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COLUMN FIFTY-EIGHT, APRIL 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)

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THE SUPREME COUT'S RIGHT WING COUP

Subject: None dare call it treason
Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 22:12:40 -0500
From: portsideMod@netscape.net
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[First of a seven-part article. Full article at <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010205&s=bugliosi. -- Moderator]

THE NATION FEATURE STORY

February 5, 2001

None Dare Call It Treason

by VINCENT BUGLIOSI

In the December 12 ruling by the US Supreme Court handing the election to George Bush, the Court committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of the law. If you doubt this, try to imagine Al Gore's and George Bush's roles being reversed and ask yourself if you can conceive of Justice Antonin Scalia and his four conservative brethren issuing an emergency order on December 9 stopping the counting of ballots (at a time when Gore's lead had shrunk to 154 votes) on the grounds that if it continued, Gore could suffer "irreparable harm," and then subsequently, on December 12, bequeathing the election to Gore on equal protection grounds. If you can, then I suppose you can also imagine seeing a man jumping away from his own shadow, Frenchmen no longer drinking wine.

From the beginning, Bush desperately sought, as it were, to prevent the opening of the door, the looking into the box--unmistakable signs that he feared the truth. In a nation that prides itself on openness, instead of the Supreme Court doing everything within its power to find a legal way to open the door and box, they did the precise opposite in grasping, stretching and searching mightily for a way, any way at all, to aid their choice for President, Bush, in the suppression of the truth, finally settling, in their judicial coup d'état, on the untenable argument that there was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause--the Court asserting that because of the various standards of determining the voter's intent in the Florida counties, voters were treated unequally, since a vote disqualified in one county (the so-called undervotes, which the voting machines did not pick up) may have been counted in another county, and vice versa. Accordingly, the Court reversed the Florida Supreme Court's order that the undervotes be counted, effectively delivering the presidency to Bush.

Now, in the equal protection cases I've seen, the aggrieved party, the one who is being harmed and discriminated against, almost invariably brings the action. But no Florida voter I'm aware of brought any action under the equal protection clause claiming he was disfranchised because of the different standards being employed. What happened here is that Bush leaped in and tried to profit from a hypothetical wrong inflicted on someone else. Even assuming Bush had this right, the very core of his petition to the Court was that he himself would be harmed by these different standards. But would he have? If we're to be governed by common sense, the answer is no. The reason is that just as with flipping a coin you end up in rather short order with as many heads as tails, there would be a "wash" here for both sides, i.e., there would be just as many Bush as Gore votes that would be counted in one county yet disqualified in the next. (Even if we were to assume, for the sake of argument,! that the wash wouldn't end up exactly, 100 percent even, we'd still be dealing with the rule of de minimis non curat lex--the law does not concern itself with trifling matters.) So what harm to Bush was the Court so passionately trying to prevent by its ruling other than the real one: that he would be harmed by the truth as elicited from a full counting of the undervotes?

And if the Court's five-member majority was concerned not about Bush but the voters themselves, as they fervently claimed to be, then under what conceivable theory would they, in effect, tell these voters, "We're so concerned that some of you undervoters may lose your vote under the different Florida county standards that we're going to solve the problem by making sure that none of you undervoters have your votes counted"? Isn't this exactly what the Court did?

Gore's lawyer, David Boies, never argued either of the above points to the Court. Also, since Boies already knew (from language in the December 9 emergency order of the Court) that Justice Scalia, the Court's right-wing ideologue; his Pavlovian puppet, Clarence Thomas, who doesn't even try to create the impression that he's thinking; and three other conservatives on the Court (William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy) intended to deodorize their foul intent by hanging their hat on the anemic equal protection argument, wouldn't you think that he and his people would have come up with at least three or four strong arguments to expose it for what it was--a legal gimmick that the brazen, shameless majority intended to invoke to perpetrate a judicial hijacking in broad daylight? And made sure that he got into the record of his oral argument all of these points? Yet, remarkably, Boies only managed to make one good equal protection argument, and that one near the ve ry end of his presentation, and then only because Justice Rehnquist (not at Boies's request, I might add) granted him an extra two minutes. If Rehnquist hadn't given him the additional two minutes, Boies would have sat down without getting even one good equal protection argument into the record.

