Category Archives: Blog

Two articles on the London bombings

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[The following two articles on the London bombings, from the London Mirror and Agence France-Press, were sent among others. Interesting idea, although nothing conclusive yet. ]

 

 

(1) Subject: Mirror.co.uk – EXCLUSIVE: WAS IT SUICIDE?16 July 2005
EXCLUSIVE: WAS IT SUICIDE?

Why did they buy return train tickets to Luton? Why did they buy pay & display tickets for cars? Why were there no usual shouts of ‘Allah Akhbar’? Why were bombs in bags and not on their bodies?
By Jeff Edwards

THE London bombers may have been duped into killing themselves so their secrets stayed hidden.
Police and MI5 are probing if the four men were told by their al-Qaeda controller they had time to escape after setting off timers. Instead, the devices exploded immediately. A security source said: “If the bombers lived and were caught they’d probably have cracked. Would their masters have allowed that to happen? We think not.”
The evidence is compelling: The terrorists bought return rail tickets, and pay and display car park tickets, before boarding _ a train at Luton for London. None of the men was heard to cry “Allah Akhbar!” – “God is great” – usually screamed by suicide bombers as they detonate their bomb.

Their devices were in large rucksacks which could be easily dumped instead of being strapped to their bodies. They carried wallets containing their driving licences, bank cards and other personal items.
Suicide bombers normally strip themselves of identifying material.
Similar terror attacks against public transport in Madrid last year were carried out by recruits who had time to escape and planned to strike again.
Bomber Hasib Hussain detonated his device at the rear of the top deck of a No 30 bus, not in the middle of the bottom deck where most damage would be caused.
Additionally, two of the bombers had strong personal reasons for staying alive.
Jermaine Lindsay’s partner Samantha Lewthwaite, 22, mother of his one-year-old son, is expecting her second baby within days. Mohammed Sidique Khan’s wife Hasina, mum of a 14-month-old daughter, is also pregnant.
Our source disclosed: “The theory that they were not a suicide squad is gathering pace. They were the weakest link.
“We think it’s possible they were told that when they pressed buttons to set off timers they’d have a short time to abandon the bombs and get away before the blast. Instead, the bombs exploded immediately.”
Another intelligence source added: “Whoever is behind this didn’t want to waste their best operatives on a suicide mission. Instead they used easily recruited low-grade men who may have believed they’d walk away.”
At least 54 people were killed in the 7/7 blasts. Khan, 30, of Dewsbury, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, of Leeds, and Jamaican-born Lindsay, 19, of Aylesbury, Bucks, detonated devices on the Tube at Edgware Road, Aldgate and King’s Cross.
Hussain, 18, of Leeds, blasted the bus at Tavistock Square. The Tube explosions went off almost simultaneously. But the bus went up an hour later.
Yesterday, Hussain’s family told of their horror at the teenager’s involvement in the massacre. They said in a statement: “We are devastated over the events of the past few days. Hasib was a loving and normal young man who gave us no concern and we are having difficulty taking this in.
“Our thoughts are with all the bereaved families. We have to live with the loss of our son in these difficult circumstances.
“We had no knowledge of his activities and, had we done, we would have done everything in our power to stop him. We urge anyone with information to cooperate fully with the authorities.”
Police are urgently investigating the missing 81 minutes between Hussain arriving from Luton in London and the time his bomb went off. His device may have malfunctioned. He may have lost his nerve. Or he may have panicked when he discovered the Northern Line, on which he is
thought to have been due to travel, was suspended.
Officers want to discover if Hussain met anyone else who either strengthened his faltering resolve or reset his flawed bomb.”

 

 

(2) Sunday, July 17, 2005|09:05 IST
London bombers may have been tricked: Report
Agence France-Presse
London, July 17, 2005
 
British police are considering the possibility that the four key suspects in last week’s London attacks may have been tricked into setting off their bombs, a British newspaper reported.
“We do not have hard evidence that the men were suicide bombers,” a Scotland Yard spokesman told The Sunday Telegraph. “It is possible that they did not intend to die.”
According to the paper, one police hypothesis is that the bombers were tricked by a “master” who told them they would have time to escape — when in fact the devices were set to go off immediately.
“The bombers’ masters might have thought that they couldn’t risk the four men being caught and spilling everything to British interrogators,” an unnamed security official told the Telegraph.
Lending weight to the theory is the fact that all four men had paid up their parking tickets before boarding a train at Luton for King’s Cross, and that they all bought return tickets to the capital.
Moreover, the paper said, the men were carrying their explosives inside rucksacks, as opposed to strapped to their bodies as is common practice among suicide bombers.
None were reported to have cried “Allah Akbar” (God is Greatest) before setting off their charge — something that most Middle Eastern suicide bombers do.
“It is possible they were duped into believing there would be a delay, but what we know is that they carried bombs onto Tubes and a bus and set them off, killing themselves and innocent people,” one senior officer said.
“But we are keeping an open mind until we have firm evidence one way or another,” said the officer.”

Those bomb-in-the-subway drills, London, July 7th

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[On July 7th in London, a private security company called Visor Consultants was actually conducting a drill, pertaining at least partly to bombs being placed in the London subways. I emailed the company for comment. Here is their response, in full:]

“Thank you for your message. Given the volume of emails about events on 7 July and a commonly expressed misguided belief that our exercise revealed prescient behaviour, or was somehow a conspiracy (noting that several websites interpreted our work that day in an inaccurate / naive / ignorant / hostile manner) it has been decided to issue a single email response as follows:  It is confirmed that a short number of ‘walk through’ scenarios
planed well in advance had commenced that morning for a private company in London (as part of a wider project that remains confidential) and that two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs at the same time as the ones that actually detonated with such tragic results.   One scenario in particular, was very similar to real time events.”

