David Farmer vs. Harmon - Witness HILLARY CLINTON

THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

OFFICE OF THE U.S. TRUSTEE

David C. Farmer, Successor Trustee
vs.
Bobby N. Harmon

(Formerly Mary Lou Woo vs. Harmon and James Nicholson vs. Harmon)

CV05-00030 DAE/KSC

United States District Court, District of Hawaii

Judges: David A. Ezra; Kevin S. Chang

~ ~ ~

DEFENDANT’S WITNESS

HILLARY CLINTON

U.S. Department of State
2201 C. Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20520

Website: http://www.state.gov
Contact Information
TTY: 1-800-877-8339

Hillary Clinton is currently the U.S. Secretary of State, appointed by President Barack Obama; formerly a New York Senator (D); a former First Lady; and a former 2008 Democrat presidential candidate. Senator Clinton has many ties to Hawaii and its politicians and special interests, as does her husband, former president, Bill Clinton, who is also a witness in this case:

See:

http://www.kycbs.net/Aloha-Air.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Catbird3.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Chief-Clinton.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Democrats.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/MaunawiliValley.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Yucaipa.htm

* * * * *

GOOGLING FOR CLINTON & THE HAWAIIAN CONNECTION

* * * * *

NEW DISCOVERY (07/24/09): More undisclosed relationships between David Farmer, Steven Guttman, Robin Campaniano, Rey Graulty, Wayne Metcalf, Linda Lingle, James Nicholson, Jim Nicholson, Phillip Winn, John Waihee, Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Norm Brownstein, Larry Mizel, Leonard Millman, Gale Norton, Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, The Nature Conservancy, Goldman Sachs, Chubb Group, AIG, HUD, AIPAC, Bernard Schwartz, HonFed, Investors Equity Insurance Co., etc.

PHILLIP WINN GETS PARDON

* * * * *

April 13, 2009

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, USA

Online Action Center

Ask Secretary Clinton Why the US Continues
to Deliver Arms to Israel

Despite strong evidence of the misuse of U.S. weapons against civilians in Gaza, Amnesty International recently revealed that the United States sent a massive new shipment of arms to Israel. The Wehr Elbe, a ship controlled by the U.S. Military Sealift Command, docked and unloaded several thousand tons of arms on March 22 at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Ask State Department officials why the United States would deliver these arms to Israel.

» Background Information

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=11787

# # #

CV05-00030 - U.S. Dept. of Justice, David C. Farmer, Trustee vs. Bobby N. Harmon - Exhibit: "Ask Secretary Clinton Why the US Continues to Deliver Arms to Israel - Amnesty International USA" and Witnesses: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton & David C. Farmer

Monday, April 13, 2009 2:12 PM

From: Bobby N. Harmon

To: "Barack H. Obama" <president@whitehouse.gov>, "Eric Holder" <AskDOJ@usdoj.gov>, "David Farmer" <farmerd001@hawaii.rr.com>, "Steven Guttman" <sguttman@kdubm.com>, "Carol K. Muranaka" <ustp.region15@usdoj.gov>, "David A. Ezra" <theresa_lam@hid.uscourts.gov>, "Judith Neustadter" <Judy@tiki.net>, "Kevin S.C. Chang" <shari_afuso@hid.uscourts.gov>, "Barry M. Kurren" <tammy_kimura@hid.uscourts.gov>, "Securities & Exchange Commission Enforcement Division" <enforcement@sec.gov>, "U.S. Treasury Dept. Office of Inspector General" <hotline@oig.treas.gov>, "Office of Inspector General US Dept of Justice" <oig.hotline@usdoj.gov>, "Executive Office for U.S. Trustees" <ustrustee.program@usdoj.gov>, "Robert Faris" <hib@hib.uscourts.gov>, "Thomas Fitton" <info@judicialwatch.org>, "SEC Office of The Inspector General" <oig@sec.gov>

Cc: “ACLU Hawaii" <office@acluhawaii.org>, "All Representatives" <reps@Capitol.hawaii.gov>, "All Senators" <sens@Capitol.hawaii.gov>, "Andrew Walden" <hfpeditor@email.com>, "Aon Insurance Managers" <mike_coulter@agl.aon.com>, "Arthur Rath" <imua@spamarrest.com>, "Benjamin Kudo" <bkudo@imanakakudo.com>, "Bradley Tamm" <btamm@hawaii.rr.com>, "Carl Morton" <ethics@hawaiiethics.org>, "Charles Goodwin" <HONOLULU@FBI.GOV>, "Charles Hurd" <mcp@mediatehawaii.org>, "David Shapiro" <volcanicash@gmail.com>, "Dee Jay Mailer" <ksinfo@ksbe.edu>, "Dorothy Sellers" <hawaiiag@hawaii.gov>, "Executive Office for U.S. Trustees" <ustrustee.program@usdoj.gov>, "Hugh Jones" <hugh.r.jones@hawaii.gov>, "Insurance Division Fraud Branch" <insfraud@dcca.hawaii.gov>, "J C Shannon" <Hapa1234@aol.com>, "James B Nicholson" <jamesbnicholson@aol.com>, "James B. Farris" <Farrisj@adr.org>, "James Cribley" <jcribley@caselombardi.com>, "James Wriston" <jwriston@awlaw.com>, "Jeffrey Watanabe" <jwatanabe@wik.com>, "Jim Dooley" <jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com>, "Jo Ann Uchida" <rico@dcca.hawaii.gov>, "Joe Moore" <news@khon2.com>, "John D. Finnegan" <info@chubb.com>, "John Goemans" <wip@kamuela.com>, "Judge Lloyd King" <hib@hib.uscourts.gov>, "Judson Witham" <jurisnot2@yahoo.com>, "Ken Conklin" <ken_conklin@yahoo.com>, "Lawrence Reifurth" <dcca@dcca.hawaii.gov>, "Linda Lingle" <governor.lingle@hawaii.gov>, "Lyn Flanigan Anzai" <lflanigan@hsba.org>, "Margery Bronster" <info@bchlaw.net>, "Marsh Affinity Group" <prosecure@marshpm.com>, "Michael N. Tanoue" <mtanoue@paclawgroup.com>, "Michelle Tucker" <michelle@sterlingandtucker.com>, "Nathan Aipa" <nathan@pitluck.com>, "Office of Inspector General Civil Rights Complaints" <inspector.general@usdoj.gov>, "Office of the U.S. Trustee District of Hawaii" <ustp.region15@usdoj.goV>, "Paul Alston" <palston@ahfi.com>, "Randall Roth" <rroth@hawaii.edu>, "Rick Daysog" <rdaysog@honoluluadvertiser.com>, "Robert Bruce Graham" <bgraham@awlaw.com>, "Robin Campaniano" <aigh001@aighawaii.com>, "Samuel P. King" <leslie_sai@hid.uscourts.gov>, "William K Slate" <Websitemail@adr.org>, "Jim Terrack" <tnthawaii@aol.com>, "Don Michak" <dmichak@journalinquirer.com>, "Rocco Sansone" <rocco.c.sansone@marsh.com>, "Ted Pettit" <tpettit@caselombardi.com>, "Mark Burch" <burch@hawaii.edu>, "Laura Thielen" <dlnr@hawaii.gov>, "Vaughn & Lynda Robinson" <ronpaulslcutah@yahoo.com>, "Rebecca Christie" <rchristie4@bloomberg.net>, "Catbird" <the-catbird@hotmail.com>, "James Duca" <jduca@kdubm.com>, "Ian Lind" <diary@ilind.net>, "Roy F. Hughes" <hthughes@hawaii.rr.com>, "Malia Zimmerman" <Malia@hawaiireporter.com>, "Elisa Yadao" <Ka_Hana@notes.k12.hi.us>, "Jack Cashill" <JCashill@aol.com>, "Marshall Chriswell" <mc@whistleblowers.org>, "Tom Flocco" <tom2@tomflocco.com>, "Michael Moore" <mike@michaelmoore.com>, "Eric Shine" <civilrights911@socal.rr.com>, "Laser Haas" <laserhaas@msn.com>, "Lucy Komisar" <lkomisar@msn.com>, "Democrats.com" <activist@democrats.com>, "Debra Sweet" <debrasweet@worldcantwait.org>, "Jane Kirtley" <kirt001@umn.edu>, "V K Durham" <vkdtdht@pionet.net>, "John Jubinsky" <Jube@tghawaii.com>, "Yamil Berard" <yberard@star-telegram.com>, "Global Exchange" <communications@globalexchange.org>, "William K. Black" <blackw@umkc.edu>, "Carole Williams" <cjwms@up.net>, "Susan Tius" <STius@rmhawaii.com>, "Alex Jones" <alex@infowars.com>, "Human Rights in China" <hrichina@hrichina.org>, "Michelle Malkin" <writemalkin@gmail.com>, "Heather Vsn Doren" <heather.vandoran@yahoo.com>, "Phil J. Berg" <philjberg@obamacrimes.com>

References:

http://www.kycbs.net

http://www.kycbs.net/AIG.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Allied-World-Assurance.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Aloha-Air.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Bank-of-Hawaii.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Bank-of-Honolulu.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Broken-Trust-Book.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Catbird3.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Chief-Bush.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Chief-Clinton.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/ChubbGroup.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CITIGROUP.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Confessions.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Abramoff-Jack.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Aipa-Nathan.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Anzai-Earl.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Anzai-Lyn.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Bronster-Margery.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Cayetano-Ben.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Chang-Kevin.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Clinton-Bill.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Clinton-Hillary.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Duffy-James.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Ezra-David.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Farmer-David.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Goemans-John.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Gonzales-Alberto.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Giacometti-Guido.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Guttman-Steven.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Hifo-Eden.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Holder-Eric.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Hughes-Roy.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Kam-Louanne.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Kurren-Barry.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Lingle-Linda.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Matsumoto-Colbert.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-McConaghy-Mark.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Obama-Barack.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Paulson-Henry.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Plotts-Diane.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Rubin-Robert.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Sansone-Rocco.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Schwartz-Bernard.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Shannon-JC.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Sia-Sukamto.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Witham-Judson.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Wong-Colleen.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Democrats.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Democrats2.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Dragon.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Freedom-To-Sing.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/GoldmanSachs.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Indict-Bush.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/IndonesianConnection.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/JUSTICE.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Lobbyists.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Lost-Generations.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/MarshBirds.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/MaunawiliValley.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Methane.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/NatureConservancy.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Nature-Conservancy-Hawaii.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Peregrine-Fund.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/PriceWaterhouse.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/PunaConnection.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/RICO-BH.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/TheMeadows.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/XL.htm

April 13, 2009

Dear President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Mr. Farmer; Mr. Guttman; Ms. Muranaka; Judge Ezra, Judge Chang, Judge Kurren, and All Concerned:

Due to the discovery of new facts in this case, I am adding the subject Exhibit as it relates to your lawsuit which violates my Constitutional Rights of Free Speech and a Fair Trial by a jury of my peers, and to Federal and Hawaii Anti-SLAPP statutes.

In view of all the facts that I have presented in this and hundreds of other Exhibits and witness descriptions, it is beyond comprehension that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; Assistant U.S. Trustees Curtis Ching, Gayle Lau and Carol Muranaka; Judges Eden Hifo (fka Bambi Weil), Kevin Chang, David Ezra, Barry Kurren, Lloyd King and Robert Faris, and Trustees Mary Lou Woo, James Nicholson and David C. Farmer; the American Arbitration Association arbitrator Judith Neustadter Fuqua, and attorney Steven Guttman can still claim that they were non-conflicted, fair, impartial, and unbiased in this case.

In spite of all this factual evidence, however, I am again asking that we attempt to reach a global settlement of this matter through confidential negotiation or mediation rather than continuing these costly and seemingly-endless court proceedings.

If you, and your insurance carriers, are still NOT willing to attempt to negotiate or mediate a settlement, then I ask that you perform your mandated review of this new Exhibit in accordance with Judge Ezra's Order, and advise me if you find it contains any so-called "protected subject matter", and whether or not you intend to OBJECT to my filing a Motion to reopen this case.

Mr. Farmer, I respectfully request your immediate reply. If I do not receive a response from you or your insurance carrier within 15 days, I will assume that you have found no "PSM" in these updated pages, and that you will NOT file any objections to my Motion.

Very truly yours,

Bobby N. Harmon, CPCU, ARM

~ ~ ~

February 20, 2009

Activists 'shocked' at Clinton stance on China rights

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Amnesty International and a pro-Tibet group voiced shock Friday after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed not to let human rights concerns hinder cooperation with China.

Paying her first visit to Asia as the top US diplomat, Clinton said the United States would continue to press China on long-standing US concerns over human rights such as its rule over Tibet.

"But our pressing on those issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis," Clinton told reporters in Seoul just before leaving for Beijing.

T. Kumar of Amnesty International USA said the global rights lobby was "shocked and extremely disappointed" by Clinton's remarks.

"The United States is one of the only countries that can meaningfully stand up to China on human rights issues," he said.

"But by commenting that human rights will not interfere with other priorities, Secretary Clinton damages future US initiatives to protect those rights in China," he said.

Students for a Free Tibet said Clinton's remarks sent the wrong signal to China at a sensitive time.

"The US government cannot afford to let Beijing set the agenda," said Tenzin Dorjee, deputy director of the New York-based advocacy group.

China has been pouring troops into the Himalayan territory ahead of next month's 50th anniversary of the uprising that sent Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama into exile in India.

"Leaders really need to step up and pressure China. It's often easy to wonder whether pressure makes a difference. It may not make a difference in one day or one month, but it would be visible after some years," Dorjee said.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had sent a letter to Clinton before her maiden Asia visit urging her to raise human rights concerns with Chinese leaders.

Before she left, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said human rights would be "an important issue" for Clinton and that she would "raise the issue when appropriate."

China has greeted President Barack Obama's administration nervously, believing he would press Beijing harder on human rights and trade issues than former president George W. Bush.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090220/pl_afp/usdiplomacyasiachinarights

# # #

From The Catbird Seat - Part III archives (Year 2000):

China - The world's largest country.

November 8, 2000

China's Brutal One-Child Policy

"BOYCOTT THE PHARMACEUTICAL BUTCHERS OF BEIJING!"

By Michelle Malkin, Midweek

Is there a protester out there brave enough to wear that phrase on a T-shirt? Search high and low, but you will not find any ... activists criticizing communist China's peddlers of RU-486, the abortion pill.

The Washington Post reported recently that the Hua Lian Pharmaceutical Co, a govt-owned firm outside of Shanghai, will manufacture Mifepristone-- the raw compound for RU-486-- for sale in the United States. The firm is one of three in China that makes the drug. It won U.S. approval to produce and export abortion drug ingredients here thanks to financial help from population control fanatics at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Pro-abortion groups are ecstatic. But while American women celebrate their newly-acquired "choice," millions of pregnant women in China are forced to swallow the poison pill against their will. It is no small coincidence that RU-486 was originally developed by a drug company whose parent corporation manufactured Zyklon B-- the poison gas used in Nazi concentration camps to destroy millions of unwanted lives.

