Sunday, January 6, 2008

Military Mindfields

By Daniel Pinchbeck

Recently, while at a Phoenix, Arizona conference on UFOs, crop circles, alternative archaeology and other such fringe matters, I encountered, to my surprise, a true American hero. A straightforward and unassuming man whose father was a well-respected Alaskan congressman, Dr. Nick Begich has been waging a long and often lonely campaign to raise the public’s awareness of the extraordinary perils and potentials of new technologies that can act upon the brain and influence our cognitive and somatic capacities, often without us knowing about them. At first, many of the military initiatives and scientific research projects described by Dr. Begich sound like science fiction — the stuff of Philip K. Dick’s most paranoid visions — but they are quite real, and in many cases already available. A huge trove of documents, articles and public testimonies assembled by Begich’s team can be found at the website of The Lay Institute.

Confronted with this information, I was shocked at first, and wondered why it is almost never discussed in the media or public sphere. My next reaction was to want to run away from thinking about it ever again. Unfortunately, as Begich makes clear, the only protection we have against misuse of these discoveries is an increase in public knowledge and debate about them. The legislative system we inherited from the 18th Century was not set up to deal with the current scenario, where rapid-fire developments in technology and science have immediate political meaning and potentially great social consequences. It is up to civil society — and us as individuals — to step into this breach. The consequences of not doing so may be severe.

Dr. Begich began his work studying the HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) Project, an array of radio frequency transmitters in Alaska designed to affect the ionosphere, an atmospheric sheath that protects the Earth from solar rays. Beyond potentially influencing missile guidance systems and changing weather patterns, HAARP can also be used, potentially, to affect the brainwaves of civilians over a large geographical area, causing inexplicable agitation or aggression by beaming ELF (extremely low frequency) waves or high-frequency pulses beyond the threshold of our auditory capacity. Dr. Begich objects to HAARP because of this capacity, and because it changes the delicate ionosphere. Although we don’t know much about the ionosphere, we are treating it as an arena in which to “plug and play” our experimental technologies.

In the last decades, a huge amount has been learned about the electromagnetic environment of the human brain and body. This knowledge, as Dr. Begich discusses in his latest book, Controlling the Human Mind: The Technologies of Political Control or Tools for Peak Performance (Earthpulse Press, 2006), could lead to tremendous advances in healing and in methods of self-development, or to weapons that “pierce the very integrity of the human being.” Potentially, memory, emotion and cognitive function can be transformed by these technologies.

Dr. Begich isolates a spooky trend in military thought that sees the human being reduced to the status of a “data-processing system” that can be affected or incapacitated depending on the energy inputs it receives. As one article, “The Mind Has No Firewall,” from Parameters, the U.S. Army War College Journal, put it, “The body is capable not only of being deceived, manipulated, or misinformed but also shut down or destroyed — just as any other data-processing system.” Electromagnetic or acoustic energy waves can alter the individual’s “hardware system” and manipulate the “data” stored in their psyche. According to Dr. Begich, technologies already exist that can “shift a person’s emotions using remote electromagnetic tools,” and “transfer sound in a way where only the targeted person” hears a voice in their head.

Interestingly, developments in these areas could lead to breakthroughs in healing, to tools that greatly increase cognitive function and even amplify “abilities of individuals for anomalous phenomena” — psychic capacities — according to a military analyst. Biofeedback techniques have been proven to accelerate skills-based learning and to successfully treat children with ADD. Use of “binaural beats” can harmonize relationships between the two hemispheres of the brain, while tools focusing on the energy fields of the body can augment acupuncture and other treatment modalities.

Begich calls for an end to government secrecy about study of mind and behavior control techniques. He notes that the area of mind modification technologies is “changing so rapidly that the science is being formed faster than the applications can be fully recognized.” Considering the enormous potential of these tools to help liberate the mind or control it at a level beyond anything previously known, the U.S. public should demand to have a rigorous “precautionary principle” put in place.

Philip K. Dick is great fun to read, but few of us would want to live in one of his maniacal, paranoid dystopias. Unfortunately, the powerful knowledge we are now accessing about the intricate workings of our energetic systems could lead in that direction, if we don’t take action.

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications.
 

Make a Revolution Resolution

6 Jan 2008
 

By Mick Youther

     Last year at this time there was a real feeling of hope in America. For the first time in twelve years, American voters gave control of Congress to the Democratic party; along with a clear mandate to end the war in Iraq, bring our troops home, and stop the Bush administration’s all-out assault on our Constitutional protections.

      Now, a year later, instead of ending the war and bringing our troops home, we have even more troops occupying Iraq, and 2007 was the deadliest year for American forces since the war started. Nearly 4000 U.S. military lives have now been sacrificed and $600 billion dollars squandered in Mr. Bush’s unnecessary wars; and what do Americans have to show for it?--$3+/gallon gasoline and $100/barrel oil.

      Personal privacy is now only a memory in America, because each time the Bush Administration is caught illegally spying on Americans; their crimes are retroactively legalized by our so-called representatives in Congress.

     The Democratic leaders in the House and Senate began 2007 by taking impeachment “off the table” and ended it by caving in and funding Mr. Bush’s War on Iraq (again) with no strings attached--after promising in the Spring that they would not pass another war funding bill that didn’t contain a timetable for troop withdrawals.

      Senate Democrats whine that they don’t have enough votes to end the war, but the fact is that they control the legislative agenda and could have stopped any further appropriations for Mr. Bush’s wars at any time. Instead, the Democratic leadership seems to have made the political decision to let Mr. Bush’s unpopular war continue, believing it will somehow help Democrats in the 2008 election. In the meantime, a few hundred more U.S. troops will be killed and another $200 billion will go down the drain; but hey, sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good (like getting re-elected). No wonder Americans have such a low opinion of Congress.

      Americans can not afford to wait another year. Bush has said, “…my spirits are high, my energy level is good and I'm sprinting to the finish line.” (11/1/07) You can be sure that Bush, Cheney and their corporate cronies have an ambitious agenda to push through during the next year--with much of it being accomplished by Royal decree, without benefit of congressional advice, consent, approval or oversight. By the time this gang of thieves leaves office; America’s wallet will be empty, its cupboard bare, its credit cards maxed out, and somebody better count the White House silverware.

     Even after Bush is gone, our national nightmare will not be over. It will take years to undo the damage that has been done. We need more people, who will stand and fight the big-money corporations that have been making their own rules and riding the gravy train for the past seven years--with American taxpayers picking up the tab.

      In June 2007, a CBS News poll found that 75 percent of Americans believed that America was headed in the wrong direction. You would think when three out of four Americans say we are going the wrong way, we would change course; but no, we just keep going--full speed ahead in the wrong direction, because George W. Bush has assumed the powers of a virtual king, and Congress has failed to do anything to stop him.

      If you want to know how America came to this sorry state, I can tell you. Too many Americans (like me) have ignored the workings of government for too long, expecting government to run the country and control itself. …It doesn’t work that way.


·        “Unless the mass [of people] retains sufficient control over those intrusted [sic] with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression.”--Thomas Jefferson, 1812


·        “The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.”--Albert Einstein

     This past fall, I attended a GreenFestival conference in Washington, DC and listened to several nationally-known speakers talking about America’s problems and what can be done about them. Every speaker I heard offered the same solution: It is up to us--We The People of the United States. It is our country and our government. If we want anything to change, we will have to change it.

 ·        “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”--Abraham Lincoln, 1861

      So, why not make a belated New Year’s resolution to become a more active participant in your government? You won’t be alone. George W. Bush’s “election” and presidency has made millions of Americans aware of how dysfunctional our government has become, and how its defects have allowed the Bush Administration to do so much damage in such a short period of time.

      Our government has become a giant monster, running amok; destroying everything that once made it the model of democracy to the world--and it is up to us to change it. To do this, we need another American Revolution.

