Columbia University Restricts Access To Campus During Obama's May 14, 2012 Campaign Speech At Barnard College's Graduation Ceremony

If you’re a neighborhood resident who wishes to protest against Columbia University’s West Harlem/Manhattanville business school construction project, an anti-war student who wishes to protest against the endless U.S. war in Afghanistan or an Occupy Wall Street supporter who wishes to protest against Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs, you apparently won’t be allowed by the Columbia Administration to protest on Columbia’s campus on May 14, 2012 during 2012 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign speech at Barnard College’s 2012 graduation ceremony. As a May 10, 2012 memorandum from Columbia University Vice- President James McShane to “Members of the Columbia Community,” for example, stated:

“On Monday, May 14,…Barack Obama will be on the Morningside Campus to deliver the…address at the Barnard College ceremony, held on the South Field Lawns at 12:30 p.m. This message provides important information regarding the extensive security measures that will impact lower campus operations and access.

“Please know the logistics outlined here may change at any point, subject to White House and Secret Service discretion. Updates will be posted to the Columbia homepage. We ask for your cooperation and flexibility given these extraordinary circumstances. As a precaution, please carry your University ID card with you at all times on Monday.
“AREA OF RESTRICTED ACCESS: MIDNIGHT – 6:00 A.M. MONDAY
"All gates south of 117th Street, Low Plaza, College Walk, South Field and the following buildings must be vacated and locked down. There will be no entry or activity permitted.
“Lower Campus
“Journalism, Furnald, Lerner Hall, Carman, Butler Library, John Jay, Wallach, Hartley and Hamilton
“Upper Campus
“Low Library, Kent, Dodge Hall and Miller Theatre
“LOWER CAMPUS ACCESS: 6:00 A.M. – 3:00 P.M. MONDAY
“Entry to lower campus and its buildings will be limited on Monday. Those permitted to enter lower campus will be required to pass through magnetometer screening. Large bags and liquids will not be allowed. Access will be granted to the below groups at the locations specified.
“Columbia University Faculty or Staff Reporting to Work on Lower Campus
“Faculty or staff must have a University ID card and University-issued letter to verify they work in a lower campus building. If you have been instructed to report to work, but have not yet received this documentation, please see your immediate supervisor.
Lerner Hall and Print Services staff: 115th Street and Broadway, Lerner Hall gate
Hamilton staff: 115th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Taint gate
“Upon entry to these buildings, staff will not be permitted to exit onto campus.
“Barnard College Ceremony Participants
“Degree candidates and members of the academic procession: Lerner Hall, Broadway lobby entrance
“General Admission ticket holders: 114th Street: Carman and John Jay gates
“Guests with Disabilities, Press and VIPs: 115th Street and Broadway, Lerner Hall gate
"STREET AND GATE CLOSURES: MIDNIGHT – 3:00 P.M. MONDAY
"In addition to areas specified here, there may be intermittent street and walkway closures during the President’s arrival and exit.
"Street Closures
"No parking will be permitted on 116th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. Additionally, there will be no parking on Amsterdam Avenue from 114th to 125th Street.

"No parking will be permitted on the east side of Broadway from 114th to 120th Street.

"There will be no parking on West 114th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. Additionally, this street will be closed to vehicular traffic.
"Pedestrian traffic on 114th Street will be restricted to the south side of the street.
"Sidewalk traffic along campus on both Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue will be restricted, from 114th to 117th Street.
"Campus Closures
"The 116th Street gates, College Walk and Low Plaza will be closed.
"The Amsterdam Avenue overpass will be closed.
"The Bookstore, Butler Library, Dodge Hall, Furnald, Carman, John Jay, Hartley and Wallach will all be closed.
"Hamilton, Journalism and Kent will be closed, except for personnel already identified.
"The Intercampus Shuttle 116th Street, Northbound stop will be moved to 117th Street.
"Administrative and Student Mail delivery, as well as external couriers to lower campus will be suspended and the Lerner Hall Student Package Center will be closed Monday.
"UPPER CAMPUS ACCESS
"Access to Dodge and Kent Halls will be restricted as described above. All other buildings on upper campus will follow normal University operations on Monday….”

Coincidentally, the Barnard College president who invited the 2012 Democratic presidential candidate to give a campaign speech at the 2012 Barnard College graduation ceremony, Debora Spar, also sits on the board of directors of Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs investment banking firm; and a vice-chair of Columbia University’s board of trustees, Esta Stecher, is also the CEO of Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs Bank USA.