Family-planning propagandists in China slyly echo the liberating rhetoric of their U.S. counterparts. "RU-486 has given women more choices, and it's been beneficial to women's health," Gao Ersheng, director of the Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, told the Post. "Most unmarried women prefer Mifepristone, which is less painful and more private than surgical abortions," Gao told The New York Times.

Preferences? Pain? Privacy? Since when did Chinese family-planning bureaucrats care about any of those things? Certainly not since they instituted the one-child policy in 1979. An army of 200,000 officials and a million volunteers who comprise "street committees" snoop on the fertility of Chinese citizens. The government keeps dossiers tracking women's menstrual cycles.

All women who "choose" to undergo surgical abortions "prefer" to do so without anesthesia.

Out of an estimated 10 million abortions performed in China each year, the Washington Post reports, about half of those that are performed in the cities use RU-486. The other five million women undergo such methods as saline injections to induce miscarriage; Ribalor injections, which cause congestive heart failure in the unborn baby, who is then delivered dead; or partial-birth abortions in which doctors inject formaldehyde into a baby's soft spot as the child crowns during delivery.

"Neither abortion nor RU-486 is a subject for moral debate in China in the way it is in the United States," the Post noted. There is no debate in China about anything. When a family disagrees with the government's diagnosis, the consequences are hellish-- ranging from back-breaking fines and forced sterilization to mass infanticide....

If you think government-sponsored baby-killing no longer happens in 21^st century China, you missed last month's international headlines: "Chinese officials drown baby in front of parents." Huang Quisheng, a rural farmer, told London reporters how family planners had tried to induce a miscarriage in his eight-months-pregnant wife by injecting saline solution into her womb.

Against the odds, their baby son survived and was born healthy.

But, as Huang recounted: "They grabbed him from me and threw him to the floor and kicked him several times. We were ordered to go home as they took him to the back of the government building and drowned him ..."

The enforcers of this brutal regime will now reap profits by selling their deadly abortion pills to the United States. Feminists embrace them; the White House toasts them; a bipartisan Congress rewards them with a multibillion-dollar trade deal. The laboratories of an evil empire churn and bellow as millions of Chinese parents mourn.

And where are America's human rights activists? Boycotting Happy Meals, sneakers and Kathie Lee....

* * *

Human Rights in China

Sophia Woodman in Hong Kong: 852.2710.8021; Judy Chen in New York: 212-239-4495; International Rivers Network: Doris Shen in California: (510) 848-1155 ext 317

October 3, 2000 - As violence grows in the Three Gorges resettlement areas, international NGOs call for immediate action by government and investors to address affected peoples' grievances.

Reports from the areas to be flooded by the mammoth Three Gorges Dam tell of an alarming rise in violent incidents sparked by resentment against resettlement. Officials summoned troops to quell one protest.

On Friday, Sept 29, the South China Morning Post reported that long-standing complaints that resettlement plans are ill-conceived, funds inadequate and that monies allocated for this purpose have been embezzled by corrupt officials continue to be ignored, while the date for filling the reservoir grows ever nearer. In many cases, years of peaceful petitioning has brought no relief, and frustrated residents are increasingly resorting to public protests, sometimes resulting in clashes with police or local officials. The homes of between 1.2 to 1.9 million people are to be flooded.

Reports of growing tension and violence contradict official statements that the first stage of resettlement is proceeding smoothly. They also demonstrate that the Chinese government's resettlement regulations and policies, praised by the World Bank as a model for the developing world, are often nothing but empty promises for displaced people. In addition, they reveal the serious inadequacy of complaints mechanisms in China, where the constitutional right to petition the authorities for the redress of grievances generally means little in practice.

A number of recent examples of disturbances illustrate the seriousness of the problems in the Three Gorges area. In mid-September, about 300 peasants from Gaoyang Township in Yunyang County attacked officials in charge of the county Resettlement Bureau, injuring at least one. In another protest in September, farmers hurled objects that injured some officials, including the deputy party chief, who was hit with a brick. Officials summoned troops to quell the violence. Earlier this year in Gaoyang, more than 1,000 peasants staged a protest and demanded a meeting with county leaders to demand more equitable compensation and access to official policy documents detailing the terms and conditions of resettlement.

A group of 300 farmers resettled in Zhanjiang in Jiangsu Province is returning to the Three Gorges area because each household had received the pitiful sum of only 9,000 yuan ($1,200 dollars) to build new houses. Last week, another group of 300 farmers sent to Taofu state farm in Hubei Province returned to Gaoyang and assaulted local resettlement bureau officials, accusing them of embezzling money earmarked for the construction of their new homes.

Farmers have signed dozens of petitions to complain that their representatives had been detained and threatened by local officials and even charging that petitioner representatives had been knifed by local gangsters on the orders of a local official.

These are just a few among a catalogue of incidents resulting from severely inadequate resettlement planning, endemic corruption and mismanagement, problems the International Rivers Network and Human Rights in China have been warning for some years create an explosive situation in the Three Gorges area as large numbers of people began to be moved under the resettlement program.

For over eight years, the International Rivers Network has been lobbying financial institutions to ensure they will not support the project. "We call on the international community to cease involvement in Three Gorges Dam until abuses of civil rights are addressed. By financing the project, U.S. banks are aiding in the creation of the most development refugees for a single project ever. Until Morgan Stanley Dean Witter implements necessary environmental and social policies governing core business operations, International Rivers Network is spearheading a consumer boycott of the firm's Discover Card and Choice brokerage services.

"Financial institutions don't deserve our business if they don't take responsibility for their environmental and social impacts" said Doris Shen, IRN program officer. Since 1995, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's joint venture, China International Capital Corporation based in Hong Kong, has served as the Three Gorges Project Development Corporation's advisor on raising overseas capital. In May 1997 and 1999, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter helped underwrite $830 million in bonds for the China Development Bank (CDB). Three Gorges Dam is listed as CDB's top loan commitment. (see www.floodwallstreet.org for more details)

Human Rights in China is disturbed at the evident failure of the authorities at all levels to address the grievances of people forced to move by the Three Gorges Dam. "As in so many cases, promises made to people displaced for hydropower projects are proving to be not worth the paper they are written on," said Sophia Woodman, HRIC research director. "People whose rights are ignored have no effective means of redress, and their efforts to organize to protect their interests are met only with repression. This kind of approach is a recipe for instability and unrest. In the Three Gorges, it could mean out-and-out violence as the resettlement program advances."

"We call on the Chinese government to act immediately to ensure that the rights of people displaced by the dam are fully respected, and to undertake serious, good faith investigation of all complaints. We recommend that foreign investors suspend their involvement in the Three Gorges Dam project until these problems have been satisfactorily addressed," Woodman added.

Companies that are currently involved in the project include: GEC Alsthom of France, ABB of Switzerland and Sweden, Agra Monenco of Canada, GE Canada, and Voith Hydro and Siemens of Germany.

Financing firms involved in financing include: Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, China International Capital Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Salomon Smith Barney of Citigroup, Goldman, Sachs & Co., Credit Suisse First Boston.

http://www.kycbs.net/Catbird3.htm

# # #

February 21, 2009

Dear President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Mr. Farmer; Mr. Guttman; Ms. Muranaka; Judge Ezra, Judge Chang, Judge Kurren, and All Concerned:

This references the subject Exhibits and related witness descriptions which provide evidence of undisclosed conflicts of interest among various persons directly involved in this case.

This Exhibit also provides further evidence that the closing of my website by the U.S. Department of Justice, by Order of Judge David A. Ezra, is a prior restraint of freedom of speech and clearly violates my First Amendment Rights, and that Judge Ezra did not have jurisdiction in this case due to the fact that I was not a resident of Hawaii, and the website domain name was registered in Australia, at the time of the Order.

Although this document clearly justifies my filing a Motion to Reopen this case, for the sake of expediency and closure, I again offer to you, and to your insurance carriers, the opportunity to attempt a global settlement of this matter through negotiation or mediation.

If you are NOT willing to attempt to negotiate or mediate a settlement, however, then I ask that you review this new Exhibit and advise me if you find it contains any so-called "protected subject matter", and whether or not you

~ ~ ~

January 21, 2009

Senate confirms Clinton as
secretary of state

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer Anne Flaherty

WASHINGTON – The Senate confirmed Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state Wednesday as President Barack Obama moved to make his imprint on U.S. foreign policy, mobilizing a fresh team of veteran advisers and reaching out to world leaders. The Senate voted 94-2, with Republican Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana and Jim DeMint of South Carolina opposing.

Republicans and Democrats alike said her swift confirmation was necessary so that Obama could begin tackling the major foreign policy issues at hand, including two wars, increased violence in the Middle East and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

"It is essential that we provide the president with the tools and resources he needs to effect change, and that starts with putting a national security team in place as soon as possible," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Obama's presidential rival, Sen. John McCain, was among those who spoke in Clinton's favor.

"This nation has come together in a way that it has not for some time," said the Arizona Republican, on the Senate floor for the first time since the inauguration.

Voters "want us to work together and get to work," McCain said.

As the Senate debated Clinton's appointment, Obama wasted no time in his first day at the White House. According to a White House spokesman, Obama placed telephone calls to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The administration also planned to name former Senate Democratic leader George J. Mitchell as Clinton's special envoy for the Middle East. Dennis Ross, a longtime U.S. negotiator, was also expected to advise Clinton on Mideast policy, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the move.

She was sworn in as the nation's 67th secretary of state in her office in the Russell Senate Office Building. Attending the private ceremony was her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and her Senate staff. According to her office, she used the Bible that belonged to her late father. To assume the position, she submitted her resignation as senator in twin letters to Vice President Joe Biden, as president of the Senate, and New York Gov. David Paterson.

The former first lady planned to report to the State Department on Thursday, where she was expected to address employees in the main lobby that morning — a tradition of sorts for secretaries of state on their first day on the job.

Clinton received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress despite lingering concerns by some Republicans that her husband's charitable fundraising overseas could pose conflicts of interest.

Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, proposed that former President Bill Clinton's foundation reject foreign contributions. But Hillary Clinton rejected Lugar's proposal, contending that the foundation's plan to disclose annually its list of donors and a range of its contributions already exceeds legal requirements.

Lugar said he hoped Clinton would re-examine her position but supported her appointment, citing her "remarkable qualifications" and "pressing global issues."

Vitter and DeMint, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said they were unsatisfied. Last week, Vitter cast the sole opposing vote in the committee's 16-1 endorsement of Clinton. DeMint voted in favor of Clinton on the committee because he said he didn't want to obstruct a full Senate vote on her appointment, but ultimately did not support her nomination.

In addition to concerns surrounding the foundation, DeMint said he opposes Clinton's positions on such matters as providing aid to foreign groups that offer abortions.

"I do not plan to slow up this nomination, but I do find it difficult to support a nominee who I know will pursue policies so contrary to American sovereignty and the dignity of the human person," he said.

Following the vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed Susan Rice to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a post Obama has elevated to the Cabinet level.

Meanwhile, the Senate considered other appointments by Obama.

Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner apologized to the Senate Finance Committee and said he was careless for failing to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes earlier this decade. The committee planned to vote on his appointment on Thursday.

Eric Holder's bid to become the first African-American attorney general was delayed for at least a week when Republicans demanded more time to question him about harsh interrogations, Guantanamo trials and other topics.

Yahoo News

~ ~ ~

December 18, 2008

Saudis, Indians among Clinton foundation donors

By BETH FOUHY and SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The world opened its wallet for Bill Clinton. Governments, corporations and billionaires with their own interests in U.S. foreign policy gave the former president's charity millions of dollars, according to records he released Thursday to lay bare any financial entanglements that could affect his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton as the next secretary of state.

Saudi Arabia, Norway and other foreign governments gave at least $46 million, and donors with ties to India delivered millions more. Corporate donors included the Blackwater security firm, at risk of losing its lucrative government contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, and Web company Yahoo, involved in disputes over surrendering Internet information to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of dissidents there.

Other high-profile Clinton donors don't suggest inevitable collisions between U.S. policies and their giving. Celebrities Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Paul Newman, Carly Simon and Chevy Chase all gave. Sports figures included New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Formula One driver Michael Schumacher and owners of the Indiana Pacers basketball team.

The records account for at least $492 million in contributions to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit created by the former president to finance his library in Little Rock, Ark., and charitable efforts in dozens of countries to reduce poverty and treat AIDS.

President-elect Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton's nomination as secretary of state contingent on her husband revealing the foundation's contributors, to address questions about potential conflicts of interest.

The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on its Web site Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying them. It released only the names of donors and the range of their contributions. It did not identify each contributor's occupation, employer or nationality or provide any other details. The foundation said separately Thursday that fewer than 3,000 of its donors were foreigners but it did not identify which ones....

It was not immediately clear whether the disclosures will raise any serious challenge to Hillary Clinton's nomination to be secretary of state. The two senior lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., wrote to colleagues on Thursday and said the list's disclosure "is designed to establish greater transparency and predictability with regard to the activities of the Clinton Foundation in the context of Sen. Clinton's service as secretary of state."

Shortly after the documents were released Thursday, Hillary Clinton made another appearance at the State Department for meetings with transition aides, officials said. The trip was the latest of several to the building for the former first lady since she was nominated by Obama. Her first visit was Dec. 8, after which she had dinner with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

After negotiations with Obama's transition team, Bill Clinton promised to reveal the contributors, submit future foundation activities and paid speeches to an ethics review, step away from the day-to-day operation of his annual charitable conference and inform the State Department about new sources of income and speeches.

According to Clinton's list, Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to $25 million to the foundation. Other government donors include Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy, Jamaica and Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The Dutch national lottery gave $5 million to $10 million.

The Blackwater Training Center donated $10,001 to $25,000. The State Department will have to decide next year whether to renew Blackwater Worldwide's contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. A U.S. grand jury has indicted five Blackwater guards on manslaughter and weapons charges stemming from a September 2007 firefight in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in which 17 Iraqis died.

"Blackwater frequently supports charitable organizations and we were honored to make a donation to this one, long before Senator Clinton became the Secretary of State-designee," said Blackwater spokeswoman Anne E. Tyrrell.

Donors also include Yahoo; its co-founder Jerry Yang; Yahoo board member Frank J. Biondi and former Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel, who stepped down in June 2007. Another company where Yang serves on the board, Alibaba.com, does extensive business in China and contributed separately to the foundation.

Eager to tap into China's lucrative markets, Yahoo has fallen under bitter criticism — one congressman publicly called Yang a moral "pygmy" — after the company handed over e-mails that helped the Chinese government identify and ultimately imprison two Chinese journalists. Yang later expressed regret over the incident and urged Rice — who would become Hillary Clinton's predecessor — to negotiate for their freedom.