 ·        “The [American]Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations...This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”--John Adams, 1818

      We must begin this Revolution by becoming informed citizens, and we cannot do that by watching the network news. If the network news and the Sunday talk shows are your only sources of information, you may not even realize that Americans are still fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. You may believe that the U.S. presidential primary race is the most important news in the world and that the biggest problem facing Americans today is erectile dysfunction.

      That is what they would like you to believe.

      If you have satellite TV, watch Democracy Now on Link TV, and as many foreign news programs as you can find. If you have internet access, sign up with news digest sites and have important news stories delivered to your e-mail In-box. (I recommend BuzzFlash Alerts, TomPaine.com, Citizens For Legitimate Government, and you can find a roundup of the latest news and opinion at OpEdNews.com.

      You can also join on-line political action groups like MoveOn.org, Unitedforpeace.org, and People for the American Way. What you will find is millions of Americans, who are working to change America. Within a month, you will probably be better informed on many issues than your representatives in Congress (who are too busy raising money to do anything else). That is why you must keep them informed about what is going on, and tell them what you expect them to do about it--with a clear understanding that if they fail to respond to your concerns, they will be replaced. When they hear that from enough voters, they will get the message.

      So, let’s get started today. Working together, Americans can make America a better place in 2008.

  Happy New Year!

 

Authors Bio: Mick Youther is an American citizen, an independent voter, a veteran, a parent, a Christian, a scientist, a writer, and all-around nice guy who has been aroused from a comfortable apathy by the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration.

 
~ Link ~
 

the Peace Tax Seven

"a group of conscientious objectors seeking a judicial review of the war tax policies in Britain"

" ... alongside the 50 per cent or so of the population who supported the war in 2003, it is no exaggeration to say that millions protested, held vigils, went on marches, lobbied MP’s and signed petitions to try and stop the war, but the government went ahead and executed their war, in our name, and with our taxes. As Alexander Haig, US Secretary of State said, when confronted by the historic anti-nuclear marches in 1982, ‘Let them march all they want as long as they continue to pay their taxes’.

Some taxpayers however - following the examples set by the American writer Thoreau in the nineteenth century, Joan Baez during the Vietnam war and pacifists in Britain in the 1980’s and 1990’s – withheld the military portion of their taxes maintaining that in matters of deliberate killing, personal conscience reigns supreme and no state can over rule the individual conscience and force its citizens to pay to kill. The courts however ruled that ‘war tax resisters’ have no option but to pay up.

In this, the courts are upholding the valid principle that taxation should not be unnecessarily divided, and that individuals in a democracy should not pick and choose how their personal contributions are disbursed. However, in doing so, conscientious objectors argue that the law as it currently stands ignores the fact that UK tax administration already divides tax revenue into a number of streams for practical reasons: given that National Insurance is accessed and administered separately from ordinary income tax. The courts ignore the unique personal urgency of the issue of the deliberate taking of human life, which is already conceded in the right to conscientious objection to military service - a right established at the height of the Great War in 1916 - and in the disinclination of political parties to dictate to MP’s consciences on comparable issues such as capital punishment.

In law nothing entitles a person to pay to kill another but it is currently impossible for any taxpaying UK citizen to live by this principle without coming into conflict with the government and the courts, because the courts enforce a policy which compels the individual taxpayer to contribute about 10 per cent of their total tax bill to military expenditure, irrespective of conscientious objection.

All walks of life
In 2004 seven taxpaying citizens decided to form a group - calling themselves the Peace Tax Seven campaign - to obtain a Judicial Review for a change in the law so that conscientious objectors can have the military portion of their taxes redirected to peace building and conflict resolution initiatives. Their lawyers, led by Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, maintain that since the Human Rights Act and the right to freedom of conscience has now been enshrined in British law, British citizens have the right to translate an ancient and compelling conscientious objection directly into tax policy on this specific issue, yet, UK tax policy ignores this fact.

The group, are taxpayers from all walks of life - a retired teacher, an accountant, a psychiatrist, a writer, a toymaker, a university lecturer and a single mother who argue that they have a legal right to have the military portion of their taxes put in a ring-fenced fund solely for peaceful purposes. Their campaign has taken its toll on all seven given that alongside individual legal proceedings, bailiffs, fines and possible bankruptcy and imprisonment, they have had to raise over £50,000 to take this case all the way to the High Court for a Judicial Review. Such has been the public outrage about the invasion of Iraq that the group managed to raise the money and in July 2005 their case was heard in the High Court.

Building a culture of peace
Although the judge found the Peace Tax Seven arguments ‘forceful’ their request for a Judicial Review of current UK tax policy was turned down. At an appeal court hearing in March 2006 it became plain that the British judges acknowledged the validity of the arguments, particularly when three Lord Justices, while refusing permission for a judicial review, cast doubt on previous rulings that had previously prevented cases like this moving forward; recommending that having exhausted the British legal process the group are now in a position to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Earlier this year papers were lodged with the European Court at Strasbourg and the group is currently waiting on a decision as to when they will have their case heard. Already the legal bills are mounting and the group must raise another £70,000 to successfully fight their case in Europe.

Building a culture of peace is a difficult, complicated and uncertain process, yet it is reasonable to suggest that tax arrangements are one part of the political and civic culture, which must be developed in peaceful directions. The Peace Tax Seven are in no doubt that in the modern world conscientious objectors can fulfil all of their responsibilities to the community including the responsibility of paying for its safety and security without giving a penny to the armed forces and argue that they have the right to do so. Experts in civilian and military fields are already stressing the importance to national security of conflict prevention, civilian peace work and global justice in its wider sense. In insisting on this right the Peace Tax Seven maintain that they are standing up for the rights and for the well being of all victims of war and violence in our own community and across the world.

The Peace Tax Seven currently owe £12,000 to their lawyers and their work will continue as the case progresses through the courts. If you object to having your taxes used for war, please give generously to help them challenge this issue and win their case www.peacetaxseven.com/donate.html ... "

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article778.html

New Hampshire - the other debates

Archives of the Orgone Institute - History

In the 1950s, Wilhelm Reich, M.D. kept his Archives—which he called the Archives of the Orgone Institute—in two locations in the Orgone Energy Observatory at Orgonon in Rangeley, Maine (now the Wilhelm Reich Museum):

  • in a photographic dark-room on the first floor, which today is part of the museum’s Exhibit Hall
  • and in a large closet in Reich’s study and library on the second floor

In the opening paragraph of his Last Will & Testament—signed on March 8, 1957—Reich wrote:

“I made the consideration of secure transmission to future generations of a vast empire of scientific accomplishments the guide in my last dispositions. To my mind, the foremost task to be fulfilled was to safeguard the truth about my life and work against distortion and slander after my death.”

To accomplish this task Reich created a Trust, originally known as The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund. This Trust was so named because of his conviction that the only real solution to eliminating psychological disturbances and somatic illnesses was in prevention, which was possible only by ensuring what he called “the unspoiled protoplasm” and the “unarmored life” of infants.

And in his Last Will & Testament, Reich included directives to this Trust specifically regarding the Archives:

“In order to enable the future student of the PRIMORDIAL COSMIC ENERGY OCEAN, THE LIFE ENERGY discovered and developed by me, to obtain a true picture of my accomplishments, mistakes, wrong assumptions, pioneering basic trends, my private life, my childhood, etc., I hereby direct that under no circumstances and under no pretext whatsoever shall any of the documents, manuscripts or diaries, found in my library among the archives or anywhere else, be altered, omitted, destroyed, added to, or falsified in any other imaginable way. The tendency of man, born from fear, to ‘get along with his fellow man’ at any price, and to hide unpleasant matters, is overpoweringly strong. To guard against this trend, disastrous to historical truth, my study, including the library and Archives, shall be sealed right after my death by the proper legal authorities, and no one shall be permitted to look into my papers until my Trustee, hereinafter named, is duly appointed and qualified and takes control and custody thereof.

