serving time in a federal penitentiary in Florida.
In the summer of 2003, Minor's Biloxi, Mississippi law office was allegedly broken into. According to his secretary, Janet Miller, a brick was used to shatter her office window and the break-in targeted only her office.
"I panicked because they took my whole computer -- it had all of my bookkeeping on it and I had an old back up that I had not updated since March," Miller said.
"It had a lot of Paul [Minor]'s personal stuff on it, his business, and of course it had all of the accounting for the law firm on it from 2000 forward."
Miller said that files were also rummaged through, but she could not say for sure if anything was taken because it was so chaotic. No other office in Minor's suite of offices were disturbed.
This crime, like the others, remains unsolved.
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?
John C. Villines, ICPS, CPP, has studied crime causation and crime prevention for 30 years. As a security consultant, he has provided services to private industry, the United States Government, law enforcement agencies, community organizations and others. He is the Director of John C. Villines LLC, often appears as an expert witness criminal cases, and was up until recently the Chairman of the Georgia Board of Private Detective and Security Agencies.
Villines was asked in the most general terms what he makes of this series of crimes. He was not provided with the names of the individuals or any information that would identify the Alabama and Mississippi cases.
"I would avoid drawing conclusions based upon the amount of information you have provided," Villines wrote in an email response. "But it would be reasonable to expect that the burglar or burglars is seeking information."
RAW STORY asked Villines if these crimes could be identity theft-type crimes or something similar.
"Certainly, identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States," Villines responded. "However, a series of burglaries and arsons such as you have described would not be the primary crimes I would expect to see associated with attempts to steal personal identifiers."
"It would seem more reasonable to expect that the burglar(s) have targeted information related to specific individuals, and that the value of the information is related to a personal motivation (either on the part of the burglar(s) or someone who has contracted their services, as in the famed Watergate burglary). Possible motives (speculation): acquire damaging information about a third party, or recover personal information to keep it from being discovered by others."
The pattern of break-ins and other crimes in Alabama and Mississippi and the serious questions surrounding possible intimidation tactics are not without precedent. From the 1960's to the 1980's, similar tactics were used by the Nixon and Reagan administrations to spy upon and demoralize their political opponents.
In 1971, a group of anonymous activists broke into FBI headquarters in Media, Pennsylvania and made off with more than a thousand documents, which were then mailed to major newspapers and politicians. The documents revealed the existence of a secret counterintelligence program -- known as COINTELPRO for short -- dedicated to investigating, undermining, and discrediting anti-war and civil rights groups. As part of this program, violent attacks against activists by right-wing groups were sometimes allowed to go forward or even incited by FBI informants within those groups.
The death of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1972 and strict new guidelines passed by Congress in 1976 were believed to have put an end to such abuses. Two high FBI officials were even convicted in 1980 of having ordered agents to break into the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground, including the sister of Bernadine Dohrn.
These safeguards, however, broke down during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who pardoned the two officials and had their convictions expunged. The FBI was once again a political tool, which not only investigated liberal members of Congress, such as Rep. John Conyers and Sen. Christopher Dodd, but also paid right-wing groups, including the followers of Reverend Moon, to spy upon and disrupt individuals and organizations opposed to the Reagan administration's support for right-wing dictators in Latin America.
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ross Gelbspan wrote in Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI (1991) about "the mystery of the little-publicized epidemic of low-grade, domestic terrorism. It includes break-ins, death threats, and politically motivated arson attacks which have plagued hundreds of activists and organizations across the country for the past seven years. While the FBI has repeatedly denied any role in these activities, the Bureau has, at the same time, refused scores of requests to investigate what is clearly an interstate conspiracy to violate the civil liberties of the victims.
"From 1984, when the first reports of mysterious political break-ins and death threats began to surface, the list of such episodes has continued to escalate. ... Of nearly 200 political break-ins and thefts of files reported by Central America and Sanctuary activists, not one has been solved."
Whether or not the recent cases in Alabama and Mississippi actually represent the reemergence of COINTELPRO tactics from the past remains unclear. There is no solid evidence tying any of the cases to one another. But there does appear to be a common pattern, both in who is being targeted and also in how the burglars have conducted their operations.
#
The Permanent Republican Majority Series and Related Raw Story Articles
Part One – The Political Prisoner
Part Two – Exclusive interview with jailed governor's daughter, Dana Siegelman
Part Three – Running Elections from the White House
Part Four – How Bush pick helped prosecute top Democrat-backed judge
Alabama station drops 60 Minutes expose on Don Siegelman prosecution
Interview with Dana Jill Simpson and alleged Rove smear campaign
Karl Rove's Next Move: A million dollar home on Florida's Emerald Coast
Part Five – Mississippi Justice: Bush US Attorney targeted my wife, supporters and friends ++
"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice,
beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter
ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities
that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin'
the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun
it was."
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107,
this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.
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