Paranotes 2001
by Al Hidell

Clampdown in the Homeland
A perpetual war that never ends. Allies that become enemies. Enemies that become allies. Massive government surveillance projects. Congressmen instructing us, as they did recently on PBS's NewsHour, to keep an eye on our neighbors and report anything odd or suspicious, no matter how minor. And a shadowy Osama bin Goldstein releasing subversive communiqués from parts unknown. Break out the Victory Gin, because it looks like George Orwell's 1984 finally began on September 11, 2001. In an instant, dissent and debate-which had been generally accepted hallmarks of our democracy-have become "inappropriate," especially any suggestion that US policies and practices in the Middle East may be motivating the world's radical Islamics. No, they just have an incomprehensible "hatred of freedom and democracy," and that's the end of it. Meanwhile, the list of "terrorists" is expanding to include hackers (who could get life imprisonment without parole under the Justice Department's proposed Anti-Terrorism Act) and even MIT professor and political analyst Noam Chomsky. Chomsky - along with several left-wing and anarchist groups - was named as a suggested target in the War on Terrorism in a September 18 press release by the Jewish lobbying organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Libertarian Socialist News (www.overthrow.com) notes that the ADL's advice echoes an earlier statement made by then-FBI Director Louis Freeh in May 2001 Terrorism hearings, when he told Congress, "Anarchists and extremist socialist groups, many of which ... have an international presence... represent a potential threat in the United States. For example, anarchists, operating individually and in groups, caused much of the damage during the Seattle World Trade meeting." As author George Monbiot (www.Monbiot.com) observed in the September 18 Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk), "Radical opposition has seldom been more necessary. But it has seldom been more vulnerable. The right is seizing the political space which has opened up where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood. Civil liberties are suddenly negotiable." 

All Hemp Products Banned by DEA 
An important decision was made on October 9, 2001 by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) concerning the legal status of products marketed in the US made from portions of the cannabis plant. The portions of the plant used to make these products are excluded from the definition of marijuana. Such products include paper, clothing, bird seed, food, beverages, shampoos and body lotions. Such products may be labeled or advertised as being made from hemp, and some may indicate that the product contains a certain percentage of THC. In the DEA's view, "any material, compound, mixture, or preparation which contains any quantity of THC is a Schedule I controlled substance." A grace period is being provided for persons to dispose of existing inventories of hemp products that are not exempted under this interim ruling. Any person who possesses a THC-containing hemp product not exempted from control under this interim rule has until February 6, 2002 to dispose of such product in the manner described in this document. Comments should be submitted to:

Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Diversion Control, Drug Enforcement Administration, Washington, DC 20537; Attention: DEA Federal Register Representative/CCD. 

Comments must be received by DEA on or before December 10, 2001. If DEA determines based on any comments received that a modification of this interim rule is warranted, such modification will be specified in the final rule. The entire ruling may be read at: http://www.hempreport.com.

Mass Murderer Pays Fine, Is Released
In June 2001, S. Lee pled guilty in the deaths of 21 people, and the serious injury of 100 more. Amazingly, she paid a fine and was released. The reason? Sara Lee is a corporation, not a person. Sara Lee pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts in connection with a listeriosis outbreak that led to the deaths of at least 21 consumers who ate Ball Park Franks hot dogs and other meat products. The company paid a $200,000 fine. In December 1998, after the damage was done, Sara Lee ordered a recall of millions of pounds of hot dogs and deli meats. According to the Detroit Free Press, beginning in July 1998, after the replacement of an old refrigeration unit, workers recorded a sharp increase in the presence of cold-loving bacteria, a class that includes the deadly Listeria monocytogenes. The number remained high until the company stopped performing tests in November 1998, a month before the Sara Lee recall. "Sara Lee was doing testing of the environment in the plant for cold-loving bacteria," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Then their tests started coming up positive, so they stopped testing. They knew they had a problem with bacteria in the plant. But instead of solving it, they chose to ignore it." If the company knew that they had a Listeria monocytogenes problem and ignored it, they could have been charged with a felony. In an interview, U.S. Attorney Phillip Green said there was insufficient evidence to bring a felony charge. Recently, when asked whether President Bush-a strong supporter of the death penalty for humans-supports the death penalty for corporate criminals (that is, revoking the charter of a corporation that has been convicted of a crime that has resulted in death), White House spokesman Ari Fleischer responded, "The President does not weigh in on those matters of justice. They should not be dictated by decisions made at the White House." ("The Ball Park Franks Fiasco," Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, www.alternet.org) 