These documents are of crucial importance to the future of newborn generations. There are many emotionally sick people who will try to damage my reputation regardless of what happens to infants, if only their personal lives would remain hidden in the darkness of a forsaken age of the Stalins and Hitlers.

I therefore direct my Trustee and his successors that nothing whatsoever must be changed in any of the documents and that they should be put away and stored for 50 years to secure their safety from destruction and falsification by anyone interested in the falsification and destruction of historical truth.

These directives are established by me solely for the preservation of documented truth as I lived it during my lifetime.”

In March of 1959—during her first visit to Orgonon—the newly-appointed Trustee, Mary Boyd Higgins, discovered that the Archives were gone. They had been removed illegally in 1958 by Aurora Karrer, the last woman in Reich’s life, who transported the materials hundreds of miles away to Maryland.

In 1960—unable to obtain any cooperation from Ms. Karrer—The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust took legal action against her, which resulted in the bulk of the Archives being turned over to the Trust. Subsequent legal actions over the years to recover still missing materials were unsuccessful. And the Trust’s efforts to retrieve additional materials from Ms. Karrer would stretch across almost five decades. In 2007, the Trust took possession of other archival materials that Ms. Karrer had stolen.

For years after the Trust had retrieved the bulk of the Archives, Mary Higgins kept these materials at her home in Forest Hills, New York. During this time, she looked into several institutions—including the Library of Congress—as possible repositories for these materials.

Meanwhile, New York publisher Roger Straus—of Farrar, Straus and Giroux—was also aware of the need for a safe and permanent repository for the Archives. Straus contacted Richard Wolfe, Chief Librarian of the “Rare Books and Special Collections” at Harvard University’s Countway Library of Medicine, one of the world’s premier medical libraries. Mr. Wolfe agreed that Reich’s legacy was significant and that his Archives would be an important addition to the library’s other collections.

In October 1973, The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust signed an agreement with the Countway Library, whereby Reich’s archival materials would be periodically given to the library over the years, to be stored in their “Rare Books and Special Collections,” with the Trust retaining all copyright title and publishing rights to these materials.

The “Rare Books and Special Collections” was recently renamed “The Center for the History of Medicine.” And today the Center’s temperature-controlled environment houses the Archives of the Orgone Institute, comprising 98 cubic-feet of materials currently stored in over 280 archive boxes. These Archives constitute one of the Countway Library’s largest collections.

http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/archive_history.html

Archives of the Orgone Institute

Scholars and researchers are strongly encouraged to read the History of the Archives and the Access Policies & Procedures before contacting the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust to request access. All are welcome to browse the contents of the Archives, which are available in PDF format via the links below. The Archives' Index is presented herein as a single 141-page document, as well as 12 smaller documents, each devoted to a specific Category of the Archives...

http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/resources.html

Letting Thompson just be Thompson

" ... few observed how close Thompson's exit was to his literary hero's, Ernest Hemingway.

In Gonzo, an oral history with no shortage of speculation, we learn that Thompson copied whole sections of Hemingway on his typewriter and went to Hawaii to catch a huge marlin "just like Hemingway," an incident later used for The Curse of Lono. In his Hemingway biography, James R. Mellow recounted an incident in which Wallace Stevens, unimpressed with the Hemingway legend, joked at a party, "By God I wish I had that Hemingway here now. I'd knock him out with a single punch." This resulted in a drunken brawl between the two men. Hemingway was indeed knocked down into a muddy puddle. Six years later, Stevens proposed that Hemingway speak at a Princeton poetry lecture.

This tendency to let Hemingway be Hemingway mirrors the remarkable tolerance that Thompson's friends had for his behavior. An Aspen neighbor recalls Thompson threatening his son with a cattle prod, but in the same breath declares how "he was always great to Juan." His landlord confesses to receiving irregular rent checks, but admires Thompson's motorcycle and is ordered to try high-grade mescaline.

Thompson's first wife, Sandy, is commanded around and has abortions that Thompson refuses to pay for. And yet, with pals, Thompson is willing to lend all the money he has and regularly dole out football bets. A keg of beer promised to the Hell's Angels upon the sale of Thompson's first book is sadly not honored, although Thompson does offer the keg to Sonny Barger, fresh out of jail 25 years later.

Like Hemingway, Thompson had a machismo that wouldn't quit. He ingested drugs and drink, often ordering "five or six Bloody Marys and twelve or fourteen lines of coke" for breakfast. His room service orders read like the demands of a junta. He had lungs and a liver to rival Charles Bukowski's and a high pain threshold, but was tremendously sensitive about depictions that didn't stem from his frenetic adrenaline. He came close to suing Garry Trudeau for the Duke character in Doonesbury, until an old roommate informed him, "This guy makes you out to be friendly and nice, basically. You're not."

Thompson's writing was frequently dazzling, as many of the snippets interspersed throughout Gonzo attest. But the arduous task of enabling Thompson to meet his deadlines was taken up by a revolving door of mostly female assistants, many of whom became his girlfriends, and surprisingly patient editors. Assistants read his work to him to cheer him up and get him writing, but often "couldn't breathe without getting yelled at." In Thompson's later years, Jann Wenner "couldn't get him writing strong or sustained pieces, long or short, for Rolling Stone" - this, for a 10-grand check on a 1,500-word piece. The carrot at the end of this short stick was the promise of Thompson's writing and his dazzlingly idiosyncratic charisma. ... "

~ Read on... ~

 

obit: 'Liam O'Gallagher, 90, a Beat Avant-Gardist and Teacher'

Liam O’Gallagher, an avant-garde sound artist, painter and teacher whose San Francisco studio became an early gathering place for Beat writers and poets in the 1950s, died Dec. 4 at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif.
 
He was 90. His death, which was not widely reported at the time, was announced by a friend and former student, William Gray Harris, a Los Angeles photographer.
 
Mr. O’Gallagher was a lifelong religious seeker who never seemed to pursue a career in the art world but found his natural home there, befriending free-spirited artists like Beatrice Wood and writers with mystical leanings like Aldous Huxley. He was an art teacher for many years at the Happy Valley School, now known as the Besant Hill School, in Ojai, Calif., founded by Huxley, Annie Besant, Jiddu Krishnamurti and others who sought a more open, nurturing model for education.
 
Born William Gallagher in Oakland, Calif., on Oct. 2, 1917, Mr. Gallagher adopted the more traditional rendering of his first name after visiting relatives in Ireland. He moved to the Monterey Peninsula, long a hothouse of bohemianism, in 1945 and then a year later left briefly for New York to study painting with the Abstract Expressionist and teacher Hans Hofmann in Greenwich Village. He painted throughout his life, and at his death was working on a series that he described as expressing “the surreal aspects of space science.”
 
He was also active in the worlds of theater and dance, collaborating with the pioneering choreographer Anna Halprin on “Ceremony of Us,” an encounter staged in 1969 between African-American dancers from the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and dancers from her San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop, who were primarily white.
 
Mr. O’Gallagher’s loft in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where he moved in 1954, became a hangout for writers like the poets Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman. And Mr. O’Gallagher dabbled in the psychedelia of the age, trying a new experimental psychiatric drug, then legal, called LSD while in Mexico in 1959.
 
Mr. Gallagher is survived by his companion of 58 years, Robert S. Rheem, and a brother, Ted.
 
In some circles, he is probably best known for sound art that combined performance, chance and technology to create surreal, sometimes funny works like “Border Dissolve in Audiospace” from 1970, a fuzzy, echoing recording in which directory operators are called and asked to look up various numbers.

“I wanted the phone number of the city zoo,” Mr. O’Gallagher asks dryly.

“The city jail?” the operator responds, in a high, officious voice.

“No, the city zoo, operator.”

~ Link ~

 

"The most important American love poet in living memory..."