This was Boies's belated argument: "Any differences as to how this standard [to determine voter intent] is interpreted have a lot less significance in terms of what votes are counted or not counted than simply the differences in machines that exist throughout the counties of Florida." A more powerful way to make Boies's argument would have been to point out to the Court the reductio ad absurdum of the equal protection argument. If none of the undervotes were counted because of the various standards to count them, then to be completely consistent the Court would have had no choice but to invalidate the entire Florida election, since there is no question that votes lost in some counties because of the method of voting would have been recorded in others utilizing a different method.1 [Footnotes on page 7] How would the conservative majority have gotten around that argument without buckling on the counting of the undervotes? Of course, advice after a mistake is like medicine after death. And as we shall see, no matter what Boies argued, the five conservative Justices had already made up their minds. But it would have been delightful to see how these Justices, forced to stare into the noonday sun, would have attempted to avoid a confrontation with the truth. ##

* * *

POWELL PICKS A DEATH SQUAD PRO

Subject: POWELL'S PICK FOR UN: CONTRA OPERATIVE
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 17:34:47 -0500
From: portsideMod@netscape.net
Reply-To: portside@yahoogroups.com
To: portside@yahoogroups.com
meisenscher@igc.org
cmhallinan@aol.com

Los Angeles Time - March 25, 2001

Bush's U.N. Pick Faces Battle Over Contra Role Congress: Critics raise questions about John Negroponte's actions as ambassador to Honduras and his knowledge of a CIA-backed death squad.

By MAGGIE FARLEY and NORMAN KEMPSTER, Times Staff Writers

UNITED NATIONS--John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee for U.N. ambassador, is likely to face a fierce fight for confirmation over questions about his role in the Central American wars of the 1980s--and the abrupt deportation of people who might have answers has heightened the mood of uncertainty.

While ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte directed the secret arming of Nicaragua's Contra rebels and is accused by human rights groups of overlooking--if not actually overseeing--a CIA-backed Honduran death squad during his tenure.

Although Negroponte, a career diplomat, has in previous confirmation hearings denied knowledge of systematic human rights abuses, declassified documents and disclosures by former death squad members since his latest testimony in 1993 have cast doubt on whether he was telling the whole truth before Congress.

Human rights groups and Democratic Party opponents are preparing for a fight, making Negroponte the Bush administration's first foreign policy appointee to kindle serious opposition from Congress.

The sudden deportations of several former death squad members, however, have raised questions. The men, who had resided for years in the United States and Canada and could have provided evidence for the hearings, were returned to Honduras within a few weeks of Negroponte's floated nomination. But one of them, Gen. Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, who was Honduras' deputy ambassador to the U.N. until Washington revoked his visa in February, went public this month with details of U.S. support for the rogue battalion. His comments could provide fodder for Negroponte's opponents on Capitol Hill.

Members of Congress who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Iran-Contra investigations said Negroponte must satisfy doubts about his past performance before he can be confirmed as the face for U.S. interests around the world.

"In the 1980s, John Negroponte was at the center of a clash over deep disagreements we had about the role the United States should be playing in Central America and, more importantly, the way--often secretive or, at best, unclear--that our policy was being conducted," said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

"New information suggesting that the U.S. Embassy in Honduras knew more about human rights violations in Honduras than was communicated to the Congress and to the public," he said, "needs to be probed carefully and thoroughly examined."

Opposing Negroponte, a key Bush appointment, will be a politically risky task. Taking him on means challenging Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who is said to have handpicked him. Powell is a close friend of Negroponte and made him his deputy national security advisor in the Reagan administration after the diplomat's Honduran stint, presumably having found nothing disqualifying in his background at the time. And Negroponte has been confirmed twice as ambassador since then, to Mexico in 1989 and to the Philippines in 1993.

Negroponte, who spent 37 years as a foreign service officer, is largely well thought of in the diplomatic corps as a man who speaks five languages but knows when to keep silent. His friends say he is brilliant and urbane, and carries out orders with a cool and quiet efficiency.