 

“However, anyone with knowledge about such ongoing threats to our capital city will be aware that (a) the emergency services have already practiced several of their own exercises based on bombs in the underground system (also reported by the main news channels) and (b) a few months ago the BBC broadcast a similar documentary on the same theme, although with much worse consequences.  It is hardly surprising therefore, that we chose a feasible scenario – but the timing and script was nonetheless, a little
disconcerting.”

 

“In short, our exercise (which involved just a few people as crisis managers actually responding to a simulated series of activities involving, on paper, 1000 staff) quickly became the real thing and the players that morning responded very well indeed to the sudden reality of events.”

 

“Beyond this no further comment will be made and based on the extraordinary number of messages from ill informed people, no replies will henceforth be given to anyone unable to demonstrate a bona fide reason for asking (e.g. accredited journalist / academic).
Peter Power
Visor Consultants Limited”

—– Original Message —–
From: “Margie Burns” <margie.burns@verizon.net>
To: <info@visorconsultants.com>
Cc: <margie.burns@verizon.net>
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 6:47 PM
Subject: questions re drill on July 7th

> Hello. I am a journalist in the Washington, DC, area. I have received more > than one email saying that your company was conducting drills that > coincided exactly in timing with the bombings in London on July 7. Three > questions:
>
> 1) Is the above true and correct?
> 2) Did the drills concern or include representations of the London subways > being bombed?
> 3) Did you give an interview on this topic to the BBC on the evening of > the 7th?
>
> Any information appreciated. No one is accusing you of any wrongdoing, but > it is always best to get even trifling facts straight.  Thank you very > much.
>> Sincerely, Margie Burns>
>

 

[A couple of thoughts, here: obviously the individuals who planted those bombs took advantage of the drill, along with the advantage of extra crowds in London that day amid the hubbub of the Olympics announcement. Just as obviously, the individuals who planned the strikes of 9/11 took similar advantage of the drills on that date. Any genuine investigation would look into the question of who knew about those drills. I’m not expecting that the knowledge was particularly restricted – undoubtedly it was easily accessible, especially with the “911” date — but it numbers among several obvious starting points for inquiry. The inquiry cannot be confined to individuals “in government,” either. It must extend to private firms, both in the U.S. and in Britain.]

White House versus Pentagon: Press Loses

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Back in the Sixties, some French auteur – Godard, I believe – had a scene in one of his films about the political uses of anti-Semitism. In the scene, a young rich woman is berating an older blue-collar man, a driver who accidentally killed her young rich boyfriend. The driver fights back. The scene ends, however, with the two heated participants in class warfare walking off with arms around each other, after they reconcile by mutually dumping on “Jews.”

 

This scene exactly parallels the way the story about Islam’s holy Koran being put into toilets at Guantanamo has played out. In an ongoing but largely sub rosa battle between the White House and the Pentagon, the two antagonists have (temporarily) reconciled by mutually dumping on the press.

 

Let’s not forget that the item – alleging that military interrogators were under investigation for defiling the Koran — was leaked to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff by a “senior administration official.” This, in the journalistic code for background sources, signifies at least an Undersecretary and should signify a Cabinet member.

 

The leak comes shortly after the Army took its remarkable step of announcing that all its recruiters are going to “stand down” for one day this month, ostensibly because of abuses (lying) by recruiters. When I heard Bob Schieffer report that on CBS Evening News, I couldn’t help remembering what an uncle of mine once told us about being recruited. He’s my only uncle who wasn’t in World War II – by a lucky break, too young for WW2 and too old for Vietnam – and he was reflecting on the difference between before (getting in) and after. Once in, he said, he “never heard that [recruiter’s] voice again” – “so sweet, kind . . .” And that was in good times.

 

Not to get anyone into trouble, but the point here is that military recruiters have been lying for years. You pretty much have to shade the truth, if you want people to think that getting shot at is a good way to make a living.

 

The military is having increasing problems in recruiting; meanwhile, signs are that the White House wants to move on Iran if not Syria; service personnel are on beepers if they’re home and are prevented from coming home if abroad; cuts in pay and benefits for veterans and active duty personnel are constantly being mooted by the White House’s GOP boosters in Congress; another round of base closings is about to begin; and the Pentagon is under constant pressure from the White House and the GOP in Congress to cover up everything from prisoner abuse to security lapses before and after 9/11 to contractor corruption, even while facing public frustration at the cover-ups. That Army recruiters took a collective day off solely because of recruiting abuses is, shall we say, not a given.

 

My take on all this is (1) that the announced one-day stand-down was a protest, (2) that it got noticed at the White House, and (3) that the White House riposted.

 

Enter our “senior administration official.”

 

The Bush White House has evinced intent to dominate and control the Pentagon since first coming into office in January 2000. The story deliberately put out by an administration spokesperson about the Koran being put into toilets is only the most recent chapter in a consistent strategy of keeping a large power base off-balance (parallel to White House strategy of keeping the Fourth Estate off-balance, through a combination of attack, buying off, protective mimicry, infiltration and disinformation). The Pentagon may have bought itself time, temporarily, by joining the White House in an attack on Newsweek. But that superficial unity cannot possibly shore up the armed forces, caught up partly unknowingly and partly knowingly in a demented strategy to heighten and inflame terrorist strikes into “global war.”