" ... Abridged from his last poems and the two volumes of Collected Poems published in 2006--the first extending from 1945 to 1975, the second from 1975 to 2005--this Selected Poems began as a project by Creeley and his former student Ben Friedlander and was finished by Friedlander after Creeley's unexpected death. Friedlander has updated the poet's earlier Selected Poems of 1991 by including more than thirty poems from four later books. Creeley famously wrote in his first Collected Poems, published in 1982, that he felt his poems were all of a piece and he would omit none of them so as not to "miss the factual life they had either made manifest or engendered." Readers new to Creeley, or simply those who want a more portable edition, will therefore welcome this new sampling.

Because Creeley was a friend of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac, he was often identified as being part of the Beat generation. Yet his main early poetic influences were, to put them in historical order, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Louis Zukofsky, Charles Olson and Robert Duncan--the last two forming his immediate company at Black Mountain College, where he taught in 1954 and 1955. Just as important is the fact that their influences were often some of his. Creeley's early poetry shows a Poundian affinity for the troubadours and poets of the dolce stil nuovo, but his love of what might be called an English American English--the New England speech patterns that were his native legacy--can clearly be heard in his echoes of Campion, Herrick and Anglo-American ballad and song traditions. The spareness of Creeley's poems is Puritan as much as '70s Minimalist, and perhaps only a Puritan could celebrate the body and its ambivalent desires quite as well as he does. His well-known mantra "Form is never more than an extension of content," which he honed in his extensive early correspondence with Olson on issues of form and line, can be viewed not only as the outcome of a Modernist rebellion against Victorian meters and narrative structures but also as a late-twentieth-century version of the concept of organic form, which reaches from German Romanticism to Coleridge's lectures on Shakespeare to the New Criticism of the 1950s.

Often on the margins of social life, Creeley was at the exact center of a poetic tradition that stretched from the twelfth century to the present. But unlike other twentieth-century poets who wore their learning heavily, Creeley had a touch as light as a song, a touch that could only come from internalizing the whole tradition and letting it come naturally to him. ... "

From: 'A Human Pledge'

 

Fernanda Pivano and the Beat generation

“Fernanda Pivano e la Beat generation – Mostra di fotografie e memorie” is the title of this collection of photos on display in Verona from 1st December last to 2nd February 2008, at the Modern Section of the Biblioteca Civica in the centre of Verona, on the corner of via Cappello (at number 23 is the home of Giulietta Capuleti, a place of continuous pilgrimage to this day) and vicolo San Sebastiano.
The exhibition was set up by the Verona City Council for Culture with the help of Biblioteca Riccardo e Fernanda Pivano - Fondazione Benetton studi e ricerche and the Verona Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Scavi Scaligeri.
45 photos are on display, in two sections: in the first one there are 30 black and white pictures taken as far back as 1948 by Ettore Sottsass – Pivano’s husband – some on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the publication of “On the road”.
In the second section, there are 10 photos of the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who then became the publisher of the Beat movement, taken from the Conz Archive in Verona and 5 photos of Pivano taken between 2002 and 2005 by Walter Pescara, the photographer and curator of the collection.

Then there is a special section dedicated to autographed books, documents and papers that relate mainly to Hernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

This exhibition is noteworthy because, among other things, it allows young people to learn about the Beat movement that their “all and now” generation feeds on.

A generation that is considered “as voracious as it is unknowing” by Pescara, who denounces the fact that all too often in schools the Fifties are barely mentioned.

However, Pescara also says, “that climate of holier-than-thou conformism and prohibitionism that existed at the time has been eroded in the West thanks to those poets, writers and musicians: opinions that went against the tide, that dissociated themselves from the ideas shared by most"; these are words that echo those of the poet Gregory Corso: “Beat is whoever breaks away from the established line in order to follow the line of his destiny”.

And the faces of those pacifist-revolutionaries are all there, often with Fernanda Pivano:
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Hemingway, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Rudolf Nureyev, Bob Dylan, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gary Snyder, Julian Beck, Judith Malina.

The collection that celebrates two important anniversaries of the two fathers of the movement, Kerouac and Ginsberg, is on display among the shelves and the computers of the renewed artistic and high tech version of the Library.
In fact, 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the Beat Bible: On the road, written in 1951 on a roll of teleprinter paper and published in New York in 1957 by Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books, while the author of Howl, a scandalous book published in 1956 by the same publishing house, who was taken to court for it the following year, died ten years ago.
The group was kept together by an extraordinary woman: Fernanda Pivano, 90 last July, famous above all for being Hemingway's translator, who also inspired Kerouac himself when he wrote the great new American novel.
Of the over 40 translations from across the ocean, Italy owes Pivano the Antologia di Spoon River by Edgar Lee Master, paraphrased to music by Fabrizio De Andrè, and the made-in-Usa classics: from Faulkner to Scott Fitzgerald, all of whom she met personally in order to grasp their essence.
Finally, the event is enriched by a series of fringe appointments, such as the screening of a video on the Beat Generation and a theatre performance on Kerouac.
 
 

'You'll Be Okay-- My Life With Jack Kerouac'

You'll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac, Edie Kerouac-Parker, City Lights Press, September 2007

" ... Kerouac-Parker’s strength lies in showing these characters as ordinary men instead of ‘mythic’ writers—which rings especially true in her descriptions of Kerouac. Rarely does the reader get a glimpse of Kerouac at his typewriter or hard at work on a story. Instead, she focuses on the memories of her and Jack out to dinner with friends or walking together in the park with their dog, Woof-it. She let’s intimate details subtlety slip into the text to let the reader experience the closeness they shared as a couple —how “his skin was salty, his body odorless” when they made love, how he read Shakespeare and The Bible in the bathroom, how he fell for her after she ate five hot dogs in a deli. She describes it all with precise feminine detail and the audience gets to see a Kerouac through the wide eyes of a woman who loved him before alcohol and drug abuse afflicted him in later years.
Edie’s affection for Kerouac borders, at times, on desperation and denial. She explains how Kerouac and Neal Cassidy (the real-life Dean Moriarty of On the Road) would come to visit her in Detroit and ask her for money (“If possible, I was generous, knowing it would keep them coming back to Grosse Pointe to see me”). Her devotion to him would be pathetic (“…I dreamed about his success. All of my wishes had been for him”) if it weren’t so real. The reader, instead of feeling sorry for Edie, understands that she was a woman with immense strength and that her relationship and love for Kerouac was a decisive personal choice.  ... "
 
 

The Museum of Contraception and Abortion

" ... Austria has, more than any other nation, turned the issue of sex away from the Church, and toward science and humanity. Besides Freud's Oedipal Complex and Penis Envy, nobleman Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the world's first sexologist, spent a good deal of the 1800s fastidiously studying the sexual habits of his countrymen, from homosexuality to fetishes to masochism (he actually coined the word). Austrian sex psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich was so sure that orgasms were a cure for neuroses and a guarantee of a healthy life that he went so far (too far, his peers said) as to invent an "orgone simulator," under which patients sat to improve their health and vitality.

And Austrians are right smack at the top of the list when it comes to the sexually satisfied, according to a recent world survey by a condom company; they are also more likely to have one-night stands, and tend to start having sex at a younger age than their Western counterparts — all apparently without a whole lot of guilt and shame. In its Germanic pragmatism, this country has made sex about life, not about God, and in so doing, has rendered the Vatican impotent in controlling this little land.

This is why a village priest can keep an open secret about living with his girlfriend and kids; why prostitution is legal; why contraception is aggressively employed; and why the Austrian school system, which requires mandatory religion class, will also include a stop at the Museum of Contraception and Abortion during each school's annual Vienna field trip.

The religious stigma around contraception has been neutralized because Austrians have made it clear that the Church is not to intervene in their sexual behavior. But the social taboo regarding abortion still exists. The motive behind the museum is to erase a moral issue by utilizing the same Germanic sensibility used to defuse the Church's authority in the bedroom: To present abortion as a solution to a problem, not the problem itself; to turn the issue away from God and toward science and education. ... "
 
 

The Murder of Christ

" ... The great psychosomatic pioneer, Wilhelm Reich, actually wrote a book on this subject, entitled The Murder of Christ (1953) (available at Amazon.com). Counterpunch Online Magazine actually reprinted Chapter 14 of this profound work back in 2002, the chapter entitled Gethsemane. Here is an excerpt:
Christ is Life. And Christ was manhandled just as Life was manhandled long before him and long after the crucifixion and is still manhandled today.

