Sunday, May 14, 2006
Saturday, May 13, 2006
THE SPIES WHO SHAG US
The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story -- Again
Greg Palast
I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news. This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.
The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts. Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate. They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint. Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you? ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information. I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 "felons" that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc. And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply rewarded by the man the company elected. And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States ...linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records. And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI. "And that scares the hell out of me," said the executive (who has since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida "felons," Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test "results" on rape case evidence ... that didn't exist. And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records. But it won't stop, despite Republican senators shedding big crocodile tears about "surveillance" of innocent Americans. That's because FEAR is a lucrative business -- not just for ChoicePoint, but for firms such as Syntech, Sybase and Lockheed-Martin -- each of which has provided lucrative posts or profits to connected Republicans including former Total Information Awareness chief John Poindexter (Syntech), Marvin Bush (Sybase) and Lynn Cheney (Lockheed-Martin). But how can they get Americans to give up our personal files, our phone logs, our DNA and our rights? Easy. Fear sells better than sex -- and they want you to be afraid. Back to today's New York Times, page 28: "Wider Use of DNA Lists is Urged in Fighting Crime." And who is providing the technology? It comes, says the Times, from the work done on using DNA fragments to identity victims of the September 11 attack. And who did that job (for $12 million, no bid)? ChoicePoint, Inc. Which is NOT mentioned by the Times. "Genetic surveillance would thus shift from the individual [the alleged criminal] to the family," says the Times -- which will require, of course, a national DNA database of NON-criminals. It doesn't end there. Turn to the same newspaper, page 23, with a story about a weird new law passed by the state of Georgia to fight illegal immigration. Every single employer and government agency will be required to match citizen or worker data against national databases to affirm citizenship. It won't stop illegal border crossing, but hey, someone's going to make big bucks on selling data. And guess what local boy owns the data mine? ChoicePoint, Inc., of Alpharetta, Georgia. The knuckleheads at the Times don't put the three stories together because the real players aren't in the press releases their reporters re-write. But that's the Fear Industry for you. You aren't safer from terrorists or criminals or "felon" voters. But the national wallet is several billion dollars lighter and the Bill of Rights is a couple amendments shorter. And that's their program. They get the data mine -- and we get the shaft. **********
The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story -- Again
Greg Palast
I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news. This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.
The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts. Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate. They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint. Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you? ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information. I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 "felons" that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc. And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply rewarded by the man the company elected. And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States ...linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records. And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI. "And that scares the hell out of me," said the executive (who has since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida "felons," Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test "results" on rape case evidence ... that didn't exist. And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records. But it won't stop, despite Republican senators shedding big crocodile tears about "surveillance" of innocent Americans. That's because FEAR is a lucrative business -- not just for ChoicePoint, but for firms such as Syntech, Sybase and Lockheed-Martin -- each of which has provided lucrative posts or profits to connected Republicans including former Total Information Awareness chief John Poindexter (Syntech), Marvin Bush (Sybase) and Lynn Cheney (Lockheed-Martin). But how can they get Americans to give up our personal files, our phone logs, our DNA and our rights? Easy. Fear sells better than sex -- and they want you to be afraid. Back to today's New York Times, page 28: "Wider Use of DNA Lists is Urged in Fighting Crime." And who is providing the technology? It comes, says the Times, from the work done on using DNA fragments to identity victims of the September 11 attack. And who did that job (for $12 million, no bid)? ChoicePoint, Inc. Which is NOT mentioned by the Times. "Genetic surveillance would thus shift from the individual [the alleged criminal] to the family," says the Times -- which will require, of course, a national DNA database of NON-criminals. It doesn't end there. Turn to the same newspaper, page 23, with a story about a weird new law passed by the state of Georgia to fight illegal immigration. Every single employer and government agency will be required to match citizen or worker data against national databases to affirm citizenship. It won't stop illegal border crossing, but hey, someone's going to make big bucks on selling data. And guess what local boy owns the data mine? ChoicePoint, Inc., of Alpharetta, Georgia. The knuckleheads at the Times don't put the three stories together because the real players aren't in the press releases their reporters re-write. But that's the Fear Industry for you. You aren't safer from terrorists or criminals or "felon" voters. But the national wallet is several billion dollars lighter and the Bill of Rights is a couple amendments shorter. And that's their program. They get the data mine -- and we get the shaft. **********
Friday, May 12, 2006
Big Brother's Secret Calling Plan
Disclosure of the NSA's illegal database of Americans' telephone records has brought outraged demands for an investigation -- and for legal action against the government.
