US Frustration in Its Desire to Dominate Cuba

US Frustration in Its Desire to Dominate Cuba
By Roberto Perez Betancourt - AIN Special Service -

"It's one thing is to want and another is to be able," says an old proverb that Grandmother Nana recalled when mentioning US threats ever since that first day of January 1959, when the Revolution planted a new reality on the island.

She was one more of the hundreds of thousands of humble, illiterate people who recorded in their minds the injustices of the Spanish colonizers and the so-called "representative democracy" of that time.

I think of her when I look at Bush Plan, in effect since May 1, 2005, and which will be expanded next month with the objective of speeding the colonialist transition of a so-called "free Cuba". The interventionist policy envisions the sponsoring and financing of counter-revolutionary elements aiming to revert Cuban society to the days of a barbaric neo-colony; where exploitation by the US consortium, poverty, illiteracy, gambling, prostitution and drug-trafficking are rampant.

Washington does not hide its intentions and walks around with millions of dollars and influence which it will use to achieve its purpose. We can see the anxiety of the Bush administration, and also the inefficiency of its strategies - incapable of cutting down the resistance that the Cuban people have offered for so many years. Their struggle has been waged despite Washington's strengthening of its economic blockade against the island, restrictions against Cubans from traveling and the re-writing of the concept of family according to a neo-fascist interpretation in order to minimize monetary aid going to residents on the island. But after the plan went into effect, at the UN General Assembly in 2004 the international community overwhelmingly voted 179 to 3 in support of a Cuba resolution condemning Washington's blockade.

The following year, for the fourteenth consecutive time, the world reiterated its rejection of Washington's anti-Cuba policy. This time 182 nations supported Cuba, while only four voted against the resolution: the United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau.

The response of the Cuban people during that period included a progressive increase in its annual GDP, the extension of health services to the neighborhood level, the implementation of an Energy Revolution on the basis of capital investments and a new savings plan, and the expansion of university education to 169 municipalities, just to mention a few social benefits for the public. Among the events which have contributed to the failure of the Bush Plan's objectives is Cuba's strengthening of commercial and financial ties with Venezuela, China and other countries and humanitarian aid offered by other nations. But we should not underestimate the damages caused by W. Bush's evil program, particularly the escalating of the economic war that has exacted damages estimated at some $82 billion.

Daily, the US administration dedicates its time to persecuting and fining those who travel to the island, imposing sanctions on banks and firms that trade with Cuba, and protecting terrorist in their criminal adventures, on which the government spends millions of taxpayers' dollars.

US actions add an increasing number of obstacles to the purchase of food and medicine and obstructs scientific, cultural, sports and academic exchanges as US authorities deny Americans and Cubans permission to travel between the two countries.

In this context, the arbitrary laws continue to do harm, just as the so called "Cuban Adjustment Act" encourages illegal migration. This motivates individuals to risk the currents of the Florida Straights with the promise of awarding anyone who reaches US soil residency --after having dared to overcome sharks, the coast guard and storms-- to become "political refugees."

After the Bush administration's unsuccessful realization of the plan's objectives, they have announced that new measures will be issued next month in an attempt to destabilize the island and destroy the Cuban people. But remembering Grandmother Nana, we must reiterate her proverb: "It's one thing is to want and another is to be able."

Cuba-Bolivia Open New Free Eye Care Center

Cuba-Bolivia Open New Eye Center

La Paz, Apr 10 (Prensa Latina) Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Felipe Pérez Roque returned to his country on Tuesday after a short visit to Bolivia to attend the opening ceremony of a new Operation Miracle center.

The Cuban minister concluded his full agenda by having breakfast with Bolivian President Evo Morales, with whom Perez Roque shared the opening of Villa Tunari Ophthalmologic center.

Perez Roque said that his presence at the opening ceremony shows Bolivia can count on Cuba and ratified the decision to collaborate with La Paz providing training and resources in the health field.

The Cuban official praised the opening of the health center, which is a result of the Cuban cooperation and in which 50 low income patients will be able to undergo free eye surgery daily.

Morales and Perez Roque also attended the closing ceremony of the Congress of the National Women Farmers Federation, which was held in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba.

The Bolivian statesman thanked the Cuban government and people for their solidarity and highlighted that more than 6,000 low income Bolivians have undergone eye surgery in Operation Miracle and that over 4,000 young Bolivians are currently studying in Cuba.

Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455 - A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists

April 11, 2006

Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455

A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists

By JOSÉ PERTIERRA

Last week in Miami, Luis Posada Carriles´s accomplice in the downing of the Cuban passenger plane that was blown out of the sky with 73 innocent people on board on October 6, 1976 was interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao of Channel 41 in Miami. His name is Orlando Bosch.

I quote verbatim excerpts from the television interview

Juan Manuel Cao: Did you down that plane in 1976?

Orlando Bosch: If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself . . . . and if I tell you that did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.

Juan Manuel Cao: In that action 76 persons were killed (the correct figure is 73, including a pregnant passenger)?

Orlando Bosch: No chico, in a war such as us cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant, you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.

Juan Manuel Cao: But don´t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?

Orlando Bosch: . . . Who was on board that plane? Four members of the Communist Party, five north Koreans, five Guyanese, (JP: there were really 11 Guyanese passengers) . . . concho chico, four member of the Communist Party chico!!! Who was there? Our enemies . . .

Juan Manuel Cao: ¿And the fencers? The young people on board?

Orlando Bosch: I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant etc etc. She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that every one who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.

Juan Manuel Cao: If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't you think it difficult . . . ?

Orlando Bosch: No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba.

Bosch´s answers to those five questions give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorist that the United States government harbors and protects in Miami: terrorists that for the last forty-seven years have waged a bloody and ruthless war against the Cuban people.

What happened to Cubana de Aviación 455 almost thirty years ago is no secret. We need simply examine the CIA's own declassified cables. At the time, this was the worst act of aviation terrorism in history, and the first time that a civilian airliner was blown up by terrorists.

More than three months before CU-455 was blown out of the sky over Barbados on that sunny Wednesday afternoon of October 6, 1976, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informed Washington that a Cuban exile extremist group planned to place a bomb on a Cubana de Aviación flight.

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that a CIA source had overheard Luis Posada Carriles say less than a month prior to the bombing that "we are going hit a Cuban airliner."

Neither Washington nor the CIA alerted Cuban authorities to the terrorist threat against their planes.

The bombing was carried out by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Final preparations for the terrorist act began with the arrival of Orlando Bosch in Caracas on September 8, 1976. Bosch is a Cuban-born terrorist who was the acknowledged leader of an organization called Coordinación de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas (CORU).

According to the FBI, CORU was an umbrella group of Cuban exile organizations that was formed to "plan, finance and carry out terrorist operations and attacks against Cuba." (FBI cable dated June 29, 1976).

When Bosch arrived in Caracas on the 8th of September of that year, Posada Carriles was there to greet and make available to him his right hand man: trusted confidante Hernán Ricardo, who has admitted under oath to be a CIA operative. In 1976, Ricardo was also an employee of Luis Posada Carriles at a private intelligence firm that the latter founded and ran in Caracas: Investigaciones Comerciales e Industriales (ICI). Ricardo says that Posada Carriles introduced him to Orlando Bosch at the ICI offices in Caracas.

To help him with the special operation that Bosch and Posada planned for him, Ricardo in turn recruited Freddy Lugo. A Venezuelan citizen, Lugo has also admitted under oath to be a CIA operative.

We know that the foursome of Posada, Bosch, Ricardo and Lugo met together at least four times to plan the downing of the plan.

At the meetings, the terrorists agreed upon the coded words they would use to describe the success of the operation. The plane would be known as the "bus", and the passengers would be called the "dogs." "The rest is up to you," Posada told Lugo and Ricardo.

The C-4 explosives were carried on board the aircraft by Ricardo and Lugo in a tube of toothpaste and in a camera.

Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo boarded the CU-455 flight in Trinidad at 12:15 PM bound for Barbados. Ricardo traveled under a forged passport using a false name. They sat in the middle of the plane. During the flight, they placed the C-4 explosives in two separate places in the plane: the rear bathroom and underneath the seat belonging to Freddy Lugo. Lugo and Ricardo got off the plane during its brief stopover at Seawell Airport in Barbados. They later admitted under oath that they had each received special training in explosives from the CIA.

Aboard CU-455 were 73 persons. 57 of the passengers were Cubans. 11 of them were Guyanese medical students in Cuba. The remaining five passengers were Koreans. Those on board averaged only 30 years of age.

Traveling with the group were 24 members of the Cuban fencing team, many of them teen-agers, fresh from gold medal victories at the Youth Fencing Championship in Caracas. They proudly wore their gold medals on board the aircraft. One of the young fencers, Nancy Uranga, was only twenty-three years old and pregnant. She wasn't supposed to be on board. That spot on the fencing team belonged to a pretty little twelve-year old fencer, unusually tall for her age, named María González. María had planned to participate in the Caribbean Games, and was on the tarmac at Havana's José Martí Airport ready to board the plane that would take the team to the Games, when one of her coaches gave her the bad news that international amateur rules prevented twelve year olds from competing. María reportedly was devastated, and she went to her home in Havana's neighborhood called La Víbora, and cried for three days, refusing to watch the games on Cuban television because it hurt her so much not to be there. Nancy Uranga was summoned to the Airport and took María´s place on the ill fated trip to the Caribbean Games.