And all his admirers fled and forsook him while he was captured, just as they all had fallen asleep again and again before he was taken and while he went through the agony of the innocent one in supreme distress.

And even his God seemed to have abandoned him. But Life within had not abandoned him. His Life within kept acting as Life acts, up till the last breath. And this is so because God is Life within and without. God did not abandon him at all, except as an image of misled men, corresponding to no reality.

Life had known who would deliver it to its enemies. It had known it for a very long time. It saw the traitor step up to it and kiss it on the cheek as he still said, " Master! "

And this, again, is the plague. ... "
 
 

Pa Chin: A literary and revolutionary Chinese anarchist

" ... Branded a counterrevolutionary during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, Pa Chin therefore was purged and didn’t reappear until 1977, after he had been rehabilitated considerably. Consequently, he was elected a deputy to the 1978 National People’s Congress, followed by chairman of the China Writers Association in 1983.

Pa Chin’s literary works have been translated into and published in numerous foreign languages. He also has received prizes and medals from Italy and the former Soviet Union for his contributions in translating and introducing foreign literary works to the Chinese people.

In the two decades before the late 1950s, Pa Chin wrote nearly 20 novels and translated just as many foreign works, as well as more than 70 short stories. While studying in France in 1927, he began writing his first novel, “Mieh-wang” (Destruction), about the life of a young Shanghai revolutionary anarchist.

Pa Chin is most acclaimed for his autobiographical “Turbulent Stream” trilogy, including his masterpiece, “Chia” (Family, 1931), and the trilogy’s other two novels, “Spring” (1938) and “Autumn” (1940). Describing the struggle between young intellectuals and their family traditions, the trilogy became a classic in modern Chinese literature.

In 1934, Pa Chin completed his Love trilogy, consisting of the novels “Fog” (1931), “Rain” (1933) and “Lightning” (1935), in addition to a novelette, “Thunder.” His Love trilogy describes the life of revolutionary intellectuals and other vital problems as the purpose of human life, friendship and love.

Beginning with the battle for Shanghai, Pa Chin’s three-volume novel, “Fires” (1941-1945), tells the story of this new, often heroic, generation. Among his other works from the postwar period are the short novels, “A Garden of Repose” (1944) and “Ward No. 4” (1946), while another of Pa Chin’s masterpieces, “Han-yeh” (Cold Nights, 1947), tells the story of a couple whose dreams are shattered by the war and the tragic loss of their idealism.

Between 1978 and 1986, Pa Chin penned a series of 150 essays entitled, “Suixiang Lu” (Random Thoughts), largely dealing with China’s Cultural Revolution. He also translated literary works by Russian and French writers, winning him the 1982 Dante International Prize and being nominated for the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature. ... "
 

Drug Company Conspiracy Theory Debunked

" ... Two recent medical studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs for treating coughs and sinus infections and instead recommended home remedies.

In so doing, the research undermines the idea of a conspiracy by big drug companies to hide information about alternative cures.

Research done at the University of Southampton in England examined 240 patients with sinus infections and found that those taking antibiotics and steroid sprays fared no better than those given no treatment at all. The study's lead author said that "the current view that antibiotics are effective [for acute sinusitis] can now be challenged."

The study's authors recommended home remedies such as inhaling steam and flushing the nose with salt water for relief. The research was detailed in the Dec. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Another study, published in the December issue of the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, concluded that honey works better than cough medicines or no treatment at all in soothing children's coughs.

Researchers led by Dr. Ian Paul of Pennsylvania State University's College of Medicine used 105 children with upper respiratory infections. Some of their parents were given honey to administer to the children, others were given cough medicine, and still others were left untreated. Parents were then asked to rate the severity of their children's symptoms, and across the board, those treated with honey did the best. Though the sample size was small and parent's judgments were subjective, Dr. Paul noted that this was the first study to actually demonstrate honey's effectiveness as a treatment.

To many people, this was non-news: Of course honey helps coughs; any grandmother could tell you that. But controlled, scientific testing is important, because while some home remedies are valid, many are not.  ... "

http://www.livescience.com/health/080102-bad-conspiracy.html

bamboo as "Nature cure" for spine. "Can anyone believe this?"

Respected Mahant Dada,
Thanks lot.However you might have seen our kalaigaon house in your last visit.These are made of bamboo(outside cement) only and standing all the climate since 1963.
The villagers around Darrang,old Kamrup etc will also tell the same formula.But here its with modern calculations and there the original assamese calculations with maturity and durations of life.Our encestors home in Koch kingdom-Jaljalee got beautifull bamboo home still with bamboo beds, bamboo mattress.Good for spine.One simple live example being of bamboo villager:-
During long Army rule in Assam, this Jaljalee villagers was beaten up left and right on doubt of hardcore ULFA people.Army had taugh time to beat all- but still the villagers had no taugh time, no spinal injury,nor back ache!!! All credit goses to Bamboo bed and mattress.Nature cure.Can anyone believe this?
Thanks lot for the scientific informations.
Happy new year with a happy informations.
Regards.
Bikash
mc mahant <
mikemahant@hotmail.com> wrote:

Saw this Link:
http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/bamboo1966/BambooReinforce dConcreteFeb1966.htm
There is still time to learn!
 
~ Link ~
 

Breasts not Bombs.org

" ... Many passersby were supportive and actually tickled by our presence. There were a lot of smiles and thumbs up and of course there were those who were offended, but didn't stop long enough to have a conversation and find common ground. I notice that those who agree with us stay and talk, those who don't run off, cursing or yelling as they go. I also have noticed that those who flash a peace sign at any of our demonstrations are usually smiling, but the one's who give us the finger are mostly miserable. ... "
 
 
Other links:
 
 

"Information Operation Roadmap "

 

Global Research, December 24, 2007
 

In 2003, then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld signed a document called the Information Operation Roadmap which outlined, among other things, the Pentagon's desire to dominate the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

If you are unfamiliar with this document, more detail can be found in a previous article here.

Dominate

From the Information Operation Roadmap:

"We Must Improve Network and Electro-Magnetic Attack Capability. To prevail in an information-centric fight, it is increasingly important that our forces dominate the electromagnetic spectrum with attack capabilities." [emphasis mine] - 6

"Cover the full range of EW [Electronic Warfare] missions and capabilities, including navigation warfare, offensive counterspace, control of adversary radio frequency systems that provide location and identification of friend and foe, etc." - 61

"Provide a future EW capability sufficient to provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, denying, degrading, disrupting, or destroying the full spectrum of globally emerging communication systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependant on the electromagnetic spectrum." [emphasis mine] - 61

"DPG [Defense Planning Guidance] 04 tasked USD(AT&L) [Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics], in coordination with the CJCS [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] and Services, to develop recommendations to transform and extend EW capabilities, ... to detect, locate and attack the full spectrum of globally emerging telecommunications equipment, situation awareness sensors and weapons engagement technologies operating within the electromagnetic spectrum." [emphasis mine] - 59

Stealthy Platforms Above Your House

"Develop a coherent and comprehensive EW [Electronic Warfare] investment strategy for the architecture that... Pay particular attention to:

- (U) Projecting electronic attack into denied areas by means of stealthy platforms... As a matter of priority, accelerates joint development of modular EW payloads for the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle." [emphasis mine] - 62

It is interesting to see the mention of stealthy platforms like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) because they are now patrolling both the Canadian and Mexican borders of the United States and will soon be patrolling the arctic. With funding supplied by Homeland Security, US police departments are also using UAVs to spy on the citizens below. A couple of examples are Sacramento, California and...