Obama Regime Solicitor General's AIG & Pro-Israeli Government Lobby Links?

Did you notice that the former Williams & Connolly D.C. law-lobbying firm associate and Clinton White House Staff member-lawyer that Democratic President Obama appointed to be U.S. Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, both sat on a "non-profit" board with an AIG executive and spoke at an American Friends of the Hebrew University/lobby function honoring a Goldman Sachs executive?

As the Equal Justice Works website notes, U.S. Solicitor General Kagan recently sat on the Equal Justice Works “non-profit” board next to Anastasia “Stasia” Kelly; and “Anastasia `Stasia' Kelly is the executive vice president and general counsel and senior regulatory and compliance officer of American Insurance Group (AIG)” who “leads a worldwide legal and regulatory team and manages the Corporate Secretary function of this international insurance and financial services firm.”

And, as the Jewish Forward newspaper’s website revealed:

"Unlike Jewish women comics who tend to malign their mothers, Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School (whose awesome curriculum vitae includes a stint as associate counsel to the president (1995-1999), paid homage to hers. At the October 19 American Friends of the Hebrew University lawyers lunch at Cipriani 42nd Street, Kagan told the sea of suits that (despite all her accomplishments) her mother “would be proud” that she was the keynote speaker at this George A. Katz “Torch of Learning” luncheon honoring Robert Katz, a philanthropist and partner at The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc".

So don't expect the White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Democratic Obama Administration to go into court against any of the AIG, Goldman Sachs, or AIPAC executives who may have been recently involved in either white collar crimes or the support of the Israeli War Machine’s war crimes in Gaza.

Massachusetts Jobless Rate Under Dem Patrick Administration: 6.9 Percent

When Deval Patrick was campaigning for Governor of Massachusetts in 2006, some local DSA members were skeptical that a former top corporation executive at the labor movement-boycotted Coca-Cola Company would be likely to restore economic prosperity to Massachusetts—even though Patrick was then being skillfully marketed as an “agent of change” by a Chicago-based campaign media consultant named David Axelrod. Well, today, it looks like these dissident DSA folks were accurate when they predicted that just electing Deval Patrick as Governor of Massachusetts in 2006 would not magically bring economic prosperity back to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—even though the Democratic Party has controlled the U.S. Congress since 2007.

Between November 2008 and December 2008, for example, the official Massachusetts jobless rate jumped from 5.9 percent to 6.9 percent and 16,000 more jobs in Massachusetts vanished, according to a January 22, 2009 press release of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.

The same press release also noted:

“Education and Health Services, Massachusetts' largest sector, lost 700 jobs in December...

“Jobs in the Professional, Scientific and Business Services declined by 7,500 in December. Over half of the monthly job loss was recorded in the Administrative and Support Services component, which includes Temporary Help. At 478,000, employment is down 6,200 from one year ago…

“Financial Activities employment was off 900 over the month, with losses in Finance and Insurance and Real Estate, Rental and Leasing. At 217,500, Financial Activities jobs are down 7,000 or 3.1 percent from one year ago…

“Trade, Transportation and Utilities jobs shed 3,400 jobs in December, with Retail Trade again accounting for most of the losses…At 557,300, employment is down 14,100 from one year ago…

“Leisure and Hospitality jobs were down 900 in December with losses divided between Arts, Entertainment and Recreation and Accommodation and Food Services. At 296,900, jobs are off 6,100 over the year…

“Manufacturing jobs declined by 1,000 in December after losing 3,300 the previous month. Most of the losses over the last two months have been in durable goods. At 285,000, Manufacturing employment is down 8,600 or 2.9 percent from one year ago with the largest losses in Computer and Electronic Products, Fabricated Metals, and Machinery.

“Construction jobs which were down 2,500 in December have declined by 9,400 over the last four months. At 125,400, jobs are down 11,700 or 8.5 percent from one year ago, the largest percentage decline of any sector…

“The Bay State's labor force was down 3,100 over the month with 35,700 fewer Massachusetts residents employed and 32,600 more unemployed. At 3,418,100, the labor force is up 15,300 from this time last year as 74,000 fewer residents were employed and 89,300 more were unemployed.”