"It's terrific that the administration has appointed a professional like him," said Richard Holbrooke, the most recent U.N. ambassador. Negroponte was Holbrooke's roommate and fellow political officer in Saigon--now Ho Chi Minh City--in 1966 and his State Department deputy for East Asian affairs in 1980-81. "It will be good for the U.N., good for the foreign service, and I believe it will be good for the United States."

No one is disputing Negroponte's foreign policy experience or willingness to wade into tough situations. Stationed in Saigon during the Vietnam War, he learned to speak Vietnamese so well that Henry A. Kissinger chose him to act as his secret liaison with the Vietnamese during the Paris peace talks in 1968.

While ambassador to the Philippines from 1993 to 1996, Negroponte curtailed the careers of two consecutive consul generals in the embassy suspected of trading U.S. visas for sexual favors and kickbacks. As ambassador to Mexico, he is credited with quietly easing the two countries' long estrangement and paving the way for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Colleagues describe him as a dedicated diplomat who did the bidding of whatever administration was in office at the time--a quality his friends see as loyalty, and his critics as amorality.

"John doesn't have an agenda," said one former senior State Department official who worked closely with Negroponte in the 1980s. "John is not ideological. He believes in nothing."

In 1981, President Reagan sent Negroponte to Honduras, a tiny country of farmers that had become Washington's base for covert military operations against the leftist Sandinistas who controlled neighboring Nicaragua. Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor in Honduras, had cabled Washington several times about an alarming increase in extrajudicial executions and torture of political opponents by the Honduran government. There was no response, he said, until the day he was summoned to Washington and told by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders to stop reporting human rights abuses through official channels.

"He was afraid it would leak and make it more difficult for us to continue our economic and security assistance," said Binns, now retired. "And it would prejudice the Contra operation, though I didn't know it at the time."

Binns' assignment lasted only a year, ending not long after that meeting. But before he left, he compiled a briefing book for Negroponte detailing the human rights problems. Negroponte took a different approach. Under his direction, U.S. military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million. He also helped orchestrate a secret deal later known as Iran-Contra to send arms through Honduras to help the Contras in Nicaragua overthrow the Sandinista government. In the background, a murky military unit called Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA, carried out the dirty work of making sure that communism didn't spread to Honduras--a business that involved the torture and "disappearing" of at least 184 political opponents, according to a 1994 Honduran human rights report called "The Facts Speak for Themselves."

Negroponte testified later that he knew little about the battalion or systematic abuses and that he was an advocate of human rights in Honduras. Embassy colleagues believe that he was indeed involved but not quite in the way he claimed.

"In Honduras, he told these guys [the death squad leaders] to cut it out, but he wasn't going to say that publicly," said a former official who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation. "This is the problem with most of Washington. You tell political bosses what they want to hear and don't let the truth get in the ! way of policy."

In fact, compared with the reports of kidnappings and murders regularly recorded by local newspapers and human rights groups, cables about the human rights situation in Honduras were so sanitized that staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the capital, joked that they were written about Norway. Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch/Americas, called Negroponte "the ostrich ambassador. He never saw anything wrong. He never heard about any serious human rights violations. It was like he was living in a different country."

Activists such as Honduran Human Rights Commissioner Leo Valladares have been pursuing the truth since the late 1980s, making hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests for documents. The U.S. government has released thousands of pages to him and other petitioners over the years, but the documents are heavily redacted, blacked-out page after blacked-out page.

"They gave me thousands of pages, but they didn't give me anything," Valladares said. "I trust the U.S. Senate to look at the original documents. Perhaps they will help determine if there are other American citizens who can perform better than Negroponte because they don't have a past of knowing about human rights violations and keeping silent about them."

If questions remain, there is one person who could know the answers: Gen. Discua Elvir, a founder of Battalion 3-16. Honduran President Carlos Roberto Reina sent Discua to the U.N. in 1996, in part to give the general diplomatic immunity from investigations into the battalion's past--and in part to protect himself from a feared military coup. Discua's title was deputy representative, and he reportedly was paid about $6,000 a month--more than the ambassador. But he seemed to spend most of his time living in Miami, where he owned several houses and operated an import-export business. Periodically, human rights groups protested his assignment, the outrage tempered only by the fact that he rarely bothered to act as a diplomat.