Border patrols, militiamen, and “left”-“right” misunderstanding

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Current reports over the controversial vigilante decision to patrol the US-Mexico border offer a perfect example of the right getting it wrong and the left not getting it, to borrow from the title of a book I haven’t read.

 

(N.b.: I plan to read the book, but the “why” in this kind of formulation often turns out to be theory about a nonexistent phenomenon. Most liberals still need to read David Brock’s book on the “noise machine” and to quit denying that 30 years of paid propaganda have taken their toll. Of course, “liberal” pundits or writers who timidly knuckled under to a nonexistent rightwing groundswell won’t be eager to admit it. Envy and competitiveness take their toll, too.)

 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch – when I wrote, last year, about the open entrance of “OTMs” – “Other Than Mexicans” along “Arab Road” into Arizona, after a report about them in the Tombstone Tumbleweed, the article drew numerous responses, mostly favorable. But if you believe that the Democratic Party and “liberal” commentators immediately seized upon those reports to demand an investigation, and to point out that the so-called “War on Terror” is a sham, then I have a bridge in Arizona to sell.

 

Predictably, the only political action was by rightwingers in Congress wanting to halt the entrance of minority populations into this country, and reporting on the local action – which is NOT exclusively by white supremacists – has been dominated and characterized by the emphasis on racism.

 

As I said, a perfect example of the “left” not getting it and of the “right” getting it wrong.

 

That numerous Middle Easterners, intriguingly nicely dressed and showing no sign of having trekked through the desert, are among those coming into the US illegally through Arizona of all places, is a sign:

 

It is a sign of utter neglect by the Bush administration of the most elementary security measures. (Probably, genuine border patrolling ranks low among White House priorities partly because it doesn’t generate corporate contracts on a scale with Iraq and Afghanistan.)

 

As such, it is a sign that the “war on terror” is a sham. An administration genuinely concerned about domestic security would have taken on-the-ground measures first – even at the risk of offending corporate donors in the chemicals and transportation sectors.

 

As such, it is a sign – yet another sign — that the invasion of Iraq is not a “war on terror.”

 

As such, it is a sign that the White House is not interested in warring on terror; it is interested in goosing up terrorism into a world war. The envious and insecure George W. Bush, brought up to be resentful of American great families including the Roosevelts, thinks he’s another FDR, on the right instead of on the left. Another Yalta awaits – with Bush, the Saudis, and China in the key positions.

 

But the purported intellectuals in media, in academia and in government who have turned a blind eye to this horrendous picture have little vested interest in exposing it. In exposing it, after all, they also expose their own blindness, but even more of a chilling effect is the insidious pressure exerted by status. To be engaged by genuine public health and public safety issues is low-status. (The WashPost, having reported the release of Plague virus to several thousand labs, backpedaled and ran a ridiculous article saying, in effect, No cause for alarm, folks; nothing to worry about – but very skimpy on details.) To this day, even the best of the Post’s commentators – William Raspberry, Colbert King – have not forcefully opposed incarceration under the vile and cowardly policy of “indefinite detention.”

 

It’s as though they cannot see that the White House is deliberately (1) inflaming global tensions and (2) attempting an inappropriate degree of control over this country’s political and judicial system.

 

We all engage in denial at times. But remember back when Miss Lewinsky was the big news story? – The WashPost ran an entire pull-out section on her, titled “The Presidency in Crisis.” (After opinion polls showed differently, the title appeared in smaller print; then the section became part of the front section; then it disappeared altogether. That editor then took leave to spend more time with her family.) We will know that our national press, and democracy, are thriving when the Post starts running an entire pull-out section on the indefinite incarceration of prisoners: when the prisoners’ families get entire pages devoted to their relatives; when the fact that the prisoners are not being allowed lawyers gets front-page and full-page attention; when the fact that the prisoners are not even being told the charges against them gets lengthy full-section rehashing — with experts weighing in from every point on the political spectrum — the way Miss Lewinsky did.

 

Meanwhile, I doubt whether any individual, regardless of how ignorant, sincerely believes that the US would be endangered by prisoners being told the charges against them. Bush and his team must themselves be bemused at the extent of their control over the national political press.

Nixon and the Clinton impeachment: half a motive

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Henry Hyde’s comments about the failed GOP effort to impeach Clinton have gotten a lot of publicity. On the verge of retiring, last Thursday Rep. Hyde (R-Ill.) made some attention-garnering and relatively frank statements.

 

Interviewed by ABC, Hyde suggested that he has had “second thoughts about leading the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection to the Monica Lewinsky affair because the process led to the embarrassing disclosure of Hyde’s own extramarital affair in the 1960s . . .”

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/042105_ns_hyde.html

 

“Would you do it again?” asked ABC7’s political reporter Andy Shaw. “That is a very good question. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I might not,” said Hyde . . . admitting for the first time that the impeachment of Clinton may have been in part political revenge against the democrats for the impeachment proceedings against GOP President Richard Nixon 25 years earlier.”

            “Was this pay back?” asked Andy Shaw. “I can’t say it wasn’t. [Hyde] But I also thought that the Republican Party should stand for something, and if we walked away from this, no matter how difficult, we could be accused of shirking our duty,” said Hyde.”