Obama's War In Iraq & Afghanistan: Its Historical Roots

Some of the Democratic Party-oriented leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement have been claiming since 2006 that the election of a Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Congress and a Democratic President would end the U.S. War Machine’s immoral military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the Democratic Obama Administration has still not ordered the U.S. War Machine to immediately start withdrawing all Pentagon troops and U.S. private contractor troops from Iraq and Afghanistan by February 1, 2009.

One reason may be because it was a Democratic Administration, the Carter Administration, which initiated a covert war against people in Afghanistan in the late 1970s; and it was a Democratic Administration, the administration of Obama Administration Secretary of State-Designate Clinton’s husband, which continued the Bush I Administration’s war on the Iraqi people during the 1990s.

For more information on some of the historical roots of Obama’s War In Iraq & Afghanistan, you might want to check out the following items that first appeared in the now-defunct alternative newsweekly Downtown in the 1990s:

Another Kuwaitigate War To Eliminate Saddam?

When Bill “Bush” Clinton ordered 23 cruise missiles to be fired on Baghdad in June 1993, the pretext he used was an alleged Iraqi “plot” to assassinate former CIA Director Bush, which the government of Kuwait Inc. claimed it had discovered. Yet, as Seymour Hersh noted in New Yorker magazine (11/1/93) “a classified CIA study…was highly skeptical of the Kuwaiti claims of an Iraqi assassination attempt” and “the study prepared by the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center, suggested that Kuwait might have `cooked the books’ on the alleged plot in an effort to play up the `continuing Iraqi threat’ to Western interests in the Persian Gulf.”

Hersh also revealed that the Clinton White House’s National Security Council Division of Near East and South Asian Affairs Director, Martin Indyk, strongly pressured Clinton to bomb Baghdad and that, before moving into his White House office, Indyk was the executive director of the AIPAC Zionist lobby-sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy. At a 1991 Aspen Strategy Group Workshop, Indyk argued that “the United States…can undertake a more ambitious effort to bring the Middle East into the New World Order” and “the approach…would require the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Baghdad.”

The U.S. Military-Industrial-Media Complex has apparently been seeking to eliminate the Iraqi leader since 1990. As former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark noted in The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes In The Gulf:

“…The press reported Pentagon sources saying Bush had ordered General Powell to target Saddam Hussein for assassination shortly after Aug. 2 (1990). We now know that an attempt to carry out this order was made by dropping `super’ bombs on a command shelter in February 1991, and we may never know what other efforts were made. Of course, the assassination of a foreign head of state, even in time of war, is prohibited by laws. Article 23 of the Hague Regulations, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons, and even U.S. Presidential Executive Order 12333 prohibit assassinations…”

(Downtown 11/9/94)

Did 1991 U.S. Bombing Of Iraq Kill 50,000 Civilians?

As former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark recalled in The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes In The Gulf, “When the Pentagon issued its three-volume report on the Gulf War in April 1992…it never discussed civilian casualties” and “The `watch-dog’ U.S. media never criticized this outrageous omission, and never raised the issue of civilian deaths.” Yet, according to Clark, “more than 50,000 Iraqi civilians died during the bombing” and ‘in early 1992, it was widely reported that 5,000-6,000 civilians were dying every month as a direct result of the bombing compounded by shortages of food, medicine, and medical services caused by the sanctions…”

In his 1992 book, Clark also noted the following:

“Right now the Pentagon knows exactly what it did in Iraq. It has film of much of the assault. The media knows this, yet does not demand this vital information.

“U.S. claims that it spared civilians through pinpoint bombing are false. There is no way to bomb directly populated cities day after day and not kill civilians.

“The whole of Basra was bombed mercilessly.

“In fact, 800,000 people lived in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city. When I was there, during and after the bombing, I saw whole neighborhoods—schools, homes, a post office—destroyed…”

(Downtown 11/9/94)

African-American Male Jobless Rate Under Obama & Dem Congress: 13.4 Percent

The “seasonally adjusted” official unemployment rate for African-American male workers in the United States over the age of 20 jumped from 12.1 to 13.4 percent between November and December 2008, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data--following the election of Barack Obama as the militaristic U.S. white corporate power structure’s new Commander-in-Chief and another Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Congress.