Department of Defense "Loses" $1.1 Trillion
With all the talk about increased funding for our impoverished military (Department of Defense (DoD) spending actually increased during the Clinton years, just not as much as some would have liked), we should take a moment to consider what happens to the billions upon billions of dollars currently being spent. The General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, wrote in its January 2001 report, "DoD Major Management Challenges and Program Risks," that the Pentagon "continues to confront pervasive and complex financial-management problems and has been on our list of high-risk areas vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement" and that "to date, no major part of the department's operations has passed the test of an independent financial audit." The GAO report also found that the DoD had "an inability to reconcile an estimated $7 billion difference between its available fund balances and the Treasury's balance (in other words, the Pentagon can't balance its checkbook, to the tune of $7 billion dollars.) It gets worse. In May 2001, DoD Deputy Inspector General Robert Lieberman reported to Congress - in typical Bureaucratese - that "the extensive DoD efforts to compile and audit the FY [fiscal year] 2000 financial statements for the department as a whole... could not overcome the impediments caused by poor systems and unreliable documentation of transactions and assets." He then read an eight-page summary of DoD fiduciary failures. Lieberman admitted that $4.4 trillion in "adjustments" to the Pentagon's books had to be made to compile the required financial statements, and that $1.1 trillion of that amount "could not be supported by reliable information." In other words, $1.1 trillion dollars went somewhere to someone, but no one can account for it. To put that amount in perspective, $1.1 trillion dollars is more than the federal government collected in all individual and corporate tax revenue for 1999. Looked at another way, nearly 5.5 million Americans would have to work their entire lives to pay $1.1 trillion in taxes. ("DoD Can't Find $1 Trillion," August 15, 2001, www.InsightMag.com) 

Suspicious Stock Trading
A subplot to the national tragedy of 9/11 emerged just days later when financial analyst Phil Erlanger noticed highly suspicious trading activity in airline and hotel stocks in the days and weeks leading up to the attack. As Erlanger notes on his website (www.erlangersqueezeplay.com), dramatic spikes in short selling (so-called "put" options) occurred in stocks of both American and United Airlines. "Puts" are bets that a particular stock or security is going to fall in value. The stocks of major hotel chains, including Marriott, also showed similar trading activity. An insurance firm, Marsh & McLennan, with offices at the top of the World Trade Center, showed a sharp increase in the buying of put options. Erlanger explains that these levels of trading have not been seen in years, and that this activity indicates foreknowledge of the attacks. Erlanger asks, "Was this direct manipulation by terrorist organizations looking to reap a quick windfall from their criminal acts?" "Put" trading prior to assassination is an old trick. A similar sharp rise in "put" trading occurred on November 21, 1963, the day before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. According to Lincoln Lawrence in Were We Controlled?, a record short-selling spree swamped the New York Stock Exchange on this date, prompting a massive short-sell. "Someone" reaped $500 million 1963 dollars, the equivalent of $2 billion dollars today, when the market crashed on news of the assassination. (See PARANOIA Issue 9, "The Dan Rather Connection") 

Let the Roundup Begin
In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks in NYC, stocks of publicly traded prison companies have skyrocketed 300% in anticipation of a massive roundup of illegal aliens and other criminals. The crime rate is also expected to rise due to an expected recession. Corrections Corp. of America, the nation's largest private prison company, was on the brink of bankruptcy a few months prior to the attacks. But with sudden "new business" after the attack its stock rose a whopping 308%. Prison security analyst James MacDonald is quoted as saying, "They got immediate returns, but it's going to take a while for any new prisons to make their way into the market." It shouldn't take too long, however. The Federal Bureau of Prisons in early October requested bids to build two prisons to hold criminal aliens in Georgia. The Bureau will also be seeking bids early next year to build three more prisons in the southwestern desert area. In addition, according to the New York Post, private prison investors are "jubilant" about an expected U.S. Supreme court ruling that would bar any inmate from suing a privately run prison for civil rights violations. 

