The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.

During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money’s origins.

Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman’s former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives.

The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay’s vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy.

If it looks like bribery and smells like bribery….

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Blair Watch broke the story about US/British complicity in torture in Uzbekistan by publishing documents from former Ambassador to that nation, Craig Murray. They printed these documents at considerable legal risk to themselves too.

Craig Murray’s site and Blair Watch are Ground Zero here. Go to their sites for the latest in this fast-breaking story.

It’s bloggers who broke this story and bloggers who spead it across the planet in less than a day. The documents are now on servers planetwide and mainstream media is now running the story. We did good! Let’s keep pushing.

Image from the always wonderful Jesus’s General who also has multiple posts about the documents.

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From AmericaBlog

German Press reports Bush getting ready to attack Iran

Should get interesting when 350,000 Irani army members come swarming across the border into Iraq as a counterpunch.

This is why you don’t start frivolous wars, so you’re ready and able to fight the ones that matter. I don’t necessarily have a problem taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities, but for one itty bitty catch. Iran’s army was half a world away, now it’s literally on our border (i.e., Iraq).

There’s just so much wrong with this post from the normally excellent AmericaBlog. Invading based on claims of WMD is what got the US into the Iraq War quagmire. And, of course, all those claims were made-up lies. You think it’ll be any different with Iran?

AmericaBlog also seems to say it’s ok for the US to invade countries at will, but maybe y’know, just do it in a kinder, gentler, more sensible way. An odd view for a progressive blog to take, and just more of the imperialist mindset that got the US into Iraq in the first place.

Plus, Iran isn’t "literally on our border." It is on the border of Iraq, a country we invaded based on lies. To say it is somehow "our" border gives legitimacy to the invasion and simply isn’t true.

From Der Spiegel
Is Washington planning a Military Strike?

Recent reports in the German media suggest that the United States may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike against facilities that are part of Iran’s suspected clandestine nuclear weapons program.

The attack, if it comes, will probably start with a missile strike on Iran’s alleged nuke facilities, and I’ll bet it will be launched by the US proxy in the Middle East, Israel.

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We went on a Cessna ride yesterday, piloted by a friend, from Maui to the Big Island, which about 50 miles across the channel. As you can see, the scenery is amazing. This valley is on the Hilo side of the Big Island.

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A large portion of a cliff collapsed on the Big Island recently, sending lava directly into the ocean

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East side of Maui, circa 600-700 years ago.

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East side of Maui. Not sure how old it is.

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George Bush, rather then apologize for ordering illegal wiretapping by the NSA, has ordered an investigation to find the evildoers who leaked the data. How Nixonian of him.

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1) Friday morning, today, we go flying in a private plane, down the Hana Highway, then to the Big Island to view, among other things, lave flowing from a crater, and out of a cliff into the ocean. I should have some spectacular photos up by Saturday.

Then, sadly, it’s back to LA. Sigh…

2) We saw Barry Flanagan of Hapa and Eric Gilliom at Mulligans on the Blue, a small supper club Thursday night. They play there twice a week when in town. It holds maybe 60 people, an intimate setting indeed to see these superb musicians play amazing Hawaiian music. Flanagan is one of the best slack key guitarists on the planet. Gilliom played rhythm guitar, and both sang. Songs were in English and Hawaiian.

Mulligans has lots of photos online of them.

Hapa plays Santa Barbara in February, and we’ll be there to see them. 

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This lengthy WaPo article details Abramoff’s life of fixing and sleaze quite admirably. A few tidbits:

The nonprofit Capital Athletic Foundation, for example, allowed him to schmooze with Washington’s movers and shakers at charity affairs.

The foundation was ostensibly created to help inner-city children through organized sports. There is no evidence money went to city kids, but the foundation did fund some of Abramoff’s pet projects: a sniper school for Israelis in the West Bank, a golf trip to Scotland for Ohio congressman Ney and others, and a Jewish religious academy in Columbia that Abramoff founded and where he sent his children to be educated.

Even more serious, Abramoff and Kidan were targets of a Florida federal grand jury investigating the SunCruz wire transfer. And local authorities were probing the gangland-style slaying of the man who had sold them the cruise line, Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.