 

The comments generated some embarrassment and wrath among conservatives and consequent pressure on ABC, or at least perceived as such by ABC, so that it actually removed the offending material from its web site temporarily:

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/clinton_impeachment_hyde_abc_yanks_422.htm

 

No surprise there. Anyone who watched the Oscars either this year or last year – the most frightened broadcasts ever, for Hollywood’s annual celebration of itself – already knows the extent of ABC timidity, apparently born out of some delusion that there is a nationwide groundswell of populist adoration for George W. Bush. But alarm over Hyde’s remarks, from any political angle, is giving them more than their due.

 

Candid though he may have been, Hyde at 81 is still one of the most senior members of Congress, and well able to remember Nixon’s downfall. Nixon gave his resignation speech in August, 1974, when Hyde was in the prime of life and more pertinently was running for Congress, which he entered in 1975. I personally remember where I was at the time, because that was the summer I spent in beautiful Bread Loaf, Vermont, at the Bread Loaf School of English. It was my first trip to Vermont and my first stay in New England, and I took a course in Renaissance drama from Bart Giamatti; any one of those factors would have made the time memorable for me. Television was not allowed, but a set was brought in for Nixon’s resignation – only the second time in the history of the school that that had happened.

 

The point here is that Nixon’s fate is a less green memory for younger members of Congress and their allies in rightwing media, think tanks, and interest groups. It happened in the childhood of the fortyish, before the formative years of thirtysomethings, and before the birth of twentysomethings. It’s not necessarily the burning issue for them that it was for Hyde and some of his peers.

 

A more pressing and immediate issue than Nixon, in the late 1990s, was that Clinton was in the White House for a second term after 1996, Al Gore looked like a good candidate for 2000, and it was beginning to be known that George W. Bush wanted to run for the GOP nomination.

 

Anyone who can read should know that George Walker Bush was putting his White House campaign in place from 1996, and more importantly that the shapers and powers around him were also doing their job from 1996 on. Regardless of the quietness with which he began his presidential campaign efforts, Bush was a very good bet to win the nomination by default if he tried seriously for it – even with his comparative lack of resume, shortness of political career, and closet of individual and family skeletons.

 

But that scenario still left the aforementioned skimpiness of merit and abundance of problems that would have to be dealt with, for the Republican Party to win the White House with Bush at the top of the ticket. I’ll treat those bogus accusations of “murder” against Mrs. Clinton some other time. For now, it is not a given that Clinton alone was the object of the impeachment strategy. That cannot be assumed. If you’re soon going to nominate a man whom you must secretly suspect to have potential for impeachment himself, then what you need more than anything else is – I hate to say this – a preemptive strike.

 

And surely every figure in Washington informed about the younger George Bush must have been at least slightly acquainted with his shadowy resume: the special treatment in re Vietnam, the years of problem drinking and highly credible rumors of other substance abuse, the rumors of at least one drug arrest with an out arranged for him by his father (then ambassador to the U.N.) through community service, the years of drift in his personal and professional life, the series of favors and special deals that made him rich and gave him his resume as a businessman in spite of companies that foundered – the list of major problems could be, and undoubtedly was, subdivided into richly detailed branches.

 

In short, literally nothing in Bush’s history could cause party supporters or sympathetic interest groups to assume that he would be immune to the pressures and temptations of high office. What to do? – Why, strike first, on the chance that it might help and couldn’t hurt. (Not that preemptive strike was the only tactic employed, but we can revisit some of the other tactics later.)

“Imaginary Crimes”: a book recommendation

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Hidden guilt – hidden even from the self – afflicts ordinary people in everyday life, with costs uncounted and uncountable, according to a book by Lewis Engel, PhD, and Tom Ferguson, MD, titled Imaginary Crimes (Houghton Mifflin, 1990). The thesis of Imaginary Crimes is simple: many adults suffer from a version of “survivor’s guilt,” a guilt not over wrong done but over the mere fact of having come out ahead in some situation or even over just having lived when others died or were harmed.

 

Survivor’s guilt has long been recognized in Holocaust survivors and their families, combat veterans and their families – this kind of guilt, with a virus-like knack for camouflage, can be transmitted to relatives – and prisoners and their families.

 

Engel and Ferguson apply this concept to less disrupted lives, even to ordinary lives. To a surprising extent, according to the authors, millions of us are liable to one or another form of this hidden guilt, of which we ourselves are unaware.

 

I cannot recommend the prose style of this otherwise valuable book, and regrettably the authors have to disguise individual case studies so much that the anecdotes come out garbled and difficult to relate to. But the basic categories of imaginary crime are lucid and informative. “Most of us believe ourselves guilty of one or more of the six common imaginary crimes described on the following pages”:

  • Outdoing – “The crime of outdoing can result from surpassing a family member in any way . . .”
  • Burdening – “If either or both of your parents seemed weighed down by life, or drained by parental responsibilities, you may suffer from the imaginary crime of burdening.”
  • Love theft – “Love theft is the crime of receiving the love or attention that another family member seemed to need in order to thrive.”
  • Abandonment – “Abandonment is the crime of wanting to separate from your parents . . . simply distancing yourself from them – physically or emotionally – can make you unconsciously feel as if you are abandoning them.”
  • Disloyalty – “The crime of family disloyalty can result from breaking family rules or disappointing parental expectations.”
  • Basic badness – “Most of us have suffered to some extent from bad messages. As a result, we sense that we are somehow inherently flawed . . . not important, not worthwhile, not lovable, not attractive, not caring, or not intelligent.”