Networks Agree to Censorship
In mid October, executives of the five major US television networks met and decided that there are some things it would be best for the American people not to know. This act of collective self-censorship was done at the request of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Self-censorship during wartime is sometimes necessary in order to protect US forces. For example, specific troop locations, movements, and tactics are often withheld from news reports. However, in this case the censorship had to do with ideas and viewpoints, albeit unpopular ones. The networks agreed to edit any videotaped statements by Osama bin Laden and his followers "so as not to give their more inflammatory statements airtime." A secondary concern, voiced by Ms. Rice, was that the terrorists might sneak coded messages into their tapes. (On this point, writer Susan Sontag recently observed, "Excuse me, but does anyone over the age of 6 really think that the way Osama bin Laden has to communicate with his agents is by posing in that Flintstone set of his and pulling on his left earlobe to send secret signals?") The views of bin Laden are in fact newsworthy, because they provide insight into his motives and goals. The American people should be trusted to make a reasonable assessment of his statements, no matter how strange or ludicrous they might appear. We deserve an answer to the "Whys" that have echoed since September 11. 

In a similar development, a group of major US print and electronic media, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, has agreed to give up on an investigation they funded into the conduct of last November's election, the closest and most controversial in American history. Although they have already spent more than $1 million to have an independent body analyze the Florida ballots, they claim that continuing the investigation would "waste resources" that now must be used to cover the War on Terrorism. (Canadian Globe and Mail, October 12, 2001) 

Human Cloning Going Forward in Secret
Dr. Severino Antinori has told a National Academy of Science panel in Washington DC that he will proceed with plans to provide cloned children for infertile couples in November of 2001. Dr. Brigitte Boisselier has also announced plans to begin making cloned babies, saying that "people have the right to use their genes the way they want." Dr. Boisselier is a Raelian Bishop, responsible for the cloning projects of the Raelians, a UFO group which claims 55,000 members worldwide (www.rael.org). In the early 90s, the Raelians founded a company called Clonaid in the Bahamas, the first company offering to clone human beings. Clonaid was subsequently closed down by the Bahamian government after pressure from the French media. According to their website (www.clonaid.com), Boisselier has founded another company in the US, which is now carrying out the Clonaid projects. The name and location of the company are being kept secret and hundreds of potential clients are on the waiting list. The company's website claims its first phase will subcontract existing laboratories to perform cloning, and that it may sponsor American laboratories working on human cloning whose government subsidies have been cut. 

Bush Critic Commits Suicide in Arkansas
The author of a book about George W. Bush has killed himself, police said. James Howard Hatfield, 43, wrote Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President in 1999. The unauthorized biography accused Bush, among other things, of covering up a cocaine arrest. A hotel housekeeper discovered the body, Springdale, Arkansas police Detective Al Barrios said. Barrios said the man apparently overdosed on two kinds of prescription drugs. Police "don't suspect foul play." (Associated Press, July 20, 2001)

Tax Rebate Not a Rebate
That Tax "Rebate" check you received is really an advance on your 2001 refund. In other words, your refund in April will be $300 smaller than it would have been, or your tax bill will be $300 higher. "I think people think what they're getting is a refund of taxes they paid in 2000," said Gary Dudley, the tax partner-in-charge at Deloitte & Touche's Denver office. "If they think their taxes are going to be lower April 15 (from this change), they're not." The IRS could have included a line at the end of next year's 1040 where you took the amount of the refund check and reduced your refund, or added that money to the tax bill you owe. Instead, the amount owed that you get from the tables at the back of the booklet will have this unpleasant fact "built in." (Detroit News, July 26, 2001)

Secret Power Cartel Caused Rate Increases
In May 2001, Loretta Lynch, the head of the California Public Utilities Commission, bluntly declared that her state's energy crisis "is no accident." She stated it was due to the "coordinated behavior" of a secret "cartel" of power companies. In a Los Angeles Times interview, Lynch said the companies unnecessarily closed plants in order to inflate prices. She stated that her agency, along with the California attorney general's office, is investigating patterns of plant outages that have created "artificial shortages," particularly when the state has issued emergency alerts due to seriously low electricity levels. "There are instances where plants could have produced, and they chose not to," Lynch charged. "And it is clear that there are instances that plants, when called to produce, chose not to produce," even when they were obligated to do so under special contracts with the state. Lynch told the Times that the investigation by the Commission and the attorney general's office has already produced enough evidence to warrant taking legal action against the generators. The Times noted that plant shutdowns are a key factor in sending power prices from $200 a megawatt hour in December 2000 to $1,900 a megawatt in March 2001. Gary Ackerman, executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum, a trade association funded by large power producers, told the Times that Lynch's allegations were "the height of idiocy." (Reuters, May 18, 2001)

Grassy Knoll Revisited
Was a shot fired from the grassy knoll during the assassination of President Kennedy? The Warren Commission said No, The House Assassinations Committee said Yes, and a special panel of the National Academy of Sciences said No. Now, a recent study has suggested that the House Assassinations Committee was in fact correct. Of course, a shot from the knoll would mean a second gunman and thus a conspiracy.