Two things. First, if mainstream media is running stories like this, Abramoff is dead meat. He’s going down. Good, may he take the rest of the corrupt DC establishment with him. 2) Much of what Abramoff did concerned creating a string of casinos. Was he an independent or are there organized crime ties, was he just the hired help?

After John Giotti was convicted, I recall reading a NYC newspaper article saying Giotti’s real mistake was being so public, so blatant. The article then mentioned the name of the boss of bosses in NYC, the head of the families, saying he lived quietly and stayed out of the headlines, and that you’d probably never heard of his name, right? He, as I recall, has never even been arrested.

Maybe the neocon sleaze in DC thought they had it all wired and they couldn’t fall. They were wrong. Wrapped in patriotism and religiosity, at heart they’re greedy, not too bright thugs. And about to take a fall.

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Let the oil drilling begin

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $685 million loan for Iraq on December 24. Now the country’s war torn economy will be fully integrated into the global economy—indefinitely. The reconstruction of Iraq will soon be open to even more industrialized nations and interests.

Iraq will not be sovereign or independent in the near future, even if President Bush says so. The country’s financial future will instead be dictated by a new colossal economic occupation, complete with ground forces, tanks, foreign military bases and the like—all thanks to the United States, Britain and the IMF.

That’s why the US will never leave Iraq, they want the oil - unless they lose the war, that is. But then, they lost in Vietnam too.

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Are we to decide the importance of issues by asking how fashionable or glamorous they are? Or by asking how seriously they affect how many? - Nelson Mandela.

This two-part article explains in depth the problem of poor water supply in Delhi, India, using examples from other countries showing why water privatization hurts more than it helps. This is a great introduction to the myriad social. political, and health issues  revolving around water.

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1/2 mile in on the road to Lahaina by the general store. There’s probably many more in the West Maui mountains, however these are easily accessible.

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It might be sabotage. Chris Murray is the writer with the documents about UK/US complicity in torture in Uzbekistan that Blair Watch posted today (see following post.)

Blair Watch has the post from Craig Murray’s blog online.

The story is seeping into mainstream media. Chris Floyd has a news scraper with all the latest.

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These documents need publishing

Blair Watch now has documents online showing British and US government complicity in torture in Uzbekistan. The British government doesn’t want these documents made public. Blair Watch, at some risk to themselves, has published them and is asking other blogs to do the same and to host them on their servers, thus lessening potential risk to Blair Watch.

The UK government has been quick to deny that we practice, or tolerate the practice of Torture. So it is perhaps not suprising that they are determined that you should not see the following documents:

Telegrams. Npaper

Craig Murray was the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, untill his complaints and protest at the use of intelligence gained by torture got too much for Jack Straw and the Foreign Office, who set about attempting to unsuccessfully smear him, and to successfully remove him from office.

The first document is a series of Telegrams that Craig sent to the Foreign Office, outlining his growing concern and disgust at our use of intelligence passed to the UK by the Uzbek security services.

Faced with this heavy handed censorship by the FCO, in an attempt to cover up our use of and complicity in torture, Craig has decided to fight back, and has asked us all to publish this information, so it cannot be suppressed.

Craig Murray stood up for what many of us believe, and it cost him his Job, his health, and his professional reputation. The least we can do his stand by him as he defies the UK government’s attempts at censorship, and possible prosecution.

Craig’s own post on the subject can be found here.

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We did a lot! Two major antiwar marches and rallies that drew tens of thousands, Anti-Arnold and Minutemen actions, Free The Five work, went to New Orleans and held meetings about it, opposed Social Security privatization, supported the hotel workers strike, and much more. I played a role in organizing most of this. It was exhausting, fun, and rewarding.

Scroll down to "Some of A.N.S.W.E.R.’s work in 2005" to see what we did We plan more for 2006.

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The Bishop Museum in Hawaii is a respected museum run by non-natives (haoles) with collections of native Hawaiian artifacts. They often lend them out to native Hawaiian groups for use in ceremonies. Five years ago they lent 82 ‘priceless’ items to a native group, Hui Malama, who then claimed the artifacts were stolen by the museum, buried them in a cave, and refused to tell a judge where they were. The leader of the group, Edward Halealoha Ayau, has just been jailed for contempt.  

Forbes Cave controversy - A nexus of religion, politics, and law.