 

The authors explain some of these categories better than they do others. “Basic badness,” for example, is less coherent than other illusory crimes but seems reminiscent of the “We’re not worthy” scene in Wayne’s World. It’s also probably widely spread among offspring of the Greatest Generation, who often received a message, however unintentional, that “Whosever wish or pleasure or convenience is consulted, it won’t be yours.”

 

This book is not pessimistic – the good news about guilt, after all, is that it indicates a conscience, a capacity to regret that better things didn’t happen to other people, especially the ones we loved.

 

The book is therefore a useful reminder and clarification of some fundamentals. Good bedside reading, a little at a time.

Little help for one Texas family

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[I am conveying this message, for what little help possible, for a Texas woman who has been through more than any one family can endure.]

 

To: BOC ADMINISTRATOR & BOARD MEMBERS

 

From: Brenda Pitts Bennett

(Mother of inmate)

701 Meadowdale

Royse City, Texas75189

bbbennett@cebridge.net

972-636-3575 

Dear Mr. Administrator,

Hello and hope you are good?I am faxing you this plea letter regarding my son, Chad Ray Bennett TDCJ # 1282720 who resides at The Byrd Unit in Huntsville where he was sent last week from Middleton Transfer Facility in Abilene? We had been told many times that Chad was on his way home yet he never made it home and we had to cancel the burial a few times.

My problem is that I and a few others in the funeral business have tried to just help us to get my son home for his fathers funeral.

I had to put the funeral off several times now because I would be told by someone at TDCJ and Rockwall County Jail that Chad was on his way to our area yet he never showed up. Chad’s dad has now been passed on now near two weeks in our wait for Chad to get here. This has made it very hard on our family as you can imagine if this was your family. And this death is just adding fire to the damages already in our lives as our 21 year old beautiful, perfect son died last year. My baby sons death happened while Chad was in TDCJ also and Chad and Chip was like twins and best friends and yes TDCJ may have changed employees since that time but we had no problems getting Chad home for his brothers funeral.

My entire family suffers with Lyme Disease which when is not treated properly ( which it is not treated properly in Texas) leaves people with Lyme in tragic health conditions and constantly fighting to hang on to life. I have begged TDCJ to study this disease and they could possibly not contribute to my only son I have left life but still no medical help has been given. My 28 daughter had 2 heart attacks from Lyme Disease and I could go on and on just so you could understand what we have to deal with.

I was told several different stories and one of them was that Chad has not been in TDCJ six months yet therefore he can’t come to his father’s funeral. I had a dear friend in the political arena to look up rules on this for me and I was told that there is no such rule.

But she was the only person who told me this. The others told us other stories such as he was on his way, etc.

But even if this woman’s story was true about the six months time limit, my son has been in TDCJ more than six months and we was told that the many months he spent in the Rockwall County Jail and the Dallas County Jail was both TDCJ time.

I cannot understand “ why “ some of your employees try to make this a hard task to get a son home for his fathers funeral? This is a shame and none of us can get any closure until my son can get home for his dads funeral.

If my son had done something that was so wrong as to be on the top ten list of “ bad crimes” I could even understand this better but my son is in TDCJ only because his girlfriend was evidently a medical assistant and she admits to be hooked on pain killers and not from having a reason to need these medications and she was doing this fraudulently. I can think just off the top of my head of at least 30 people that went to pick her medications up for her as everyone assumed she was truthful and had a disease but my son did not even pick these medications up for her he only took her bags to carry for her as she handed them to Chad.

And some could say that he was aware of his girl doing this illegally so he could have some but this is not true. My son was in TDCJ last year and he was having severe migraines, upchucking, seizures, and many other complicating health issues. WE assumed all this was happening from his Lyme Disease but TDCJ medically neglected him and through all my pleas and many private doctors pleas for TDCJ to just do a MRI were denied.

When Chad was released August 24, 04 his seizures became so… bad that an ambulance had to take him to the Hospital at Baylor Hospital where they did many testing which proved him to have brain and testicle masses and many other diagnosis’s caused from the Lyme Disease.

BaylorHospital gave Chad a lifetime refills of vikoden, Valium, morphine, etc. Another words he had no reason to need someone else’s medications. He had enough strong prescriptions of his own.

My son asked for a Jury Trial for this charge but the DA made strong accusations that Chad should take the plea of 2 years (and we later learned this had 2 paragraphs added to it which means that if my son gets in trouble again even if it is to steal a candy bar which could happen in reality because he has Lyme Disease and will live on SSI which their amount of recourses is about $500.00 a month. I fear Chad will because if he didn’t the Jury would be told by the DA that Chad had been in TDCJ before and the DA promised Chad he would get 20 years and up. My son is 30 years old and he has been incrassated about 10 years of his life for what was a bizarre charge also and you can read more of this on a web site later if you want at:  www.geocities.com/copbrutality

Of course I believe this sort of coaxing from District Attorneys should be a crime for DA’s with bigger sentences than the person who does not know the laws but my son is in jail and for not doing a crime at all and now all this trouble of him not getting to come to his dads funeral is not at all understandable!

We have reset Chad’s dad’s funeral once again for Thursday (tomorrow) at 2:00 PM at Farmersville Texas with just a graveside funeral. There is only one graveyard in Farmersville and I believe it is on Main Street.

They said they have called your office a few times and that he gets the same answer from a woman there saying that it is impossible for Chad to come to his fathers funeral and there is no reason to even send the administrator anything because it will be denied.

A Moratorium named Wilson‘s in GarlandTexas on Forest Lane said they faxed and called ya’ll also but he was given similar answers. Wilson‘s embalmed my kids dad and Rockwall County Indigent paid them for this. I did not know how we could pay for more but thanks be to God there is a contributor that is giving us a graveside funeral and a lot.