The fencing team was a roaring success at the Games. They won gold, silver and bronze medals. They were to return home on October 6, 1976. The athletes proudly wore their medals dangling over their clothes, as they boarded the aircraft. Cubana de Aviación 455 stopped first in Trinidad at 11:03 AM, and then touched down again in Barbados at 12:25 PM.

Nine minutes after take-off from Barbados, the bombs exploded and the plane caught fire. The passengers on board then lived the most horrifying ten minutes of their lives, as the plane turned into a scorching coffin.

The cockpit voice-recorder captured the last terrifying moments of the flight at 1:24 PM: "Seawell! Seawell! CU-455 Seawell. . . ! We have an explosion on board. . . . . We have a fire on board."

The pilot, Wilfredo Pérez (affectionately known as "Felo"), asked Seawell Airport for permission to return and land, but the plane and its passengers were already doomed.

As the plane approached the shore, it was rapidly losing altitude and control. "Hit the water, Felo, Hit the Water," said the co-pilot.

Rather than crashing into the white sands of the beach called Paradise and killing the beachgoers, Felo courageously banked the plane toward the water where it crashed in a ball of fire one mile north of Deep Water Bay.

Pieces of bodies were slowly recovered from the sea. Most of them too grotesquely disfigured to be identified by their family members. There were no survivors.

After deplaning, Lugo and Ricardo hurriedly left Seawell Airport in Barbados and checked into a local hotel under assumed names.

From the hotel, Hernán Ricardo called his bosses in Venezuela: Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Unable to find Posada at his desk, he left a message with Posada´s secretary. He then called Caracas again and asked a mutual friend, Marinés Vega, to deliver the following message to Posada:

"We are in a desperate situation, the bus was fully loaded with dogs . . . they should send someone I can recognize . . . I will be waiting in a soda fountain near the embassy just in case something happens and I need to ask for asylum there."

Ricardo was able to communicate with Bosch who allegedly said to him: "my friend we have a problem here in Caracas. An aircraft is never blown up in midair . . .", implying that the plan had been for the bomb to explode while the plane was on the ground before take-off.

Sensing how hot things were getting for them in Barbados, Lugo and Ricardo boarded a return flight to Trinidad on British West Indies Airlines that very evening. On the flight, Ricardo said to his buddy: "Damn it, Lugo, I'm desperate and feel like crying. I had never killed anyone before."

In Port of Spain, the terrorists checked into the Holiday Inn with false identities and made more desperate calls to Caracas, trying to reach Posada Carriles.

Their nervous demeanor at the airport and at the hotel, as well as their conversations in the taxis they took in Barbados and later in Trinidad, led the police to zero in on them as the primary suspects in the bombing. They were arrested and interrogated by detectives from the Trinidad police department.

Both confessed to Commissioner Dannis Ramdwar who took their written depositions. Lugo and Ricardo each admitted to being CIA operatives. Ricardo described in detail how he could detonate C-4 explosives and pointed to a pencil on Ramdwar´s desk that was similar to the timer he used to detonate the explosive on board the plane. Ricardo also told the police in Trinidad that he worked for Luis Posada Carriles. He told Ramdwar that the head of CORU was Orlando Bosch and drew for the police an organizational chart of CORU and said that the terrorist organization was also known as Condor.

Upon hearing of the confessions of Lugo and Ricardo, the police in Caracas moved in and arrested Posada and Bosch. They also obtained a warrant and searched the offices of Posada Carriles where they confiscated weapons and sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment. The police also found a schedule of Cubana flights in Posada´s Caracas office.

In one of the very first reports on the October 6, 1976, downing of Cubana Flight 455, the FBI Venezuelan bureau cables that a confidential source has identified Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch as responsible for the bombing. "The source all but admitted that Posada and Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airline," according to the report.

During the television interview three days ago in Miami, Bosch talked about an agreement reached between terrorists in Santo Domingo in June of 1976.

The FBI itself tells us about that secret agreement. According to an FBI report, Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and other terrorists formed an umbrella terrorist organization called CORU at a meeting in the Dominican Republic. The FBI report details how at that meeting in the Dominican Republic, CORU planned a series of bombing attacks against Cuban entities, as well as the murder of Communists in the Western Hemisphere. On page 6, the report relates in great detail how Orlando Bosch was met in Caracas on September 8, 1976, by Luis Posada and other anti-Castro exiles and a deal was struck as to what kind of activities he could organize on Venezuelan soil.

After the arrests of Lugo, Ricardo, Bosch and Posada, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana and Cuba ceded jurisdiction over the downing of the passenger plane to Venezuela, and all four were prosecuted in Caracas for murder.

Prosecuting terrorists has a price. The Judge who issued the initial arrest warrants for the four terrorists, Delia Estava Moreno, received several death threats and attempts at blackmail as reprisals for her conduct. As a result, she was forced to recuse herself. The presiding judge of the military court, Retired General Elio Garcia Barrios, also received death threats and in 1983, his son and chauffeur were murdered during a Mafia-style hit intended to even the score and intimidate those who dared legally prosecute the murderers.

Eventually, Lugo and Ricardo were convicted, but before the Court could reach a verdict regarding his case, Luis Posada Carriles escaped from the prison at San Juan de los Moros in the State of Guárico where he had been confined after two unsuccessful escape attempts.

Posada escaped with the help of at least $50,000 from a right wing extremist group in Miami.

Fifteen days after his escape from jail, Posada was smuggled out of Venezuela bound for Aruba on a shrimp boat. He spent a week in Aruba and was then flown by private plane to Costa Rica and then San Salvador. He immediately started working alongside Felix Rodriguez, a high ranking CIA member, at the Ilopango Airbase. Posada´s job in San Salvador was to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with arms and supplies obtained through the sale of narcotics. This Operation became a scandal known as Iran-Contra. Felix Rodriguez was the CIA's point man in Central America for the Iran-Contra scandal, hired for the job by an old friend from the CIA Donald Gregg who was Vice-President Bush's National Security Advisor. According to Anna Louise Bardach who interviewed Posada while she was a reporter for the New York Times, "Posada noted with a certain pride that George Bush had headed the CIA from November 1975 to January 1977"-a period that covered some of the most violent crimes committed by Cuban exiles and Operation Condor: including the Letelier assassination and the downing of the passenger plane.

Posada spent the next several years in Central America working for the security services of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But in the early 90s he turned his attention once again to Cuba which was struggle to jump start a tourist industry in order to offset a dramatic economic downturn after the demise of the Soviet Bloc. From his lair in Central America he recruited Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries to smuggle explosives to Cuba, and in 1997 bombs began to blow in the finest hotels and restaurants of Havana-killing an Italian tourist named Fabio DiCelmo and wounding several others.

Cuba learned that the campaign of terror against its tourist industry was being financed by Miami exile organizations and orchestrated by Luis Posada Carriles in Central America. Faced with the FBI´s refusal to reign in the terrorists in Miami, Cuba sent some very brave men to penetrate these terrorist organizations and gather information with the purpose of asking President Clinton to intervene and order the Feds to arrest the terrorists.

After gathering enough evidence to determine the source of the terror campaign, on May 1, 1998 Fidel Castro sent a personal emissary to Washington with a handwritten message to President Clinton: the emissary was none other than Nobel Prize for Literature Gabriel García Márquez. President Clinton was out of town for several days in California, and after waiting him out at the Hotel Washington for several days, García Márquez finally met with White House Chief of Staff Mac McLarty and gave him the letter. García Márquez recounts McLarty´s reaction to the letter and quotes McLarty as saying to him: "We have enemies in common: terrorists".

In the wake of the Garcia Marquez visit, the U.S. sent an FBI team to Cuba a month later to discuss collaboration with Cuba on a "War On Terror". Cuba handed over to the FBI tapes of 14 telephone conversations of Luis Posada Carriles with details on the series of bombs that had exploded in Cuba in the 90s. Cuba also gave the FBI Luis Posada Carriles´ addresses in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama. Also tapes of conversations with Central American detainees in Cuba who admitted Posada is their boss. All together, Cuba turned over 60 sets of documents with information about 40 terrorists based in Miami, including their addresses, and evidence of their ties to terror.

Cuba then waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Cuba waited for the FBI to start arresting terrorists. But instead the FBI arrested on September 12, 1998, the men now known as the Cuban Five: the men who had come to Miami to penetrate the Miami exile terrorist organizations.

According to El Nuevo Herald, the first persons that were notified of the arrests of the Cuban Five were Cong. Lincoln Diaz Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami.

The Five were charged with 62 counts of violating federal laws. Their arrests illustrates Washington's double standard when it comes to its so-called war on terror: a war that the U.S. government chooses to fight a la carte, distinguishing between terrorists it likes and those it doesn't.

The Five were placed in solitary confinement for the next 17 months, until the start of their trial. They were convicted of several charges and received the maximum sentences possible. Gerardo Hernandez received a double life sentence and Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labañino on life sentence each. Fernando Gonzalez and René Gonzalez, got 19 and 15 years respectively.

They were sent to maximum security prisons across this country, and two of them have been denied visits from their wives for the past seven years in violation of U.S. laws and international law.