Ancient Hawaiian religious and cultural artifacts originally found in caves near human bones were removed by explorers and ended up in Bishop Museum. Here are some questions at the core of the Forbes Cave controversy. (Read on, this is an excellent explanation.)

Hui Malama leader in jail for ‘indeterminate amount of time’

Other native groups may or may not agree with Hui Malama, and may also claim ownership of the artifacts. However, the artifacts no doubt were stolen from the native culture, Hui Malama does have a valid point there. This court battle demonstrates in a microcosm the ongoing clashes and interplay between native Hawaiians, the current legal system, religion, and the Anglo culture at large. 

Ayau has taken a strong, principled stand, and has shown he’s willing to go to jail for his beliefs. Out of such struggle, movements grow and are strengthened.

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Hana Highway twists and turns for some forty miles, with over 600 curves and dozens of one lane bridges. Hana itself is a tiny little village of 1,200 with a couple of stores, a hotel, and that’s it. It had been a plantation town, and in many ways still is. Mostly populated by native Hawaiians, I felt in a different country, not just in a remote part of Maui. There were several “Reinstated Hawaiian Government” signs along the way too. They are part of a serious, growing movement for Hawaiian independence and should not be discounted. (See comments for more on this.)

Hana Highway passes through spectacular vistas of ocean, coves, rain forests, with each twist in the road seemingly a different eco-system. There are trailheads everywhere. Exploring all them would take months!

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These valleys are really steep, and completely dense with trees, vines, shrubs, and lush vegetation. Trying to hike them without a path would be nearly impossible.

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Defense lawyers in some of the country’s biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.

The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency’s domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration’s most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.

When Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground surfaced from ten years underground and turned themselves into the FBI, the FBI was forced to drop all charges against them because the FBI had broken so many laws trying to find them that none of their ‘evidence’ could be used in court.

History may be about to repeat itself.

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Not really. If you fly by private plane, there are no inspections and searches by TSA.  Just walk up to the plane and fly away. The pilot might be asked to show ID, pilot license, and maybe a list of passenger names (with no addresses and ID needed for passengers.) That’s it. Private flights get a free pass from TSA inspections.

Even international private flights aren’t inspected by TSA. Customs, yes. But no TSA. What an idiotic system. Subject regular passengers to long waits and security searches, but anyone with the money to fly private gets no searches.

Thus, the system isn’t even slightly secure.

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The Greek justice ministry has launched an inquiry into the alleged torture of Pakistani terror suspects after their lawyer announced he would press charges against Greek intelligence officers named by a newspaper.

The weekly Proto Thema (Top Story) revealed on Sunday the identities of the alleged British M16 station chief in Athens and those of 15 Greek officers. They are alleged to have taken part in the arrest and abuse of 28 Pakistani terrorism suspects after the July 7 bombings in London.

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We shall be returning those 2551 miles too soon (see photo.) I am becoming dangerously relaxed here in Hawaii.

This photo was taken in Lanai City, a tiny town on the rural island of Lania, formerly the Dole pineapple planation. A book on the island says most of the native inhabitants were "relocated" while this was happening, forced from their ancestral lands so an invader could fatten himself with wealth..

The history of imperialism in Hawaii is omnipresent and continues to this day. Currently, Lanai is being remade as an upscale rural tourist island with plans for suburbanization. So, then what happens to the locals?

Sometimes they get forced out. Property taxes here are based on assessed value and are re-assessed every year. Take a family that’s been here for generations on five acres at the beach growing their own food. Taxes are tiny. Oprah buys the three acres next door for 2 million. Property taxes for everyone in the area then soar, maybe to the point where the long-time family can’t afford it. Some counties in Hawaii, like Maui, have a circuit breaker, i.e., property taxes can be no more than 3% of gross income. But other counties have no such protection. Remember, these are families that may have been here for generations and who have little income.

Lanai is still mostly uninhabited. I’d like to come back and spend a few days here hiking and swimming (before the ‘burbs come.) More and more, Los Angeles seems a ‘life out of balance." 

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I’ve no idea what they are. The fruits are at least 18 inches long. I’ve been eating lots of papaya and apple bananas (yes, these are bananas that taste a bit like apples) and stuffing myself with mahi-mahi, ahi, and ono.

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