The foundation's list also underscores ties between the Clintons and India, which could complicate diplomatic perceptions of whether Hillary Clinton can be a neutral broker between India and neighboring Pakistan in a region where Obama will face an early test of his foreign policy leadership. Tensions between the two nuclear nations are high since last month's deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Amar Singh, a donor in the $1 million to $5 million category, is an Indian politician who played host to Bill Clinton on a visit to India in 2005 and met Hillary Clinton in New York in September to discuss an India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement.

Also in that category was Suzlon Energy Ltd. of Amsterdam, a leading supplier of wind turbines. Its chairman is Tulsi R. Tanti, one of India's wealthiest executives. Tanti announced plans at Clinton's Global Initiative meeting earlier this year for a $5 billion project to develop environmentally friendly power generation in India and China.

Two other Indian interests gave between $500,000 and $1 million each: the Confederation of Indian Industry, an industrial trade association; and Dave Katragadda, an Indian capital manager with holdings in media and entertainment, technology, health care and financial services. Ajit Gulabchand, chairman of the Hindustan Construction Co., gave $250,000 to $500,000.

Other foreign governments also contributed heavily to the foundation.

AUSAID, the Australian government's overseas aid program, and COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, each gave $10 million to $25 million. Norway gave $5 million to $10 million. Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Oman gave $1 million to $5 million each. The government of Jamaica and Italy's Ministry for Environment and Territory gave $50,000 to $100,000 each. The Tenerife Island government donated $25,000 to $50,000.

The biggest donations — more than $25 million each — came from two donors. They are the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a London-based philanthropic organization founded by hedge fund manager Chris Hohn and his wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn and dedicated to helping children, primarily in Africa and India; and UNITAID, an international drug purchase organization formed by Brazil, France, Chile, Norway and Britain to help provide care for HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis patients in countries with high disease rates.

(Catbird Curiosity: Why do these foreign countries, government agencies, “philanthropists” and other entities need to give millions to The Clinton Foundation in order to fight poverty, disease and AIDS in Africa, India, and other foreign countries? Can’t they just give it directly to those countries in need???)

The foundation's donor list includes many overseas business interests:

_Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid gave $1 million to $5 million.

_Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation each gave $1 million to $5 million, as did the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office.

_The Swedish Postcode Lottery gave $500,000 to $1 million.

_China Overseas Real Estate Development and the U.S. Islamic World Conference gave $250,000 to $500,000 apiece.

_The No. 4 person on the Forbes billionaire list, Lakshmi Mittal, the chief executive of international steel company ArcelorMittal, gave $1 million to $5 million. Mittal is a member of the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan, Goldman Sachs' board of directors and the World Economic Forum's International Business Council, according to the biography on his corporate Web site.

_Simon Barcelo, chief executive of Barcelo Hotels & Resorts, gave $500,000 to $1 million. The company's holdings include hotels in Cuba, a communist country subject to U.S. trade sanctions.

_Victor P. Dahdaleh, who gave $1 million to $5 million, is a Canadian investor and philanthropist involved in aluminum production. His business ties have brought allegations of fraud and bribery in a lawsuit filed by a Bahrain aluminum company. The suit seeks more than $1 billion in damages for what it alleges is Dadaleh's involvement in questionable deals in the Middle East, and the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the matter. Dahdaleh has vowed to vigorously contest the charges.

Among other $1 million to $5 million donors:

_Harold Snyder, director for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the largest drug company in Israel. His son, Jay T. Snyder, serves on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which oversees State Department activities, and served as a senior U.S. adviser to the United Nations, where he worked on international trade and poverty. Jay Snyder donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation.

_No. 97 on the Forbes billionaire list, Ethiopian-Saudi business tycoon Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi.

_Issam Fares, a former deputy prime minister of Lebanon.

_Mala Gaonkar Haarman, a partner and managing director at the private investment partnership Lone Pine Capital.

_Lukas Lundin, chairman of oil, gas and mining businesses including Tanganyika Oil Company Ltd., an international oil and gas exploration and production company with interests in Syria, and Vostok Nafta Investment Ltd., an investment company that focuses on Russia and other former Soviet republics.

_Victor Pinchuk, son-in-law of the former president of Ukraine. Clinton spoke in 2007 at an annual meeting of Yalta European Strategy, a group Pinchuk founded to promote Ukraine joining the European Union.

The top ranks of Clinton's donor list are heavy with longtime Democratic givers, some notable for their staunch support of Israel

_TV producer Haim Saban and his family foundation, who donated between $5 million and $10 million, splits his time between homes in Israel and California. "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel," he told The New York Times in 2004.

_Slim-Fast diet foods tycoon S. Daniel Abraham, a donor of between $1 million and $5 million, has been a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which promotes Israel's interests before the U.S. government.

_The American Jewish Committee and the United Nations Foundation donated $100,000 to $250,000.

Clinton thanked his donors in a statement for being "steadfast partners in our work to impact the lives of so many around the world in measurable and meaningful ways."

The former president agreed to step away from direct involvement in the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual charitable conference where businesses and many foreign governments pledge donations to help ameliorate AIDS, poverty and other social ills. He will continue serving as CGI's founding chairman but will not solicit money or sponsorships. The CGI will cease accepting foreign contributions and will not host events outside the United States.

Clinton started raising money for his library before leaving the White House. Over the years, the Clintons repeatedly refused to identify all the foundation donors, and continued to do so during Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Names surfaced nonetheless. Several news organizations unearthed foreign-government donors, and in 2001, Bill Clinton turned over a list of 150 top foundation donors to a House committee investigating his pardon of fugitive businessman Marc Rich, whose ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave the library foundation at least $450,000.

On the Net:

Clinton Foundation contributors: http://www.clintonfoundation.org/contributors

www.kycbs.net/Clinton-Donors.mht

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (02-04-09): More undisclosed conflicts of interest between David Farmer, James Nicholson, Steven Guttman, Paul Alston, Judith Neustadter Fuqua, John Waihee, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Mukasey, Eric Holder, and other witnesses in this case:

June 26, 2008

Pardongate Is The Least of
Eric Holder’s Sins

“I was wondering when you were going to call me,” so said the irrepressible Nolanda Butler Hill when I phoned last week.

She knew precisely what item of news had prompted me to call: the revelation that Barack Obama had selected Clinton Deputy Attorney General and Ron Brown protege, Eric Holder, to help vet his vice presidential candidates.

As the confidante and business partner of the late Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Hill knows from personal experience that Holder’s sins go well beyond his seamy role in the Marc Rich pardon scandal.

In the way of background, in May 1995, Clinton’s unpredictable Attorney General Janet Reno called for an independent counsel to assess whether Ron Brown had “accepted things of value” from Hill in exchange for his influence.

Reno’s pursuit of Brown did not shock either of them. He had been the subject of an inquiry for months. Targeting Hill, however, had no precedent, and it unnerved them both.

By statute, the independent counsel law applied only to political and government figures. “It was unlawful,” says Hill of her own targeting, “I was the only such person in history.”

In time, the independent counsel also targeted Brown’s son, Michael, for laundering money to his father through a scam minority set aside deal with a sleazy pair of Asian-American fundraisers. In Hill’s words, Michael “was as guilty as a goose.”

Hill and Brown both understood that she was being targeted in the hopes that she would roll over on Brown. Her condition for not doing so was that Brown share with her his every point of vulnerability.

Nowhere was Brown more vulnerable than in his unwelcome role as chief bagman for the Clintons’ relentless and often illicit fundraising in the run-up to the 1996 election.

Hill learned virtually every unseemly detail--from Brown’s go-between work with the Chicoms and their American vendors to his wholesale distribution of walking around money to Democratic race hustlers. As Brown understood, Hill knew way too much.

Even before his own mysterious death, Brown worried openly about her life and safety. He went so far as to call Hill’s sister, with whom she stayed from time to time, and insist Hill not be allowed to go out jogging alone.

As soon as Brown died, the independent counsel ceased the investigation into his illicit activities. As to Michael, he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor, accepted a small fine, and was out playing golf with the president a month later.

Not surprisingly, however, the Justice Department kept the pressure on the outspoken Hill, still deeply troubled by the circumstances surrounding Brown’s death.

Hill took heart when, in July 1997, President Clinton appointed Holder to replace Jamie Gorelick as Deputy Attorney General. Although ostensibly second in command, the Deputy AG was the real power in Justice, the Clinton equivalent of a Soviet “political officer.”

Hill knew Holder through Brown, who had been instrumental in getting him his previous job as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

She and her attorney wasted no time in contacting Holder at the American Bar Association Annual Meeting, which was held that year in San Francisco in early August.

Holder, however, did not get to be Deputy AG by being naïve. “The train is already going down the tracks,” he explained to Hill. “It will take your cooperation to stop it.”

The “train” in question was a D.C. grand jury, which was being led to indict Hill. The “cooperation” meant Hill keeping her mouth shut.

Hill clarifies, “He [Holder] told me and my attorney that if I told what I knew about election fundraising I would be indicted.”

Holder was as good as his word. On March 13, 1998, ten days before Hill was to testify in a suit brought by Judicial Watch on the subject of Brown’s fundraising, the Clinton Justice Department indicted Hill on trumped up charges of fraud and tax evasion.

The willfully blind lead of the New York Times called the indictment “a vivid example of how an investigation can outlive its target.”

Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch knew better. In a motion to the court, he would write, “The timing of these events is neither accidental nor coincidental. Ms. Hill’s indictment was likely an effort to retaliate against her and deter her from giving any further damaging testimony at the March 23, 1998 hearing.”

At White House bidding, Holder had Hill indicted to shut her up, and he succeeded. Anxious, alone, and broke, facing as many as seventy years in prison if convicted, Hill chose to negotiate a deal.

On June 15, 1999, a day before her fifty-fifth birthday, she reported to a halfway house in Seagoville, Texas, her silence at least temporarily assured.

As James Sanders, my partner on the TWA 800 investigation, can attest, silencing whistleblowers through bogus prosecution was the modus operandi in the Holder era. Sanders and his wife Elizabeth were indicted and convicted on federal conspiracy charges on Holder’s watch.

Although generally appalled by the Clintons, Hill understands how betrayed they must feel when their very proteges desert them for Obama.

Holder did so early on. “Given Holder’s credentials,” the Chicago Tribune reported breathlessly in August 2007, “it isn’t outside the realm of possibility to suggest he could wind up the nation’s first African-American attorney general should Obama win the White House.”

Hill thinks she knows why Holder jumped ship. He was a key player in a racially exclusive cabal of DC insiders. “He’s so racist it’s not even funny,” she says of Holder, “not only racist but elitist.”

Still, no matter how compromised Holder might be, Obama can ill afford to dismiss him from his vice-presidential selection committee.

Obama has already had to dismiss one of the three selectors. If he dismisses a second, it will become absurdly obvious that the real problem is not Holder or Jim Johnson of Countrywide fame, but Mr. Obama himself

http://www.cashill.com/natl_general/pardongate.htm

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (12-01-08):

December 1, 2008

Clinton's India ties may complicate Obama policy

By MATTHEW LEE and PETE YOST, Matthew Lee And Pete Yost, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The close ties with India that Secretary of State-nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton forged during her years as a U.S. senator and presidential candidate could complicate diplomatic perceptions of her ability to serve as a neutral broker between India and its nuclear neighbor, Pakistan.

With tensions rising between India and Pakistan after last week's deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Hillary Clinton faces an early test of her influence in South Asia, where President-elect Barack Obama on Monday said that instability and the rise of militants pose "the single most important threat against the American people."

Both Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have maintained warm relations for years with India and the Indian-American community. As New York's senator for eight years and as a 2008 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton toured India and visited with Indian officials and entrepreneurs, and her campaigns profited from the largesse of Indian-American fundraisers. Bill Clinton's charitable foundation has been funded by some of the same well-heeled Indian businessmen who backed his wife's campaigns.

In her new role as the nation's top diplomat, Hillary Clinton would project Obama's policies, not her own. But even foreign affairs experts who wave off suggestions that Hillary Clinton would lean toward either Asian power acknowledge that the perception of such a tilt could cause suspicions in Pakistan. South Asia experts reject the assertion of bias, but they acknowledge it exists....

Karin Von Hippel, a South Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed, saying Hillary Clinton is "very balanced" and "understands almost better than anybody how delicate the situation is between these two countries."...

Still, perceptions matter, especially in the region. "There are concerns that she is seen as pro-India, she and her husband both," said one Washington-based foreign diplomat with extensive experience in South Asia. "The Pakistanis definitely see them as closer and friendlier to India."...

Influential members of the Indian-American community have rejoiced in Hillary Clinton's selection as secretary of state....

A current State Department official allowed that Bill Clinton had substantially boosted engagement with India, but noted that any administration would likely have done so. The official stressed that President George W. Bush has continued that course, most recently signing a civilian nuclear pact with New Delhi.

"None of this has been meant to exclude Pakistan, but it is a zero-sum game when you are dealing with these two countries," the official said. "You can't do something with one without it affecting the other." The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration thinking.

Ties between the United States and India improved dramatically, as did Pakistani suspicions of pro-India bias in Washington, during Bill Clinton's administration, which embraced India as a major power and market as it opened its economy in the 1990s.

The administration's disparate treatment of India and Pakistan was most apparent during a 2000 Asian trip, with the president spending five days in India and seven hours in Pakistan.

The Clinton White House barred media coverage of the Pakistan stop and released only an official photo of Bill Clinton and Gen. Pervez Musharraf seated among aides, 12 feet across from each other. Bill Clinton admonished Pakistan's military government to retreat from its nuclear weapons course and to lower dangerous tensions with India...

Early during her presidential campaign in 2008, the former first lady pointed to the "strong partnership" that Bill Clinton forged between India and the U.S. As New York's senator, Hillary Clinton also touted her role as co-chair of the Senate India Caucus.

"As president I will work with India to make our strong friendship even stronger," Hillary Clinton promised earlier this year.

During the presidential campaign, Indian-Americans reciprocated Hillary Clinton's long-standing embrace of India by giving generously — $2 million at a single fundraiser in New York in 2007.

At one point, the Obama camp prepared, but then disavowed, a campaign memo that carried the headline "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)," a mocking play on the standard reference to a candidates' party and constituency.

The memo, which created a furor in India and the Indian-American community, also referred to the Clintons' investments in India, Sen. Clinton's fundraising among Indian-Americans and the former president's $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company that has moved U.S. jobs to India.

Obama called the memo "a dumb mistake" and "not reflective of the long-standing relationship I have had with the Indian-American community."

Now as president-elect, Obama has chosen Hillary Clinton to be his chief diplomat and highlighted India and Pakistan as priorities for his administration.

"The situation in South Asia as a whole and the safe havens for terrorists that have been established there represent the single most important threat against the American people," he told reporters at a news conference Monday as he unveiled his foreign policy and national security team, including Hillary Clinton.