"one North Carolina county is using a UAV equipped with low-light and infrared cameras to keep watch on its citizens. The aircraft has been dispatched to monitor gatherings of motorcycle riders at the Gaston County fairgrounds from just a few hundred feet in the air--close enough to identify faces--and many more uses, such as the aerial detection of marijuana fields, are planned."

The Electronic Battlespace

"The ACTD [Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration] should examine a range of technologies including a network of unmanned aerial vehicles and miniaturized, scatterable public address systems for satellite rebroadcast in denied areas. It should also consider various message delivery systems, to include satellite radio and television, cellular phones and other wireless devices and the Internet." [emphasis mine] - 65

"Exploits other transformational EW initiatives, including use of the E-Space Analysis Center to correlate and fuse all available data that creates a real time electronic battlespace picture." [emphasis mine] - 62

How exactly do you create a real time electronic battlespace picture? And where exactly is the battlespace? A very similar statement was made in the Project for a New American Century document Rebuilding America's Defenses published in September of 2000 (more about this document here and here.)

"New classes of sensors - commercial and military; on land, on and under sea, in the air and in space - will be linked together in dense networks that can be rapidly configured and reconfigured to provide future commanders with an unprecedented understanding of the battlefield." - pg 59

An article written by Mark Baard from Parallelnormal.com sheds some light on this subject.

"Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, and Providence, R.I. are among the cities partnering with private companies and the federal government to set up public broadband internet access. Providence used Homeland Security funds to construct a network for police, which may be made available to the public at a later date..."

"But even if the cities fail to complete their Wi-Fi projects, the military will be able to set up wireless networks within hours, perhaps even faster."

"The DOD [Department of Defense], which is in the middle of joint urban war-games with Homeland Security and Canadian, Israeli and other international forces, is experimenting with Wi-Fi networks it can set up on the fly."

"According to a recent DOD announcement for contractors, soldiers will be able to drop robots, called LANdroids... when they arrive in a city. The robots will then scurry off to position themselves, becoming nodes for a wireless communications network. (Click here to download a PDF of the DOD announcement.)"

"The Wi-Fi antennae dotting the urban landscape will serve not only as communications relays, but as transponders that can pinpoint the exact positions of of individual computers and mobile phones - a scenario I described in the Boston Globe last year."

"In other words, where GPS loses site of a device (and its owner), Wi-Fi will pick up the trail."

"The antennae will also relay orders to the brain-chipped masses, members of the British Ministry of Defense and the DOD believe."

PsiOp Radio

Presidential candidates diverge on U.S. joining war crimes court

" ... The International Criminal Court isn't discussed much in the presidential campaign, but few issues are more revealing of a candidate's perspective on the United States' legal and political relations with the rest of the world.

The court was established in 2002 to deal with cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Headquartered in the Dutch city of The Hague, it was conceived as a permanent successor to the Nuremberg tribunals formed to try Nazi leaders after World War II. It now has 105 members, including virtually all current U.S. allies, but not the United States itself.

President Bush has attacked the court relentlessly, saying it could subject Americans to politically motivated prosecutions abroad. He has renounced the 1998 treaty that created the court, pressed other nations to disregard it, and signed legislation - nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act" by critics - authorizing military action to free any citizen of the United States or an allied nation held for trial by the court.

Republican presidential candidates generally share Bush's view, while Democratic candidates largely reject it. But there are differences among candidates within each party.

Unlike the rest of the Republican field, Sen. John McCain has said he would like to see the United States join the international court, although he would first require more protections for U.S. personnel. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have taken similar wait-and-see positions, while most of the other Democratic hopefuls have called for full U.S. membership.

The presidential candidates also took differing positions in the only congressional vote on the issue, the 2002 legislation allowing military action to free prisoners at The Hague. Clinton and McCain voted for the bill, as did then-Sen. John Edwards - who now favors U.S. membership in the court - and Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of Alpine (San Diego County). Three other Democrats, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Sens. Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd, voted against the measure. The other candidates weren't in Congress at the time.

Two international law scholars say the candidates' positions are illuminating because the disagreements over the court represent some of the most critical foreign-policy questions in the post-Cold War world - U.S. autonomy and its limits, the role of international law and the multinational bodies that enforce it, and the balance between power and accountability. ... "

~ Read on... ~

 

Halliburton Corporation's Brown and Root is one of the major components of

THE BUSH-CHENEY DRUG EMPIRE
[Lead story in the October 24, 2000 issue of "From The Wilderness"] 
by Michael C. Ruppert
 

FTW  October 24, 2000 - The success of Bush Vice Presidential running mate Richard Cheney at leading Halliburton, Inc. to a five year $3.8 billion "pig-out" on federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans is only a partial indicator of what may happen if the Bush ticket wins in two weeks. A closer look at available research, including an August 2, 2000 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) at www.public-i.org, suggests that drug money has played a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under Cheney's tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000. This is especially true for Halliburton's most famous subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant, Brown and Root. A deeper look into history reveals that Brown and Root's past as well as the past of Dick Cheney himself, connect to the international drug trade on more than one occasion and in more than one way.

This June the lead Washington, D.C. attorney for a major Russian oil company connected in law enforcement reports to heroin smuggling and also a beneficiary of US backed loans to pay for Brown and Root contracts in Russia, held a $2.2 million fund raiser to fill the already bulging coffers of presidential candidate George W. Bush. This is not the first time that Brown and Root has been connected to drugs and the fact is that this "poster child" of American industry may also be a key player in Wall Street's efforts to maintain domination of the half trillion dollar a year global drug trade and its profits. And Dick Cheney, who has also come closer to drugs than most suspect, and who is also Halliburton's largest individual shareholder ($45.5 million), has a vested interest in seeing to it that Brown and Root's successes continue.

Of all American companies dealing directly with the U.S. military and providing cover for CIA operations few firms can match the global presence of this giant construction powerhouse which employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries. Through its sister companies or joint ventures, Brown and Root can build offshore oil rigs, drill wells, construct and operate everything from harbors to pipelines to highways to nuclear reactors. It can train and arm security forces and it can now also feed, supply and house armies. One key beacon of Brown and Root's overwhelming appeal to agencies like the CIA is that, from its own corporate web page, it  proudly announces that it has received the contract to dismantle aging Russian nuclear tipped ICBMs in their silos.

Furthermore, the relationships between key institutions, players and the Bushes themselves suggest that under a George "W" administration the Bush family and its allies may well be able, using Brown and Root as the operational interface, to control the drug trade all the way from Medellin to Moscow.

Originally formed as a heavy construction company to build dams, Brown and Root grew its operations via shrewd political contributions to Senate candidate Lyndon Johnson in 1948. Expanding into the building of oil platforms, military bases, ports, nuclear facilities, harbors and tunnels, Brown and Root virtually underwrote LBJ's political career. It prospered as a result, making billions on U.S. Government contracts during the Vietnam War. The "Austin Chronicle" in an August 28 Op-ed piece entitled "The Candidate From Brown and Root" labels Republican Cheney as the political dispenser of Brown and Root's largesse.  According to political campaign records, during Cheney's five year tenure at Halliburton the company's political contributions more than doubled to $1.2 million. Not surprisingly, most of that money went to Republican candidates.

Independent news service "newsmakingnews.com," also describes how in 1998, with Cheney as Chairman, Halliburton spent $8.1 billion to purchase oil industry equipment and drilling supplier Dresser Industries. This made Halliburton a corporation that will have a presence in almost any future oil drilling operation anywhere in the world. And it also brought back into the family fold the company that had once sent a plane - also in 1948 - to fetch the new Yale Graduate George H.W. Bush, to begin his career in the Texas oil business.  Bush the elder's father, Prescott, served as a Managing Director for the firm that once owned Dresser, Brown Bothers Harriman.

It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is Brown and Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown and Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown and Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the U.S. military. Now, instead of U.S. Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown and Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms to rations to vehicles.