The disputed evidence of a fourth shot is contained on a police dictabelt of the sounds in Dealey Plaza. The National Academy of Sciences panel insisted it was simply random noise or static, recorded about a minute after the shooting while Kennedy's motorcade was en route to Parkland Hospital. A March 2001 article in Science and Justice, a publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, says the NAS panel's study was seriously flawed. Indeed, the author of the article, D.B. Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher, said he was more than 96 percent certain that there was a shot from the grassy knoll to the right of the president's limousine, in addition to the three shots from the book depository window above and behind the president's limousine. G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel to the House Assassinations Committee, said the NAS panel's study always bothered him because it dismissed all four shots as random noise even though the three soundbursts from the book depository matched up precisely with film of the assassination. "This is an honest, careful scientific examination of everything we did, with all the appropriate statistical checks," Blakey said of the recent article. "It shows that we made mistakes, too, but minor mistakes. The main thing is he [Thomas] increased the degree of confidence that the shot from the grassy knoll was real, not static. We thought there was a 95 percent chance it was a shot. He puts it at 96.3 percent. Either way, that's 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'" (The Washington Post, March 26, 2001)

New Flight 800 Theory
A new theory on the TWA Flight 800 crash has emerged, one which reconciles eyewitness accounts of a missile with the recovered physical evidence of the downed airliner. Similar to earlier theories, it blames a US Navy missile firing for the tragedy. The new wrinkle is the proposed nature of the suspected missile. According to researcher Ian Goddard, the US Navy began developing a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) warhead for antiaircraft missiles in the early 1990s, and was test firing them two years before the Flight 800 crash. An MHD warhead downs an aircraft by "frying" its control circuits with a powerful electrical surge, induced by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from the warhead detonating near the aircraft. Flight 800's systems showed strong evidence of a powerful electronic surge. In fact, the official cause was declared to be an inexplicable surge strong enough to put a spark into the center fuel tank. Goddard, who publicly disavowed his earlier explosive-missile theory, may be on the right track this time. http://users.erols.com/igoddard/twa-emp.htm

 Alzheimer's Linked to Dental Fillings
Your dentist may be planting the seeds of Alzheimer's Disease with every filling. Research conducted at the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine has demonstrated that trace amounts of mercury can cause a type of nerve damage found in the victims of Alzheimer's Disease. The level of mercury exposure used by the researchers is consistent with levels found in humans with mercury/silver amalgam dental fillings. The exposure to mercury caused the formation of "neurofibrillar tangles," which are one of the two diagnostic markers for Alzheimer's Disease. In their research, published in March 2001 in the peer-reviewed journal NeuroReport, the scientists found that other metals, including aluminum, did not cause the damage. Previous research has shown that mercury can also cause the formation of the other Alzheimer's marker, "amyloid plaques." (International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, www.iaomt.org)

Majestic: The Game
The Truth may be Out There, as The X-Files' Fox Mulder tells us, but a new online game is making it even harder to find. Majestic, whose makers are clearly versed in the UFO and conspiracy subculture, is billed as an online interactive experience where the player's goal is to uncover a conspiracy. However, unlike all past computer games, the gaming environment extends beyond the player's computer to the entire world wide web, and (depending on the desired level of interactivity) to their email, online instant messages, telephone, and fax. For example, wannabe Mulders will get emails directing them to certain websites, faxes of censored documents or photos, and even late-night phone calls threatening their family members by name. Of greatest concern to conspiracy researchers is Majestic's extensive use of real and fake web sites to supply its players (and everyone else who surfs the web) with real and fake information. Electronic Arts, the game's publisher, has gone so far as to create front companies for several of these web sites, and is urging fans of the game to create web sites to act as fronts for the game. In addition, established "real" parapolitical sites such as www.disinfo.com have announced their participation in the game. In a field where the line between information and disinformation is already hard to discern, the Majestic project has single-handedly managed to raise doubts about every conspiracy and UFO website. Although good researchers already cast a critical eye on any source before accepting its information, we must now heed Fox Mulder's other favorite motto: Trust No One. http://www.elfis.net/mkc/mkcx/majesticarts.htm

Plan Colombia
Colombia is by far the leading recipient of US military aid in Latin America, ostensibly due to its status as a key battleground in the so-called Drug War. But rather than major drug lords, the victims of this war are the country's impoverished peasants and social reformers. Both the Clinton and Jr. Bush Administrations have supported "Plan Colombia," the US program that supplies and trains Colombian security forces, a group that even the State Department admits "continues to commit numerous, serious abuses, including extrajudicial killings."

