Volume 5 Issue 22…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…June 7, 2002

Truth is often a double-edged sword

Words slicing and dicing hearts to the core

We use it so selectively

We covet it protectively

The results can be both positive and negative

For most Reality is a matter of perspective

Evolution brings change

While old truths remain

hurled in spite to only bring pain

Indiscriminate voice

or weapon of choice

leaving blood on our hands

sticky and moist

Sometimes it is better to be kind than right

Wisdom rarely controls the fight

When to fight

When to forgive

Dilemmas to face as long as we live

Motive determines selection

Reaction determines protection

Sometimes a thoughtful pass beats throwing stones

We all have plates of glass in our homes

Shattered glass is a dangerous thing

Truth is cherished freedom

Not a weapon to sling

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro enjoys each warm and lazy spring day. Free of school and homework, all he wants to do is play. Asked for comments, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro thought for a moment before honestly replying, "Grandma, the truth is I have nothing to say."

In late May, United States District Judge Emmett Sullivan refused to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm, seeking records of the White House energy task force. Headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, the task forced developed Bush administration policy, which favors the energy industry.

Arguing the case for the White House, U.S. Department of Justice lawyers claimed that divulging the energy task force records would undercut the executive branch's ability to seek and receive confidential advice. Clearly not convinced, Judge Sullivan declared the case would proceed to discovery. With the case going forward, the public might learn the truth about Enron's role in formulating White House energy policy. The now-bankrupt energy giant was President Bush's chief campaign contributor. Was there a quid pro quo?

Enron's business practices are also under federal investigation. Information subpoenaed by a Senate panel shows numerous contacts between the White House and Enron. Its accountant, Arthur Andersen, is on trial for shredding documents. Though questionable, Enron's accounting practices seem common. Companies, such as Halliburton Oil, formerly headed by Dick Cheney, and Global Crossing, engaged in similar unsavory practices.

Americans Venus and Serena Williams made history on Tuesday. The sisters made it to the semi-finals at the French Open. Along with Jennifer Capriati, Americans won three of the four semi-final spots in the tennis tournament. Not known for winning on the red clay of Roland-Garros, the sisters convincingly won their quarterfinal matches. Well-done! Kudos to the sisters!

News You Use

As chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, you are aware slave descendants are victims of the 3/5 Compromise. We are survivors of institutionalized racism and poverty. Consequently, we had to organize to fight segregation and discrimination for opportunities and access guaranteed other Americans by the U. S. Constitution. New guidelines for domestic surveillance proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft harken back to tools of the repressive years of the "red scare."

Convinced black civil rights demonstrations meant communism, J. Edgar Hoover created a domestic Counter Intelligence Program (Co-InTel-Pro) during the 1960s. Its goal was to surveil, infiltrate and disrupt black organizations. Hoover ordered FBI agents to violate laws and assassinate black Americans fighting for their constitutional rights. Today, under cover of the so-called "war on terrorism," Ashcroft and Bush are reestablishing the kind of unlimited power exercised by the U. S. Department of Justice and FBI when anti-communism equaled patriotism.

Confirmed following a career of trying to limit, if not eviscerate entirely, First Amendment guarantees, Ashcroft has emasculated congressional oversight and Congress' right to countermand attempts to circumvent the U. S. Constitution. Several court cases and congressional investigations during the 1970s and '80s proved that FBI agents, with Bureau and Justice Department approval, grossly abused their power.

Among other things, the FBI admitted its agents surveilled citizens at meetings held in schools, churches, homes and other places, then used information gathered to intimidate, threaten and otherwise harass citizens involved in the civil rights and/or black power struggle. Most damning are admissions FBI agents infiltrated black power groups and targeted leaders for prison and/or assassination. Run amok, clearly violating First Amendment rights, outraged Americans demanded the FBI be constrained with specific language to ensure agents respected constitutional rights.

Citizens, such as you, characterize what FBI agents did to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as the "bad old days." However, you still refuse to expose Co-InTel-Pro abuses, so the public will know the truth about the reign of terror and pain experienced by Co-InTel-Pro victims. "Stolen lives," like deaths in Afghanistan and Palestine, assassinations of Mark Clark, Fred Hampton, Elton Hayes, Mark Essex and Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. were counter intelligence targets. Even today, some victims still languish in prison in order to hide the truth about and identity of Co-InTel-Pro informants.