In addition, the official jobless rate for African-American youth between 16 and 19 years old in the United States increased from 32.2 to 33.7 percent, while the unemployment rate for white youth increased from 18.4 to 18.7 percent. The official jobless rate for Hispanic or Latino workers in the United States also increased from 8.6 to 9.2 percent between November and December 2008.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also summarized the December 2008 employment situation in the United States for all U.S. workers in the following way in its January 9, 2009 press release:

“Nonfarm payroll employment declined sharply in December, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.8 to 7.2 percent…Payroll employment fell by 524,000 over the month and by 1.9 million over the last 4 months of 2008. In December, job losses were large and widespread across most major industry sectors…

“In December, the number of unemployed persons increased by 632,000 to 11.1 million and the unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has grown by 3.6 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.3 percentage points…

“The unemployment rates for adult men (7.2 percent), adult women (5.9 percent), and whites (6.6 percent) increased in December…

“Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs rose by 315,000 to 6.5 million in December. Over the past 12 months, the size of this group has increased by 2.7 million…The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose to 2.6 million in December and was up by 1.3 million in 2008…”

Yet despite the continued high rate of joblessness in the United States in 2009, the Democratic Party-controlled Congress is apparently still unwilling to finally cut off all funding for the Pentagon’s war machine in Iraq and Afghanistan and all funding for U.S. military aid to all foreign governments in the Middle East.

Nor is the militaristic U.S. white corporate power structure’s new Commander-in-Chief apparently yet willing to secure more funds for a U.S. public works job program by immediately ordering all Pentagon troops and U.S. private contractor troops to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan by February 1, 2009—despite his 2008 “anti-war” campaign rhetoric.

Unemployment Rates During First Term Democratic Administrations

During the 2008 election campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Obama promised U.S. voters that joblessness would be reduced in the United States if he were elected. Yet in the 1990s, the official unemployment rate in the United States actually remained at a high level during the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration—when a top Obama economics advisor, former Harvard University President Larry Summers, was a high official in the U.S. Treasury Department and another Obama economics advisor, Robert Reich, was Secretary of Labor. For example:

1. Between April 1993 and May 1993 the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7 percent to 7.5 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.4 percent in May 1993.

2. Between May 1993 and June 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7.5 percent to 7.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City remained at 9.4 percent in June 1993. Between the first inauguration of Democratic President Clinton in January 1993 and June 1993, 190,000 factory jobs also disappeared in the United States, according to the July 3, 1993 issue of the New York Times.

3. In July 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 7.5 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.5 percent.

4. Between July 1993 and August 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7.5 percent to 7.9 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City remained at 9.5 percent. Between July 1993 and August 1993 the number of payroll jobs throughout the United States also fell by 88,000.

5. In September 1993, California’s official jobless rate jumped to 9.4 percent, New York State’s official unemployment rate still exceeded 7 percent, New Jersey’s official unemployment rate jumped to 7.7 percent and over 12 percent of Black workers were still officially unemployed in the United States.

6. Between September 1993 and October 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York City jumped from 8.7 percent to 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate throughout New York State jumped from 7.1 percent to 7.9 percent. In October 1993, the official unemployment rate in California also rose to 9.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in Florida was 7.1 percent.

7. The official jobless rate for Black workers in the United States was 12.5 percent in November 1993, while the official unemployment rate in New York City in November 1993 was 10.2 percent. That same month, the official unemployment rate in Los Angeles was 9.4 percent, while the official jobless rate in Michigan was 7 percent.

8. Between November 1993 and December 1993, the official jobless rate in New York City increased to 10.5 percent, while the official unemployment rate in New York State increased to 7.6 percent. During the same period, the official unemployment rate jumped from 6.5 percent to 7 percent in Florida, from 7 percent to 7.5 percent in Michigan and from 8.6 percent to 8.7 percent in California.

9. Between December 1993 and January 1994, the official unemployment rate in New York City jumped from 10.5 percent to 10.8 percent, while the official unemployment rate in California jumped from 8.7 percent to 10.1 percent during the same period. Between December 1993 and January 1994, the official unemployment rate also jumped from 5.9 percent to 6.6 percent in Illinois, from 6.2 percent to 7.2 percent in Massachusetts and from 7.3 percent to 7.5 percent in Michigan. In addition, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the United States was 13.1 percent in January 1994.