Dramatic expansion of Brown and Root's operations in Colombia also suggest Bush preparations for a war inspired feeding frenzy as a part of "Plan Colombia." This is consistent with moves by former Bush Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady to open a joint Colombian-American investment partnership called Corfinsura for the financing of major construction projects with the Colombian Antioquia Syndicate, headquartered in Medellin. (See FTW June, 00). And expectations of a ground war in Colombia may explain why, in a 2000 SEC filing, Brown and Root reported that in addition to owning more than 800,000 square feet of warehouse space in Colombia, they also lease another 122,000 square feet. According to the filing of the Brown and Root Energy Services Group, the only other places where the company maintains warehouse space are in Mexico (525,000 sq. feet), and the U.S. (38,000) square feet.

According to the web site of Colombia's Foreign Investment Promotion Agency Brown and Root had no presence in the country until 1997. What does Brown and Root, which, according to the AP has made more than $2 billion supporting and supplying U.S. troops, know about Colombia that the U.S. public does not?  Why the need for almost a million square feet of warehouse space that can be transferred from one Brown and Root operation (energy) to another (military support) with the stroke of a pen?

DRUGS

 As described by the Associated Press, during "Iran-Contra" Congressman Dick Cheney of the House Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North. This was in spite of the fact that North had lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White House briefing. Oliver North's own diaries and subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector General have irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine smuggling during the 1980s and the opening of bank accounts for one firm moving four tons of cocaine a month. This, however, did not stop Cheney from actively supporting North's 1994 unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia just a year before he took over the reins at Brown and Root's parent company, Dallas based Halliburton Inc. in 1995.

As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels in northern Iran. The Kurds' primary source of income for more than fifty years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Having had some personal experience with Brown and Root I noted carefully  when the Los Angeles Times observed that on March 22, 1991 that a group of gunmen burst into the Ankara, Turkey offices of the joint venture, Vinnell, Brown and Root and assassinated retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Gandy.

In March of 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees, long-time assets of the CIA, were being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War. Saddam, seeking to destroy any hopes of a successful Kurdish revolt, found it easy to kill thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish security forces, trained in part by the Vinnell, Brown and Root partnership,  turned thousands of Kurds back into certain death. Today, the Vinnell Corporation (a TRW Company) is, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp (FTW June, 00) one of the three pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world. It is also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the Middle East. Not surprisingly the Turkish border regions in question were the primary transhipment points for heroin, grown in Afghanistan and Pakistan and destined for the markets of Europe.

A confidential source with intelligence experience in the region subsequently told me that the Kurds "got some payback against the folks that used to help them move their drugs." He openly acknowledged that Brown and Root and Vinnell both routinely provided NOC or non-official cover for CIA officers. But I already knew that.

From 1994 to 1999, during US military intervention in the Balkans where, according to "The Christian Science Monitor" and "Jane's Intelligence Review," the Kosovo Liberation Army controls 70 per cent of the heroin entering Western Europe, Cheney's  Brown and Root made billions of dollars supplying U.S. troops from vast facilities in the region. Brown and Root support operations continue in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia to this day.

Dick Cheney's footprints have come closer to drugs than one might suspect. The August Center for Public Integrity report brought them even closer. It would be factually correct to say that there is a direct linkage of Brown and Root facilities - often in remote and hazardous regions - between every drug producing region and every drug consuming region in the world. These coincidences, in and of themselves, do not prove complicity in the trade. Other facts, however, lead inescapably in that direction.

A DIRECT DRUG LINK

The CPI report entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton To Feast at Federal Trough" written by veteran journalists Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller describes how, under five years of Cheney's leadership, Halliburton, largely through subsidiary Brown and Root, enjoyed $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer insured loans. The loans had been granted by the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). According to Ralph McGehee's "CIA Base ©" both institutions are heavily infiltrated by the CIA and routinely provide NOC to its officers.

One of those loans to Russian financial/banking conglomerate The Alfa Group of Companies contained $292 million to pay for Brown and Root's contract to refurbish a Siberian oil field owned by the Russian Tyumen Oil Company. The Alfa Group completed its 51% acquisition of Tyumen Oil in what was allegedly a rigged bidding process in 1998. An official Russian government report claimed that the Alfa Group's top executives, oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven "allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe."

These same executives, Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family were the same ones who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could continue - and expand.

After describing how organized criminal interests in the Alfa Group had allegedly stolen the oil field by fraud, the CPI story, using official reports from the FSB  (the Russian equivalent of the FBI), oil companies such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB officers and press accounts then established a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin.

In 1995 sacks of heroin disguised as sugar were stolen from a rail container leased by Alfa Echo and sold in the Siberian town of Khabarovsk. A problem arose when many residents of the town became "intoxicated" or "poisoned." The CPI story also stated, "The FSB report said that within days of the incident, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) agents conducted raids of Alfa Eko buildings and found 'drugs and other compromising documentation.'

"Both reports claim that Alfa Bank has laundered drug funds from Russian and Colombian drug cartels.

"The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the now imprisoned financial mastermind of Colombia's notorious Cali cartel, 'to conclude an agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore zones such as the Bahamas, Gibraltar and others. The plan was to insert it back into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies.

"É He [the former KGB agent] reported that there was evidence 'regarding [Alfa Bank's] involvement with the money laundering ofÉ Latin American drug cartels."

It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead  Washington attorney James C, Langdon, Jr. at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fund raiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign."

The heroin mentioned in the CPI story, originated in Laos where longtime Bush allies and covert warriors Richard Armitage and retired CIA ADDO (Associate Deputy Director of Operations) Ted Shackley have been repeatedly linked to the drug trade. It then made its way across Southeast Asia to Vietnam, probably the port of Haiphong. Then the heroin sailed to Russia's Pacific port of Valdivostok from whence it subsequently bounced across Siberia by rail and thence by truck or rail to Europe, passing through the hands of Russian Mafia leaders in Chechnya and Azerbaijan.  Chechnya and Azerbaijan are hotbeds of both armed conflict and oil exploration and Brown and Root has operations all along this route.

This long, expensive and tortured path was hastily established, as described by FTW in previous issues, after President George Bush's personal envoy Richard Armitage, holding the rank of Ambassador, had traveled to the former Soviet Union to assist it with its "economic development" in 1989. The obstacle then to a more direct, profitable and efficient route from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey into Europe was  a cohesive Yugoslavian/Serbian government controlling the Balkans and continuing instability in the Golden Crescent of Pakistan/Afghanistan. Also, there was no other way, using heroin from the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos and Thailand), to deal with China and India but to go around them.

It is perhaps not by coincidence again that Cheney and Armitage share membership in the prestigious Aspen Institute, an exclusive bi-partisan research think tank, and also in the U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Just last November, in what may be a portent of things to come, Armitage, played the role of Secretary of Defense in an practical exercise at the Council on Foreign Relations where he and Cheney are also both members. Speculation that the scandal plagued Armitage, who resigned under a cloud as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, is W's first choice for Secretary of Defense next year is widespread.

The Clinton Administration took care of all that wasted travel for heroin with the 1998 destruction of Serbia and Kosovo and the installation of the KLA as a regional power. That opened a direct line from Afghanistan to Western Europe and Brown and Root was right in the middle of that too. The Clinton skill at streamlining drug operations  was described in detail in the May issue of FTW in a story entitled "The Democratic Party's Presidential Drug Money Pipeline." That article has since been reprinted in three countries. The essence of the drug economic lesson was that by growing opium in Colombia and by smuggling both cocaine and heroin from Colombia to New York City through the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (a virtual straight line), traditional smuggling routes could be shortened or even eliminated. This reduced both risk and cost, increased profits and eliminated competition.