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (11-15-08): More undisclosed financial, professional, political and personal conflicts between parties directly and indirectly involved in this case, including Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, David Farmer, Kenneth Starr, Ron Rewald, Larry Mehau, Governor John Waihee, Governor Ben Cayetano, Dan Inouye, Daniel Akaka, Judge Kevin Chang, Judge Barry Kurren, Judge David Ezra, Henry Peters, Richard Wong, Milton Holt, Sukamto Sia, Guido Giacometti, Paul Alston, Judith Neustadter Fuqua, etc.:

November 15, 2008

Obama rumored to favor Clinton
as top diplomat

by Steven Collinson

WASHINGTON, (AFP) – The US capital on Saturday was abuzz with speculation that US president-elect Barack Obama is weighing former Democratic primary rival Hillary Clinton to be a heavy-hitting secretary of state.

Sources close to Clinton and Obama did not deny reports that the New York senator and former first lady met Obama in Chicago on Thursday, and was in the frame to become the top US diplomat and fourth in line to the presidency.

The reports came as Obama's team announced that the president-elect, who will take office on January 20 during an intense economic crisis and with two foreign wars raging, would meet former Republican rival John McCain on Monday.

The Clinton reports spurred talk that Obama would assemble a "team of rivals" uniting his former political foes, like that framed after the 1860 election by his hero Abraham Lincoln.

Aides to Obama and Clinton refused all comment on the rampant speculation, but equally did not deny the reports.

"I'm not going to speculate or address anything about the president-elect's incoming administration. I'm going to respect his process," Clinton said in a speech to the New York Public Transit Association.

Democratic strategist James Carville, who managed the successful 1992 run for the presidency by Hillary Clinton's husband Bill Clinton, told CNN he believed that talks with Obama were "pretty far advanced."

"She knew she was not going there (to Chicago) to have tea with the president-elect," said Carville, who remains close to both Clintons.

But the ABC network, quoting a source who knows about the transition process, described the talks between the two in Chicago on Thursday "as not a hard offer. Obama is more cautious than that."

Obama told Clinton that he knew how much she "cared about health care but said there are other challenges" and he wanted to reach out to her about secretary of state, ABC said....

Obama spent much of Friday closeted in his transition headquarters in Chicago in meetings about his future administration, fleshing out priorities following his historic November 4 victory .

With the Obama administration inheriting two wars and the pressing need to restore America's damaged global reputation, the post of secretary of state will be key.

Clinton, 61, has extensive foreign policy experience, having travelled widely when her husband was president from 1993 to 2001, and from her time in the Senate, where she serves on the Armed Services Committee.

After Obama narrowly beat Clinton in the bruising Democratic primaries this year, her legions of loyal supporters were disappointed when she was not approached to be his running mate.

But Clinton campaigned feverishly for her former rival in the final days of the campaign, doing more than 50 rallies.

Obama is also due to meet Monday in Chicago with McCain.

"It's well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality," a transition statement said Friday.

An impressive array of former Clinton-era diplomats and officials have already been appointed to oversee the transition teams that are burrowing into the sprawling US bureaucracy.

According to the Washington Post, Clinton's name emerged because the Obama camp "is not overly happy with the usual suspects" mentioned for secretary of state.

Those include Senator John Kerry, a former presidential candidate, former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and moderate Republican Senator Chuck Hagel.

Speculation has also swirled around the post of defense secretary, with rumors Robert Gates might be asked to stay on.

Meanwhile, Valerie Jarrett, a real estate lawyer who has worked for a long time for the Chicago city government, said in an interview that she had been hired by Obama for a senior White House adviser.

Jarrett told The New York Times that she will be responsible for White House's relations with state and local officials and supervise the Office of Public Liaison.

About 20 years ago, Jarrett, who at that time worked for the Chicago city government, hired Michelle Obama, Barack Obama's wife, for a job at Chicago's City Hall, The Times said.

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (08-15-08): Undisclosed conflicts of interests between Senator Dan Inouye, Senator Ted Stevens, VECO Corporation, George W. Bush, John McCain, Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Shell Oil, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Waihee, Bishop Estate, Aloha Petroleum, James Ahloy, Chevron-Texaco, Mark Bennett, Linda Lingle, Tesoro Petroleum, Faye Kurren, Judge Barry Kurren, Enron, Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, Henry Peters, Paul Alston, etc.:

December 6, 1996

ENRON and Shell Win Bid in
Capitalization of YPFB's
Transportation Segment

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA – Enron Development Corp. and Shell International Gas Ltd. announced today that the government of Bolivia has named the companies the successful capitalizing company for the transportation segment of the state oil and gas company, Yacimientos Petroliferos...

Business Wire

~ ~ ~

March 30, 1998

The following is an excerpt from a 10-K SEC Filing, filed by TESORO PETROLEUM CORP on 3/30/1998:

ACCESS TO NEW MARKETS

A lack of market access has constrained natural gas production in Bolivia. With little internal gas demand, all of the Company's Bolivian natural gas production is sold under contract to the Bolivian government for export to Argentina.

Major developments in South America indicate that new markets will open for the Company's production. Construction of a new 1,900-mile pipeline that will link Bolivia's extensive gas reserves with markets in Brazil commenced in 1997 and is expected to be operational in early 1999.

The owners of the new pipeline include Petrobras (the Brazilian state oil company), other Brazilian investors, Enron Corp., Shell International Gas Ltd., British Gas PLC, El Paso Energy Corp., BHP, and Bolivian pension funds. When completed, the new pipeline will have a capacity of approximately 1 billion cubic feet ("Bcf") per day.

For more, see...

Googling the Ghost of Ken Lay

Aloha, Harken Energy

Citigroup: Vampires in the City

Dirty Gold in Goldman Sachs

Shell Oil: The Shell Game

The Story of Enron

Vultures Up to their Necks in Tesoro Petroleum

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (07-12-08):

Harken Energy & The SEC

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (06/16/08):

Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal (also known as the AIPAC espionage scandal) refers to allegations that information regarding United States policy towards Iran was passed to Israel through Lawrence Franklin via staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC].

Franklin, a former Defense Department employee, has pleaded guilty to several espionage-related charges and was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly thirteen years of prison. Two former AIPAC employees have also been indicted.

The investigation and prosecutions, which began in 1999, have attracted attention because critics of U.S. Israeli policy have claimed AIPAC has served as a conduit for Israel’s spying efforts with near impunity due to its powerful connections in Washington. Franklin's indictment mentioned but did not name several foreign diplomats, widely believed to be Israeli, as being involved with his efforts....

Continued at: http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC.htm

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (06-04-08):

June 4, 2008

OBAMA WILL BE A GOOD FRIEND TO ISRAEL, HILLARY CLINTON TELLS AIPAC
- OBAMA IS MY FRIEND

US presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton delivered an address to AIPAC in Washington on Wednesday morning.

Less than 24 hours after the Associated Press reported that Senator Barack Obama had clinched a sufficient number of delegates to claim the Democratic nomination, Clinton announced that it had been “an honor” for her “to contest this race with [him]” and that it was also an honor to call Obama her friend.

Clinton then stated that she knew “Obama will be a good friend to Israel” and that the presumptive Democratic nominee “shares [her] views” that the US stands with Israel “now and forever.”

The US presidential candidate opened her speech by praising the pro-Israel lobby group for engaging in the constitutionally protected activity of “exercising the right to petition,” and expressed her “pleasure” in representing “one of the largest Jewish constituencies” in her role as a senator from New York State.

Speaking in commemoration of Israel’s 60th anniversary, the senator lauded Israel by stating that the Jewish state’s story “demonstrates [that] democracy can flourish in the most difficult of environments.”

“What a remarkable 60 years it has been,” the former first lady said, noting that after nearly continual “trials and tears” since Israel’s independence, “the desert is blooming again.”

Turning to current threats faced by Israel, Clinton declared that “our hearts go out to residents of cities like Sderot,” who exist under a nearly continuous barrage of Kassam rocket attacks.

In contrast to Obama, who expressed a deep commitment to Israel’s security, the New York senator also made mention of Israel’s security barrier. She recalled her visit to the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, where she witnessed the barrier “protecting families.” She went on to say that she has “spoken up for the right of Israeli families to have that protective fence.”

At the close of her speech, Clinton outlined what she considered to be three important points of her Middle East and Israel foreign policy.

First, she stressed the importance of continued US support for Israel, including the 2 billion dollars of US military aid [a.k.a. US Taxpayers’ aid] given annually and cautioned against pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions or implement “made in America” solutions to the conflict.

Secondly, she said that “no nuclear weapons for Iran” with its “president who denies the Holocaust” must be a central component of American policy in the region. Clinton reiterated her previous calls to have the US Congress define the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terror organization.

Lastly, Clinton stressed the importance of standing up against “hatred and anti-Semitism wherever they are found” and said that “every fair-thinking person must be concerned.”

Continuing to highlight the fight against anti-Semitism, she said that the “debacle at Durban” should never be repeated and even went as far to say that perhaps the “US should boycott” the so-called Durban II conference should it contain anti-Semitism rhetoric.

Despite her opponent Barack Obama having claimed victory on Tuesday evening, Senator Clinton made no mention of it, nor did she hint at conceding her campaign.

http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=13574

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (04-22-08): David Farmer’s undisclosed connections with AIPAC and Senator Hillary Clinton:

From Exhibit: “CONNECTING THE DIRTY DOTS TO AIPAC”:

David C. Farmer, Successor-Trustee vs. Harmon

(Formerly Woo vs. Harmon & Nicholson vs. Harmon)

CV05-00030 DAE KSC

U.S. District Court For the District of Hawaii

Judges: David A. Ezra; Kevin S. Chang

—

DEFENDANT’S EXHIBIT

—

A few words of explanation:

In his "MEMORANDUM IN OPPOSITION TO DEBTOR'S MOTION FOR ORDER TO DISAPPROVE APPOINTMENT OF DAVID C. FARMER AS SUCCESSOR TRUSTEE", filed with the Court on August 24, 2007, the Trustee's attorney, Steven Guttman, Esq., of the law firm, Kessner Umebayashi Bain & Matsunaga, stated to the Court:

"... Harmon is once again attempting to create issues of conflict where none exist by attempting to draw connections between phantom dots."...

Mr. Guttman does not elaborate beyond this simple statement of HIS PERSONAL OPINION, as to WHICH of the thousands of connections I have cited that he wishes the Court to accept, without question, as being merely "phantom dots". In other court filings, Mr. Guttman has characterized my Motions as consisting of "conspiracy theories" -- again with no specific references.

Despite these unnamed "phantom dots" and "conspiracy theories", the Court has blithely and unquestionably gone along with Mr. Guttman's opinions and has repeatedly denied ALL Motions that I have made. In fact, both Courts involved have ruled that the Court Clerk shall not accept any future filings from me without the Courts' prior approval - which it has repeatedly declined to give.

Therefore, due to the fact that I continue to discover new, material FACTS almost daily, I am preparing a set of NEW EXHIBITS in which I intend to document the financial, professional, personal, and political connections between the many various entities involved in this case.

~ o ~

The following is a listing of named witnesses in this case who have factual connections with the subject entity. Each underlined name has been linked to a detailed description of that witness to enable the reader to more easily CONNECT THE DOTS TO...

AIPAC

Investors Equity Insurance Company

Reliance Insurance Group

Judith Neustadter Fuqua

James B. “Jim” Nicholson

Dan Inouye

* * * * *

THE AIPAC PHOTO GALLERY

http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0709/frontpage/israellobby

http://zioneocon.blogspot.com/bush%20speech%20to%20AIPAC.jpg

www.radioislam.org/bush/jewishpower.htm

yannone.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Bush-7-20-3.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Rice.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Clinton.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Bush-McCain.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-McCain-Lieberman.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Washington-Gabfest.mht

* * * * *

LEARN MORE FACTS ABOUT AIPAC:

http://www.stopaipac.org/

http://www.stopaipac.org/spystory.htm

www.hadassah.org/education/content/influentials_israel.asp

http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/021108/hawaii.shtml

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1721.htm

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/06/lfow.html

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=AIPAC

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/03/6138/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidtiC-UPNU

http://www.franklingate.com/aipac-cheney.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-9-11.mht

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Obama.mht

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Bush-Abramoff-Greenberg.mht

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Mische-7-11-7.mht

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vwV6O5AGKyw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8gHmJUa720

http://ifamericaknew.com/us_ints/mc-aipac.html

http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=9697

www.literarylotus.com/2007/12/wimr-brian-schatz.html

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Lingle-Abramoff-Brownstein.mht

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (04-15-08):

Connecting the dots...

David Farmer...Steven Guttman...Brian Schatz...Barack Obama...Oprah Winfrey...Hillary Clinton...Linda Lingle...John McCain....AIPAC...Punahou School...Kamehameha Schools...Dee Jay Mailer...The Global Fund...Henry Paulson...George W. Bush...Haunani Apoliona...OHA...Daniel Akaka...Dan Inouye...Suzanne Case...Dan Case...Steve Case...Jeffrey Case...Aon...The Nature Conservancy...Greg Dunn...Judith Neustadter Fuqua...etc...ad infinitum...

http://www.midweek.com/content/paina/image_full/2090/

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (04-04-08):

April 4, 2008

WAR ROOM

By Alex Koppelman, Salon,

Why did Clinton wait to release her tax returns?

On Friday afternoon, Hillary Clinton finally released her and her husband's tax returns. (You can view them here -- if you find anything interesting, feel free to let me know by e-mail, alex@salon.com .) And that prompts some inevitable questions: What took her campaign so long? Why allow yourself to be dogged by weeks of attacks from Barack Obama's campaign instead of just releasing the returns? Why take the traditional route of someone with bad news to deliver and release the returns on Friday afternoon? What could they have to hide?

The short answer is that, for the moment, we don't really know. That's the point of releasing the information the way the Clinton campaign did. If you're putting out a ton of information on a Friday afternoon, it's because you know that way reporters won't have a chance to filter out the chaff, and you hope that the story dies over the weekend and isn't picked up the following week. In this case, since the Clinton campaign had promised to release the returns around April 15th, and did it slightly earlier, I have to wonder if they saw an opportune moment in this particular weekend, as Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, will be testifying before Congress next week. The Clinton camp is probably hoping that some media attention will shift to Iraq and away from the campaign, and they're probably right.

As of this posting, there has been some information gleaned already, mostly predictable and small if potentially damaging details. There is, for example, information about just how much money Bill Clinton has earned (at least $12 million and possibly as much as $15 million) in a partnership with close friend and billionaire Ron Burkle, who is practically a human minefield for the campaign. And there are some other connections -- both to sources of the Clintons' money, and to managers of it -- that could prove embarrassing.

There may well be a big bombshell waiting in the returns for some enterprising person to find. If there isn't, then here's my theory to explain the campaign's foot-dragging: Simply put, since they left the White House, the Clintons have made a lot of money. Between 2000 and 2007, they grossed a combined $109 million. And though they paid almost $34 million of that to Uncle Sam, and donated another $10 million to charity, that still leaves them a hefty chunk of change. This is, potentially, a political problem.