On August 9, 2005, a 3 judge panel of the Court of Appeals published a 93 page decision that reversed the convictions and sentences, ruling that the Five did not receive a fair trial in Miami and acknowledging evidence produced by the defense at trial that revealed terrorist actions by Miami exile groups against Cuba. The Court of Appeals even cited in a footnote the role of Luis Posada Carriles and correctly referred to him as a terrorist. The tree-judge panel found that "a perfect storm" of prejudice prevented the Cuban Five from having a fair trial in Miami.

The Bush Administration, through its Solicitor General, made a formal appeal to all 12 judges of the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, and out of apparent deference to the unusual request from the Department of Justice the Court of Appeals nullified the three-judge panel decision and agreed to hear the case en banc.

Attorney Leonard Weinglass who represents Antonio Guerrero said recently: "The Five were not prosecuted because they violated American law, but because their work exposed those who were. By infiltrating the terror network that is allowed to exist in Florida they demonstrated the hypocrisy of America's claimed opposition to terrorism."

As the Five were being prosecuted in Miami, the campaign of terror against Cuba continued. In November 2000, Posada Carriles was arrested in Panama along with three accomplices before they could carry out the plan to blow up an auditorium filled with students at the University of Panamá where Cuban President Fidel Castro was to speak. The four were convicted by a Panamanian Court, but on August 26, 2004, in one of her last acts as President, Mireya Moscoso pardons them in violation of Panamanian law. The three accomplices, all Cuban-Americans, go to Miami to be welcomed home. Posada Carriles who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident, goes underground in Honduras and begins to scheme a plan to go to the home of terrorism: Miami.

In March of 2005 he shows up in Miami and applies for asylum. For weeks he lives openly in that city, even going shopping at the mall. Before he is detained by anyone, Venezuela requests his preventive detention for the purpose of extraditing him to Venezuela to stand trial for 73 counts of first degree murder relating to the downing of the passenger plane in 1976.

Rather than exercising an extradition detainer on him, the Department of Homeland Security instead did nothing. It wasn't until Posada called a bizarre press conference in Miami on May 16, 2005 where he openly boasted that the DHS wasn't even looking for him, that government officials felt they had no choice but to detain him. He was detained immediately after the press conference and gingerly escorted in a golf cart with no handcuffs to a waiting helicopter.

Posada was charged with illegal entry into the United States and thus began the legal charade designed to divert attention from the extradition request that remains unattended by the Department of Justice.

As relief from deportation, Posada first claimed he was still a permanent resident of the U.S. In the alternative, he asked for asylum and protection from removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Although it is true that he had been a permanent resident in the 60s, Posada long ago abandoned that status. After all, he has spent the last almost forty years living and killing abroad. Because of his long curriculum of terror, as a matter of law he does not qualify for asylum. That left him only with the possibility CAT relief.

It was then that we witnessed one of the sorriest episodes of legal maneuvering ever by Department of Homeland Security attorneys. Those handling the immigration matter of Posada Carriles at the Immigration Court in El Paso, Texas set the table for Posada to win CAT relief.

Posada called only one witness in his immigration case. A so-called expert on Venezuela who testified that in his expert opinion, Posada would be tortured if returned to Caracas. The witness testified that Venezuela tortures prisoners and that Posada would be surely tortured if sent back. That witness was none other than Joaquín Chaffardet, friend, business partner and lawyer of Luis Posada Carriles in Venezuela. Chaffardet had also been Posada´s boss at the DISIP in the early 1970s, a man that Posada has been close to for the past forty years. The DHS never even cross-examined this guy! Its attorney never even raised the possibility that Chaffardet was not an objective, disinterested witness-but instead was biased in favor of his friend, partner and client. Other than Chaffardet´s questionable testimony, no other evidence in support of the theory that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela was presented.

DHS´s tactic worked. Immigration Judge William Abbott credited Chaffardet´s testimony as credible and found a "clear probability" that Posada would be tortured if returned to Venezuela. Judge Abbott ordered his removal from the United States, but not to Venezuela or Cuba because he would be tortured there. DHS declined to appeal the decision, and began a quest to find a third country that would take him. A few months earlier the DHS had appealed an Immigration Judge´s decision to grant CAT relief to two Venezuelan officers. In that appeal, the same DHS attorney who litigated the Posada case argued that there is no evidence that Venezuela tortures prisoners. Now in the Posada case, DHS took a decidedly different position. Why? You figure it out.

More than six months have passed since the immigration decision. Since it has thus far refused to slap an extradition detainer on him (as Venezuela has requested numerous times), the U.S. government has to either release Posada or declare him a threat to the community. In a letter to Posada dated March 22, 2006, DHS decided to continue to detain him on immigration charges. The letter told Posada that he has a "long history of criminal activity and violence in which innocent civilians were killed." His release from detention concludes ICE in its letter to Posada, "would pose a danger to both the community and the national security of the United States."

In support of its interim decision to continue to detain him, ICE cites Venezuela's pending extradition case against Posada and the fact that Posada fled from a Venezuelan prison while his trial for the downing of a passenger plane in 1976 was pending. "Your past also includes your escape from a Venezuelan prison which was accomplished after several attempts utilizing threats of force, explosives and subterfuge," says ICE in its Decision.

ICE goes on to cite Posada's own statements to link him to the "planning and coordination of a series of hotel and restaurant bombings that occurred in Cuba . . . in 1997." These bombings resulted in the murder of an Italian tourist and the wounding of several others. ICE also cites Posada's conviction in Panama for "crimes against national security," in reference to his attempt to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2000 with C- 4 explosives as President Castro was to speak to an auditorium with full of students.

So finally the US government recognizes that Posada is a bad guy! Without actually saying the dreaded word, the letter from ICE virtually calls him a terrorist. The law forced the United States to make this admission. Although it's clear that Washington doesn't want to extradite him to Venezuela, it is not prudent to release him. The only way that he can continue to be detained without an extradition detainer is with a government finding that he is a danger to the community.

But the extradition case is not going to go away. It's there, very much alive. Unless Posada has a heart attack and dies in prison, the law is eventually going to force the US government to proceed with the extradition case. A lot of people think that Judge Abbott´s finding that Posada may not be deported to Venezuela is a ruling on Venezuela's extradition request. That is not the case. Extradition rulings trump immigration decisions.

Moreover, even if Secretary of State Rice decides in her discretion not to extradite Posada, the treaties and conventions signed by the US government in the past obligate this country to prosecute him for downing of the plane in the United States-where noooooooooooo prisoners are ever tortured: right?

Listen to the language of the Montreal Convention on Civil Aviation.

Article 7

The Contracting State in the territory of which the alleged offender is found shall, if it does not extradite him, be obliged, without exception whatsoever and whether or not the offence was committed in its territory, to submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution. Those authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State.

The Montreal Convention´s Article 7 gives the US no discretion. It must either extradite or prosecute Posada Carriles for 73 counts of first degree murder in relation to the downing of the airliner. Deporting him to a third country is not an option and neither is releasing him to the community.

The story of CU-455 cries out to be told to the American people. If the American people hear the true story of how those 73 people were murdered in cold blood by terrorists whom the United States prefers to shelter rather than prosecute, they'll not stand for it.

Few people in this country know that Orlando Bosch was released from immigration custody by President George Bush Sr. in 1990, and that he now sits on the dais whenever President Bush Jr. delivers speeches in Miami. Bosch´s lawyer, who happens to be Fulgencio Batista´s grandson, was appointed four years ago by Jeb Bush to Florida's Supreme Court.

The fate of the Cuban Five is in the hands of 12 judges, but the judges must be put under the microscope of public opinion. Despite your best efforts, Americans still don´t know who the Five are or why they went to Miami. It's important that you continue to make sure that their story is told: that the U.S. prosecutes and condemns anti-terrorists, yet shelters and protects terrorists.

It's up to the American people to put a stop to impunity, and it's up to you to make sure the American people learn the truth about these cases and this government.

It's up to you to bring the truth to the American people about Cuba and about Venezuela.

The US government conducts a hypocritical war on terror, while it shelters and rewards the terrorists it prefers. Washington lectures other governments about human rights, while it blockades Cuba, using hunger as a foreign policy tool, in order to try and starve 11 million people into submission.

We cannot sit idly by while the U.S. government blockades and invades countries that have never attacked it, tortures prisoners and takes their pictures as if the victims were curiosity pieces rather than human beings, as it spies on Americans without a warrant, and tramples the civil rights of its citizens with a law whose authors dared title "Patriotic."

In 2002, Washington helped organize a failed coup against a democratically elected government in Venezuela in order to prop up a typical puppet government in Caracas. Thanks to the Venezuelan people, the coup failed and President Chávez was restored to office.

The blockade against Cuba didn't work and neither did the coup in Venezuela. Cuba and Venezuela are now stronger than ever.

The Bush Administration's policies at home and abroad have woken a sleeping and silent giant throughout this continent. And, yes: America is one continent and not two as some U.S. textbooks would have us believe.

We are in the midst of a new social movement that is shaking this continent to its core. On the 30th anniversary of Operation Condor's bloodiest year, we are witness that the people Latin America have taken back their countries from the grip of terror. Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia have governments that respond to the needs of their own people, rather than to the interests of US corporations. Other countries in will soon join them. This is an election year in America. The people of Latin America are taking back their governments.