I trust that you can please help to get my son home for his fathers funeral? This is more important than a usual circumstance because of losing his brother last year. This is not much for any mom to ask.

Thank you,

Brenda Pitts Bennett

http://www.lymenet.org/SupportGroups/UnitedStates/Texas/LDN.shtml

Time for Greenspan to resign

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It is time for Mr. Greenspan to retire. Things were bad enough last week, when he appeared publicly to support, at least partly, the White House attack on Social Security.

 

Time out:  yes, it is an attack on Social Security. Regardless of the choice of euphemisms, any proposal to “divert” or otherwise remove payroll taxes from the Social Security program, to send them elsewhere, is taking money out of Social Security.

 

Payroll taxes, you see, are what fund the Social Security program. So taking even part of the payroll taxes and sending them to Wall Street, or into some form of bundled private accounts that amounts to sending them to Wall Street, is taking money out of Social Security.

 

This is, on the face of it and self-evidently, the reverse of what Social Security needs. There is no “crisis” facing the Social Security program as yet, of course, and there is no “crisis” due for many years, indeed for decades. The program will not even end its break-even period for many years. The GWBush campaign to pretend that the program over-all needs urgent immediate assistance is so obviously smarmy and bogus that even the opinion polls reveal that less than half the public supports any part of the White House’s thus-far-guarded hints at what it wants.

 

In so far as there is a genuine problem looming in future, it can be fixed. That is, any future revenues shortfall can be easily addressed – by increasing revenues in the most painless, the simplest, and the most sensible way, in other words by removing the payroll tax cap for the wealthy. Payroll taxes now are levied only on the first $90K of income, a regressive tax that penalizes everyone but the wealthy. Tax the higher income brackets, and you’ve made a start at addressing any future shortfall. In fact, since that money will be earning money itself, the shortfall is postponed as well as diminished.

 

But if Social Security needs a revenue boost, the way to accomplish that is not to take money out of Social Security. And yet, what the Bush White House is proposing is (repeat after me) to take money out of Social Security. They’ve even got some of the rightwing “noise machine” arguing that the program is a “Ponzi scheme” – apparently because people keep being born and then aging. Presumably they feel the same way about education, and for that matter, churches:  new people keep getting born, and then, they put their children into schools and churches, and then, blame it, the schools and churches keep requiring support.

 

Speaking of simple taxes, Greenspan appeared today to advise the White House taxation council with his ghastly recommendation:  make our taxes even more regressive. He’s out in public talking about “broadening the tax base,” cf. those pyramid-building scenes in the old Charlton Heston movie The Ten Commandments, with innumerable insect-like extras pulling gargantuan blocks of rock on huge logs, to build a monument for mummies. Our “tax base” isn’t “broad” enough already, with the top two percent raking in every conceivable tax advantage, both direct and indirect, from Bush’s unconscionable tax cuts for the rich to the corporate dodges that high-powered lawyers push in federal courts at taxpayer expense, and everybody else making up the difference, through either more taxes or fewer services, or both?

 

On top of that, he’s even talking about – and this has been the dream of the nut right ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt – a national “consumption tax,” as though that were the kind of thing we need more of. Take one moment and consider this suggestion clearly. We need a federal “consumption tax,” at a time when the states and municipalities are taxing, fee-ing, tolling, licensing and permit-ing virtually every legal activity known to man, and largely because of Bush’s budget-busting? Has the man gone around the bend? Aside possibly from food in cans, is there anything we don’t already pay some kind of surcharge on to consume, to sell, or even to make? We pay sales taxes on vehicles and fuel; we pay taxes, fees and tolls for bridges, tunnels and open (ha) highway lanes; barbers, liquor store proprietors, dog groomers and a host of other small operators pay for a license just to set up shop; is there any sizeable sector of the economy that is free of “consumption” surcharges in some form, aside from the corporations and individuals able to park a chunk of their operating revenues overseas or offshore?

 

I have no personal feeling against Mr. Greenspan. He even hired one of my own younger relatives, an assistant of his. But if he is going to go along with the reverse-FDR, Warren-G-Harding-on-meth, starve-the-public, bloat-the-contractors, uber-laissez-faire-for-the- rich, ultra-control-for-everybody-else intriguing of a vilely selfish cadre in one administration, then he has lost all claim to be the voice of economic reason. You can either go along with the administration’s ghastly, intentional rotting-out of a vibrant and socially mobile middle class, or you can speak for fiscal probity. Not both.

 

It’s time for him either to reconsider, or to resign.

More from Go-ahead Jeff

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The more I look at these White House press briefings, the more I don’t understand why Helen Thomas was, apparently, the only regular reporter to catch this guy. Here is a further sampling of questions he posed. Note particularly the alert attention to nonexistent issues that could benefit the White House, the absence of any pretense of nonpartisanship, and the attack on the press:

 

[June 18, 2003]

Q Democrats in Congress are dragging their feet on the president’s free trade initiatives. Is the president frustrated by the loss of business and jobs, as result of their procrastination?

 

[June 26, 2003]

Q Two questions, please. Earlier in the year, the president announced a plan to competitively source over 400,000 federal jobs. Democrats in Congress are attaching language to appropriations bills for each of the agencies to prevent that. Is that something that the president would veto if those bills came to his desk with that language in it?

MR. FLEISCHER: On competitive souring?

Q Yes.