Before he was elected president, and while he remained in the White House, Bill Clinton could tell voters he felt their pain. That particular line suddenly got a whole lot less believable. And this year, Hillary Clinton has relied on the support of voters who are typically lower on the socioeconomic scale than Obama supporters are. Her campaign has to be at least a little worried that the revelation of the Clintons' newfound wealth might hurt them among this key group.

www.salon.com

~ ~ ~

January 22, 2008

Bill Clinton May Get
Payout of $20 Million

By: John R. Emswhiller

Former President Clinton stands to reap around $20 million -- and will sever a politically sensitive partnership tie to Dubai -- by ending his high-profile business relationship with the investment firm of billionaire friend Ron Burkle.

Mr. Clinton is negotiating to end his relationship with Mr. Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. as part of a broader effort to protect the presidential campaign of his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, from potential conflicts of interest. Details of Mr. Clinton's involvement in Yucaipa and his efforts to unwind it come from documents and interviews with people familiar with the matter.

The former president has had links to Yucaipa since early 2002, when Mr. Burkle -- a longtime friend and political contributor -- offered him a role there. Mr. Clinton's association with the firm began at a time when he was looking to earn large amounts of money, partly to pay heavy legal bills accumulated to defend himself and Mrs. Clinton from several investigations during his presidency.

Now, as he negotiates with Yucaipa to withdraw from the relationship, he is a wealthy man, thanks partly to tens of millions of dollars he has earned making speeches around the world.

Mr. Clinton initially signed on with Mr. Burkle as a senior adviser to closely held Yucaipa. As part of that arrangement, Mr. Burkle agreed to give Mr. Clinton a share of the profits from two Yucaipa domestic investment funds if their returns reached a certain threshold. Mr. Clinton's adviser arrangement ended in early 2007, five years after it began. But Mr. Clinton still hasn't settled the issue of his payout.

The sales in recent months of Wild Oats Markets Inc. and Pathmark Stores Inc. produced several hundred million dollars in profits for the two Clinton-related Yucaipa domestic funds, which had big shareholdings in the two supermarket chains. Profits from the sales helped to push the funds above the earnings threshold needed to generate a multimillion-dollar payday for the former president, according to public documents related to the sales and other information.

The deals were announced in February and March 2007, respectively -- around the time Mr. Clinton's involvement as an adviser to the domestic funds was set to expire. By not closing out his Yucaipa relationship before those sales were completed, President Clinton probably increased the amount of money ultimately due him, say people familiar with such transactions.

Mr. Clinton is also looking to close out partnership interests in a Yucaipa fund that focuses on investing in foreign companies. This fund -- called Yucaipa Global Partnership Fund LP -- has raised several hundred million dollars from a range of investors. Unlike his deal to advise the two Yucaipa domestic funds, Mr. Clinton invested an undisclosed sum of his own money in the global fund and has a limited partnership interest.

Mr. Clinton is also one of three owners of the global fund's general partner. The others are Mr. Burkle, who is the managing member, and an entity connected to the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

Severing the tie to Dubai, a U.S. ally, will remove a potentially tricky problem for Mrs. Clinton. Questions raised about the activities of sovereign wealth funds -- giant pools of money controlled by foreign governments -- have become a campaign issue, as the funds have made a spate of multibillion-dollar investments in such corporate giants as Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Clinton said such purchases are "a source of concern," partly because the foreign funds "lack transparency" and could be used by foreign governments as "instruments of foreign policy."

Mr. Burkle made his fortune by investing in a range of industries, particularly the supermarket business, and is believed to have become a billionaire. He also has become a major fund-raiser for and backer of Democratic Party candidates, including the Clintons. He often opens his Beverly Hills estate, Green Acres, for fund-raising events, and Mr. Clinton has been a frequent house guest there.

Mr. Clinton's duties and activities as a Yucaipa adviser have never been completely clear to outsiders. He has met at times with people involved in various Yucaipa business deals. And the former president's vast global network of contacts probably has been an asset for Mr. Burkle in dealings with business, labor and political leaders. Over the years, Mr. Burkle has said publicly that Mr. Clinton's prestige and connections have helped Yucaipa get its business proposals in front of top corporate decision makers.

Appropriate Transition

Asked about the unwinding of the Yucaipa relationship, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton said the former president "is taking steps to ensure" that there will be "an appropriate transition" for the business relationship should Mrs. Clinton win the Democratic presidential nomination.

The spokesman added it isn't yet known how much Mr. Clinton will receive from his involvement in Yucaipa. A Yucaipa spokesman declined to comment on the firm's relationship with Mr. Clinton.

As part of the effort to sever financial connections that could complicate Mrs. Clinton's presidential bid, the couple in June disclosed that they had sold millions of dollars worth of stock in public companies and put the funds in cash accounts.

The first public sign of Mr. Clinton's pullback from Yucaipa came recently when a Clinton spokesman confirmed, in response to questions from the Journal, that the former president hadn't participated in an investment that the Yucaipa foreign fund made in Xinhua Finance Media Ltd. Top officials of the Beijing-based news and information company have had close ties over the years to China's Communist government.

The Right to Opt Out

Under his arrangement with Yucaipa, Mr. Clinton has the right to opt out of a particular investment, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Clinton exercised that option in the Xinhua case -- possibly out of concern that such an alliance could cause headaches for his wife's presidential bid. Yucaipa invested about $25 million in the company.

In an October filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning the Xinhua investment, Yucaipa disclosed that one member of its global fund's general partnership was Dubai Investment Group (YGP) Ltd., which is connected to a much larger group of entities owned by Sheik Mohammed that has investments around the world.

Since leaving the White House, Mr. Clinton has had various contacts with Dubai. For example, Sheik Mohammed last year pledged financial support to a Clinton charitable initiative, and the former president's foundation has a scholarship program at the American University in Dubai in cooperation with the emirate's ruler.

Other leading American political figures have had business connections with foreign countries, including Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, has provided security advice to the government of Qatar.

SOURCE: Wall Street Journal

The Hillary Project - 2007

http://www.hillaryproject.com/index.php?/en/story-details/bill_clinton_may_get_payout_of_20_million/

www.kycbs.net/Clinton-Burkle-NYM-1-22-8.mht

www.kycbs.net/Clinton-Burkle-Bloomberg-12-17-7.mht

www.kycbs.net/Clinton-Burkle-Julian-4-6-8.mht

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1997469/posts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/hillary-clinton-ron-burkle

~ ~ ~

September 26, 2007

Hsu raised big money
for Clinton supporters

Candidates she courted benefit

By Scott Helman, Boston Globe

Disgraced fund-raiser Norman Hsu did a lot more than just pump $850,000 into Hillary Clinton's campaign bank account: He also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local, state, and federal candidates who have endorsed Clinton or whose support she courted.

A major fund-raiser for Democrats since 2003, Hsu became one of Clinton's biggest bundlers - gathering scores of individual checks and sending them to her campaign. But since revelations last month that Hsu was a fugitive in a 15-year-old California fraud case, Clinton has said she would return the $850,000 she has taken from him and his associates.

In at least some cases, Clinton or her aides directly channeled contributions from Hsu and his network to other politicians supportive of her presidential campaign, according to interviews and campaign finance records. There is nothing illegal about one politician steering wealthy contributors to another, but the New York senator's close ties to Hsu have become an embarrassment for her and her campaign.

Last fall, as the Nevada governor's race was heating up, Clinton agreed to help raise money for Democrat Dina Titus, a prominent party leader in a state that holds a key early presidential caucus. Clinton arranged for Hsu, at the time a little-known New York apparel executive with no apparent reason to take interest in Nevada politics, to give Titus $5,000 on Nov. 3, according to a person with knowledge of Clinton's fund-raising.

And in February, when former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack ended his own White House bid, he was about $450,000 in the red. A month after dropping out, Vilsack endorsed Clinton, and Clinton agreed to help him retire his debts. (Both insisted there was no quid pro quo.)

Over the next few months, some of Clinton's biggest fund-raisers gave Vilsack checks, including Hsu, who kicked in the maximum allowable contribution, $2,300, on May 3 after attending an event organized by Clinton's campaign, Newsweek reported this month. An associate of Hsu's, Paul Su, chipped in $1,000 on the same day.

In other cases, Clinton helped direct Hsu's money to influential politicians who have yet to endorse her but hail from key presidential primary states. Clinton raised at least $6,000 from Hsu and his network last year for Governor John Lynch of New Hampshire, according to Lynch aides. Lynch has no plans to endorse anyone before the state's crucial January primary, aides said.

And at least some of the $17,000 that Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan collected from Hsu and his associates in 2005 and 2006 stems from a Nov. 29, 2005, fund-raising reception for her hosted by Steven Rattner, a New York investment firm executive and major Clinton donor seen as a candidate for US Treasury secretary if Clinton wins. Granholm's office said she has not made an endorsement decision.

Clinton's campaign acknowledged that they urged Hsu to give to fellow Democrats.

"We frequently encourage supporters of ours to donate to other Democrats - Mr. Hsu was no exception," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said in an e-mail.

Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed a separate criminal complaint against Hsu on Thursday, charging him with breaking campaign finance laws by giving to Clinton and other candidates in other people's names and with running a "massive" Ponzi scheme to defraud investors out of more than $60 million.

Clinton's critics have said that her relationship to Hsu dredges up memories of the fund-raising scandals that dogged her husband, Bill, in the White House in the 1990s. Hillary Clinton has sought to limit the damage by vowing more thorough background checks on major donors.

A spokesman for Hsu, Robert Emmers, declined to comment.

Campaign finance records show numerous contributions from Hsu and his associates to Clinton supporters.

In New Hampshire, Senate President Sylvia Larsen's Democratic Caucus committee received $5,000 from Hsu in September 2006; Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan collected more than $20,000 from Hsu and his associates; Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas took in about $11,000; and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California received at least $17,000.

Hsu and his network also gave nearly $50,000 to Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. Harkin has not endorsed anyone, but his wife, Ruth, is a major Clinton backer.

In addition, Hsu and his associates have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic Party organizations and candidates around the country, including more than $100,000 to Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, both of whom have endorsed Clinton. On Feb. 21, Hsu dipped into Chicago city politics, giving $3,500 to Alderman Danny Solis, the brother of Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton's campaign manager.

Hsu is hardly the only "Hillraiser" - donors who raise at least $100,000 for Clinton - to have spread his or her largesse in key primary states. For example, Elaine Schuster of Chestnut Hill, one of Clinton's biggest supporters in Massachusetts, gave $5,000 in October 2006 to Chet Culver, then a Democratic candidate for governor of Iowa. Culver is now governor but has not endorsed anyone in the presidential race.

Clinton said in a National Public Radio interview last week that Hsu's past was "a rude awakening to all of us - I mean, not only in my campaign, but the dozens of campaigns going back to, I guess, 2003 and '04 who, you know, took contributions. None of us caught this and we all ran searches."

But the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month that a California businessman had warned the campaign about Hsu in June and that a Clinton aide dismissed the concerns. "I can tell you with 100 [percent] certainty that Norman Hsu is NOT involved in a ponzi scheme. He is COMPLETELY legit," Samantha Wolf, Clinton's former West Coast campaign finance director, wrote in an e-mail to a California Democratic Party official, the Times reported.

Other Democratic presidential hopefuls have collected money from Hsu and his network, including Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. But Clinton has been by far the biggest beneficiary of Hsu, who was reportedly trying to establish himself as one of her elite fund-raisers by pulling in more than $1 million.

Most recipients of his contributions have said they will return the money or donate it to charity.

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com

The Boston Globe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W05NRa-l1ls

~ ~ ~

< < < FLASHBACK < < <

Feb 26, 2001

PARDONGATE FIGURES GAVE
MONEY TO HILLARY

Contributions Came on November 27, 2000

Nora Lum, Convicted Felon, Gave $2,000 to ‘Friends of Hillary’
and Sought Pardons Through Hillary’s Brother

(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, today called attention to $2,000 in contributions by Pardongate/Chinagate figure Nora Lum to Hillary Clinton’s “Friends of Hillary” fundraising operation on November 27, 2000.

Today’s Washington Post reports that Nora and Gene Lum were also seeking pardons from Bill Clinton through Hugh Rodham, Hillary’s brother, around the time the contributions were made. The Lums were not pardoned.

The bribery statutes prohibit not only the granting of government action in return for anything of value, but even special consideration of government action in return for anything of value.

Nora and Gene Lum, who plead guilty to making illegal contributions to Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), were embroiled in scandals involving Bill and Hillary Clinton, former Clinton Chief of Staff Thomas McClarty, the late Ron Brown, and his son Michael Brown, to name a few.

“Why would Nora Lum, a convicted felon, give money to Hillary almost a month after her landside Senate victory? The answer is obvious – the Lums had previous illegal dealings with the Clintons and their ilk – they knew the pardons were for sale and these contributions were meant to ‘grease the wheels’ for ‘special consideration’ of their Hugh Rodham-endorsed pardon by Bill and Hillary Clinton,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2001/852.shtml

For more:

http://www.kycbs.net/MaunawiliValley.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/NatureConservancy.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Nature-Conservancy-Hawaii.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/TheChief.htm

http://www.kycb.net/Democrats.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Democrats2.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Dragon.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Peregrine-Gallery.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/PunaConnection.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/SandwichIsles.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Obama-Barack.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Paulson-Henry.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Lingle-Linda.htm

http://www.kycbs/net/CV05-00030-Witness-Savio-Peter.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Winfrey-Oprah.htm

~ ~ ~

MEET M. MICHELLE BURNS

M. Michele Burns, age 50, is chairwoman and chief executive officer of Mercer. Ms. Burns joined MMC as executive vice president on March 1, 2006, assumed the position of chief financial officer of MMC on March 31, 2006 and moved to her current position with Mercer on September 25, 2006.

Prior to joining MMC, Ms. Burns was executive vice president and chief financial officer since May 2004, and chief restructuring officer, and chief financial officer since August 2004, of Mirant Corporation, an energy company, following the company’s bankruptcy filing in 2003.

Prior to joining Mirant, she was executive vice president and chief financial officer of Delta Air Lines, Inc. from August 2000 to April 2004. She held various other positions in the finance and tax departments of Delta beginning in January 1999. Delta filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in September 2005.

M. Michelle Burns, currently a director of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and Cisco Systems, Inc., she previously served as executive vice president.

For Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.:

Cash Compensation (FY December 2006)

Salary: $625,000

Bonus: $750,000

Latest FY other long-term comp. $945,832

Total: $2,320,832

~ ~ ~

From wikipedia:

WAL-MART

Financial

In 2006, Wal-Mart was 67th most profitable corporation (profits divided by total revenue), behind retailers Home Depot, Dell, and Target, and ahead of Costco and Kroger. For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2006, Wal-Mart reported a net income of $12.178 billion on $344.992 billion of sales revenue (3.5% profit margin). For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2006, Wal-Mart's international operations accounted for about 20.1% of total sales. As of Mar 06, 2008, net sales for the 4-week period ending Feb 29, 2008 was $29.1 billion, up 8.9% from the previous year's results.