It's high time that the people of the United States did the same.

José Pertierra is an attorney, practicing in Washington, D.C. He represents the Venezuelan government in the case of Luis Posada Carriles.

Keep on giving them hell, Harry.

From Black Commentator:
https://www.blackcommentator.com/168/168_bruces_beat.html

By some time in the late 1950s, before I was ten years old and without knowing what most of the words meant, I had memorized my child's version of Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat" song along with a couple others on his Calypso album. As many times as I heard those songs, I am certain my parents wore out the vinyl. But mid-century electronics geek that my dad was, he pumped a lot of his favorite music through a suitcase-sized reel to reel tape recorder. Harry was in a lot of those mixes too.

Belafonte is a creative artist, an entrepreneur and public intellectual in the finest sense of those words, and a human rights activist of long standing. Like Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis, Harry was a confidante of both Martin Luther King and of Malcolm X. That makes him one of the last surviving flesh and blood links to that piece of our histories, but Mr. Belafonte has always been about way more than showing up at the right place and time.

This year Belafonte led a fact finding delegation to Venezuela of more than a dozen U.S. activists and notables including Cornel West, Danny Glover of TransAfrica and Tavis Smiley during which he raised the ire of the corporate press back home.

For our money, Harry speaks for more African Americans on more issues than any of the black mayors we can think of. But in a time when the Wall Street Journal can blithely declare black public opinion illegitimate because most whites may not agree with it, nobody should be surprised by the corporate press's attempts to denigrate and dismiss Belafonte. Our reader email on the subject indicates that savvy BC readers are not surprised either.

Dear BC,

Harry Belafonte got it right when he announced, in company of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, that "George W. Bush is the greatest terrorist in the world." Wasn't it Martin Luther King that once said, "The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government?" Belafonte might have added that the president is a liar and "un criminal de guerre" - a war criminal as well.

The press pirates have denounced him as a "has been" and a traitor, bashing the USA. But when did criticizing government policy become anti-American? Just when did truth become treasonous, anyhow?

VF

Harry Belafonte is an esteemed elder, one of the tallest trees in the forest. Beside him, this president is a shrub. A bush.

Dear BC,

I'm a middle-aged working-poor white male (though I'm not necessarily without formal education, I live in Pittsburgh and vote across party lines).

I have paid attention to the multiple controversies over Belafonte's statements the past months. Via the Crooks 'n Liars web site I just viewed the recent Harry Belafonte/Wolf Blitzer interview on CNN - twice. Belafonte is absolutely correct in his basic points and observations, as far as I can tell. So, I googled "Harry Belafonte e-mail" to tell him what I think. Your site was near the top of the list. With a name like "Black Commentator" I thought I might be able to write to Belafonte through you.

You just keep going Harry. And thank you. You are reminding us of what America is really supposed to be about. I hope you continue to speak out, and hope you continue to get exposure in the corporate media. Your responses to Blitzer were unlike anything I see from the usual talking heads. Bravo! I agree. And if I do, others do too.
I hope he reads this.

We do too. And we hope Belafonte is around for many more years to come. Keep on giving them hell, Harry.

Hillary Clinton's Plantation

Criticizing the Bush administration in a black church on Martin Luther King Day is an easy way to get applause. The crowd is in the palm of the speaker's hand, eager to be inspired and filled with righteous indignation. New York's junior Senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, found herself in just such a situation. She had an audience full of ardent supporters who feel a genuine affection for her and for her husband.

At Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem she described Republican one party rule as being akin to a plantation. Of course the right wing went into outrage overdrive. If they could just get over their Hillary hatred she would have little appeal, if any. When Trent Lott mused that she might be struck by lightning, Hillary's stock soared so much that she must have thanked God for Trent when she said her prayers at night.

Of course she is right about the Republicans. They love being the masters of this country and, they hope, of the entire world. For decades they have nursed fantasies of reconquest, waiting for the day when they could bring the nation back to the good old days when everyone knew their place.

Democrats behave the way oppressed people usually do. They cow and begin believing that their masters are not only powerful but deserving of the position they hold. Too few dream of waging war against the plantation system. Most just want a seat at the table in the big house and are satisfied when the master doesn't beat them too badly. If a few crumbs are thrown their way they are in seventh heaven.

Hillary's speech was not very impressive and neither is she, right wing blood lust not withstanding. She is just Mrs. Slick Willie. When she supports legislation to ban flag burning, legislation that she knows is unconstitutional, she insults the people who always rush to her defense. She and her husband play a tiresome game with Democrats. The right wing hate them so they get credit they don't deserve. They have concluded that they can get away with just about anything.

In the days after hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, Bill Clinton sucked up to the Bush family and declared that we shouldn't be too critical of them. Hillary now criticizes her yes vote on the war, sort of. Now she says she “takes responsibility" for her vote and complains that troops who are in Iraq because of her support don't have enough armor.

It is important to keep the triangulating, back pedaling and pandering in mind when tempted to be impressed by Hillary's King Day speechifying.

The week before King Day, Hillary showed her true colors. She and Harry Belafonte were both guests at a Children's Defense Fund luncheon. It is a gross understatement to say that she avoided Belafonte. If he were infected with leprosy and the first case of contagious avian flu she could not have stayed further away from him.

Belafonte had committed the unpardonable sin of speaking ill of the white and powerful when he quite correctly referred to Bush as a tyrant and a terrorist. The Senator went nowhere near his table, stayed at the event for only fifteen minutes and refused to comment on his presence or her failure to acknowledge it. She saw nothing wrong with the plantation system on that occasion.

Bill and Hillary are the masters of their own plantation. It is called the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC exists to make sure that anyone who dares to break free realizes their error and runs back to Tara before sundown.

The DLC has already turned the bright, charismatic Barack Obama into an apologist for the Bush administration:

“Let me say this - I don't think that George Bush is a bad man. I think he loves his country. I don't think this administration is full of stupid people - I think there are a lot of smart folks in there. The problem isn't that their philosophy isn't working the way it's supposed to - it's that it is. It's that it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do."

Yes, that is what life on the plantation will do to an otherwise intelligent mind. DLC talking points may make Obama sound like an idiot, but he isn't one. He knows the rules. Stick with the DLC, spew their bizarre mumbo jumbo, or give up any hope of political aspirations.

The DLC plantation has already chosen the Democratic presidential nominee for 2008 and it is none other than Hillary Clinton. The plantation system is so secure that it isn't risky to make a prediction two years ahead of time.

Just a few short weeks after hurricane Katrina destroyed the Gulf Coast, Harry Belafonte had this to say at the Congressional Black Caucus annual conference. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were present:

"The most important wreckage to look at is the wreckage of the Democratic party. We must look through the ravages of the Democratic party to see if there is anything worth salvaging."

Thanks to the DLC and Bill and Hillary Clinton, Belafonte's worst fears have been realized. The Democrats have their own plantation and it may not be worth saving.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BC. Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City. She can be reached via e-Mail at margaret.kimberley@blackcommentator.com. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at freedomrider.blogspot.com

https://www.blackcommentator.com/168/168_freedom_rider_clinton_plantation.html

Gangster Government -- A Leaky President Runs Afoul of "Little Rico" by Greg Palast

It's a crime. No kidding. But the media has it all wrong. As usual, 'Scooter' Libby finally outed 'Mr. Big,' the perpetrator of the heinous disclosure of the name of secret agent Valerie Plame. It was the President of United States himself -- in conspiracy with his Vice-President. Now the pundits are arguing over whether our war-a-holic President had the legal right to leak this national security information. But, that's a fake debate meant to distract you.

OK, let's accept the White House alibi that releasing Plame's identity was no crime. But if that's true, they've committed a bigger crime: Bush and Cheney knowingly withheld vital information from a grand jury investigation, a multimillion dollar inquiry the perps themselves authorized. That's akin to calling in a false fire alarm or calling the cops for a burglary that never happened -- but far, far worse. Let's not forget that in the hunt for the perpetrator of this non-crime, reporter Judith Miller went to jail.

Think about that. While Miller sat in a prison cell, Bush and Cheney were laughing their sick heads off, knowing the grand jury testimony, the special prosecutor's subpoenas and the FBI's terrorizing newsrooms were nothing but fake props in Bush's elaborate charade, Cheney's Big Con.

On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it."

Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this "classified" info -- knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime. For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice.

If you or I had manipulated the legal system this way, we'd be breaking rocks on a chain gang. We wouldn't even get a trial -- most judges would consider this a "fraud upon the court" and send us to the slammer in minutes using the bench's power to administer instant punishment for contempt of the judicial system.

Why'd they do it? The White House junta did the deed for the most evil of motives: to hoodwink the public during the 2004 election campaign, to pretend that evil anti-Bush elements were undermining the Republic, when it was the Bush element itself at the center of the conspiracy. (Notably, elections trickery also motivated Richard Nixon's "plumbers" to break into the Watergate, then the Democratic Party campaign headquarters.)