With the revelations Thursday in U.S.A. Today that the National Security Agency has compiled a vast database of every telephone call made in the U.S., President George W. Bush, who took pains yesterday not to deny the program's existence, is now fighting for his political life. The outraged reaction to the program by members of the U.S. Senate, including from some Republican members, even suggests that impeachment proceedings could be brought against the President should Democrats gain a majority in November.......More
Thursday, May 11, 2006
FUN WITH SURVEILLANCE.
Turns out the NSA, with the collaboration of every phone company except Qwest, is monitoring all of our calls -- not to listen in to what's being said, but simply to gather data about the calls and draw inferences from that. It's important to link this up to the broader chain. One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself. --Matthew Yglesias
Turns out the NSA, with the collaboration of every phone company except Qwest, is monitoring all of our calls -- not to listen in to what's being said, but simply to gather data about the calls and draw inferences from that. It's important to link this up to the broader chain. One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself. --Matthew Yglesias
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
It's OK When Republicans Do It
A furor erupted Tuesday over Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson's recent suggestion that Bush critics should forget about winning government contracts. After Democrats demanded an investigation into violations of federal procurement law and accused the administration of playing favorites, a Jackson spokeswoman said he'd made up a story about a would-be contractor who was rejected after saying he didn't like President Bush."It's not a true story. It's a made-up story," said Jackson spokeswoman Dustee Tucker, adding that he was only trying to make a point about how Washington works.
A furor erupted Tuesday over Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson's recent suggestion that Bush critics should forget about winning government contracts. After Democrats demanded an investigation into violations of federal procurement law and accused the administration of playing favorites, a Jackson spokeswoman said he'd made up a story about a would-be contractor who was rejected after saying he didn't like President Bush."It's not a true story. It's a made-up story," said Jackson spokeswoman Dustee Tucker, adding that he was only trying to make a point about how Washington works.
President Jeb Bush
President Bush suggested Wednesday that he'd like to see his family's White House legacy continue, perhaps with his younger brother Jeb as the chief executive.
President Bush suggested Wednesday that he'd like to see his family's White House legacy continue, perhaps with his younger brother Jeb as the chief executive.
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
"Deadlines are important"
Bush @ Sun City Center
President Bush has heard pleas for an extension of the deadline to sign up for new Medicare drug coverage from lawmakers, seniors advocacy groups and finally two women in his audience Tuesday. He's rejected them all.
"Deadlines are important," the president said at a retirement community, less than a week before the last day for most seniors and the disabled to enroll in the program without facing higher prices. "Deadlines help people understand there's finality and people need to get after it."
The new program allows 43 million Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in a private plan that will subsidize the cost of their prescription medications. With about 37 million people now either signed up or automatically enrolled, federal officials from Bush on down have engaged in an all-out push to spread the word to those remaining and help them navigate the Byzantine process of choosing a plan by Monday..........yada, yada, yada...more
Bush @ Sun City Center
President Bush has heard pleas for an extension of the deadline to sign up for new Medicare drug coverage from lawmakers, seniors advocacy groups and finally two women in his audience Tuesday. He's rejected them all.
"Deadlines are important," the president said at a retirement community, less than a week before the last day for most seniors and the disabled to enroll in the program without facing higher prices. "Deadlines help people understand there's finality and people need to get after it."
The new program allows 43 million Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in a private plan that will subsidize the cost of their prescription medications. With about 37 million people now either signed up or automatically enrolled, federal officials from Bush on down have engaged in an all-out push to spread the word to those remaining and help them navigate the Byzantine process of choosing a plan by Monday..........yada, yada, yada...more
Halliburton's Immigrant Detention Centers
by Ruth Conniff
While thousands of people were celebrating the contribution America's undocumented immigrants make to our economy, and demanding justice and recognition for workers who are denied basic rights, the government was making plans for large-scale detention centers in case of an "emergency influx" of immigrants.
KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary recently reprimanded for gross overcharging in its military contracts in Iraq, won a $385 million contract to build the centers. According to the Halliburton website -- www.Halliburton.com -- "the contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."
What new programs might those be?
The web was abuzz with speculation after the contract was awarded on January 24. Pacific News Service gave the most detailed analysis.
It connected the new "immigration emergency" plans with older plans that involved imposing martial law.