Governance

Wal-Mart is governed by a fifteen-member Board of Directors, which is elected annually by shareholders. S. Robson Walton, the eldest son of founder Sam Walton, serves as Chairman of the Board. Lee Scott, the Chief Executive Officer, serves on the board as well. Other members of the board include Aída Álvarez, James Breyer, M. Michele Burns, James Cash, Roger Corbett, Douglas N. Daft, David Glass, Roland A. Hernandez, Allen Questrom, Jack Shewmaker, Jim Walton, Christopher J. Williams, and Linda S. Wolf.

Notable former members of the board include Hillary Clinton (1985–1992) and Tom Coughlin (2003–2004), the latter having served as Vice Chairman. Clinton left the board before the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election, and Coughlin left in December 2005 after pleading guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wal-Mart. On August 11, 2006, he was sentenced to 27 months of home confinement, five years of probation, and ordered to pay $411,000 in restitution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart

~ ~ ~

CHAPTER 12

“Heavenly Father,
we are in trouble”

The sergeant at arms moved to the center aisle of the Senate chamber and called out like some medieval town crier in a twentieth-century business suit. “Hear, ye! Hear, ye!’ declared Jim Ziglar. “All persons are commanded to keep silent, on pain of imprisonment, while the House of representatives is exhibiting to the Senate of the United States articles of impeachment against William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States.”

All one hundred members of the United States Senate sat in their seats, tense and rigid, unusually attentive to every little detail, consumed by the gravity of the task awaiting them on this day, Thursday, January 7, 1999. The chamber that usually bustled with the motion of horse-trading legislators and aides and clerks was unnaturally still.... Most senators had figured the House would never impeach Clinton. Even once it did, many of the senators assumed some deal would be cut in the dead of winter to forestall an actual trial. But they were wrong, and now they had no choice but to confront the issue...

“Mr. President,” the silver-haired Hyde said from the well of the Senate, “the managers on the part of the House of Representatives are here present and ready to present the articles of impeachment, which have been preferred by the House of Representatives against William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States.”...

“Heavenly Father,” began Senator Daniel K. Akaka, delivering the opening prayer, “we are in trouble and we need your help. We’ve come to a point where we don’t know what to do.”...

~ ~ ~

July 26, 2007

Richard Holbrooke:
A Hillary Clinton Neocon

By Joshua Frank

Richard Holbrooke likes Hillary Clinton. In fact he may well be asked to serve as Secretary of State if she is to win the presidential campaign next year. Holbrooke, a Democratic adaptation of Henry Kissinger, loves her approach to foreign policy.

"She is probably more assertive and willing to use force than her husband," says Holbrooke, a former adviser to Bill Clinton. "Hillary Clinton is a classic national-security Democrat. She is better at framing national-security issues for the current era than her husband was at a common point in his career."

Holbrooke is an example of just how scary a Clinton administration would be.

In 1975, during Gerald Ford's administration, Indonesia invaded East Timor and slaughtered 200,000 indigenous Timorese. The Indonesian invasion of East Timor set the stage for a long and bloody occupation that recently ended after an international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999.

Transcripts of meetings among Indonesian dictator Mohamed Suharto, Gerald Ford, and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger have shown conclusively that Kissinger and Ford authorized and encouraged Suhatro's murderous actions. "We will understand and will not press you on the issue [of East Timor ]," said President Ford in a meeting with Suharto and Kissinger in early December 1975, days before Suharto's bloodbath. "We understand the problem and the intentions you have," he added.

Henry Kissinger also stressed at the meeting that "the use of US-made arms could create problems," but then added, "It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self defense or is a foreign operation." Thus, Kissinger's concern was not about whether US arms would be used offensively, but whether the act could be interpreted as illegal. Kissinger went on: "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly."

After Gerald Ford's loss and Jimmy Carter's ascendance into the White House in 1976, Indonesia requested additional arms to continue its brutal occupation, even though there was a supposed ban on arms trades to Suharto's government. It was Carter's appointee to the Department of State's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, now a likely candidate to be nominated for Clinton 's Secretary of State, who authorized additional arms shipments to Indonesia during this supposed blockade. Many scholars have noted that this was the period when the Indonesian suppression of the Timorese reached genocidal levels.

During his testimony before Congress in February 1978, Professor Benedict Anderson cited a report that proved there was never an US arms ban, and that during the period of the alleged ban the US initiated new offers of military weaponry to the Indonesians:

"If we are curious as to why the Indonesians never felt the force of the U.S. government's 'anguish,' the answer is quite simple. In flat contradiction to express statements by General Fish, Mr. Oakley and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke, at least four separate offers of military equipment were made to the Indonesian government during the January-June 1976 'administrative suspension.' This equipment consisted mainly of supplies and parts for OV-10 Broncos, Vietnam War era planes designed for counterinsurgency operations against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons, and wholly useless for defending Indonesia from a foreign enemy. The policy of supplying the Indonesian regime with Broncos, as well as other counterinsurgency-related equipment has continued without substantial change from the Ford through the present Carter administrations."

If we track Holbrooke's recent statements, the disturbing symbiosis between him and figures like uberhawk Paul Wolfowitz is startling.

"In an unguarded moment just before the 2000 election, Richard Holbrooke opened a foreign policy speech with a fawning tribute to his host, Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington," reported First of the Month following the terrorist attacks in 2001.

The article continued: "Holbrooke, a senior adviser to Al Gore, was acutely aware that either he or Wolfowitz would be playing important roles in next administration. Looking perhaps to assure the world of the continuity of US foreign policy, he told his audience that Wolfowitz's 'recent activities illustrate something that's very important about American foreign policy in an election year, and that is the degree to which there are still common themes between the parties.' The example he chose to illustrate his point was East Timor, which was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia with US weapons - a security policy backed and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. 'Paul and I,' he said, 'have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [ East Timor ] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."

In sum, Holbrooke has worked vigorously to keep his bloody campaign silent. The results of which appear to have paid off. In chilling words, Holbrooke describes the motivations behind support of Indonesia 's genocidal actions:

"The situation in East Timor is one of the number of very important concerns of the United States in Indonesia . Indonesia, with a population of 150 million people, is the fifth largest nation in the world, is a moderate member of the Non-Aligned Movement, is an important oil producer -- which plays a moderate role within OPEC -- and occupies a strategic position astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans... We highly value our cooperative relationship with Indonesia ."

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/14874

~ ~ ~

January 16, 2007

Nightingale at Large

“There are rats in the War Office — also a cat”

Florence Nightingale, 1860

~ ~ ~

McCain & Robert S. Bennett

Nightingale at Large

Again I’m going to deviate from my guideline (obviously no longer a “rule”) and reproduce an article, Paul Krugman’s column “The Texas Strategy” from Monday’s Times. He explains Bush’s “surge” by analogy to the Savings & Loan scandle. Very apt.

Krugman is leading up to future columns on John McCain, who was involved in that scandle as one of the “Keating Five” and also likely to be the Republican candidate for President in 2008. We will hear a lot about McCain’s ethics and McCain on Ethics. I hope we also hear a bit about Robert S. Bennett, likely to be prominent on McCain’s team and in his administration. I am assuming the Democrats are not going to make much of an effort to run their candidate for president against McCain. McCain is very tough. And Bennett serves his clients better than Karl Rove served Bush.

Bennett arranged McCain’s escape from the “Keating Five” part of the S&L scandle in which Keating purchased five Senators, including McCain, to block investigation of his failing bank. Bennett is near the top of all the defense lawyers in Washington. He has defended Enron, KPMG in “the largest ever tax shelter fraud” case, Clark Clifford in the BCCI case, Caspar Weinberger in the Iran-Contra case, Bill Clinton in his multi-million dollar indiscretion cases, Rostenkowski, and recently Judith Miller in the fallout from her selling Iraq War lies case.

Here is the column from the Times:

January 15, 2007

Paul Krugman, “The Texas Strategy”

Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush’s decision to escalate the Iraq war as a “Hail Mary pass.”

But that’s the wrong metaphor.

Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.

The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.

The “surge” is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.

Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits — it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers — came to be known as the “Texas strategy.”

What was the point of the Texas strategy? Bank owners were certainly gambling — with other people’s money, of course — in the hope of a miraculous recovery that would bail out their negative balance sheets.

But the real point of the racket was a form of looting: as long as they could keep reporting high paper profits, S.&L. owners could keep rewarding themselves with salaries, dividends and sweetheart business deals.

Mr. Keating paid himself a million dollars just weeks before his holding company collapsed.

Which brings us to Iraq. The administration has spent the last three years pretending that its splendid little war isn’t a big disaster. There have been the bromides (we’re making “good progress”); the promises (we have a “strategy for victory”); and, as always, attacks on the media for not reporting the good news from Iraq.

Who you gonna believe, the president or your lying eyes?

Now Mr. Bush has grudgingly sort- of admitted that things aren’t going well — but he says his “new way forward” will fix everything.

So it’s still the Texas strategy: the war’s architects are trying to keep their failed venture going as long as possible.

The Hail Mary aspect — the off chance that somehow, things really will turn out all right — is the least of their motivations. The real intent is a form of looting. I’m not talking mainly about old-fashioned war profiteering, although there is no question that profiteering is taking place on an epic scale. No, I’m saying that the hawks want to keep this war going because it’s to their personal and political benefit.

True, Mr. Bush can’t win another election with phony claims of success in Iraq, the way he did in 2004. But escalation buys him another year or two to claim that we’re making progress — and it gives him another chance to prove that he’s the Decider, beyond accountability.

And as for pundits who promoted the war and are now trying to sell the surge: for a little while longer they can be Very Important People who have the president’s ear.

Meanwhile, the nation pays the price. The heaviest burden — in death, shattered bodies, broken families and ruined careers — falls on those who serve. To find the personnel for the Bush escalation, the Pentagon must lengthen deployments in Iraq and shorten training time at home.

And the back-door draft has become a life sentence: there is no limit on the cumulative amount of time citizen-soldiers can be required to serve on active duty. Mama, don’t let your children grow up to be reservists.

The rest of us will pay a financial price for the hundreds of billions squandered in Iraq and, more important, a price in reduced security.

Escalation won’t bring victory in Iraq, but it might bring defeat in Afghanistan, which the administration will continue to neglect. And it has pushed the military to the breaking point.

Mr. Bush calls his critics “irresponsible,” saying that they don’t have an alternative to his strategy. But they do: setting a timetable for withdrawal, so that we can cut our losses, and trying to save what can be saved. It isn’t a strategy for victory because that’s no longer an option. It’s a strategy for acknowledging reality.

The lesson of the savings and loan scandal was that when a bank has failed, you shouldn’t let the owner string you along with promises — you should shut the thing down. We should do the same with Mr. Bush’s failed war.

–end of Krugman column–

Regards, Jim

http://nightingaleatlarge.com/?p=6

http://nightingaleatlarge.com/?p=6#comment-2205

* * *

FOR MORE SEE: VULTURES IN THE MEADOWS; THE VULTURES IN MAUNAWILI VALLEY

~ ~ ~

June 12, 1995

City has Fasi legal bills under wraps

The case involves ousting Maunalani
people for a golf-country club

BY IAN Y. LIND, Star-Bulletin

Bills for more than $300,000 in legal services by a private law firm defending former Mayor Frank Fasi are secret, a city official says.

Corporation Counsel Darolyn Lendio said the bills will remain confidential, at least for now, although they have been paid with public funds.

The invoices submitted by the law firm of Fujiyama Duffy & Fujiyama are considered "privileged and confidential" because they are part of pending litigation, Lendio said in a letter earlier this week.

The Star-Bulletin had requested access to the records after the City Council voted in April to authorize an additional $100,000 to be paid to the law firm, bringing the total paid out so far to nearly $360,000.

"We may reconsider your request once the litigation is completed," Lendio wrote.

Hugh Jones, staff attorney for the Office of Information Practices, said Hawaii law generally requires public disclosure of billing records and government contracts. Although his office has not issued a formal opinion on the matter, Jones pointed to a publication of the American Bar Association which concluded that such information is not exempt from public disclosure.

The firm represents Fasi in a federal lawsuit by Windward Oahu residents who were displaced by the controversial Royal Hawaiian Country Club in Maunawili. The 1989 suit alleges that the golf course developers made illegal contributions to Fasi's 1988 re-election campaign in exchange for favorable city action on their development.

The law firm was hired to represent Fasi in 1991 after the Office of Disciplinary Counsel ruled that city attorneys could not continue to represent the mayor because of various ethical conflicts.

The case took on renewed life last year after the Federal Election Commission found that dozens of foreign businesses and individuals violated federal law by contributing to political candidates in Hawaii between 1986 and 1992. The Royal Hawaiian Country Club and its owner, YY Valley Corp., along with major stockholders, were fined $46,000 by the FEC for illegal contributions.

Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to candidates or taking part in corporate decisions by organizations or political action committees making such contributions.

The FEC also found evidence that the Maunawili developers violated state law by contributing more than allowed by state law, and by concealing the actual source of the funds. A complaint now is pending before the state Campaign Spending Commission.

Lendio said her office scrutinizes the legal bills "to ensure conformity with the custom and practice in the legal community," and to assure that "costs expended are reasonable and necessary for the vigorous defense of the City and its officers."

She refused, however, to allow public review of the bills.

City records show the Fujiyama firm was paid $45,399.27 from October 1991 through June 1994. Following Fasi's resignation as mayor in July 1994, the pace of the court action and the payments have increased, with the following payments reported by the city:

Nov. 25, 1994: $23,873.78

Jan. 23, 1995: $15,892.06

Feb. 2, 1995: $74,834.89

March 15, 1995: $59,032.11

March 21, 1995: $40,967.89

An additional $86,960.93 in costs remained unpaid as of mid-April, according to a City Council resolution authorizing the most recent payments.

http://ilind.net/add_stories.htm

From PBS - Frontline:

Anthony P. Locricchio is an attorney who represented Hawaiian farmers in a lawsuit against Japanese golf course developers. Locricchio and others also alleged in a 1989 Federal Elections Commission complaint that foreign nationals made illegal contributions to local politicians. Five years later, FEC investigators found more than 100 violations of federal election campaign law.

An interview with Anthony P. Locricchio

Locricchio: Basically, Hawaii was a place for native Hawaiians until the missionary families came...and did very well. They became the sugar industry and really the major economic businesses in Hawaii. They really caused the overthrow of the monarchy and caused the United States to intervene...

Until Hawaii became a state, it was really run by that group. But at that point, a revolution occurred, which was a coalition of Japanese-Americans, [and] Hawaiians, and the Democrats took over on a promise of land reform and dispersing the power.

Q: By revolution, you mean a political revolution?

Locricchio: A political revolution.

Q: The ruling political class, if you will, before this time had been pretty much a Republican, ruling class, planter-associated, big company-associated group. And then in the postwar 1950s, as Hawaii approached statehood, there came this more populist thrust, which expressed itself in the Democratic party.

Locricchio: It's been almost exclusively [Democratic since statehood], with only a token Republican counterbalance...In a very short time the ideals of the political revolution got washed out, and it again became a power base that was susceptible to political corruption as it had been in the past....