Let me draft the indictment for you as I would have were I still a government gumshoe:

"Perpetrator Lewis Libby (alias, 'Scooter') contacted Miller; while John Doe 1 contacted perpetrators' shill at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward, in furtherance of a scheme directed by George Bush (alias 'The POTUS') and Dick Cheney (alias, 'The Veep') to release intelligence information fraudulently proffered as 'classified,' and thereinafter, knowingly withheld material evidence from a grand jury empanelled to investigate said disclosure. Furthermore, perpetrator 'The POTUS' made material statements designed to deceive investigators and knowingly misrepresent his state of knowledge of the facts."

Statements aimed at misleading grand jury investigators are hard-time offenses. It doesn't matter that Bush's too-clever little quip was made to the press and not under oath. I've cited press releases and comments in the New York Times in court as evidence of fraud. By not swearing to his disingenuous statement, Bush gets off the perjury hook, but he committed a crime nonetheless, "deliberate concealment."

Here's how the law works (and hopefully, it will). The Bush gang's use of the telephone in this con game constituted wire fraud. Furthermore, while presidents may leak ("declassify") intelligence information, they may not obstruct justice; that is, send a grand jury on a wild goose chase. Under the 'RICO' statute (named after the Edward G. Robinson movie mobster, 'Little Rico'), the combination of these crimes makes the Bush executive branch a "racketeering enterprise."

So, book'm, Dan-o. Time to read The POTUS and The Veep their rights.

After setting their bail (following the impeachments and removals, of course), a judge will have a more intriguing matter to address. The RICO law requires the Feds to seize all "ill-gotten gains" of a racketeering enterprise, even before trial. Usually we're talking fast cars and diamond bling. But in this case, the conspirators' purloined booty includes a stolen election and a fraudulently obtained authorization for war. I see no reason why a judge could not impound the 82d Airborne as "fruits of the fraud " -- lock, stock and gun barrels -- and bring the boys home.

And if justice is to be done we will will also have to run yellow tape across the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- "CRIME SCENE - DO NOT ENTER" -- and return the White House to its rightful owners, the American people, the victims of this gangster government.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Former racketeering investigator Greg Palast is author of "ARMED MADHOUSE: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," to be released in June. Subscribe to our new podcast of these columns at http://www.gregpalast.com/gregpalastmedia.rss

"I am one of those from below and my idea is to govern with them and with everyone": • From Lima, presidential candidate Ollanta Humala

• "We shall respect foreign investment although it must meet certain requisites: the generation of employment – direct or indirect – the transfer of technology for the country, respect its fiscal obligations and protect the environment" • From Lima, presidential candidate Ollanta Humala talks to Granma International

MEDIUM height, an athletic constitution, close-cut black hair and a measured way of speaking characterize this man of 44, who spent 23 of those years in the Peruvian Army. When he was discharged, after an argument with his superiors for exposing shady dealings and fraud within the force, he was a commander and had been the chief of a military unit, in which he won the respect of officers, NCO’s and soldiers.

Now he is aspiring to the Peruvian presidency and his government program has provoked panic in the ranks of those who openly or from the wings control this immensely rich country but in which the majority of its 27 million inhabitants live in poverty or bordering on it.

Ollanta rejects labels: “I am a nationalist because I support my nation and my people. I am not a leftist or a rightist: I am one of those from below and I propose to govern with them – and with everyone.”

Granma International approached Ollante in a Lima hotel where he had met with the foreign press, eager to meet one of the most vilified men in Peruvian national history, but who is leading the opinion polls for the elections this April 9.

“I come from a family of bankrupted farmers who had to leave the country for the city in a desperate search for survival,” he affirms. “Agriculture, Peru’s principal economic and social base, has been remorselessly attacked. In many cases the huge latifundia conceded on false premises include entire villages of native peoples who have been inhumanly enslaved.”

A nationalist government will reactivate agriculture, will give value to the land, protect its cultivators, offer them financial credits, promote their cultural, scientific and technical development, create a sound agrarian sector, care for and develop sources of water and conditions so that rural people do not have to emigrate and live in slum conditions in the cities or cross the border in search of sustenance in other lands. Agriculture is the pillar of the country’s development,” he affirms, adding: “We shall begin by respecting the rights of the poorest.”

The nationalist candidate emphasizes the protection of the environment and adds: “We support the Kyoto Protocol and will give special attention to the precarious situation of the environment in line with the agreements and efforts of the United Nations.

“Education is another sector that demands particular attention from a nationalist government. The situation of 20,000 schools in the Altiplano region is tragic. We shall make an effort to give education to everyone, to eliminate illiteracy and guarantee the country’s present and future.

“I am going to construct the dignity of the people and their pride at being the owners of their country. The Peruvian people are the owners of their homeland: workers have the right to receive a decent wage that will allow them to maintain their families and with respect for the 8-hour working day, which has been criminally abolished,” he states.

Ollanta Humala advises that, through the country’s legal mechanisms, a nationalist government will carefully review all the concessions granted to national and foreign investors, will take action against corruption and oblige those who have been evading the payment of taxes to cover them.

“We will respect foreign investment although it must meet certain requisites: the generation of employment – direct or indirect – the transfer of technology to the country, respect for its fiscal obligations and protection of the environment.

“Those that meet these requisites are not going to have any problems,” stated the Peruvian nationalist candidate, adding: “We are going to consolidate democracy, affirm the institutions and reaffirm the concept of citizenship.

“I am against the neoliberal economic model. We want an economy at the service of the people and have a sense of solidarity with other Latin American countries that are trying to build a regional economic, social, energetic agenda and one that protects the environment, all in function of the well being of our peoples, without exception.”

In this context, Ollanta Humala notes: “I am not going to accept pressure from any country to discriminate against another country. We are not anti: we are pro, and we want good relations with all nations, including Chile and Ecuador, our neighbors, based on respect for our rights and theirs. We will have a politics of agreement and dialogue.

“The Peruvian people are sick of corruption, of seeing how the law is selectively applied, in favor of those who already have everything. Moreover,” he emphasizes, “there is currently a discrimination based on language. Many indigenous people do not speak Spanish and can see how their rights are being violated without even having the possibility of defending themselves, because their culture belongs to another of the seven languages spoken in the country.”

Incidents show that neo-cons fascists everywhere are desperate.

Incidents show that neo-cons everywhere are desperate. Upcoming elections around the world are pinning neo-cons against the wall and are heralding a return to democratic socialism and progressive populism, much to the anger and angst of international bankers, militarists, and reactionary Abrahamic tradition religious sects and movements. Tomorrow's election in Italy is a case in point. With neo-fascist Silvio Berlusconi trailing in the polls, he has resorted to accusing China's Mao of boiling babies to make fertilizer and called his Communist-Socialist opponents "coglioni," a vulgar term defined variably as prick, asshole, moron, and idiot.

U.S. ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield is spinning a Venezuelan vegetable, egg, and fruit protest pelting of his motorcade as some sort of terrorist attack. The U.S. State Department complained to Venezuela's ambassador in Washington that Venezuela was in violation of the international treaty on the protection if diplomats. Spinning an unfounded conspiracy theory (they are only conspiracy theories when the left-wing cites them), State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the incident in a poor Caracas neighborhood was condoned by the city's mayor, police, and local government. McCormack vowed that the United States will not be intimidated by such attacks of vegetables, fruit, and eggs on U.S. diplomatic vehicles. U.S. embassy spokesman Brian Penn bemoaned, ''Our car is stained all over . . . the motorcyclists were throwing things at us for at least 10 minutes, and the police did nothing." Penn did not indicate whether there were any funds left in the embassy's CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency slush funds used to foment insurrections, secessionist movement, coups, street protests, and election chicanery to afford a car wash for the ambassador's car.

Meanwhile, as Ollanta Humala, an ally of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, looks set to capture Peru's presidency, the neo-con and corporate media are ringing "alarm bells" about the leftist surge in Latin America. And Washington's pro-corporate and militarist elite has turned up the heat on Humala, a populist former military officer who champions the rights of Peru's poor and native Americans, including coca farmers. Dennis Jett, Bill Clinton's ambassador to Lima from 1996 to 1999, said Humala is "just as wacky" as Chavez and Morales. Such rhetoric points to Jett, who was Clinton's ambassador to Mozambique, representing the "dark side" of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Leadership Council-aligned wing that is beholden to corporate special interests while at the same time appearing to oppose the Bush administration. In Mozambique, Clinton's ambassador was opposed to the socialist policies of the government and once banned embassy and USAID officials from speaking to a pro-Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) journalist. Jett was also found to be in collusion with right-wing rebel forces of RENAMO, the former apartheid South Africa-supported Mozambican guerrilla movement. All this subterfuge occurred under the so-called enlightened worldview leadership of Bill Clinton. The fact that the Democratic elite is resorting to the same name-calling as Berlusconi is an indication that recent mass pro-labor populist protests, strikes, and riots in France and the leftward sweep in Latin America will soon severely rip into the corporate interests of both the GOP and the elitist Democrats, along with their corporate financiers and entrenched neo-con policymakers.

In October, socialist Leon Roldos looks set to win Ecuador's presidency. If that occurs, Washington already previously placed an activist ambassador in Quito to turn up the heat on any incoming prospective socialist government in the oil-rich nation. Ecuador could end up as Latin America's second Venezuela, an oil-rich country opposed to Bush/neo-con hegemony. The most recent U.S. ambassador in Quito was Kristie Kenney, now posted to the coup-wracked Philippines where President Glorida Macapagal-Arroyo has been plagued by pro-Bush rebels within the Philippine military, and who is, conveniently, the wife of America's anti-Chavez provocateur ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield.