Finally Sir, Ashcroft's new domestic surveillance guidelines represent a grave threat to citizens supporting unpopular causes. Co-InTel-Pro is not a hypothetical; it happened, it is real. Co-InTel-Pro is the model; it reflects exactly what FBI agents did to American citizens under the cover of fighting communism. Hoover's FBI violated laws under Co-InTel-Pro, what will restrain Ashcroft and Bush's "war on terrorism?" Sir, a victim/survivor of Co-InTel-Pro, who has never seen his file, I request Congress and the Bush administration through your hearings, release FBI/Co-InTel-Pro records, so Americans can decide whether or not to trust men without credibility, rather than constitutional rights. John 2002

Disgruntled says: Admonishing Americans to be skeptical of a president selected, a C-Span caller mentioned the Bush family Nazi connection to Adolf Hitler, a fact of history. Predictably, the moderator quickly dismissed the caller as a conspiracy theorist. The truth of the matter is, the general public connects dots better than FBI 'intelligence analysts.'

Disgruntled wants to know: January 2001, the economy seemed strong; budget surpluses were expected for years to come. Leaders in both political parties promised to put Social Security surpluses in a lockbox to extend the solvency of the federal retirement program. Bush wanted to allow individuals to invest a portion of their contribution to Social Security in the stock market. With Wall Street tanking, surpluses spent on tax cuts and breaks for the wealthiest Americans and a global war to prosecute, will Bush continue to raid the Social Security lockbox while advocating its privatization?

Disgruntled feels: Scandalized! War is always an economic weapon. Truth is generally the first casualty as a gullible public is spoon-fed tons of misinformation. The war on terrorism is no exception. Evidence suggests there were plenty of warnings before 9-11. Astute observers believe it could have been prevented, but scandalous greed allowed the dirty deed to happen.

Sex and business scandals abound in the annals of US history. After the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton provided fodder for the first sex scandal with overtones of fraud involving national banks. Hamilton quickly dispelled notions of business impropriety by admitting his marital infidelity. Scandalous, Thomas Jefferson had an affair with his slave Sally Heming. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. These sex scandals provided gossipers hours of diversion and journalists reams of copy. However, business scandals are far costlier in terms of confidence lost in the capitalist system and billions in tax dollars.

A number of business scandals rocked the first administration of Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1873). The Crédit Mobilier Scandal was the most infamous business debacle of the century. It reached as high as the office of Grant's Vice President Schuyler Colfax, effectively ending Colfax's political career.

In September 1872, the New York Sun broke the story. Directors of the Union Pacific Railroad had created Credit Mobilier of America, a financing vehicle to underwrite construction of the transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad, an enterprise heavily subsidized with federal tax dollars. Controlled by a few stockholders, who owned a minor share in Union Pacific, Crédit Mobilier was awarded huge fraudulent contracts, thus milking Union Pacific of millions of dollars.

To forestall congressional investigations, Massachusetts Representative Oakes Ames was recruited to distribute Crédit Mobilier stock among key Congressmen. While some paid below market prices for the stock, others put nothing down and simply let the generous dividends pay for the stock. Ames' list of Crédit Mobilier stockholders included Schuyler Colfax, Henry Wilson, Grant's second vice president, future president James Garfield and other political luminaries.

On January 7, 1873, the House committee investigating the scandal called Colfax to testify. Ames claimed Colfax received Crédit Mobilier stock dividends. Swearing to the contrary, Colfax's testimony was contradicted by the evidence. A resolution to impeach him failed to pass; Colfax left office in disgrace.

Confidence shaken, Wall Street collapsed when transcontinental railroad failed to make bond payments. Dubbed the Panic of 1873, 'irrational exuberance' led to a severe depression. By 1879, more than 10,000 businesses had failed. (Sources: W. H. Smith, Schuyler Colfax: The Changing Fortunes of a Political Idol (1952); Current, Williams & Freidel, American History: A Survey; www.pinzler.com/ushistory/timeline7.html)

Venue for an Artist

Hindsight is all the rage in Washington. While the story of the missed warning signals is eating up all the headlines, another story of warning signs is ignored by elected officials and is getting hardly any ink, even though these signs are multiplying at an alarming rate.

Here are a few of them: In the last two years, 433 public companies - including Enron, Global Crossing and K-Mart - have declared bankruptcy. Two million Americans have lost their jobs. Four trillion dollars in market value have been lost on Wall Street. Each day brings fresh, stomach-turning revelations of corruption in corporate America. Despite these ominous flashing red lights, no real reform legislation will come out of Congress before the November elections.

After the outrage generated by Enron, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, and all the other corporate scumbags undermining the modern private enterprise system, the end result will be a continuation of the rotten status quo. And that means fresh disasters down the road. Yet, we have the information to, as the phrase of the moment goes, "connect the dots" right now.

