Sing a mighty song
Bob Morris @ Jan 5th 2006 17:36 - Category: Unfiled ;
Archive for January 5th, 2006
Did Palestine take down Abramoff?
Bob Morris @ Jan 5th 2006 15:48 - Category: Uncategorized Tags: Palestine;
In a sense, yes. That’s precisely what happened. Abramoff money funded illegal settlements in Israel with sniper rifles, etc. to use against Palestinians. The FBI noticed this, and wondered what else Black Jack was up to.
Abramoff’s dense network of illicit finances and phony charities might end some political careers in the United States. But the investigation into his activities by the FBI also shed light on the ways in which rightwing American Jews have often been involved in funding what are essentially terrorist activities by armed land thieves in Palestinian territory.
Indeed, it was this terror funding of Israeli far right militiamen that tripped Abramoff up, since the FBI discovered that he had misled Indian tribes into giving money to the Jabotinskyites (militant Zionists) and then began wondering if he had defrauded the tribes in other ways.
Jack Abramoff - military supplier to terrorists
More than $140,000 of the money Abramoff “took” (stole) from Indian tribes in the United States was given to radical right-wing Israeli settlers in the West Bank to fund their private war against the Palestinians.Quoting from Newsweek
“Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as “security” equipment.
Abramoff, a legendary lobbyist particularly close to DeLay, is also a fierce supporter of Israel‗a super-Zionist,” one associate says. That may explain why Abramoff’s paramilitary gear ended up in the town of Beitar Illit, a sprawling ultra-Orthodox outpost whose residents have occasionally tangled with their Palestinian neighbors.”
The word “outpost” gives the game away. “Outpost” means that even under Israeli standards where other “settlements” are perfectly legitimate (they aren’t), these particular settlements were illegal and conducting an illegal land grab, and harassing, terrorizing, and probably killing Palestinians with their Abramoff-provided sniper scopes.
Just imagine how much trouble Abramoff would be in if he sent $140,000 to Arab terrorists?
Indeed, he’d probably be in Gitmo instead of still walking around free.
Microsoft releases patch 5 days early
Bob Morris @ Jan 5th 2006 15:33 - Category: Unfiled ;
Rather than wait until the 10th, their normal date for releasing patches, Microsoft has released the patch for the WMF vulnerability 5 days early. Scoble reported they had 200 people working on this and I bet they haven’t slept for a week.
If you installed the unofficial patch, deinstall it before applying the Microsoft patch. You can get the Microsoft patch manually by Start/All Programs/Windows Update.
Yikes
Bob Morris @ Jan 5th 2006 11:27 - Category: Unfiled ;
From Blair Watch.
Big Brother’s Little Brother, knows what you read….How a guy used to few lines of shell script to download amazon.com’s wishlists for everyone, checked them for "Subversive" books, and using yahoo people finder and google maps pinpointed their home addresses on a map…
Some of the technical aspeects of this are beyond my little brain, but a timely reminder of the footprints we leave all over cyberspace…
Democrats, stop dissembling
Bob Morris @ Jan 5th 2006 00:01 - Category: Unfiled ;
Media Matters fogs the air about Abramoff money to Democrats.
(the) suggestion that Democrats took money from Abramoff at all appears to be false — a search of the Center for Responsive Politics’ database turned up no data showing any contributions from Abramoff himself to any Democrats.
While that’s technically true, what Media Matters doesn’t say (and what they could not help but know), is that while Abramoff didn’t directly give money to Democrats, his clients did so, at his direction. So for Media Matters to muddy the waters and imply Dems received no Abramoff money is just more of the same evasion and dissembling that Democrats attack Republicans for doing.
So, why did Abramoff donate directly to Republicans but through intermediaries to Democrats? There’s a definite pattern here, as it appears most if not all money to Dems was funnelled that way. The answer isn’t rocket science. Congressional Democrats no doubt wanted no paper trail or embarrassing questions about why they were taking money from Abramoff, that’s why.
Documentation of Congressional Democrats receiving Abramoff money
Capital Eye has "a detailed look at Abramoff’s lobbying, and political contributions from Abramoff, the tribes that hired him, and SunCruz Casinos, since 1999."
Here’s the list sorted by amount given, with Democrats in blue and Republicans in red. 109 Democratic members of Congress received Abramoff money, as well several state and national Democratic groups.
The contribution summary shows 1.5 million to Democrats and 2.8 million to Republicans from 2000-2006, of that Abramoff gave $200,000 directly, the rest was via clients. Now do you see why Democratic spinners are being so pious about not getting money directly from Abramoff? Because they got it from his clients, that’s why. The same questions need to asked of them too, what did Abramoff want in return for the money?
Though Abramoff personally only gave money to Republicans his Indian-tribe clients contributed to Democrats as well, campaign-finance records show.
National Republican campaign groups received $1.24 million from sources linked to Abramoff since 1999, while Democratic groups took in $844,000 during that same time period, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
From the Times of London
Yet although the Justice Department’s investigation appears to be focusing on several high-profile Republicans, some senior Democrats also had dealings with Abramoff, making it far from certain that Democrats will be able to paint the scandal as an exclusively Republican problem. Recent polls suggest that the US public has little confidence in the ethics of either party.
Instead of using this to call for real reform, to clean up the sleaze in DC, Democratic leadership instead is being evasive about their own role and strangely silent about reform. A real opposition party would be unleashing the pit bulls now against the incumbent party, rather than distorting the facts as they run for cover.
But that’s what you get when an elite, clubby class protects their own. Congressional Democrats (and Republicans) will do little to end the corruption until they are forced to by the people. That means organizing, mobilizing, getting people in the streets. Then the parties of Tweedledum and Tweedledee will have to clean up their acts, whether they want to or not.