As the populist wave sweeps through Mexico and Nicaragua, where prospects look increasingly progressive and socialist, the real "coglioni" -- the neo-cons, free traders and international bankers, elitists of both U.S. duopolistic political parties, and religious fanatics will ultimately get their just rewards.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

Want more Bush? Elect McCain By Helen Thomas

Want more Bush? Elect McCain
By Helen Thomas
Hearst Newspapers

Sunday 09 April 2006

Washington - In his bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain is moving to the right.

The Arizona Republican, who failed to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, is the most visible Republican on television, outside the White House, and seems to never pass up an opportunity to appear on Sunday talk shows.

All this appears to be part of his effort to transform his image as a maverick independent so that he can make his pitch to the conservative Republican base that will vote in the party's primaries and caucuses two years hence.

McCain's focus is on Southern states where he will have to show his dedication to the conservatives who dominate the GOP. He was scheduled to be the main speaker at the Lincoln Day dinner in Lakeland, Fla., on Saturday. Later this spring, he will deliver the commencement address at Liberty University at Lynchburg, Va., the school founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell.

Falwell has indicated there are still some bridges to mend with McCain, who had called Falwell "an agent of intolerance" in his first bid for the presidency in 2000.

Although Falwell has not endorsed McCain, he has said that the senator "could be the GOP's best hope" if Sen. Hillary Clinton is nominated to head the Democratic ticket in 2008.

Falwell also says McCain is in the process of "healing the breach with evangelical groups."

Asked to explain his change of attitude toward the evangelist on "Meet the Press" Sunday, McCain said: "I believe that the Christian right has a major role to play in the Republican Party. One reason (that) is so is because they're so active and their followers are. And I believe they have a right to be part of our party."

McCain also has gone out of his way to cozy up to President Bush after their bitter rift in the 2000 presidential campaign. McCain has said he does not look back in anger at old political battles. That's wise - he's going to need Bush's backing in a presidential bid.

McCain also has taken other stands that should put him in good with Southern conservatives. Hailing from a military family - his father and grandfather were admirals in the Navy - he is a strong supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and believes the number of US troops there should be beefed up.

He is against abortion rights and gun-control laws and believes students should be taught the religion-oriented "intelligent design" theory of creation as well as the theory of scientific evolution.

His painful experience as a POW during the Vietnam War led him to buck the White House on the question of using torture to interrogate detainees and prisoners of war. Despite White House opposition, he triumphed with a 90-9 Senate vote on his anti-torture amendment to the defense appropriations bill.

Well, almost.

In signing the bill, the president issued a statement that under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, he did not have to abide by the anti-torture amendment. This is a dubious claim of presidential power that should be challenged.

McCain's political record is not entirely pristine. He was a member of the so-called Keating Five - five senators linked to Charles Keating in the savings and loan scandals in 1991. But a special investigator found that McCain had not been substantially involved in influence peddling but criticized him and three others for "questionable conduct."

That searing experience may explain why McCain has been an avid advocate of campaign finance reform.

With his "hail fellow well met" persona and tendency to jaw with the media and pundits in the back of the campaign bus, he has created the impression in some quarters that he is a "moderate."

Forget it. His voting record speaks for itself.

McCain is working hard to prove his staunch conservative credentials as he woos the far right in his party.

If he wins the presidency, the country can expect a continuation of Bush's aggressive foreign policy and ultra-right domestic programs.

Media Alert: Cartoon Time - Channel 4 Smears Chavez

By: Media Lens

Media Lens: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

On March 27, Channel 4 News included a report by Washington Correspondent Jonathan Rugman: 'Hugo to go?' (http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=2046)

Rugman relentlessly smeared Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, in a piece described by John Pilger as "one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen". (Email to Channel 4 News, copied to Media Lens, March 27, 2006)

Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow introduced the film:

"Now, he's the president with his own television show and a stream of semi-humorous invective hurled at America and George Bush. Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, accuses the US of planning to invade his country to take control of its vast oil reserves. And last night he invoked the ultimate deterrent - the bow and arrow dipped in Indian poison. 'If we have to put a few arrows into the invading gringo, then you'll be done in thirty seconds.'"

Snow is of course known for his own semi-humorous take on politics. But in the context of Rugman's report, and of wider political commentary, this introduction fits well as part of the ongoing cartoonisation of Chávez.

Cartoon 'bad guys' are of course depicted as absurd and wicked, and as being absurdly delighted by their wickedness. Likewise, enemies of the West are consistently painted by the media as ridiculous and menacing. Western leaders, on the other hand, are presented as dignified and rational - serious people who have ascended to the summit of a meritocratic social order. Thus, Snow followed his comical portrait of Chávez by noting the mature concerns of sensible people in the West:

"Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil exporter, and a major supplier to America itself - that causes jitters in Washington, where Chávez is seen as a demagogue who could spearhead a regional shift to the left. Chávez is undoubtedly popular at home, where he's spent billions on health and education programmes to improve the lives of the country's poor, although his critics point to an increasingly authoritarian streak."

The opening moments of Rugman's report recalled the Guardian's infamous October 2005 smear in which Noam Chomsky was pictured with Fidel Castro, John Pilger, and "en route to Hanoi to give a speech to the North Vietnamese". Chomsky commented at the time:

"That's my life: honoring commie-rats and the renegade who is the source of the word 'pilgerize' invented by journalists furious about his incisive and courageous reporting, and knowing that the only response they are capable of is ridicule." ('Chomsky answers Guardian,' November 13, 2005; www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?)

Rugman's film similarly showed footage of Chávez with Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and Qadaffi. Rugman's voiceover, strident and dramatic, hammered home the point:

"He supplies 15 per cent of America's oil, yet America's enemies are his friends. Hugo Chávez, in danger of joining a rogue's gallery of dictators and despots - Washington's latest Latin nightmare".

The film repeatedly depicted Chávez as a dictatorial menace, referring to his "personality cult" and to factories run as "Soviet-style collectives". Rugman asked:

"Is Chávez on the way to becoming a dictator?"

If so, what species of monster might we be contemplating?:

"He's no Saddam, but what's happening here does feel eerily familiar. A strongman buoyed up by oil defying the United States, using oil wealth to rearm and consolidate his own power. Setting off alarm bells in Washington where securing energy is a key foreign policy goal. A petro-state heading for a showdown with its northern neighbour."

"Rearm" is a media trigger word intended to suggest a resurgent menace - Hitler rearmed after the first world war. Saddam was rearming (we were told). When exactly did mighty Venezuela disarm?

Washington's goal is merely "securing energy" - surely a reasonable, rational priority for any modern, high-tech state. There was not a word about the unreasonable, barbaric corporate greed that has led the United States to exploit, terrorise and devastate its defenceless southern neighbours for decades.

Rugman interviewed Maria Corina Machado, describing her as a "civil rights activist". In fact she is a leader of Sumate. Last November, the New York Times reported:

"Ms. Machado does not hide her close relations with Washington, which has provided financial aid to Sumate, the anti-Chávez, election-monitoring organization she helps run. In May, she infuriated the government when she met with President Bush at the White House, and she further antagonized officials in September by announcing that Sumate had received a fresh infusion of $107,000 from Washington." (Juan Forero, 'Venezuela's best-loved, or maybe most-hated, citizen,' New York Times, November 19, 2005)

In a March 23 report Rugman again described Machado as a "civil rights activist", citing her as the source for his claim that "government critics" are "fearing another Zimbabwe here". (Rugman, 'Lord Vestey's farm,' Channel 4 News, March 23, 2006; http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=2022)

John Pilger sent a letter to Channel 4 News complaining of Rugman's report:

"This was a piece seemingly written by the US State Department, although Channel 4's Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, appeared on screen. It was one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen, qualifying as crude propaganda. I have been in Venezuela lately and almost nothing in Rugman's rant coincides with reality. Factories are like 'Soviet collectives'; a dictatorship is on the rise; Chávez is like Hitler (Rumsfeld); and the media is under government attack. The inversion of the truth throughout this travesty is demonstrated in the 'coverage' of a cowed media. Venezuela is a country in which 95 per cent of the press and TV and radio are owned by the far-right, who mount unrelenting daily attacks on the government unhindered. The Latin American Murdoch, Cisneros, unfettered, controls much of it. Indeed, it is probably the most concentrated, reactionary media on earth - but that was not worthy of a single word from Rugman." (Pilger, op., cit)

Chávez - Doing Something For The Poor

First elected in 1998, Chávez launched massive campaigns, described as Bolivarian Missions (named after the Venezuelan revolutionary, Simon Bolivar), to combat disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty, and other social ills. In a country of 25 million people, 1.4 million have been taught to read and write, while three million previously excluded from education due to poverty had enrolled in the education system. Seventy per cent of the population now enjoys access to free health care while 45 per cent receive subsidised food. Julia Buxton, a British scholar of Venezuelan politics, argues that the Chávez government "has brought marginalised and excluded people into the political process and democratised power". (Buxton, 'Resisting Confusion: Pundit Michael Shifter and Venezuela,' April 23, 2005; http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1428)

Chomsky comments on Chávez:

"The wealthy and the privileged hate him. On the other hand, the great majority of the population is very impoverished and has always been kept out of the country's enormous wealth. This Bolivarian Revolution, whatever you and I may think about it, is actually doing something for the poor and apparently they are reacting." (Chomsky interviewed by Steven Durel, 'Toward Freedom,' Social Change Today, November 7, 2005; http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20051107.htm)

Radical attempts to raise the living standards of the poor are not welcomed by US elites. Such reforms risk creating "the threat of a good example", unleashing demands for greater equality and justice among impoverished people across the region. The potential cost to Western corporations exploiting this poverty is incalculable.