 

[December 22, 2003]

Q I have a six-point question. Does the president share the view of millions of Americans who pray for him every day that hard-left groups like the ACLU and Americans for Separation of Church and State are waging a war on religion, and particularly — in particular, Christianity?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I think you’ve heard the president’s views when it comes to religion. He’s spoken out very forcefully on this issue. The president is someone who believes in the right of all people to freely express their religious views. And he is someone that believes in religious tolerance. The president believes that we should welcome people of all faiths, and that those of faith should not be discriminated against. Those are the president’s views, and he’s talked about that repeatedly.

Q In particularly, I’m trying to evoke a statement from the president, who’s a deeply religious person, to a bewildered and angry majority of Americans who see their freedom of religion being infringed by the courts and a shrill minority.[N.b.: This isn’t the only time this speaker has alluded to nonexistent attacks on Christmas by an unspecified minority.]

 

[January 23, 2004]

Q Thanks, Scott. Some of the president’s most ardent supporters were disappointed that he didn’t say more in his State of the Union Address about the out-of-control judiciary. While the Pickering appointment was well received, what’s the president going to do to break the logjam of the obstructionist minority in the Senate on his judges that are still being filibustered?

MR. MCCLELLAN: The president continues to urge a minority of Senate Democrats to quit playing politics with our nation’s judicial system. The Senate needs to move forward and give all nominees an up- or-down vote. That is their constitutional responsibility. The president has put forward highly qualified nominees, and the Senate — a minority of Senate Democrats have chosen to play partisan politics and obstruct the process. Meanwhile, there are some judicial emergencies that need to be filled, and one of those was the vacant seat that Judge Pickering is now filling.

Q In the 6th Circuit in particular, there is a judicial crisis where the caseloads are far in excess of the average of the other circuits. Will the president recess appointment just to fill those vacancies?

 

[November 8, 2004]

Q Thank you. With all the reaching out that’s going on around here, the president said Thursday in his press conference that he was reaching out to the press corps.

What did he mean by that? And why would he feel the need to reach out to a group of supposedly nonpartisan people?

MR. MCCLELLAN: I think that was a tongue-in-cheek comment that the president made at the beginning of the press conference. He was showing his outreach efforts by holding that press conference the day after the election was decided.

Q Has he decided to let bygones be bygones and —

MR. MCCLELLAN: Look. Look. You heard — you heard from the president —

Q — (inaudible)?

MR. MCCLELLAN: You heard from the president at the news conference. The media certainly has an important role to play in keeping the American people informed about the decisions that we make here in Washington, D.C. He has —

Q Despite the role that they tried to play, the president won anyhow. Is there some kind of rapprochement that’s going on?

On domestic security, Iraq and the White House — from “Jeff Gannon”

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From the transcripts, there is little doubt that “Jeff Gannon” tried to deflect any criticism of the White House re Iraq or domestic security, by any means:

 

 

Go ahead, Jeff.
[November 5, 2003]
Q I know that you said you hadn’t seen the Rockefeller memo that Jim referred to, but I have, and it clearly outlines a Democrat plan to exploit the information gathered by the committee to undermine the president’s reelection chances. Under those circumstances, would the White House consider halting the transfer of documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee until a Senate ethics panel investigates the matter?

MR. MCCLELLAN: We have been and will continue to work cooperatively with the Senate Intelligence Committee. That is our position. We want to assist them and help — we want to be helpful in their efforts to review the intelligence relating to Iraq. That’s exactly what we plan to continue doing. Again, I just have not seen that specific memo. I’ve seen the news reports. But, you know, we would hope that people are not trying to politicize an issue of such importance.

Q Doesn’t the implication of the memo cast a whole new light on the Niger controversy and all of the things that have ensued after the remarks of Joe Wilson?

 

Go ahead, Jeff.
[March 22, 2004]
Q Does the president have any regrets about his “new tone” policy now that one more Clinton holdover has betrayed his administration?  [this is about Dick Clarke]

MR. MCCLELLAN: I’m sorry, does the president have —

Q Well, does he have any regrets about the new tone that he wanted to set in Washington, now that these people from the previous administration, from another political party, have taken the actions they have done?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, let me just — I mean, without getting into specific areas there; just broadly, the president has always been someone who’s worked to elevate the discourse, and worked to focus on where we can advance on common ground issues of great importance. There are many common challenges that we have, and the president believes it’s important to reach out and work together to address those priorities. Certainly it’s difficult to change the tone in this town. But the president —

Q Don’t you see it as a little one-sided here?

 

Go ahead, Jeff.
[March 24, 2004]
Q On the issue of the credibility, a staff report of the 9/11 commission was released yesterday, and in it it said that they had not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim that they offered Osama bin Laden to the United States in 1996.

This is despite a speech by President Clinton to the Long Island Association in 2002 where he said, and I’ll quote, “I did not bring him here because we had no basis” to hold him. And he also went on to say, and he “pleaded with the Saudis to take him,” unquote. Do you think something like this undermines the credibility of the conclusions that the commission is going to reach in matters like this?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, one, I haven’t had a chance to look at the commission report. We certainly are working very closely and cooperatively with the commission so that they can get to the bottom of this matter, and —

Q It was in their opening statement, before any witnesses testified yesterday. That’s why I bring it up.

MR. MCCLELLAN: And they made the claim that —

Q Yes, that there was no evidence to support the Sudanese claim that they offered Osama bin Laden to the United States in 1996.