A textbook case of special interests triumphing over the public interest, unless you're reading this in your executive boardroom, you've lost again. The biggest winners are veteran Washington arm-twisters, the powerful - and very well funded - accounting and financial services lobbies. The same folks who helped bring us this mess by relentlessly chipping away at the rules and regulations governing their industries are now ensuring that any efforts to clean things up will be thwarted. Lest we forget, the problem is that much of what is being done isn't illegal but should be. Otherwise, the manic appetite for profits will continue to inspire Wall Street's rats to squeeze through every loophole.

About Me: Columns by Arianna Huffington can be found online at www.arianna.com. Send questions and comments to arianna@ariannaonline.com.

Hood Notes

Several pending lawsuits claim the Boston office of the FBI was complicit in a number of murders or helped to cover them up. In addition, retired FBI agent, John J. Connolly Jr., was convicted on charges that he collaborated with Boston's leading mobsters.

Headed by Rep. Dan Burton, the House Government Reform Committee is investigating accusations that for decades Boston FBI agents provided tips to organized crime leaders to help them eliminate witnesses against them, sent innocent men to prison for life, lied to other law enforcement agencies and covered up crimes committed by FBI informants.

In May, investigators released a "smoking gun" memo from 1965 that showed J. Edgar Hoover knew that four innocent men had been sent to prison for life for a murder the FBI knew was committed by one of its Boston informants. (Source: www.nytimes.com)

Email: robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net The Bush administration's top cops have apologized for what they claim were mistakes about 9/11. The only problem is these were not mistakes of omission but deliberate failures to act. FBI agents were ordered by the administration not to investigate bin Laden and the Saudis. The wiretap a FBI agent wanted on the 20th hijacker was deliberately blocked by a superior. Memos specifically about suspected terrorists taking flight lessons in US schools were consistently ignored, as were specific high-level warnings of an imminent attack from a host of foreign governments. Now, besides their phony apology, they want to blame it all on low-level FBI agents and then use this lame excuse to justify turning the FBI into a souped-up domestic spy organization with sweeping new powers which virtually eliminate all Constitutional protections. The problem was not that they couldn't detect a coming terrorist attack but that they didn't want to. The solution is to fully investigate 9/11 and hold the highest level Bush officials responsible for what it now seems inevitable will come out of such an investigation. That, not creating a Gestapo-like police state, will protect the American people.

Email: www.newvision.co.ug For 40 years, the concentration of oil reserves in the Middle East made this region uniquely important. US strategy focused on ensuring the flow of oil to world markets would not be interrupted. On the one occasion when it was, during the oil embargo of 1973-74, the oil price quadrupled, angry consumers queued for hours to fill up their cars, and the global economy dove into a long recession.

Saddam Hussein has debunked the myth of the oil weapon. In April, he suspended Iraq's oil exports -around 4 percent of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' total output -- until Israel ended its invasion of the West Bank, and invited other OPEC members to join him. The markets didn't blink. After one month, when the price of oil did not waiver, Iraq declared its embargo over, claiming it could have worked had the other countries had the courage to follow his example. That is exactly why the markets stayed calm: they knew that none of the other countries would follow Saddam's example.

Email runoko@yahoo.com No Water? Drink Coke! On 22 April 2002, more than 2,000 irate protestors, consisting mostly of indigenous people and Dalits (oppressed castes), gathered at the gates of the Hindustan Coca-Cola factory in Plachimada, Palghat district, Kerala. Residents from the villages surrounding Coke's Greenfield soft-drink bottling factory here say that Coke's indiscriminate mining of groundwater has dried up many wells, and contaminated the remainder.

Email: http://www.whtt.org/rpr/020528.htm Israel has poured millions of dollars in recruiting top PR firms in the US to make sure the news coverage is tilted towards Israel. In addition to public relation firms, the Israelis are using several pro-Israel groups to influence American news coverage using tactics that include boycotts of several media outlets and massive phone, e-mail and letter-writing campaigns. These are directed at large and small operations with direct communication to the editors of major newspapers, broadcast outlets, and cable news channels across the US.

Email alarkam@webtv.net When the blind leads the blind, both fall into a ditch. The Pope cannot give sound advice to a falling American government, nor can Resident Bush make viable recommendations to the Dragon about how to maintain the illusion that the corrupt Catholic Church is righteous. Historically, the U.S. government and the Vatican Empire have ruthlessly exploited the Black, Brown, Red and Yellow masses, all of whom are now awakening to the reality that they must free themselves from wicked white world rulership.

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