10. In February 1994, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 12.9 percent, while the official jobless rate in California was 9 percent. The official jobless rate also jumped from 7.5 percent to 7.9 percent in Michigan and from 6 percent to 6.9 percent in Texas between January 1994 and February 1994. In addition, 10 percent of all New York City workers and 7.8 percent of all workers throughout New York State remained officially unemployed in February 1994.

11. Between February 1994 and March 1994, New York State’s official jobless rate increased from 7.8 percent to 8.1 percent, while New York City’s official unemployment rate rose from 10 percent to 10.3 percent. During the same period, the official unemployment rate also rose from 5.1 percent to 6.8 percent in Pennsylvania, from 5.7 percent to 7.3 percent in Florida, from 6.9 percent to 7.4 percent in Texas and from 5.2 percent to 5.9 percent in Ohio. The official unemployment rate in California was still 8.6 percent in March 1994, while 12.5 percent of all Black workers in the USA were officially unemployed in March 1994.

12. In April 1994, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 8.2 percent, the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.5 percent and the official jobless rate in California was 9.1 percent. That same month, the official unemployment rate for Hispanic worker was 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate for Black workers was 11.8 percent in April 1994.

13. Between June 1994 and July 1994, the official jobless rate rose from 8.3 percent to 9 percent in California, from 4.8 percent to 6.3 percent in Illinois, from 5.4 percent to 6 percent in Michigan, and from 6.7 percent to 6.8 percent in Texas. In July 1994, the official jobless rate for Hispanic workers in the USA was 10.1 percent, while the official jobless rate for Black workers was still 11.2 percent.

14. Between September 1994 and October 1994, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 10.7 percent to 11.4 percent, while unemployment also officially jumped in Massachusetts from 5.2 percent to 6.4 percent. During this same period, the official jobless rate in New York City climbed from 7.2 percent to 8.2 percent.

15. In November 1994, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.5 percent.

16. In February 1995, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.1 percent.

17. In May 1995, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 8.2 percent, the official jobless rate in California was 8.5 percent and the New York Times reported in its June 3, 1995 issue that during the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration “stark evidence of a rapidly slowing economy came in a report that employees dropped 101,000 workers from their payroll in May [1995], the worst decline since the Spring of 1991.” In addition, in May 1995 the official jobless rate for Hispanic workers in the USA was 10 percent and the official jobless rate for Black workers was 9.9 percent.

18. Between May 1995 and June 1995, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 9.9 percent to 10.6 percent. The official jobless rate in New York City in June 1995 was also 8.1 percent.

19. Between July 1995 and September 1995, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 11.1 percent to 11.3 percent.

20. In January 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.5 percent; and, according to the February 3, 1996 issue of the New York Times, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that between December 1995 and January 1996 U.S. “employers dropped 201,000 people from the payrolls.” Coincidentally, the first term Democratic Clinton Administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics then “discontinued publication of the unemployment rates for 11 major industrial states” in its monthly employment situation reports during the 1996 presidential election year, according to the New York Times.

21. In February 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers was 10.3 percent, while the official Hispanic jobless rate was 9.7 percent. A back page of the March 9, 1996 issue of the New York Times also reported that for all U.S. workers the official unemployment rate, based on the “U-6 measure that…includes all those working part-time and those `marginally attached’ to the work force,’ increased from 10.5 percent to 10.7 percent” between February 1995 and February 1996.

22. In June 1996, the official unemployment rate in New York City was 8.5 percent.

23. In April, July, August and September of 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA remained at 10.5 percent. And in its October 5, 1996 issue, the New York Times reported that, nationally, “the job market weakened in September, confirming a slowing of the economy, as payrolls unexpectedly fell by 40,000 and the unemployment rate inched up” with U.S. factories “now employing 331,000 fewer people” than they did in March 1995.

24. Between September 1996 and October 1996, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 10.5 percent to 10.8 percent.

25. In November 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was still 10.6 percent.

26. The official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA in December 1996 of 10.5 percent remained more than double the jobless rate for white workers in the USA. The New York Times also reported in its Jan. 11, 1997 issue that “regionally, the December jobless rate edged up two-tenths of a point, to 6.5 percent in the West…”

And at the end of the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration in January 1997, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in the Northeast United States was 5.8 percent.

So don’t be surprised if full employment is not restored and the official unemployment rate of U.S. workers remains high during the first-term of the Democratic Obama Administration under the existing U.S. corporate welfare-oriented economic system—despite the 2008 presidential campaign rhetoric that “putting a Democrat in the White House” would lead to a reduction in joblessness for U.S. working-class and U.S. middle-class people during the “Great Recession of 2007-2009.”

