BaileyWo's Open Salon Blog

Let's All Get Behind Our President (no matter what)

Tue, 8 Sep 2009 20:09:37 -0400

Many of Obama's true belivers are getting more and more frustrated and angry with the right AND the left over what increasingly appears to be an unresolvable stalemate over health care reform. Some are starting to scream that we of the left should line up with "our president" despite what appears to be the onset of a new round of compromises and sell-outs to the insurance industry.

Therefor, this one's dedicated to Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, the Blue Dog Democrats and to all Obama's "moderate" apologists:

Texas National Guard on Alert at the Mexican Border

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:02:49 -0500

In response to a series of stories, one of which is featured below on Fox News, upstart Texas State Senator and radio talk show host Dan Patrick (R-7th District/Houston) [pictured at right] appeared on Fox News with the notoriously obnoxious Glen Beck, presuming to speak for the people of Texas.

His appearance was regarding the law enforcement and military responses he is proposing in the event of a refugee crisis in northern Mexico, a possible crisis -- some say remote -- resulting from the violent clashes between Mexican federal forces and paramilitary hirelings of the Sinaloa and Tamaulipas (Gulf) drug cartels. Patrick's paranoia is based on the possibility that the violence will spread into Texas along with thousands -- some project a million -- refugees. But his zeal may be driven by "campaign contributions."

If we look closely into those contributions we find first of all a strong backing from the broadcast industry. Looking further we see a number of possibly hidden contributors bunched within lobbying groups. Looking within the list of the lobbyist's clients, we find the private prison corporations Civigenics and The GEO Group as well as the lobbyists who represented them. Both prison contractors have significant interests in Texas with multiple contracts for the detention of foreign nationals held for immigration violations.

But really, who can look inside a man's heart and know what his motivations are?

It should be noted that Dick Cheney maintains an $85-million investment in private prisons, specifically The GEO Group, via The Vanguard Group. It is for that reason that a South Texas district attorney, every bit the showman wanting to make a point, convinced a grand jury to indict the then Vice President, Richard Cheney, for the murder of a foreign detainee. A district judge ordered the charges dropped.

Cheney and the Privatization of Prisons

Indeed, in the opinion of some, Sen. Patrick is exploiting not only the dire situation on the Mexican border; but also the fear and prejudice of many south Texans -- all for his personal political gain and that of his financial backers. The notoriously xenophobic and Christian nationalist Lou Dobbs, who calls himself an "independent populist," would love this guy, a guy who supported Mike Huckabee in his run for the Republican party's presidential nomination in 2008. Isn't it funny how the most "religious" of "patriots" can get mixed up with Zealot Party interests. Erik Prince of Blackwater, as well as Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes immediately come to mind. George Bush doesn't count; he was faking it.

It is not surprising that Fox News is up to its usual sensationalizing for the cause of militarist excitation -- and those of their corporatist sponsors. Here is a news link to his appearance on FoxNews with the ever obnoxious Glen Beck, along with a script of the dialogue and the accompanying video of the interview.

Feb. 10: Police officers guard two vehicles in which suspected members of a crime gang are taken after being shown to the press in Mexico City.

If Violence Escalates in Mexico, Texas Officials Plan to Be Ready

Thursday, February 12, 2009 By Joshua Rhett Miller for Fox News

As drug cartels continue to terrorize Mexico, Texas officials are planning for the worst-case scenario: how to respond if the violence spills over the border, and what to do if thousands of Mexicans seek refuge in the United States.

Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said a multi-agency contingency plan is being developed, and it will focus primarily on law enforcement issues, including how to handle an influx of Mexicans fleeing violence.

"At this point, what we're focusing on is spillover violence," Cesinger told FOXNews.com Thursday. "The immediate concern, if any, would be that."

Unfortunately, the plan does not include any contingency in response to a possible influx of refugees if the "crisis" becomes chaotic. The only contingency seems to be that refugees will be held in the many detention centers in Texas contracted to private prison companies for the detention of foreign nationals.

This would mean a boon for private prison contractors like The GEO Group. No doubt, they are already licking their chops. Unfortunately, The GEO Group, as well as others, have a sorry record in the state when it comes to the humanitarian treatment of their detainees. One detention center scandal near Austin in 2007 involved maggot-contaminated food fed on the cheap to families of detained migrant workers. Two-hundred foreign detainees, including staff, fell sick with food poisoning after eating spoiled food served on the cheap at The GEO Group's Tacoma, Washington detention facility in 2007.

Often, the medical treatment provided by private contractors is poor at best, given their focus on the "bottom line." Beginning December 22, 2008, medical neglect involving mysterious deaths led to two riots in as many months at the GEO facility in Reeves County [pictured left] near the Mexican border. The Texas ACLU is currently pressing for an investigation.