Thomas Carothers, a former Reagan State Department official, described US policy in Latin America. He explained how the US sought to maintain "the basic order of... quite undemocratic societies" and to avoid "populist-based change" that might upset "established economic and political orders" and open "a leftist direction". (Quoted, Neil Lewis, 'What can the US really do about Haiti?', New York Times, December 6, 1987)

In February, US media watch dog, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), reported that 95 per cent of the nearly 100 US press commentaries covering Venezuelan politics during the first six months of 2005 expressed clear hostility to Chávez.

The Wall Street Journal labelled Chávez a "tyrant" and "strongman", claiming he had presided over "the collapse of democracy". Three Journal editorials also referred to Chávez as a "strongman", while the editorial board suggested that Chávez should be placed on a list of the world's worst dictators. The Los Angeles Times called Chávez a "would-be dictator," arguing he engaged in "undemocratic tactics". (Justin Delacour, 'The Op-Ed Assassination of Hugo Chávez,' February 13, 2006;
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1670)

And yet the Venezuelan government and its programme of change have been ratified by the Venezuelan electorate in eight elections and referenda. FAIR noted that, in spite of the fact that recent polls indicate that Chávez's domestic approval rating is above 70 per cent, "almost all commentaries about Venezuela represent the views of a small minority of the country, led by a traditional economic elite that has repeatedly attempted to overthrow the government in clearly anti-democratic ways". (Ibid)

Similarly, in Britain the Independent wrote of "the Venezuelan strongman, Hugo Chávez". (Rupert Cornwell, 'The 5-minute briefing: South America's struggle towards democracy,' The Independent, April 22, 2005) The Financial Times wrote of how "the populist militaristic strongman has irked Washington with his anti-US rhetoric". (Andy Webb-Vidal, 'US softens its stance on Venezuela in belief Chávez will hang on to power,' Financial Times, August 6, 2004)

Chávez insists America is planning to invade his country. Chomsky argues that this would probably already have happened, but for the disastrous turn of events in Iraq.

Some kind of military action is certainly an option for the West. In an April 2002 article titled, 'US "gave the nod" to Venezuelan coup,' the Guardian reported US involvement in a coup that temporarily removed Chávez from office earlier that month. A few weeks before the coup attempt, US administration officials had met business leaders who took over the interim government after Chávez was arrested. The US defence department also confirmed that the Venezuelan army's chief of staff, General Rincon, visited the Pentagon the previous December and met senior officials.

Although the Organisation of American States denounced the coup attempt, as did all Venezuela's neighbours, Washington was eager to acknowledge the new government, declaring: "A transitional civilian government has been installed. This government has promised early elections." (Julian Borger and Alex Bellos, 'US 'gave the nod' to Venezuelan coup,' The Guardian, April 17, 2002)

In February, Tony Blair preached ethics to Venezuela:

"It is rather important that the government of Venezuela realise that if they want to be respected members of the international community they should abide by the rules of the international community." ('Chávez rejects "attack" by Blair'; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4695482.stm, February 9, 2006)

The response from Chávez was telling:

"You, Mr Blair, do not have the morality to call on anyone to respect the rules of the international community. You are precisely the one who has flouted international law the most... siding with Mr Danger [George Bush] to trample the people in Iraq."

By contrast, Jonathan Rugman said of the invasion of Iraq:

"Yes, the Americans want democracy here, but they don't want to die for it." (Channel 4 News, November 12, 2003)

Rugman warned, without irony, that if the Americans "democratise too quickly" they risked handing power over to Shia clerics.

There is an ugly truth behind the high technology, smart suits and genial smiles - the modern mass media system provides the vital propaganda component for a brutal system of exploitation.

But what will we see when the cruise missiles scorch the skies over Venezuela? When yet more poor, brown-skinned people are left incinerated by the weapons of the wealthy? Will we see the real thing: terrible crimes, the trampling of hope - the West once again imposing poverty for profit on helpless human beings?

Or will we see the media's version: one more tinpot dictator getting what he deserved? A "rogue's gallery" of cronies and lackeys - the "willing executioners" of a "rogue state" - receiving their just desserts? Will the Sun headline read: 'Chávez Shafted!'? Will we see our leaders sincerely mourning the "collateral damage" inflicted on the loved ones and little ones with whom, as ever, "we have no argument"?

Will we be appalled, or will we stand a little taller, a little prouder, alongside the Rugmans at the thought that the civilised West has once again made its "tough choices" wisely in bringing "order" to this unruly world?


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John Pilger's Email To Channel 4's Jon Snow (re: Snow's anti-Chavez bullshit article)

John Pilger Email To Channel 4's Jon Snow
Posted by The Editors on March 28, 2006, 9:39 am
User logged in as: Editor

A version has been sent personally to Jon Snow...
The Editors

John

Last night (March 27), Channel 4 News broadcast a relatively long piece on Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela. On Channel 4's website you get a flavour: "He is in danger of joining a rogue's gallery of dictators and despots -- Washington's latest Latin nightmare."

This was a piece seemingly written by the US State Department, although Channel 4's Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, appeared on screen. It was one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen, qualifying as crude propaganda. I have been in Venezuela lately and almost nothing in Rugman's rant coincides with reality. Factories are like "Soviet collectives"; a dictatorship is on the rise; Chavez is like Hitler (Rumsfeld); and the media is under government attack. The inversion of the truth throughout this travesty is demonstrated in the "coverage" of a cowed media. Venezuela is a country in which 95 per cent of the press and TV and radio are owned by the far-right. who mount unrelenting daily attacks on the government unhindered. The Latin American Murdoch, Cisneros, unfettered, controls much of it. Indeed, it is probably the most concentrated, reactionary media on earth -- but that was not worthy of a single word from Rugman.

The dishonesty of interviewing Maria Corina Machado and calling her a "human rights activist" was breathtaking. She is a leader of Sumate ('Join up'), an extreme right organisati on that was deeply involved in the 2002 coup. She met Bush in the White House shortly before the coup. There was no mention of this. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, is dismissed as a Chavez protege", a puppet, a ludicrous description of a man who has been in polityics longer than Chavez and has just won a landslide election. No mention of this.

Chavez himself is portrayed by Rugman as a comical dictator, with his folksy Latin way (one reason ordinary people love him) taken out of any context. In fact, this highly intelligent, accessible man has overseen victory in nine democratic elections in less than eight years -- a world record. In crude Soviet-flick style, he is shown with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Gaddafy when these brief encounters only had to do with Opec and oil. (He met Saddam literally in a day-long stopover).

Chavez is said to have "torn up contracts" with foreign oil companies. The con tracts were barely legal, based on loopholes which Chavez's predecessaor Rafael Caldera exploited to give away much of Venezuela's oil, in effect; billions of dollars went into the pockets of Venezuela's wealthy minority. No mention of this.

Utter bullshit about Venezuela helping Iran develop a nuclear capability is sourced to "press reports" (discredited in the United States) peddled by axe-grinding outsiders, in league with Washington, along with other half-baked hearsay. There was little, apart from tokens, about the way the Chavez government has changed millions of people's lives for the better. Rugman whined that he was "held for 30 hours" by police in Caracas. Oh, how dramatic for him. This is a country threatened day and night by the United States; there was nothing from our Channel 4 hero about "Operation Bilbao", to which serious US analysts like William Arkin have given credibility and which is about overthrowing the elected government of Ve nezuela. In his brief captivity, Rugman would have learned that this is a country, although under constant military threat, and threats from within, has not a single political prisoner.

While Chavez was offered up as a clown, Condaleeza Rice was given true gravitas. I could go on, but that's enough. This was a disgrace from beginning to end. Worse, it joined the kind of hysteria in the US that is following the Bush administration's agenda of "positioning" Venezuela as a "rogue state" and a threat to US interests: in other words, softening it up for attack. If and when it comes, the Rugmans will share some of the responsibility.

John Pilger

Long Live The 9/11 Conspiracy! Anyone still care about the heap of disturbing, unsolved questions surrounding Our Great Tragedy?

Long Live The 9/11 Conspiracy!
Anyone still care about the heap of disturbing, unsolved questions surrounding Our Great Tragedy?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
From: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/03/29/notes032906.DTL&nl=fix
Here is your must-read for the month. Here is your oh-my-God- I'm-sending-this-piece- to-every-smart-person-I-know hunk of outstanding, distressing, disquieting media bliss.

Here it is: an absolutely exceptional inside scoop on the white-hot world of Sept. 11 conspiracy theories [ http://nymag.com/news/features/16464/index.html], writ large and smart by Mark Jacobson over at New York magazine, and it's mandatory reading for anyone and everyone who's ever entertained the nagging thought that something -- or rather, far more than one something -- is deeply wrong with the official line on what actually happened on Sept. 11.