Q: Then there comes a period in the mid-1980s when the economy is susceptible to foreign involvement. There really truly was a Japanese economic invasion.

Locricchio: We were responsible for blowing the whistle on what was going on here to the Federal Elections Commission, and 110 politicians had to give back money to the Japanese. What we may have simply done was force under the table political influence that had been above the table before that.

Q: What was the money game here? What was the interest?

Locricchio: The game was possible...because of the huge imbalance between the yen and the dollar. One of the most beautiful places on earth suddenly became a bargain place, and Hawaii, a very tiny place, vied with California and New York for first place or second place as the largest investment of Japanese dollars in the United States. When we're talking about places the size of California or New York, you realize how great the investment had to be here....

It was for sale, it was cheap, and you found willing collaborators. The takeover of Hawaii economically and the loss of the environmental protections and protections for our people only occurred because lawyers, accountants, [and] political beings, were ready, willing and able to help sell their birthright.

Q: For a buck.

Locricchio: No, they were very smart. It was for several bucks.

Q: Where would you see Japanese investment?

Locricchio: It started with the tourist industry, with hotels, resorts, golf courses, and then started to move into restaurants, office buildings, really through the entire fabric of the economy. And the usual economic rules were thrown overboard.

For example,...a hotel might sell to a Japanese interest for $30 million. Two months later, it would sell for $60 million. In four months, it would be $120 million....You would have had to, with some of these hotels, rented out rooms at $500 a day and had 100% occupancy to meet the debt service. And for these excellent Japanese business people, there was a total ignoring of standard economics.

...Hawaiians couldn't afford to live in Hawaii. We had, during this period of time and really before that, too, a huge outflow of people at the bottom of the economic sector, especially native Hawaiians. When I was head of Legal Aid, and I would go for meetings on the West Coast with some of my clients from here, immediately our hotel would fill up with expatriate Hawaiians who were homesick and when it was time for us to leave would cry at the airport. They couldn't afford to live in their own homeland because of what was going on here.

Q: And yet it had gotten to the point where Japanese people would have a second vacation home there...

Locricchio: You had to understand that in Japan, the cost of living, and especially housing, was so high that the American dream of owning your house was unavailable to the bulk of the Japanese population. They ended up having to compensate by having Gucci clothes and those kinds of externals. So they would come in tour groups into Waikiki and parts of Hawaii to buy up condos, etc., because those were a great bargain, and could be a place to retire to, or you could say you owned property somewhere. And Hawaii, because of Hawaii Five-O and the various international television programs, was the status place. All of those elements combined to make Hawaii a victim of its own beauty.

Q: Where does golf course development fit in this?

Locricchio: [There] was a mad passion for golf in Japan, and the law in Japan was changed so that all conservation land, recreational land, agricultural land, overnight suddenly became available for golf courses.

Some 2,000 golf courses were in Japan, and there was an effort to hugely increase that number because it was so expensive to be a member.

...There was a group in Japan of farmers, housewives and indigenous people who rose up to react against that and were effective in stopping over 1,500 golf courses from coming into effect. What happened is Japan then had to export its golf course desire, and Hawaii became one of the targets.

Q: How easy was it to come in here and set down? Did Hawaii have any regulations in place governing land acquisition for golf development?

Locricchio: It should have been very difficult, because Hawaii is the only state in the country which has a constitutional protection for agricultural land. You were required, before you changed the use of agricultural land, to have a two-thirds vote to approve those kinds of changes by constitutional amendment....

For the Japanese,...not only was the land a great bargain, but buying the politicians was a great bargain. They used to joke about how little money, how little yen it took to buy influence. They were able to change the law and to get the Constitution ignored.

...The people who were involved in agricultural subsistence farming then became the targets, and the Japanese land owners were getting them thrown out and buying up the land, so they had no place to farm. In this very short period of time, within five years, you went from a predominantly agricultural-supported economy to literally a disappearance of agricultural land for local farmers. And it was a tragic loss that is still the case.

Q: You have your Japanese investor. You have a developer. You have your eye on a piece of land in Hawaii. Tens, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars are ultimately involved, but the land is not designated for development use. So what you need to do along the way, you're telling me, is first gain influence with the politicians. That turns out to be easy enough. Who else do you need?

Locricchio: You need to hit all the levels of politics....So getting the state law changed was not enough. You then had to go to the local mayor. And he told you to hire his attorney and to give contributions to his campaign. And again, that was fairly easy, and in terms of yen contributions a wonderful bargain.

Q: And when push came to shove, how would it play out? How would people be literally removed from the land they'd be farming?

Locricchio: ...We had situations where the police were actually used to help threaten and terrorize the farmers on these lands. They would come in with false eviction notices, with a policeman in uniform, and these farmers were uneducated, didn't know they were false evictions....They left because they were told, "You'd better get out, or we'll carry you out."

Q: You mean the police were privately employed for these purposes?

Locricchio: We have a unique situation here...where police are permitted to work on their off hours for private land owners and private businesses. They're permitted to wear their uniforms, to carry their guns, and to have many of the police powers they have as public police officers. So very often we were fighting the army of the Japanese land owner who was our local police. And we lost those fights, because our police were on the payroll of foreign nationals.

...Or, if they didn't use the police posse and used somebody else, you'd go to make a criminal complaint, and absolutely nothing would happen. Whether cattle were shot, cattle were stolen [or] you had eye witnesses, absolutely no police action would be taken....

...[Even] though we lived here and experienced it, we got numbed by our Americanism. We kept thinking, "This will work out. We will be able to stop this." Because Americans are ultimately optimistic....Even though we're angry at our government,...we still believe deep down the American democratic system will prevail. And that was our stupidity.

Q: One of the things you observed during this Japanese economic invasion of Hawaii was the willing participation of all levels of Hawaiian residents (as opposed to native Hawaiians.) This was presumably motivated by what? Getting a piece of the action?

Locricchio: Money. Hawaiian professionals had experienced other economic invasions, but they'd never seen anything like the Japanese invasion. Law firms overnight moved into marble-encrusted quarters because suddenly their Japanese clients were paying huge legal bills. Middle men who had operated in political arenas and gotten mediocre money for it suddenly saw opportunities to make tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and moved quickly, effectively, and were there, at the right place, the right time, for a very high price.

Q: So what they did was help supply the grease.

Locricchio: That's right. It couldn't have worked without the local establishment supplying the grease, giving the direction.

Q: Place Gene and Nora Lum in this spectrum of players.

Locricchio: Gene and Nora Lum come out of nowhere in the mid-1980s....They placed themselves through luck or happenstance in with major players who were developing major resorts that were totally financed by Japanese foreign dollars. And because of an ignorance of the system, Nora and Gene were able to convince these players of their contacts.

Q: So Nora and Gene Lum present themselves to these money people as fixers. They can work one end of the political machine to the other and help get things done, help clear the way. Can you give us an example?

Locricchio: There are three key examples [of when] the Lums really use their fixer skills: One that affects a project outside of Hawaii, and two here in Hawaii. The one that I'm most familiar with is the one that's here in the valley I live in, and that's how I became acquainted with them.

....Mount Olomana is one of Hawaii's scenic treasures. It's Japanese-owned, and we believe...Nora Lum...was partially responsible for bringing the Japanese land buyer to this valley and buying 1,090 acres of land here in Hawaii for only $7 million. In Hawaii, that's an incredible bargain.

After they were able to buy the state legislative vote change, that land became worth $40-50 million overnight....They made a profit of $30-40 million overnight.

Q: At least a paper profit in terms of value. And the reason it was suddenly so much more valuable is because with the change of law, they could develop it for a golf course. What is there now?

A: Finally, there is a golf course. It was delayed for several years while we fought against it. An uphill battle, to say the least, no pun intended with the mountain. They actually built a golf course on the side of a mountain. It is a ridiculous location for a golf course, but in Japan they were selling memberships at $250,000 per membership. That did not even give the owners of the membership a piece of the land. They just got a membership, and then they would have fees over and above that on an annual basis.

Q: It was a membership in a golf course that had not yet been built and whose construction depended on the change in the law.

A: They had to get zoning changes, law changes, conditional use permits, and instead they sold the memberships to finance it before they ever built the course. Fortunately we were able to stop that kind of thing occurring in the future by going to Japan, where we found a very receptive [legislature] who, to protect their own citizens, then changed the law so that no sales in Japan could occur until the golf course was built. That didn't effect this one because it had already occurred.

Q: Who were the people with the money who connected with the Lums?

Locricchio: That spectrum of people was everyone from legitimate Japanese established businesses and the largest corporations in Japan to the criminal yakuza, which is the Japanese Mafia,...[and] secretaries, who came in to buy condos. This became the Hong Kong bargain: get your suits tailored there because they're the cheapest.

Q: What is the interest of the yakuza in Hawaiian golf development?

Locricchio: ...The incredible amounts of money....Before we went into Japan with a story of what was going on here, there were reservations for thousands of memberships at $250,000 each, which was hundreds of millions of dollars before the golf course would even be built. There was an incredible amount of money to be made during this window before the Japanese economic bubble burst.

Q: Who acquired land for the golf course project in which the Lums were involved?

Locricchio: Pachinko parlor owners, of the largest pachinko parlor chain. A quasi-legal form of gambling in Japan is pachinko parlors. Historically, to run those you needed yakuza or organized crime approvals. And the people who own this particular golf course were Korean nationals who were living in Japan, using Japanese names [and] came into Hawaii using their Japanese name and not their actual name....When we found out what [developer Yasuo Yasuda's] real name was, we found out there was a criminal record....

And so when we screamed, "You're letting this guy with a criminal background come in here. Aren't you inspecting it?" the state says, "Gee, we'll look into that," etc. The immigration people who hadn't been bought moved to remove the guy from Hawaii once they found out he didn't reveal his criminal background on his visa application. He was back here in no time at all. How he got back in, we don't know. We know that it took very high political influence to bring him back in, in spite of the zeal and desire of the local INS to get him out of here.

Q: So we have a Korean national with dubious ties to the Japanese syndicate and an interest in golf course development in Hawaii. What about the farmers who still lived on the land?

Locricchio: ...Because we were able to raise a fairly high political outcry of the community here, they had to agree to protect the farmers...They agreed to move the farmers to another location that wouldn't conflict with their golf course...They got approvals based on that [and] it was the number one condition that they had to abide by. They then went in and made contributions to the local city government [that was] to enforce those conditions.

We even got the city council to demand that the mayor investigate by unanimous vote--[for the] first time ever--the violations of those conditions. The mayor refused. No investigation was ever made, and the bulk of the farmers were forced to leave by threat, false police eviction notices, [and] Wild West tactics, including killing the bulls and stealing cattle.

Q: Tell me about that.

A: The bulk of the farmers were told by quasi-government officials, dressed up in police uniforms, that they had to leave immediately....The remainder, the few that were left, contacted me...They had only 48 hours to get out of Dodge and were petrified. We were able to keep them there for about four more years through all kinds of legal tactics.

Q: But what had been their legal claim to the land? They were leasees?

Locricchio: They were leasees who had been told they would be offered the land by the former land owner. And when the land owner died, and his trustees took over, they sold the land on the condition that the new buyers had to deal with the farmers....

Q: How were people forced from their homes?

Locricchio: Either they were intimidated off [the land] or finally the rancher's cattle were stolen, killed, and they were threatened by cowboys with guns, and they had to flee from their land, leaving their cattle unprotected. They went to the police, nothing happened.

Paniolo is the Hawaiian term for cowboy. Some of these people were known to be associated with Hawaiian crime syndicates, and the knowledge of who they were brought fear to local people. They picked up and ran, which was a very wise thing to do.

Q: In this particular case we're talking here, were these paniolos literally on horseback?

Locricchio: Oh yes. Most people don't realize that the largest privately-owned cattle ranch is here in Hawaii on the Big Island. Cattle has always been a big part of Hawaiian involvement, and we have our own history and culture of good, legitimate, wonderful Hawaiian cowboys who ranched. And so even this island, which is the most populated, had [its] paniolos, and many times they made side money by other kinds of activities.

Q: So one day, the Japanese golf course development interests through the Lums employ a group of paniolos and others to forcefully evict a group of ranchers and farmers from the site of their proposed golf course.

Locricchio: They targeted the rancher [Leonard Wong] first we believe as a lesson to the rest, as a "Here's what's going to happen to you if you don't get out of here."...They actually went in, and the paniolos came with trucks to haul the cattle out...

Q: Gene Lum was with these riders when they came in?

Locricchio: Gene Lum was there, went to see [Leonard and Cheryl Wong] the night before, told them they were going to move their cattle just temporarily while this activity was going on in the valley, and it would be best if they didn't come the next day, because there'd be a lot of confusion. They suspected that something might be going on, showed up and saw not only their cattle were being taken, their fences were being wrapped up, their watering troths, [but] everything was being stolen right in front of their eyes. And when they called up the police on 911, they didn't come. When we went to the police afterwards, no action was taken.

Q: And I gather that the Wong's prize stud bull perished in this exercise.

Locricchio: We were fortunate because one of the residents here at the valley...is a great telescope person, and he was president of the community association up above. And he actually watched the paniolos run down this prize bull [and] shoot it. They had their butchering equipment with them, sawed up the meat, put it in meat trays they brought along. So they fully intended to do this.

Gene Lum later told the press that they had to kill the bull because it charged these riders who were there to protect people. He did not tell the press that he pocketed the money from the sale [of the cattle to a dairy]. Fortunately for us, it was the undoing of Gene Lum's activities in this valley because it brought down huge media coverage, and Gene Lum made the unpardonable political fixture sin of being caught publicly doing no-nos. And taking the cover off the corruption that was going on.

Q: The preferred method being to move silently and quietly and out of sight.

Locricchio: He was immediately fired as fixer attorney.

Q: Gene Lum and this group of paniolos arrive bearing carving trays and butchering utensils, chase down this prize bull, carve him up, butcher it, and sell the meat?

Locricchio: Gene Lum was the traditional Western movie fixer. He never went and got his hand bloody. He got the money, he put it in his pocket, and did not get involved with the actual [carnage]. To picture Gene Lum on a horse defies my imagination.

Q: Can you imagine this would have occurred without his knowledge?

Locricchio: Oh no, he was there. He was on the scene....He was with state officials who were doing other activities on the land at that day. He knew exactly what was going on. He was there the night before at our peoples' houses....Even Gene Lum would not deny that he knew what was going on and went to the press afterwards and talked about his involvement.

Q: How did this effect the relationship between the developers and the Lums?

Locricchio: It caused a major breakdown.

We believe that money paid to state officials was to stop a public government road from being used by the public. All arrangements had been made at that very point to have the [Old Government Road] that ran smack-dab through the middle of this golf course transferred quietly to the foreign owner. That road goes through some of the most beautiful vistas in all of Hawaii, breathtaking.