In 2007 at their Val Verde detention facility there was a GEO scandal involving the mysterious deaths of three foreign nationals whose bodies were spirited out of the country to their countries of origin. Despite that Texas law requires an autopsy in such circumstances, their bodies were deported before autopsies could be conducted. The excuse was given that the law does not apply in cases involving foreign nationals, a claim that is telling in itself. Obviously, there were allegations of a cover-up that required the complicity of contract monitors and top GEO Group officials in Boca Raton, Florida, at company headquarters -- right there in the neighborhood with other CIA storefronts, of which their parent company, Wackenhut Corrections, was one.

Ongoing child abuse and neglect at the Coke County Juvenile Facility run by GEO caused such a uproarious scandal that it led to an organizational purge of the Texas Youth Commission. The GEO Group lost its contract with Coke County, but thanks to their cadre of deep pocketed lobbyists, GEO continues to operate in Texas despite scandal after notorious scandal.

Given the history of mismanagement and abuse in Texas detention centers, A military response to an influx of refugees -- especially if the job is left to the infamously abusive Border Patrol -- one which includes confinement of refugees in concentration camps like those run by The GEO Group, is egregiously short on the humanitarian responsibilities we share as good neighbors. It is incumbent upon Texas leaders to at least design a humanitarian response if they have become so concerned, as they appear to be, that a crisis may be imminent.

The last thing we need right now is the Texas National Guard showing up in the border region profiling its cowboy spurs, testosterone, steroid inflamed muscles and their knuckle heads.

There are even chain email letters circulating in the region by someone suspected to be associated with the Minutemen vigilante group, a "citizen's militia" that has been "guarding" the Mexican border because, as they claim, the federal government fails or refuses to. They stand on the Second Amendment and their raison d'être is undoubtedly the playing of patriot games, "Butt-Weizer" in hand, games that facilitate the acting-out of their vile bigotry. Indeed, with right-wing paramilitary groups such as these pressing for some action on the border, the potential for spreading violence and chaos is exacerbated exponentially. The original material for these chain letters can be found on RevolutionRadio, an extremist rant station that apparently loves Dan Patrick, one of their own.

Notwithstanding the threat of looming financial collapse of Western governments, including that of Mexico, which raises the potential for migration on its own, and with the projected flight of refugees from civil chaos caused by the military escalation against the drug cartels along the U.S. border -- something which the Mexican people have endured for an extended period of months now -- it is irresponsible and inhumane to think solely in terms of military contingencies. But leave it to Texas leaders and a Texas Homeland Security director who has already attempted to inflame passions by falsely claiming that the drug cartels are being trained by Middle Eastern terrorists as well as smuggling their jihadists across our southern border. The truth is that the most ruthless of the drug cartel's paramilitary men were originally trained in the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, but that hasn't stopped the Air Force from deploying unmanned drones and sky blimps to film the action of nap-sack carrying migrant workers sneaking into Texas in the dead of night to pick cantaloupe in the Pecos River Valley.

The article continues:

More than 5,300 people were killed in Mexico last year in connection to criminal activity, and some experts predict things will get worse. Along with Pakistan, Mexico was identified in a Department of Defense report last year as a country that could destabilize rapidly.

If that were to happen, officials are concerned that the drug violence could cross the Rio Grande into southern Texas.

Cesinger said the plan currently does not address a potential flood of refugees, though "It may be something that comes into consideration."

"Worst-case scenario, Mexico becomes the Western hemisphere's equivalent of Somalia, with mass violence, mass chaos," said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank. "That would clearly require a military response from the United States."

Then, a chilling statement was made, one that, given the history of treatment of foreign nationals in United States detention centers, to say nothing of Guantanamo, Bagram, the Salt Pit Abu Ghraib, raises great concern among the humanitarian minded who are aware of the abusive treatment of foreign detainees who are simply held as " or illegal aliens," a classification that has become a grossly pejorative label for human beings who are more respectfully referred to among the more enlightened minded as "migrant workers and their families." Research has shown that migrant workers have far lesser crime rates than the general American population.

Our record in Texas is especially dismal:

Some lawmakers in Texas have begun questioning how to deal with a potentially massive influx of Mexican citizens.

"Do you strengthen the borders so people cannot get in by the thousands every day, or do you create detention centers where people are held until their status is determined?" asked state Sen. Dan Patrick. "This is a potential refugee problem..."

Apparently unbeknown to arch-conservative and upstart State Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston) above, the detention centers have already been built. It is common knowledge. It is also well know that migrant workers are being exploited by private prison contractors who detain them for months on end drawing fees for "bed days" with little regard for the food they eat or the medical treatment they require.

Crimes against humanity are being committed under our very noses. God forgive us. And God forgive me for blogging a Fox News article.