Wiretapping In Chicago Historically Under Illinois Dem Rule

An Illinois Democrat named Barack Obama looks like he still has a chance to be the 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate (especially if white U.S. anti-war women voters and most African-American voters refuse to vote for former Democratic President Bill "Lewinsky/Yucaipagate" Clinton’s wife in the remaining 2008 Democratic presidential primaries) . But under Illinois Democratic Party rule in Chicago, the Chicago Police Department was allowed, historically, to use wiretapping methods to violate the democratic rights of U.S. anti-war activists. As Frank Donner noted in a chapter titled “Chicago: The National Capital Of Police Repression,” which appeared in his 1990 book Protectors Of Privilege: Red Squads And Police Repression In Urban America:

“…A Cook County Grand Jury convened to determine whether the police had violated the law.

“On Nov. 10, 1975, the grand jury issued a report, `Improper Police Intelligence Activities,’ strongly condemning the red squad: `The evidence has clearly shown that the Security Section of the Intelligence Division assaulted the…constitutional right to privacy.’ The panel heard considerable testimony from several police witnesses that they were aware that electronic surveillance was used to gather intelligence information. In addition to illegal electronic surveillance, police officers admittedly engaged in burglaries, thefts, incitements to violence, destruction of mailing lists, and other criminal acts, because `they believed it their duty.’”

(Downtown/Aquarian 8/14/96)

Next: Remembering Philip Agee’s 2003 Critique of CIA-Funded “NGOism”

Democratic Party Corruption In Illinois Historically

As The Lesser Evil: The Democrats by Lenni Brenner observed in 1988:

“The Illinois and Cook County Democratic Parties are, arguably, the most corrupt political bodies west of Gomorrah. Otto Kerner, governor from 1961 to 1968, did two years, in the mid-1970s. In 1987, Daniel Walker, governor from 1973 to 1977, pled guilty to bank fraud…Myriads of Chicago Democrats have run—some have even won—while on indictment…Ten ran at one time in 1973. Nine judges were convicted of bribery in 1987."

The Chicago Tribune also revealed in 1996 that “former Democratic Illinois State Sen. Jeremiah Joyce, one of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s top political operatives, and Grace Barry, a good friend of Daley’s wife, stand to reap millions of dollars from no-bid agreements to sell gifts, food and liquors at O’Hare International airport” and “contracts worth more than $100 million and benefiting friends and supporters of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and his wife” were “expected to sail through the City Council” in 1996, under Democratic Party rule in Chicago (Chicago Tribune 2/8/96, 3/6/96).

Coincidentally, 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack “No Experience” Obama was apparently a member of the Illinois and Cook County Democratic Party before he and his Billionaire Crown Dynasty financial backers decided that the freshman U.S. Senator from Illinois should start running for President--before even completing the first three years of his term as the Illinois and Cook County Democratic Party Establishment’s representative in the U.S. Senate.

Next: Obama’s $1.7 Million Book Contract

Fems vs. Dems Historically

If you’re an anti-war woman Democrat, you might be wondering why the patriarchal Democratic Party Establishment still seems reluctant to nominate a pacifist woman or a radical feminist anti-corporate woman to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2008. Yet the patriarchal Democratic Party has a long history of promoting institutional sexism in the world of U.S. Establishment mainstream media politics. As Why And How Women Will Elect The Next President by Eleanor Smeal noted in 1984:

“Many women…spent 10 years begging Democrats to do more and to place the ERA higher on their agenda—all to little avail. The ERA was defeated in Democrat-controlled Oklahoma, Florida, and North Carolina…Several key leaders of the opposition to the ERA in these states were Democrats, notably Senator Dempsey Barron, dean of the Florida Senate, and Lieutenant Governor Jimmy Green of North Carolina, president of the North Carolina Senate…

“The same picture holds true for other women’s issues. Leading opponents of women’s rights of access to abortion are Democrats as well as Republicans. The 1983 attempt to pass a constitutional amendment permitting Congress and/or the states to ban abortion was cosponsored by…Thomas Eagleton (D-MO)…Many women are suspicious of both political parties and view themselves as `independents’…”

(Downtown 6/26/96)

Next: Democratic Party Corruption In Illinois Historically