...Suddenly the floodlight was on that whole transaction, and on the state officials who were trying to hush [it up and] quickly move it through. Suddenly the mask was ripped off, and to this day Old Government Road still moves through that golf course, thanks to Gene Lum's blunder and stupidity,... except that if you go on it you take your life in your hands. There are dogs set to attack you...

Q: Even though it's still a public road?

Locricchio: Even though it's still a public road, because you couldn't get protection....[It] cost the landowner a fortune because he had to change his golf course plans...around the eventuality that the public would be walking through the middle of the sixth and seventh fairway and etc., etc.

Q: And he was thereafter finished with the Lums.

Locricchio: He then said good-bye to the Lums, and the Lums moved on to greener pastures.

Q: The picture you're drawing for me here is of this beautiful, lush, lovely paradise on earth. It is an island being exploited with the assistance of local residents for money in a sort of Wild West, anything goes free-for-all, in which two folks - Gene and Nora Lum - operate on a fairly small-time level. Yet somehow they are drawn into the circle of the very most powerful politicians in the country. How in the world were they chosen by the late US Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and the national Democratic party?

Locricchio: Our theory is their connection with Gov. John Waihee, whom they had met and had [enough of] a relationship to have breakfast with him to discuss the turning over of this road. And we know that after that [the conveyance of the road is suddenly placed] on the Department of Land and Natural Resources official agenda...So they had the clout, the knowledge, the background with the governor.

The governor was the...first governor in the United States to support Bill Clinton's climb to the Democratic nomination for president. Clinton was a real long, long shot at that point, and John Waihee and Clinton became very close friends...We really believe there was a Cabinet position that was to be given to Waihee, who was at the end of his government term. He couldn't run for governor again,...[and] the first election of Clinton, brought into play Ron Brown and his fundraising activities and Waihee's association.

Unfortunately, just prior to the inauguration, Waihee...flew the Hawaiian flag above the American flag as a symbol of what had occurred here. And while that was deemed to be a very honorable thing to do in very certain circles in Hawaii, it was regarded as tantamount to treason in Washington. Sen. [Daniel K.] Inouye was furious...and at that point any hope of getting Waihee confirmed was lost...

Q: If Ron Brown, going into the 1992 election cycle, were to come to Hawaii and were to participate in a fundraising benefit , one of the people he would contact would obviously be Gov. Waihee. At such an event it would not be remarkable, then, that he would come to meet a Gene and a Nora Lum?

Locricchio: We believe that's what happened. And again, where they were effective with local entities, as providing the money and being in the government circles, their relationship with Waihee at the very least got them an introduction to Ron Brown.

Q: There was another golf course development that the Lums were involved in on the Big Island of Hawaii. They, in fact, represented themselves as having an ownership position in this. Do you know anything about that project?

Locricchio: ....They go in and get an option to purchase inexpensive, relatively non-usable agricultural land where they're going to have to change zoning and get government approvals. They make large contributions to the then-mayor of the Big Island, using various family members' names, but clearly our belief is that it all comes from the same source. And, strangely enough, the mayor and the planning commission, whom she appoints, does allow this change over large community opposition.

To buy the land, they needed loans and mortgage security and so forth, and some of it comes from a place called Oklahoma. And we find out later that liens are placed on this land in the Big Island to secure the purchase of an Oklahoma company, and this land is...wild lava-strewn land that ain't nothin' been built on. The approvals have expired,...and the security is far in excess of its value. If an appraiser went out and did a valuation on it, it would have been far, far lower than the security. And yet they're able to use their Hawaii political influence...to purchase land in Oklahoma, to move them from the Hawaii stage to the national government influence stage.

Q: Now as you know, local politicians and local authorities may not have been overly interested in rooting out such near corruption, if not out-and-out corruption, but federal law enforcement authorities became very interested in some of these activities. Did you ever have contact with federal officials?

Locricchio: On several occasions, as this whole thing developed, we were contacted by the FBI. Early on, they had concerns, because the law was about to change and you didn't need visas anymore,...about this opening the door for organized crime from Japan coming in through Hawaii into the United States....

...Australia had a similar invasion of Japanese on its Gold Coast, and their fear was Japanese criminal interest money and they appointed a special investigator to watch over that influence in Australia. That investigator was based, not in Australia, but in Hawaii. It gives you some idea of the importance of Hawaii for international involvement of yakuza or Japanese crime.

However, in March of 1996 I was asked to come in and speak with the FBI...Their principal interest was information about Gene and Nora Lum in 1996, and my understanding was that after they interviewed me and took down oral statements that they were interested in a deposition which Gene and Nora had given in our case, in which Gene claimed he had no income whatsoever.

About five days before that deposition, there was a $5 million check conveyed to Gene Lum that was put in his bank account, when he said under oath he did not have any money...They made the comment, "Liar, liar, pants are on fire," when they looked at Gene's statements.

Q: And they knew about the $5 million in his account?

Locricchio: Yes.

Q: And where did that money come from?

Locricchio: It came from part of this oil and gas lease pre-purchase at what appeared to be an inflated above-market purchase... by various government agencies in Oklahoma. And it was one of several checks. We actually had a copy of a check, but we didn't get that until after the deposition, until some time afterwards.

Q: Eventually the Lums left Hawaii, where they were these low to mid-level fixers for various moneyed interests, to go to California, where they more or less entered full-time politics through Ron Brown, setting up the Asia-Pacific Advisory Council-Vote. Had you heard of that?

Locricchio: We knew that they were involved in getting political contributions. It was so part of their make-up that it wasn't a great surprise. We also heard Ron Brown's name, we knew of his major involvement, and I used to live for a brief time in California, and politics, Democratic politics in the Bay area, was Ron Brown. Nothing happened, whether it was local or state politics, without Ron Brown's involvement...

Q: So it didn't surprise you that if they were going to be involved in the fundraising game, that there be an association with Ron Brown, who was basically the chief fund-raiser for Democrats then?

Locricchio: We were surprised only in that stupid blunders by Lum had occurred in both the Big Island and here in Maunawili Valley, and we thought that anybody recommending the Lums would warn higher level folks, "Watch yourself," because the Lums have an ability to bring down huge media attention on you because they're not careful.

I think the real key to the Lums was they were taught here in Hawaii, don't bother to be careful, you can commit acts that would be deemed criminal and ain't nothin' gonna happen to you. So they got educated in Hawaii, and they transferred that education to the national scene.

..These were the most experienced political operators because of their training in Hawaii, which had been a success story for Asian-Americans becoming part of the Democratic process and monies being used as part of that process.

Q: And that, in fact, may well have been what Ron Brown recognized, any warnings he may have received about the Lums notwithstanding.

Locricchio: These people had their masters degree in Asian-American politics, and--whether they had the contacts or not--were skilled in making it appear they did have the contacts. The other thing you must remember is they'd been successful. They got the Maunawili approvals. They got the approvals on the Big Island. So they had been successful, and they could wave their successes and their ability to use those properties, or their own properties, to help out Democrats in problems.

~ ~ ~

"America's Holy Warriors"

SourceWatch

Erik Prince is "the secretive, mega-millionaire, right-wing Christian founder of Blackwater, the private security firm that has built a formidable mercenary force in Iraq," Chris Hedges wrote December 31, 2006, in Truthdig

Prince "champions his company as a patriotic extension of the U.S. military. His employees, in an act as cynical as it is deceitful, take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. These mercenary units in Iraq, including Blackwater, contain some 20,000 fighters. They unleash indiscriminate and wanton violence against unarmed Iraqis, have no accountability and are beyond the reach of legitimate authority. The appearance of these paramilitary fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gave us a grim taste of the future. It was a stark reminder that the tyranny we impose on others we will one day impose on ourselves," Hedges wrote.

Starr defense

"The new 'counsel of record' for the North Carolina-based company is none other than former Whitewater investigator Kenneth Starr — the independent counsel in the 1999 impeachment of President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal," Jeremy Scahill and Garrett Ordower reported online October 26, 2006, in The Nation.

"Starr was brought in last week by Blackwater to filemotions in front of the US Supreme Court in a case stemming from the killing of four Blackwater contractors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah on March 31, 2004."

"There are undeniable benefits to having Starr, the US Solicitor General under President George H.W. Bush, represent Blackwater—a highly partisan GOP company—in front of a Supreme Court stacked with Bush appointees.

Starr also has a personal connection to Blackwater. Starr and Joseph Schmitz, the general counsel and chief operating officer of Blackwater's parent company, the Prince Group, have both worked closely with the arch-conservative Washington Legal Foundation. Since 1993 Starr has served on the legal policy advisory board of the organization for which Schmitz has frequently acted as a spokesperson and attorney," Scahill and Ordower wrote.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Blackwater_USA

~ ~ ~

From Corporate Predators: Can General Electric save America's treasures?

Bill and Hillary Clinton seem to think so.

But Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner is not so sure.

On July 14, GE Chair and CEO Jack Welch basked in the glow of media flashbulbs and television camera lights as he joined First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in announcing a $5 million contribution by his company to help preserve and restore Thomas A. Edison's "invention factory" in West Orange, New Jersey.

The donation was made as part of Hillary Clinton's "Save America's Treasures" tour, intended to highlight and raise money to address the disrepair into which many U.S. historic sites, buildings and objects have fallen.

Though it did not manage to achieve the media bounce of Ralph Lauren's $10 million contribution to repair the "Star Spangled Banner," ... GE did garner substantial publicity for its contribution. Notably, GE's network, NBC, did a segment on the "Today Show"on the Save America's Treasure tour and GE's generous participation.

Just days before Welch joined Hillary Clinton for their joint photo-op, EPA Administrator Carol Browner was on a more solemn mission in Albany, New York.

In an unprecedented move during her tenure at the EPA, Browner appeared before a state legislative committee. Testifying before the Environmental Conservation Committee of the New York Assembly, she condemned a GE advertising campaign which she said is endangering the public health.

A million tons of GE-dumped PCBs (polychorinate biphenyls) now line the bottom of a 200-mile stretch of Hudson River, making it the largest Superfund site in the United States. GE is aggressively campaigning against a potential government-ordered cleanup of the area, which could cost the corporation hundreds of millions of dollars.

"GE would have the people of the Hudson River believe, and I quote, 'Living in a PCB-laden area is not dangerous,'" Browner testified. "The science tells us the opposite is true." The federal government banned PCBs in 1977 because they are believed to cause cancer and contribute to a range of other health problems.

Browner worried that the GE public relations offensive would undermine health official efforts to deter people from eating fish from the river. PCB contamination has rendered the fish hazardous.

Surely no company doing so much to destroy the natural environment deserves the smiley-face association with a First Lady-led crusade to "Save America's Treasures."

The stark contrast between preserving Edison's "invention factory" and the science-out-of-control PCB trashing of the Hudson River highlights more than GE's duplicity. It sheds light on the dangers of corporate philanthropy, especially in private-public partnerships. . . .

Typically, the public relations payback on the corporate gift far outdistances the actural amount spent on the corporate contribution.

Too often, the positive PR happy-talk drowns out voices raising concerns about serious corporate misdeeds.

The dynamic is most troubling when the company gains credit for contributing relatively small dollar amounts to quintessentially public functions-- like restoring historic sites or funding schools-- that simultaneously help justify systemic government under-funding in those areas.

Let the federal government restore Thomas Edison's invention factory and other historic sites.

Let General Electric clean up the Hudson River.

~ ~ ~

October, 1994

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ARKANSAS

PBS Frontline

PURSUING WHITEWATER

“How the 'Times' got Whitewater wrong"

by Gene Lyons Harper's Magazine, October 1994

[Reprinted with permission of the author and Harper's Magazine]

Harper's Magazine

The Great Whitewater Political Scandal and Multimedia Extravaganza, now on the verge of entering its second smash year, has always played very differently here in Little Rock than in, say, Washington, New York, or Los Angeles.

To read the great metropolitan newspapers, observe the grave demeanor of network TV anchors, and heed the rhetoric of the politicians and radio talk-show hosts who have made the issue their own, one would gather that the republic teeters on the brink of a constitutional crisis.

The dread "gate" suffix of Nixonian legend has been applied. Melodramatic charges of bribery, corruption, cover-up, even of suicide and murder, fill the air (although at the time of this writing the focus has shifted to "improprieties" in Washington).

There has even been loose talk of presidential impeachment.

All this over a failed $ 200,000 dirt-road real estate deal up in Marion County and a savings and loan flameout that cost taxpayers a lousy $ 65 million--the 196th most costly S&L failure of the 1980s, nationally speaking, and one that accounted for about 7 percent of the roughly $ 1 billion tab bankrupt institutions ran up right here in little old Arkansas.

For the longest time, it was hard for most Arkansans to take all the bellyaching over Whitewater and Jim McDougal's Madison Guaranty very seriously....

Continued at... Pursuing Whitewater

~ ~ ~

Hillary Clinton is expected to testify regarding her business, professional, and personal relationships with Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Leon Panetta, AIPAC, Michelle Burns, Ron Rewald, Diane Plotts, William J. Clinton, Kenneth Starr, Vince Foster, Robert Fisk, Janet Reno, Monica Lewinski, Vernon Jordan, Xerox, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, Chubb Group, AIG, C.V. Starr, The Starr Foundation, Webster Hubbell, V.K. Durham, CIA, Gene & Nora Lum, John Huang, Paul Alston, Sam Pryor, Dan Case, Steve Case, Suzanne Case, Jeffrey Case, Aon, Walter Carpenter, Jr., Judith Neustadter Fuqua, William S. Richardson, George Ariyoshi, John Waihee, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Linda Lingle, Mark Bennett, Earl Anzai, Hugh Jones, Ralph Boyd, Jack Abramoff, Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs, Richard Rainwater, James Ahloy, Aloha Petroleum, Harken Energy, Chevron-Texaco, Gale Norton, The Nature Conservancy, Faye Kurren, Judge Barry Kurren, Dan Inouye, Daniel Akaka, John Peyton, John O’Neill, Frederick Black, Donald Hodel, Carol Muranaka, Curtis Ching, Gayle Lau, Carole Lam, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, Robert Kihune, Harriet Miers, Bruce Babbitt, Norman Mineta, Nancy Pelosi, Judge Kevin Chang, Judge David Ezra, Bank of Credit & Commerce International, Mark McConaghy, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Blackstone Group, Ron Brown, Marc Rich, Helen Cullen, Quintanta Petroleum, Marsh & McLennan, James Baker III, Norm Brownstein, Gayle Norton, Island Insurance Company, Warren Price III, David Farmer, Blackwater U.S.A., Erik Prince, Citigroup, Colin Powell, Ron Burkle, Trinity Investments, VMS Realty, Jon Miho, Charles Sweeney, George Ruff, William Cohen, and others to be named upon discovery.

Internet References:

Documents, News Articles and Related Links

http://www.hillaryproject.com/?/en

http://www.justhillary.com/herwords/burkle420.php

http://www.ak47world.com/clinton.html

http://www.usdoj.gov/pardon/clintonpardon_grants.htm

http://www.chinagatethemovie.com/