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While investigating Stanford, SEC told to "stand down"

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:02:22 -0500

"As Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommitee, I have sent a letter to the SEC asking for documents that relate to [the NY Times] report that they were told to 'stand down' rather than enforce the law against the Stanford Group going back to 2006. If this is true - and this is an official that is quoted - then we have the beginnings here of a massive scandal and we've got to get to the bottom of it," says Congressman Dennis Kucinich on Fox Business.

In fact, all indications are that Allen Stanford [pictured left] has been investing drug cartel money with CIA involvement. The CIA/DEA may have been taxing the Latin American "plazas," investing the "revenues" and using the dividends to fund covert operations. They even may have been raiding the fund, but this is conjecture based upon the CIA's notorious sense of entitlement and longstanding maverick attitude.

As mentioned in the interview, this is all reminiscent of the Iran-Contra Affair and the drug trafficking allowed by then Vice President George H. W. Bush during the Reagan years, a scheme concocted by the Contras themselves in order to fund their right-wing counterrevolution in Nicaragua [cf. Dark Alliance, by Gary Webb].

This same organizational structure has been indicated in the Afghanistan to Turkey opium/heroin pipeline revealed by Sibel Edmonds and Valery Plame, a fact that was suppressed with the cooperation of the mainstream media during the Bush Administration but reported by the Times OnLine in the U.K. Agencies now under the Homeland Security umbrella continue to "tax" the flow of drugs through the "plazas" (choke points like Michoacán, Antigua & Barbuda, the West African narco-state of Guinea-Bissau and other African nations).

From West Africa, drugs are then transported by the Russian-Israeli Mafia -- now partners in the Latin American drug trade -- into Europe, the Middle East and to Maldives before entering Mumbai, India, controlled by former CIA asset, now gangster and drug lord, Dawood Ibrahim.

The transfer point between the Latin American cartels and the Russian-Israeli Mafia is Antigua & Barbuda and other Caribbean Islands where Allen Stanford operates offshore banking activities. He has been accused by the FBI of operating money laundering activities for the drug underworld, but it is now becoming apparent, as Dennis Kucinich is insinuating, that Stanford may have a deeper involvement than that of investment banker, one that involves "deep cover" and perhaps a "taxman" status for which the DEA and CIA have become notorious since the days of Iran-Contra.

That CIA is using their underworld "tax revenues" to invest in stocks and money market funds in order to fund covert operations with the dividends is not outside the realm of the possible. And this may explain why "an unnamed agency" of the federal government stepped in to squelch the investigation of Stanford by the SEC in 2006.

There is much more to this story than has been revealed. Mexican President Felipe Calderón [pictured right] become suspect because of his efforts to eliminate the Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel, allowing Michoacán room to breath and to consolidate control of the flow of cocaine from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Chili. From Michoacán's Pacific coast, the cocaine is then shipped north to the Sinaloa plaza before transport into the U.S. West Coast region, or it is transported across the narrow isthmus of Mexico for shipment to Antigua and Barbuda for redistribution into the American South, Southeast and Eastern Seaboard. Oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, some of which were established by the Bush family owned Zapata offshore oil interests, are used as drop-off points for smaller packages and then delivered by fast boats to points along the American Gulf Coast.

Both northern state cartels, the Tamaulipas (Gulf) and Sinaloa, have been involved in a war for control of the state of Michoacán, Calderón's base of power and home state. In 2006, Calderón received help from Karl Rove in engineering a close election, in which accusations of election fraud still persist.

We commend Representative Dennis Kucinich for his continuing efforts to address corruption in government, a task for which he is getting little support from his peers. Few in Congress have his courage. For that matter, few in Congress enjoy his level of independence from the "power lobbies" that run Washington -- I'll leave it at that.

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Public Humiliation of Migrants In AZ; Git-Mo Scandal Worsens

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:02:40 -0500

Chained Immigrants Paraded By Arizona Sheriff

Posted in Anti-Immigrant by Casey Sanchez on February 4, 2009

This afternoon in Maricopa County, Ariz., more than 200 Latino immigrants were chained, dressed in prison stripes and forced to march down a public street from a county jail to a detainment camp in a desert industrial zone outside Phoenix.

Along the way they were filmed by television news crews and guarded by at least 50 Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) deputies, wearing body armor and combat fatigues, armed with shotguns and automatic rifles. At least two canine units were present; a Sheriff's Department helicopter hovered overhead.

The massive show of force was pure stagecraft for a blatant and dehumanizing publicity stunt orchestrated by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The MCSO gave no indication that any of the immigrant prisoners were particularly violent or presented a grave danger to the public.

The article continues hereThe article continues here.