See, it is very likely that you already know that Sept. 11 will go down in the conspiracy history books as a far more sinister affair than, say, the murky swirl of the Kennedy assassination. You probably already know that much of what exactly happened on Sept. 11 remains deeply unsettling and largely unsolved -- or to put another way, if you don't know all of this and if you fully and blithely accept the official Sept. 11 story, well, you haven't been paying close enough attention.

But on this, the third anniversary of the launch of Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq by way of whoring the tragedy of Sept. 11 for his cronies' appalling gain, what you might not know, what gets so easily forgotten in the mists of time and via the endless repetition of the orthodox Sept. 11 tale, is the sheer volume, the staggering array of unanswered questions about just about every single aspect of Sept. 11 -- the planes, the WTC towers, the Pentagon, the fires, the passengers and the cell phone calls and the firefighters and, well, just about everything. It is, when you look closely, all merely a matter of how far down the rabbit hole you are willing to go.

Verily, Jacobson, in his New York mag piece, encounters crackpots and fringe nutballs and those who think Sept. 11 was connected to aliens and electromagnetic fields and the Illuminati. It can, unfortunately, get a little crazy. But there is also a very smart, grounded, intelligent and surprisingly large faction -- which includes eyewitnesses, Sept. 11 widows, former generals, pilots, professors, engineers, WTC maintenance workers and many, many more -- who point to a rather shocking pile of evidence that says there is simply no way 19 fanatics with box cutters sent by some bearded lunatic in a cave could have pulled off the most perfectly orchestrated air attack of the century. Not without serious help, anyway.

Whose help? This, of course, is the biggest question of all, one which many of the more well-researched theories go a surprisingly long way toward answering.

You have to sift and sort. There are disturbing questions about collapse speeds and controlled demolitions and why the towers fell when the all-steel infrastructure was designed to easily withstand the temperatures of any sort of fire, even burning jet fuel. There are questions of the mysterious, media-documented blasts deep in the WTC towers that took place after the planes hit. There are questions of why there was such a short-selling spree on shares of American Airlines and United Air Lines the day before the attack, huge doubts about the failures of NORAD and the FAA, the bizarre case of the missing plane in the Pentagon crash, and also the downing of Flight 93 where, according to the coroner, no blood or major plane wreckage was actually found. There is, ultimately, the stunning failure of the entire multi-trillion-dollar American air-defense system. Just for starters.

There is also the very big question of what happened to 7 WTC, the only building not hit by anything at all, but which collapsed anyway, in a perfect controlled-demolition sort of way, for no reason anyone can sufficiently explain. But which just so happened to contain vital offices for the IRS, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission and more.

But perhaps Jacobson's article is insufficient for you. Perhaps you have heard much of it before, or you're more of the visceral type and need to actually see the proofs in order to delve deeper, have them laid out like gruesome body parts in a mesmerizing autopsy. Fair enough.

For you, we have the surprisingly compelling indie documentary "9/11 Loose Change" (Google it), freely available on the Internet and produced by three very astute and very young and very strong-willed dudes who managed to cobble together a truly astounding array of proofs and interviews and evidence, a full 1 hour and 20 minutes' worth of mesmerizing footage you will not be able to easily forget.

Or maybe you should peruse one of the countless Sept. 11 conspiracy sites, many of which link to relevant video and one of which -- scholarsfor911truth.org -- claims to be "a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and scholars, in fields as diverse as history, science, military affairs, psychology, and philosophy, dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11." Start there.

Now, it's very true that some of the more specious conspiracy claims have been largely discredited and proved false. Some of the more radical "evidence" gathered by theorists is quite suspect and easily placed in the category of no-way-in-hell. This is valid. This is as it should be. You have to chew through a lot of skin and gristle to get to the real meat.

But oh the meat. The overwhelming quantity, the bloody, deadly stench of it. Fact is, it is quite impossible to watch the entire "Loose Change" documentary and not come away just a little shaken, a little awed by the sheer number of perversely interrelated facts and aberrant coincidences-that-aren't-coincidences, shaking your head at how it all seems to irrefutably prove there is far, far more to the Sept. 11 tragedy than just crazy Osama and his band of zealots, as you begin to sink into a sighing morass of rage and frustration and suspicion and mistrust. You almost can't help it.

Of course, there is another option. There is another way out. You may, as is the standard cultural default, simply ignore it all, scoff and roll your eyes and shrug it all off because it's just too bleak and distasteful to entertain the idea that the dark Sept. 11 thread winds all the way through the NSA and the FBI and the White House and the Project for the New American Century and Dick Cheney's mangled soul and God only knows where else.

But then again, no. You have to look. You have to try. Knowledge is power, and while the truth may be spurious and slippery and messy and deep, the pursuit of it is just about the only thing we have left. Give that up, and all that's left is spiritual numbness, emotional stasis and death. So what are you waiting for?

*************
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes a tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts.

As if that weren't enough, Mark also contributes to the hot, spankin' SF GateCulture Blog.

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http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00031.htm

DeLay implicated in Florida gangland hit of casino boats owner.

Former GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay's surprise announcement that he will resign from Congress in a few weeks and not stand for re-election after winning the GOP primary in his Houston area district came after a bombshell was dropped in the Broward County, Florida trial of former John Gotti hit man Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello for the February 2001 gangland slaying of Sun Cruz casino boat owner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis. Moscatiello is on trial with Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari and James "Pudgy" Fiorillo in the murder of Boulis.

On April 1, the Miami Herald reported that Moscatiello was a long time informant for the FBI at the time of the murder of Boulis. Moscatiello quit his association with the the FBI shortly after the murder of Boulis. Recently convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his colleague Adam Kidan forced Boulis to sell Sun Cruz Casino Cruises to them in a scheme engineered by Gov. Jeb Bus to establish a GOP money launcering contrivance. The state pressured Boulis, a Greek national, to sell Sun Cruz to Abramoff because of an obscure state requirement that shipping companies be owned by U.S. citizens. Jeb Bush, using Florida's regulatory mechanisms behind the scenes, ensured Boulis was pressured to divest his interests in Sun Cruz to Abramoff.

WMR sources report that Broward County prosecutors are livid about the failure of the FBI to inform them that Moscatiello was an FBI informant at the time of the Boulis murder. They are convinced that the George W. and Jeb Bush administrations in Washington and Tallahassee, respectively, deliberately blocked the prosecution from linking Moscatiello to the criminal cases against Abramoff and Kidan. Kidan placed Moscatiello and Ferrari on the Sun Cruz payroll after Abramoff assumed control of the company. Abramoff and Kidan were sentenced to over 5 years in prison last week for lying to financers in their purchase of Sun Cruz from Boulis. The light sentences were the result of plea agreements in which they promised to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

However, the Sun Cruz case goes far beyond Abramoff and involves DeLay, according to informed sources. The Broward County prosecutors believe that the FBI's written summaries (FD-302s) of their interviews with Moscatiello were withheld from the prosecution by the FBI in order to protect senior GOP officials. Had the prosecution known Moscatiello was an FBI informer, he could have been offered a plea bargain in return for his cooperation against Republican politicians in Florida and Washington, DC.

The story behind the story: DeLay's involvement with Florida gangland mobsters probed by prosecutors stymied by withheld FBI interview forms and obstruction from George W. and Jeb Bush.

Prosecutors and investigative reporters in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are focusing on the time line involving Sun Cruz, Boulis, Abramoff, and DeLay. In February 2000, Abramoff began negotiations with Boulis for the sale of Sun Cruz, which Boulis eventually sold to Abramoff for a mere $147 million. At the time, Abramoff was a lobbyist for the well-connected Preston Gates law firm. After the November 2000 election of George W. Bush, Boulis protested that he had been defrauded by Abramoff and Kidan in the sale of Sun Cruz. To avoid legal issues, Abramoff and Kidan began to make legal moves to move Sun Cruz's corporate headquarters from Florida to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas.

On December 13, 2000, Abramoff's Sun Cruz paid $145,000 to Moscatiello for "consulting services." On January 19, 2001, one day prior to the inauguration of George W. Bush, Boulis filed court action to block Abramoff's and Kidan's involvement with Sun Cruz. On January 20, 2001, Kidan and former DeLay aide Michael Scanlon met in DeLay's congressional office in Washington to "officially" celebrate the Bush inauguration. Scanlon, former DeLay aide Tony Rudy, Abramoff, and Kidan are all cooperating with federal prosecutors after agreeing to plea agreements.

On January 25, 2001, Abramoff reportedly flew DeLay's senior staffer Tim Berry, named his chief of staff in 2002, to Tampa for the Super Bowl and a meeting on one of the Sun Cruz casino boats. Suspiciously, Berry did not report the trip on disclosure forms, something DeLay's office later called an "honest mistake."

On February 6, 2001, Boulis was shot to death in his car after leaving his Fort Lauderdale office. Florida prosecutors have uncovered preliminary evidence that Sun Cruz was wrested from Boulis to enable hundreds of millions of dollars in cash could be laundered into GOP campaigns, including the DeLay and Bush-Cheney 2004 campaigns, from the casino boats.