 

 

Go ahead, Jeff.
[April 16, 2004]
Q The White House declassified the August 6, 2001, PDB for the 9/11 commission investigation. Will there be others? And have there been other PDBs that have been declassified?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I think the September 11th commission has talked about some that maybe they would like to see declassified. You might want to direct some questions to them. Those are always issues that certainly we talk with the commission about in direct discussions. And we always talk with them in a spirit of trying to make sure they have all the information they need to do their job.

Q But it’s you that make the decision to declassify it?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, if there are requests that are made of us, we’ll work with the commission and discuss those issues with the commission. I’m not going to get into discussing specific issues that may be going on at this point. But we always work with them to accommodate their needs.

Q One more question on that.

MR. MCCLELLAN: We try to be fully responsive. Well, we have worked to be fully responsive to all their requests, I might point out.

Q Are PDBs from the previous administration, are those under consideration to be declassified?

 

 

Go ahead, Jeff.
[April 28, 2004]
Q Is there any agreement between the White House and the 9/11 commission regarding the president’s and the vice president’s remarks tomorrow; that is, not revealing them to the public and only including them in the report; or should we expect to see commissioners on television tomorrow afternoon characterizing those remarks?

MR. MCCLELLAN: I don’t know what the commission’s plans are following the meeting. I know that when they met with President Clinton and Vice President Gore, that they put out a statement afterwards and pretty much let that speak for the meeting. But I don’t know what their plans are for tomorrow.

Q Is Commissioner Gorelick going to participate in this tomorrow or is she going to recuse herself?

MR. MCCLELLAN: We’ve been told that all 10 commission members will be present tomorrow.

 

 

Go ahead, Jeff.
[April 29, 2004]
Q Some Republicans on Capitol Hill believe that the work of the 9/11 commission won’t be complete until and unless Jamie Gorelick testifies before the commission on her role in building the wall between intelligence and law enforcement. Is that an opinion shared by the White House?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Look, the president — you know, I think even at the beginning of the meeting he made some brief remarks — he didn’t have a prepared opening statement or anything like that, but certainly made some opening remarks for being — and essentially, I think, he thanked them for the work that they’re doing, talked about how he appreciated what they were doing and that their work is very important to what we are doing to protect the American people. And I think that the president looks at this and doesn’t believe that there ought to be finger-pointing. We ought to all be working together to learn the lessons of September 11th and make sure that we are doing everything that we can to protect the homeland and win the war on terrorism. That’s the way he looks at it.

Q Well, the Justice Department keeps releasing documents. They’ve released another — they declassified 30 pages yesterday that reinforce the idea that —

MR. MCCLELLAN: I think the president — yeah —

Q — Ms. Gorelick has more that she could offer to —

MR. MCCLELLAN: No, I understand that’s what the Justice Department did.

We were not involved in it. I think the president was disappointed about that.

Q The president was disappointed in the Justice Department for releasing that document?

 

Go ahead, Jeff.
[April 30, 2004]
Q Yesterday the White House criticized the Justice Department for releasing the Gorelick memos. You said the president doesn’t believe that there should be finger-pointing. This indicates that you know there is something in those memos that is potentially damaging to Commissioner Gorelick. Why shouldn’t this information be made public?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Jeff, I think that there’s work going on by the 9/11 commission to look at all issues related to the threat from terrorism prior to September 11th. And I said yesterday that it’s important for the commission to look at everything that can help them complete their work.

And, you know, I think what I was referring to on the Justice Department, I addressed yesterday, and I think I will leave it there. I think the president made his views known.

Q Okay, fine. It was Senator Cornyn and also Senator Graham that requested that information be released, in a letter to them a week ago. So it wasn’t the Justice Department that was just acting on its own to do that; it was from a specific request from the Senate. And Senator Cornyn believes that Commissioner Gorelick should testify in front of the 9/11 commission. Why shouldn’t Commissioner Gorelick have her chance to publicly apologize to the 9/11 families?

 

 

MR. MCCLELLAN: Go ahead, Jeff. You had one.
[June 15, 2004]
Q Thanks. Why hasn’t the administration made more of the U.N. inspector’s report that says Saddam Hussein was dismantling his missile and WMD sites before and during the war? And doesn’t that, combined with the now-proven al Qaeda link between Iraq — between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization unequivocally make the case for going to war in Iraq?

 

 

Go ahead, Jeff.
[July 15, 2004]
Q Thank you.

Q A Calhoun. (Laughter.)

Q Forgive me if my colleagues — forgive me if my colleagues have already touched on this subject, but last Friday the Senate Intelligence —

MR. MCCLELLAN: Three if we don’t shout all over each other and we have a civil discourse.

Q I have a question.

MR. MCCLELLAN: I’m coming to you, Helen.

Q Last Friday the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that shows that Ambassador Joe Wilson lied when he said his wife didn’t put him up for the mission to Niger. The British inquiry into their own prewar intelligence yesterday concluded that the president’s 16 words were, quote, “well founded,” unquote. Doesn’t Joe Wilson owe the president and America an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, one, let me point out that I think those reports speak for themselves on that issue. And I think if you have questions about that, you can direct that to Mr. Wilson.

Q Well, we spent so many weeks here dissecting the 16 words that are now absolutely true. Don’t you think —

Q How do you know that?

Q Excuse me, Helen. Don’t you think that America deserves the opportunity to have this information brought forward as well?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I noticed some media reports on this very issue over the weekend —

Q There are very few of them.

 

[One notes that he even got to elbow the esteemed Helen Thomas aside.]