Human Rights organizations estimate that each year some 300,000 Colombians are driven from their homes, and some 3,000 unarmed men, women and children are massacred. The Colombian government's own Human Rights Ombudsman has reported that the number of massacres increased by 68% in the first half of 1999. Contrast this to the one reported massacre in Kosovo during this period (45 victims), which so horrified American leaders that they felt compelled to bomb Yugoslavia to punish its government for its human rights abuses.

Hailed as a "leading democracy" by US officials and media commentators, Colombia did allow an independent political party to challenge the country's longstanding elites. Unfortunately, this was followed by the assassination of some 3,000 activists, including presidential candidates, mayors, and legislators. Similarly, the AFL-CIO reports that several Colombian union activists are killed each week in this "leading democracy."

It is true that many small Colombian farmers grow coca (cocaine) leaves, thus providing the official justification for the US-supported mass killing and repression. Those small farmers who have not been killed yet are also suffering the loss of legal, non-coca crops by the aerial spraying of a toxic herbicide, Roundup, which is produced by Monsanto. The Environmental Protection Agency says glyphosate-based products, such as Roundup, should be handled with caution, since they can cause vomiting, swelling of lungs, pneumonia, mental confusion and tissue damage. Several farmers are reporting fever-like symptoms. The aerial spraying, which began on December 22, 2000, has killed hundreds of acres of food crops (including corn, yucca and banana), scores of cattle, and hundreds of fish. Widespread hunger throughout this region is predicted as a result of crop damage, and thousands of families could lose their farms.

So, why do so many of the country's peasants turn to coca production? This key question is rarely asked by the mainstream media. Certainly, Colombia's extreme poverty and the profitability of the crop are major factors. However, US trade policies have also played a significant, if largely ignored, role. For example, Colombia was a major producer of wheat until the 1950s, when US "Food for Peace" policies induced it and several other nations "to become dependent on us for food," as Senator Hubert Humphrey admitted at the time. In addition, a year before President Bush Sr. proclaimed the latest Drug War, US trade policies resulted in a fall of more than 40% of the global price of coffee, Colombia's leading legal export. (Noam Chomsky, Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, www.southendpress.org, and The Washington Post, January 7, 2001)

City Planned to Dump Toxic Waste Into Sewers
A year ago, the city of Denver planned to "clean" the nearby Lowry Superfund site by pumping radioactive waste through the city's sewers. They also planned to sell the sludge to commercial agribusiness concerns for use as fertilizer on crops grown for human consumption. The local EPA office approved the plan, saying the levels of radioactive waste at the site were "not dangerous." However, local law professor Adrienne Anderson's research convinced 7,000 citizens to sign a petition, which prompted the EPA's inspector general to call for an investigation of the proposed cleanup methods. Since the story was published in The Progressive magazine, the city of Denver started, then stopped accepting liquid waste from Lowry, but the program is slated to resume. Local papers the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News (which recently merged) have not had much to say about the scandal, perhaps because their companies contributed their own toxic waste to Lowry for many years. (Project Censored, citing The Progressive)

Katherine Harris Joins Elite Cabal
In February 2001, Florida's Katherine Harris accepted an invitation to join the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR includes high-ranking members from government, corporate chiefs, high finance, big oil, and the intelligence and military communities. Its members bounce between cabinet-level posts (in both Republican and Democratic administrations) and corporate suites. The policies formulated by this group usually become US government policy, and some conspiracy researchers have gone so far as to claim that it essentially "runs the world." Since Harris's only significant accomplishment to date was to help ensure George Jr.'s 2000 election victory, her elevation to the CFR appears to be a thank-you gift from one of the world's most influential and elite cabals for getting its preferred candidate elected. (US News and World Report, February 16, 2001)