FTW suspects the hand of Medellin co-founder Carlos Lehder in this process and it is interesting to note that Lehder, released from prison under Clinton in 1995, is now active in both the Bahamas and South America. Lehder was known during the eighties as "The genius of transportation." I can well imagine a Dick Cheney, having witnessed the complete restructuring of the global drug trade in the last eight years, going to George W and saying, "Look, I know how we can make it even better." One thing is for certain. As quoted in the CPI article, one Halliburton Vice President noted that if the Bush-Cheney ticket was elected, "the company's government contracts would obviously go through the roof."

THE DARK PAST

In July of 1977 this writer, then a Los Angeles Police officer struggled to make sense of a world gone haywire. In a last ditch effort to salvage a relationship with my fiancŽe, Nordica Theodora D'Orsay (Teddy),  a  CIA contract agent, I had traveled to find her in New Orleans. On a hastily arranged vacation, secured with the blessing of my Commanding Officer, Captain Jesse Brewer of LAPD, I had gone on my own, unofficially, to avoid the scrutiny of LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID).

Starting in the late spring of 1976 Teddy had wanted me to join her operations from within the ranks of LAPD. I had refused to get involved with drugs in any way and everything she mentioned seemed to involve either heroin or cocaine along with guns that she was always moving out of the country. The Director of the CIA then was George Herbert Walker Bush.

Although officially on staff at the LAPD Academy at the time, I had been unofficially loaned to OCID since January when Teddy, announcing the start of a new operation planned in the fall of 1976 had suddenly disappeared.  She left many people, including me, baffled and twisting in the breeze. The OCID detectives had been pressuring me hard for information about her and what I knew of her activities. It was information I could not give them. Hoping against hope that I would find some way to understand her involvement with CIA, LAPD, the royal family of Iran, the Mafia and drugs I set out alone into eight days of  Dantean revelations that have determined the course of my life from that day to this.

Arriving in New Orleans in early July, 1977 I found her living in an apartment across the river in Gretna. Equipped with scrambler phones, night vision devices and working from sealed communiquŽs delivered by naval and air force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, Teddy was involved in something truly ugly. She was arranging for large quantities of weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran. At the same time she was working with Mafia associates of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to coordinate the movement of service boats that were bringing large quantities of heroin into the city. The boats arrived at Marcello controlled docks, unmolested by even the New Orleans police she introduced me to, along with divers, military men, former Green Berets and CIA personnel.

The service boats were retrieving the heroin from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, oil rigs  in international waters, oil rigs built and serviced by Brown and Root. The guns that Teddy monitored, apparently Vietnam era surplus AK 47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships also owned or leased by Brown and Root. And more than once during the eight days I spent in New Orleans I met and ate at restaurants with Brown and Root employees who were boarding those ships and leaving for Iran within days. Once, while leaving a bar and apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot at in an attempt to scare me off.

Disgusted and heart broken at witnessing my fiancŽe and my government smuggling drugs, I ended the relationship. Returning home to LA I made a clean breast and reported all the activity I had seen, including the connections to Brown and Root, to LAPD intelligence officers. They promptly told me that I was crazy. Forced out of LAPD under threat of death at the end of 1978, I made complaints to LAPD's Internal Affairs Division and to the LA office of the FBI under the command of FBI SAC Ted Gunderson. I and my attorney wrote to the politicians, the Department of Justice, the CIA and contacted the L.A. Times. The FBI and the LAPD said that I was crazy.

According to a 1981 two-part news story in the "Los Angeles Herald Examiner" it was revealed that The FBI had taken Teddy into custody and then released her before classifying their investigation without further action. Former New Orleans Crime Commissioner Aaron Cohen told reporter Randall Sullivan that he found my description of events perfectly plausible after his thirty years of studying Louisiana's organized crime operations.

To this day a CIA report prepared as a result of my complaint remains classified and exempt from release pursuant to Executive Order of the President in the interests of national security and because it would reveal the identities of CIA agents.

On October 26, 1981, in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, I reported on what I had seen in New Orleans to my friend and UCLA classmate Craig Fuller. Craig Fuller went on to become Chief of Staff to Vice President Bush from 1981 to 1985.

In 1982, then UCLA political science professor Paul Jabber, filled in many of the pieces in my quest to understand what I had seen in New Orleans. He was qualified to do so because he had served as a CIA and State Department consultant to the Carter administration. Paul explained that, after a  1975 treaty between the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein the Shah had cut off all overt military support for Kurdish rebels fighting Saddam from the north of Iraq. In exchange the Shah had gained access to the Shat al-Arab waterway so that he could multiply his oil exports and income. Not wanting to lose a long-term valuable asset in the Kurds, the CIA had then used Brown and Root, which operated in both countries and maintained port facilities in the Persian Gulf and near Shat al-Arab to rearm the Kurds. The whole operation had been financed with heroin. Paul was matter-of-fact about it.

In 1983 Paul Jabber left UCLA to become a Vice President of Banker's Trust and Chairman of the Middle East Department of the Council on Foreign Relations.

----------

If one is courageous enough to seek an "operating system" that theoretically explains what FTW has just described for you, one need look no further than a fabulous two-part article in "Le Monde Diplomatique" in April of this year. The brilliant stories, focusing heavily on drug capital are titled "Crime, The World's Biggest Free Enterprise." The brilliant and penetrating words of authors Christian de Brie and Jean de Maillard do a better job of explaining the actual world economic and political situation than anything that I have ever read.

De Brie writes, "By allowing capital to flow unchecked from one end of the world to the other, globalization and abandon of sovereignty have together fostered the explosive growth of an outlaw financial marketÉ

"It is a coherent system closely linked to the expansion of modern capitalism and based on an association of three partners: governments, transnational corporations and mafias. Business is business: financial crime is first and foremost a market, thriving and structured, ruled by supply and demand.

"Big business complicity and political laisser faire is the only way that large-scale organized crime can launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds of its activities. And the transnationals need the support of governments and the neutrality of regulatory authorities in order to consolidate their positions, increase their profits, withstand and crush the competition, pull off the "deal of the century" and finance their illicit operations. Politicians are directly involved and their ability to intervene depends on the backing and the funding that keep them in power. This collusion of interests is an essential part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the wheels of capitalism turning."

After confronting CIA Director John Deutch on world television on November 15, 1996 I was interviewed by the staffs of both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. I prepared written testimony for Senate Intelligence which I submitted although I was never called to testify. In every one of those interviews and in my written testimony and in every lecture since that time I have told the story of Brown and Root. I will tell it again at the USC School of International Relations on December the 8th, 2000 - regardless of who wins the election.

Michael C. Ruppert
www.copvcia.com

Sources:

- The Center for Public Integrity, "Cheney Led Halliburton to Feast at Federal Trough", Knut Royce & Nathaniel Heller,
http://www.public-i.org/story_01_080200.htm

-"Le Monde - Diplomatique",  April 2000.

- The U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce

-The Aspen Institute, www.aspeninst.org

-"The Austin Chronicle", August 28, 2000

-The Associated Press, "Study: US Could Save Cost in Balkans" - 10/10/00

-The Associated Press, "Cheney, North Relationship Probed" - 8/11/00

-"The New York Times" Index

-The Council on Foreign Relations

-"The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush" - Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin

-"CIA Base" © 1992, Ralph McGehee

-CIA Inspector General Report of Investigation: Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States. Volume II: The Contra Story - Report 96-0143-IG.

-newsmakingnews.com,  27 August 2000, "The Dick Cheney Data Dump"

- Securities and Exchange Commission - "Edgar" Data base.

-Halliburton/Brown and Root - www.Halliburton.com/brs

-The Vinnell Corporation - www.Vinnell.com

-"The New York Press," 8/1/00

-"The Los Angeles Times," March 23, 1991.

-"The Los Angeles Herald Examiner:, Oct. 11 & 18, 1981

-"The Christian Science Monitor" - Oct. 20, 1994

-"Jane's Intelligence Review" - February 1, 1995.

-Written testimony of Michael C. Ruppert for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence dated 10/1/97 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com//free/ciadrugs/ssci.html

-"From The Wilderness" (4/99, 4/00, 6/00)
 
 
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