In January, a Florida-based human rights group, the International Educational Missions, received a tip about Discua's presence in Miami. The head of the group, Richard Krieger, a former government official, sent a letter to the State Department on Jan. 12 with the details. In February--three weeks before Negroponte's name was floated--the State Department revoked Discua's diplomatic visa for failing to fulfill his ambassadorial duties. He was out of the country by month's end. State Department officials said that they had been aware of Discua's controversial posting since he arrived in the U.S. and that he spent more than a fair share of time in Miami. While pleased that the deportation process worked so efficiently, officials said privately that the speed of his removal was unprecedented.

"My colleagues and I could not fathom how it could work so easily," said one State Department official who asked not to be named. "If you're inclined toward conspiracy theories, the fact that it did work so quickly raises some questions."

Discua's removal coincided with the January deportation of Juan Angel Hernandez Lara, another alleged member of Battalion 3-16 living in Florida, and the expulsion from Canada on Feb. 20 of Jose Barrera, an interrogator from 3-16. Both had given detailed descriptions of their activities as members of 3-16 in attempts to receive political asylum, asserting that they would be killed if they were to return to Honduras now that the political climate has changed. Although Lara and Barrera recanted their claims that they were involved in 3-16 once they returned in Honduras, Discua Elvir defiantly elaborated on his history in the battalion and the U.S. role in it.

Two days after returning home, Discua told the Tegucigalpa newspaper La Prensa that he was brought to the United States for two months in 1983 to organize Battalion 3-16 to work with Contra forces. He has also appeared on television in full uniform with promises of more to tell. Discua is protected by his knowledge of other Honduran leaders' involvement in past crimes, human rights groups say.

"He is sending an explicit message to the United States: If they continue to do damage to him, he will disclose the role of the U.S. in Battalion 3-16 and the situation of that time," said Berta Oliva di Nativi, the director of a group representing the families of "the disappeared." Emboldened, at least one other former member of 3-16 has offered to provide evidence linking Negroponte to the battalion if he is assured of protection within Honduras.

In the meantime, human rights groups are comparing notes and Senate staffers are delving into classified documents to prepare for the contentious confirmation hearing. Negroponte has declined all interviews before the hearing, which has yet to be scheduled. But he has been exercising his trademark quiet diplomacy, paying visits to key senators and their aides, emphasizing his experience and trying to erase doubts.

"He's gotten through before in a more liberal Congress, so I don't see why he'd have trouble now," Holbrooke said. " We need a professional on the job. If professional diplomats are penalized for carrying out the instructions of their government, then we're all in trouble." Farley reported from the United Nations and Kempster from Washington. Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times ##

* * *

WBAI

Subject: The Crisis at Pacifica and the Response
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 01:20:47 -0500
From: portsideMod@netscape.net
Reply-To: portside@yahoogroups.com
To: portside@yahoogroups.com

The Crisis at Pacifica and the Response

[New organization formed of Pacifica listeners and call for support by the workers of Pacifica Station, WBAI, UE Local 404 (United Electrical Workers) for demonstration Feb. 20 in New York - Moderator]

CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED FOR A FUNDING BOYCOTT OF PACIFICA RADIO'S FIVE-STATION NETWORK

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- FEBRUARY 6, 2001

TEL: 212-871-9322

E-MAIL: PACIFICACAMPAIGN@YAHOO.COM

A new organization is calling for listeners of Pacifica radio stations around the country to show their opposition to the current corporate takeover of the network by refusing to donate any money to Pacifica until its current board of directors resigns and is replaced by a new board that is democratically accountable to listeners, staff and the communities the stations serve.

The Pacifica Campaign, the group spearheading the boycott, was hastily founded this weekend following last week's dramatic on-air resignation by Juan Gonzalez, longtime co-host of Pacifica's national flagship news show, Democracy Now!.