Casey Sanchez, the writer of the featured article, apparently failed to observe that the migrant workers, most of whom are being held for minor infractions and drug and alcohol related offenses which should be addressed through treatment protocols rather than incarceration, are being paraded in the customary Maricopa County pink underwear issued by this notorious sheriff. This is an added level of public humiliation directed against males acculturated to machismo Latino values.

At RCDC III in West Texas, I personally witnessed inmates being detained in a large room 50 at a time in cold temperatures with nothing on but their boxer shorts. This is a typically inhumane treatment which, among others, is reserved for Guantanamo detainees. It is considered a form of torture and it's now being used in U.S. prisons and detention centers.

Obama has done nothing yet about prison overcrowding and the abuses that come with privatization. Perhaps he will as he implements his promised agenda. Or perhaps not. He may not even be aware of it. Given the following article, Obama seems to have promised much but is quickly being redirected. There is decreasing hope that he will actually deliver on his promise of prison reform unless he is pressured by a grass roots movement. His national security team seems to be guiding him in the direction of maintaining the policies of the Bush/Cheney regime, including its pathological bent for secrecy.

Gitmo Detainee’s ‘Genitals Were Sliced With A Scalpel,’ Waterboarding ‘Far Down The List Of Things They Did’

Last week, two British High Court judges ruled against releasing documents describing the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. The judges said the Bush administration "had threatened to withhold intelligence cooperation with Britain if the information were made public."

But The Daily Telegraph reported over the weekend that the documents actually "contained details of how British intelligence officers supplied information to [Mohamed's] captors and contributed questions while he was brutally tortured." In fact, it was British officials, not the Americans, who pressured Foreign Secretary David Miliband "to do nothing that would leave serving MI6 officers open to prosecution." According to the Telegraph's sources, the documents describe particularly gruesome interrogation tactics:

"The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said."

Another source familiar with the case said: "British intelligence officers knew about the torture and didn't do anything about it."
An update quoting an article by Andrew Sullivan cautions:

Today in San Francisco, "a little-publicised court case into the treatment of Mohamed will open" in federal court. Andrew Sullivan notes that "we'll find out if the Obama administration intends to keep the evidence as secret as the Bush administration did."

See the entire article with associated reader comments here.

Alex Rodriguez Comes Clean; Steroid Use in MLB

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:02:21 -0500

In a December 2007 interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," A-Rod denied to Katie Couric that he ever used steroids (watch the eyes) :

Monday, he admitted to ESPN that he had used steroids way back in 2003 when they were still legal (yea right).

NEW YORK — Alex Rodriguez admitted Monday that he used performance-enhancing drugs from 2001-03 when he played for the Texas Rangers.

"Back then it was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid," the New York Yankees star said in an interview with ESPN. "I was naive, and I wanted to prove to everyone that, you know, I was worth, you know _ and being one of the greatest players of all time.

His admission came two days after Sports Illustrated reported he tested positive for steroids in 2003, one of 104 players who tested positive during baseball's survey testing, which wasn't subject to discipline.

Read the rest of the Huffington Post article here.

In the late 60s, I played college football at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Every day on the training table, sitting above our steak was a little paper cup full of pills. Like sheep, we never even asked what they were -- we trusted our coaches. I bulked up almost over night and, looking back, I had all the negative side effects of steroid use.

When I injured my shoulder, they injected pain killers deep into the joint and threw me back into the game, causing even more damage. That went on week after week throughout the season.

The year before I went off to college, a player at the University of Arkansas died on the field during a game because of amphetamines given him by the coaching staff.

"Bullet Bob," the head defensive coach, used to visit the dorms at Rice and drink and tell dirty jokes with some of the players.

Darrell Royal of the University of Texas Longhorns used to take his team down to La Grange after the season to visit the "Chicken Ranch." Their football program had more money than ours. After investigative reporter Marvin Zindler of Houston's KTRK-TV broke the story, the Chicken Ranch was forced to close and La Grange became the subject of the movie, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

It was reported that the Texas Ranger baseball organization looked the other way while their players did everything they could to "remain competitive." Of course they did. Even their former owner, now former president of the United States, has a history of drug and alcohol abuse. It's in the culture.

Unfortunately, more often than not, sheer ignorance and the "spirit of competition" (read: "obsession with winning") overloads good judgment, to say nothing of testosterone poisoning and politics.

And Just for Fun:

End note for those who love irony: Burt Reynolds, who co-starred with Dolly Parton in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," played college football at Florida State University. He injured his knee early in his junior year, was allowed to go back into the game causing further injury and then returned to active status later in the season only to cause such severe damage that, in addition to an auto accident following the season, ended his sports career for good. See Wikipedia for further details of his life.

This blog entry was cross-posted to my recovery blog at: The Balmorhea Progressive

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