Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Homeland Insecurity FEATURED ARTICLES - Foreign Monitors to Report on U.S. Presidential Vote, Reuters, - July Surprised, The New Republic - Not Scared Yet? Try Connecting These Dots, by Ray McGovern QUOTE OF THE DAY "I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." - - Adlai Stevenson KNOW YOUR HISTORY - August 11th 1970 -- United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez begins a hunger strike to protest union harassment by Teamsters officials. See the United Farm Workers web site at: http://www.ufw.org 1978 -- American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) is passed which makes recommendations to all government agencies on how to help protect Indian ceremonies. Read the Act & its amendment at: http://www2.cr.nps.gov/laws/religious.htm CORRECTION: In Monday's Blog, August 9, 1994 was cited as the day of the first meeting in 1992 of the working group on indigenous populations of the sub commission on the promotion and protection of human rights. The correct date was actually, August 9, 1894 MORE: http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2004/08/08/new29.html RHINO HERE: Today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE is by Ray McGovern,  a CIA analyst for over three decades, now organizing military and Intelligence veterans against the Bush regime. If he is concerned for the future of free American elections, we should all be. In this piece analyses the string of comments & clues coming out of the mouths of shrub gang members concerning the possibility of postponing the November election. Scary conspiracy theories one might dismiss, but remember the words of Joseph Stalin, "The people who cast the votes do not decide an election, the people who count the votes do."  Need more convincing? Check out the Flash animation at the following link: BUSHFLASH, by Eric Blumrich  http://www.ericblumrich.com/gta.html Related material (suggested by Dan Ellsberg), for websites discussing Bush administration (and much older) plans for U.S. "Martial Rule" perhaps to be sold as "Homeland Security", Google under "Garden Plot" or "Cable Splicer."  See, for example: http://www.uhuh.com/control/garden.htm http://www.tackamarks.freeservers.com/photo4.html http://www.democracyunbound.com/cablesplicer.html http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/suppression.html Response Suggestion:  For a start, Contact your Senators and congresspeople. Tell them to make sure our elections are not "postponed" or fixed. Can anything be done to stop potential election fraud or the threat of election postponement?  This next article reports that an international election monitoring group, The Organization for Security and Cooperation, will be sending teams to overlook democracy in America come November. Foreign Monitors to Report on U.S. Presidential Vote By Saul Hudson, Reuters, Mon Aug 9, 2004 Major international monitors will issue an unprecedented report on the handling of this year's U.S. presidential election, after the 2000 vote raised concerns of disenfranchisement, U.S. officials said on Monday.  The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will a send a team to observe the vote in a move applauded by Democrats who had sought monitors because they felt ballots were unfairly left uncounted last time, particularly in Florida.  In 2000, voters split down the middle in Florida, which was ridiculed worldwide as it spawned court battles over whether and how to count imperfect ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled George W. Bush was the winner by 537 votes, which put him in the White House. With polls showing this year's election between Bush and Democrat John Kerry will also be tight, civil rights groups have raised concern over a repeat of the 2000 debacle.  The OSCE, which groups 55 countries, does not have a mandate to judge the fairness of this year's vote. Still, while some OSCE representatives have observed U.S. presidential votes before, this year will be the first time they will report publicly afterward on any shortcomings it finds, according to State Department officials. MORE: Monitors Then there's the recent capture of a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative which was announced just as John Kerry was to make his Dem Convention speech. Coincidence? The Rhino many others think not. I've been speculating, as have others, that the gang will prance out Osama just before the election, or someone who looks enough like him (Sirhan Sirhan, maybe) that the American public will believe the gang has captured him after all this time. HAS TNR'S PREDICTION COME TRUE? July Surprised by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari, The New Republic, 8.16.04 On July 29, Faisal Saleh Hayyat, Pakistan's interior minister, announced the arrest of a high-ranking Al Qaeda figure on local television. After a tense standoff in Gujrat, a city some 100 miles southeast of Islamabad, Pakistani security forces had captured the Tanzanian jihadist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the FBI's twenty-second "Most Wanted" terrorist and a suspected conspirator in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. A proud Hayyat dubbed the arrest "another crowning success of Pakistan's security apparatus in the fight against terrorism." But it is doubtful Hayyat was really addressing his fellow Pakistanis: He made the announcement at midnight. More likely, his intended audience was half a world away--in the United States, where, in the middle of the afternoon, John Kerry was preparing to deliver his nomination speech to the Democratic National Convention. While media coverage of the capture didn't exactly overshadow Kerry--Ghailani isn't Osama bin Laden--the announcement's timing seemed suspicious. Ghailani wasn't apprehended on July 29 at all, but rather four days earlier. Last month, The New Republic reported that the Bush administration was pressuring the Pakistanis to deliver a "high-value target" (HVT) in time for the November elections ("July Surprise?" July 19). According to an official with Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), a White House aide told ISI chief Ehsan ul-Haq during a spring visit to Washington that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July," during the convention. When asked this week if the announcement of Ghailani's capture on July 29 confirmed tnr's reporting, National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack told the Los Angeles Times, "There is no truth to that statement."  But some American and Pakistani intelligence and counterterrorism officials do question the timing of the announcement... MORE: Prediction And in reading the BOTTOM LINE today, The Rhino suggests, "Never believe the word of someone who has had an oil tanker named after them. (Meaning Condoleeza)" 9:22:25 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - Not Scared Yet? Try Connecting These Dots "SEND THIS ARTICLE TO A REPUBLICAN!" Not Scared Yet? Try Connecting These Dots by Ray McGovern, CommonDreams.org, August 9, 2004 "Pre-election period…pre-election plot…pre-election threats" These rolled off National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's lips no less than seven times yesterday on CNN's Late Edition as she discussed the likely timing of a terrorist attack. She stayed on message.  Dr. Rice said the government had actually "picked up discussion" relating to "trying to do something in the pre-election period," and added that information on the threat came from "active multiple sources." I found myself wondering if those sources are any better than those cited by Attorney General John Ashcroft on May 26, when he launched this campaign, citing "credible intelligence from multiple sources that al-Qaeda plans an attack on the United States" before the November election. Ashcroft's warning came out of the blue, without the customary involvement of the directors of the C.I.A. and Department of Homeland Security (although the latter quickly fell in line). In support of his warning, Ashcroft cited "an al-Qaeda spokesman," who the FBI later was embarrassed to admit is "The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades." Sinister sounding though the name may be, this "group" is thought to consist of no more than one person with a fax machine, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official. That fax is notorious for claiming credit for all manner of death and destruction. Are the recent warnings and heightened alerts legitimate or contrived? Is this yet another case of "intelligence" being conjured up to serve the political purposes of President Bush and his top advisers? The record of the past three years gives rise to the suspicion that this is precisely what is afoot... MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0809-11.htm "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog Bbr> 8:24:57 AM    comment

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