Certainly the detention centers raise the specter of WW II Japanese internment camps.
The new facilities could be used for round-ups of Muslim Americans or other American citizens tagged as "enemy combatants.”
The use of military personnel and military contractors in the event of a Katrina-like disaster, which the Halliburton contract provides for, brings us closer to martial law, whether it is officially declared or not.
It also means record profits for Halliburton, which declared 2005 "the best in our 86-year history." David Lesar, Halliburton's chairman, president and CEO, declares on the company website, "For the full year 2005 we set a record for revenue and achieved net income of $2.4 billion with each of our six divisions posting record results."
Not bad for a company that has been repeatedly cited for inflating charges and wasting taxpayer money in Iraq.
The immigration detention centers ought to raise a red flag, not just about nepotism and waste among military contractors, but about what our government has in store for us.
Perhaps the same energy that propelled immigrant rights into the national headlines could be harnessed to demand an explanation for what, exactly, Halliburton is helping to prepare for with this latest big chunk of taxpayer largess.
Ruth Conniff covers national politics for The Progressive and is a voice of The Progressive on many TV and radio programs.
© 2006 The Progressive
$2,800 dinner with contractor dogs Harris
Battling a report that she had a $2,800 dinner with a man later convicted of bribing a congressman, Katherine Harris wrapped up a weeklong tour of North Florida with a message of hope for the future of her beleaguered U.S. Senate campaign.Harris said she made amends for her previous failure to pay for her dinner with a $100 donation to a Jacksonville-based religious group that claims its crusades have resulted in "supernatural deliverance from demonic possessions."Speaking to Republican leaders in the IMAX Theater just blocks from the state Capitol Friday afternoon, the Republican congresswoman......more
Battling a report that she had a $2,800 dinner with a man later convicted of bribing a congressman, Katherine Harris wrapped up a weeklong tour of North Florida with a message of hope for the future of her beleaguered U.S. Senate campaign.Harris said she made amends for her previous failure to pay for her dinner with a $100 donation to a Jacksonville-based religious group that claims its crusades have resulted in "supernatural deliverance from demonic possessions."Speaking to Republican leaders in the IMAX Theater just blocks from the state Capitol Friday afternoon, the Republican congresswoman......more
Monday, May 8, 2006
"Boycott Da Vinci Code film": top Vatican official
The Vatican stepped up its offensive against "The Da Vinci Code" on Friday when a top official close to Pope Benedict blasted the book as full of anti-Christian lies and urged Catholics to boycott the film.
The latest broadside came from Archbishop Angelo Amato, the number two official in the Vatican doctrinal office which was headed by Pope Benedict until his election last year.
Amato, addressing a Catholic conference in Rome, called the book "stridently anti-Christian .. full of calumnies, offences and historical and theological errors regarding Jesus, the Gospels and the Church."
He added: "I hope that you all will boycott the film.".....more
The Vatican stepped up its offensive against "The Da Vinci Code" on Friday when a top official close to Pope Benedict blasted the book as full of anti-Christian lies and urged Catholics to boycott the film.
The latest broadside came from Archbishop Angelo Amato, the number two official in the Vatican doctrinal office which was headed by Pope Benedict until his election last year.
Amato, addressing a Catholic conference in Rome, called the book "stridently anti-Christian .. full of calumnies, offences and historical and theological errors regarding Jesus, the Gospels and the Church."
He added: "I hope that you all will boycott the film.".....more
Cheney Blames CIA for missing 911 and WMD
White House Press Release 5-7-06
...It's been a tough time for the agency...and missed 9/11 and obviously were criticized for that. The report about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the Gulf War -- before the war in Iraq was another instance where there was a breakdown in the system...does anyone believe what this guy is saying anymore? .....more
White House Press Release 5-7-06
...It's been a tough time for the agency...and missed 9/11 and obviously were criticized for that. The report about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the Gulf War -- before the war in Iraq was another instance where there was a breakdown in the system...does anyone believe what this guy is saying anymore? .....more
Bush talks up Medicare in Sun City visit Tuesday
President George W. Bush will stop in Hillsborough County on Tuesday on part of a three-day, campaign-style trip across Florida to promote a federal prescription drug program....more
President George W. Bush will stop in Hillsborough County on Tuesday on part of a three-day, campaign-style trip across Florida to promote a federal prescription drug program....more
Saturday, May 6, 2006
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