In his resignation, Gonzalez criticized a "clique" on the board that has "hijacked" the network. That clique, Gonzalez said, has routinely squashed free speech on the Pacifica stations, has violated the civil and labor rights of listeners and staff, and has illegally changed the non-profit network's by-laws in preparation for a possible sale of one or more of the stations.

Gonzalez, who joined with some 35 New York city activists to found the new group this past weekend, is serving as interim coordinator of the campaign.

As part of the campaign, the group will seek to pressure individual board members to resign by utilizing non-violent, direct action and by launching an educational campaign to the public that exposes the roles of the individual board members in the current crisis.

Starting today, the Pacifica Campaign will have five full-time volunteer organizers and scores of part-time volunteers working on the effort. We have also retained the services of Ray Roger's Corporate Campaign Inc., a group that specializes in mounting nationwide boycotts against anti-labor and anti-community organizations.

In the few days since Juan Gonzalez's resignation, the campaign has been flooded by thousands of e-mails and phone calls of support from Pacifica listeners who want to help.

Organizers will be contacting those listeners directly during the next few days. Meanwhile, we urge all listeners to do the following:

1) DO NOT PLEDGE ANY MONEY TO ANY PACIFICA STATION

2) IF YOU HAVE ALREADY PLEDGED MONEY, DO NOT SEND YOUR CHECK IN

3) CONTRIBUTE MONEY INSTEAD TO THE PACIFICA CAMPAIGN, OR TO THE THREE LEGAL SUITS CURRENTLY CHALLENGING THE BOARD'S LEGITIMACY, OR TO A LOCAL LISTENER GROUP IN YOUR AREA -- IN SHORT, TO THOSE FIGHTING TO REFORM PACIFICA.

TAX DEDUCTIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PACIFICA CAMPAIGN CAN BE MADE PAYABLE TO: THE INSTITUTE FOR MEDIA ANALYSIS/PACIFICA CAMPAIGN.

THE MAILING ADDRESS IS:

        THE PACIFICA CAMPAIGN
        51 MACDOUGAL STREET, #80
        NEW YORK, NY 10012

4) CALL YOUR LOCAL PACIFICA STATION AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN AND LET THEM KNOW YOU WILL NOT GIVE ANY MONEY UNTIL THE CURRENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS RESIGNS

5) DO NOT COOPERATE WITH PACIFICA'S FUND DRIVE BY OFFERING AS PREMIUMS ANY BOOKS OR TAPES YOU HAVE AUTHORED OR PRODUCED.

Also, do not be confused if you hear the host of your favorite show urging you on-the-air to pledge money. Many producers and hosts are opposed to the policies of the current board of directors, but they are prevented by gag rules from voicing their displeasure and they must ask for pledges from listeners or they can be fired. It is important to keep shows like Democracy Now! on the air.

For now, we are urging producers who oppose the board to keep soliciting pledges but to "work to rule," i.e., do the minimal amount of fundraising work and with as little enthusiasm as possible.

As we reduce the money coming into Pacifica we will reduce the board's ability to continue its anti-listener policies. At the same time, we will be increasing the pressure on individual board members, until they have no recourse but to resign.

We will oust the hijackers and return Pacifica to its original mission.

For more information, go to the campaign website: http://pacificacampaign.org. Or call 212-871-9322

**********************************************

Mailing Address:
|The Pacifica Campaign
51 MacDougal St., #80
NY, NY 10012

www.pacificacampaign.org
pacificacampaign@yahoo.com

**********************************************

Labor 4 WBAI-Pacifica

Demonstrate to Defend Free Speech Radio

WBAI – 99.5 FM

Fight the Firings

The Bannings of Staff & Listeners from WBAI Radio

The Censorship of On-Air Discussion

Tuesday,February 20th - 4:30 - 7 PM

Epstein, Becker and Green

250 Park Ave. (bet E 46 St & 47 St)

This is a union-busting law firm defending Pacifica against the lawsuits seeking to reverse the corporatization of its National Board. The firm's Senior Associate

John Murdock has drafted new Pacifica By-Laws further insulating the Board from the Listeners and making it easy to sell WBAI Radio.