White Civil Rights : The Website for Europeans and Americans Wherever They May Live

by Loretta Napoleoni

The biggest transfer of cash in history took place from May 2003 to June 2004 when the U.S. Federal Reserve of New York shipped $12 billion in bills of various denominations to war-torn Iraq. Over the course of one year, a fleet of C-130s carried, from New York to Baghdad, 484 pallets weighing a total of 363 tons and holding 281 million bank notes. This is not an advertisement for a new board game but the summary of a memorandum prepared for a meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, which is examining the “reconstruction” of Iraq under Paul Bremer.

No proper record of the funds, which were distributed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, is available. They seem to have been disbursed like Monopoly money. Contractors were paid in cash from the back of pickup trucks; thousands of “ghost employees,” people enlisted in ministerial jobs that did not exist, were paid salaries with bundles of currency; $1 million was stolen from the CPA vault and nobody seemed to be bothered; $500 million was disbursed under the heading “TBD” (”to be determined”). An obscure consulting firm from San Diego was in charge of certifying the distribution of the money, yet it never conducted any review of internal controls, as was contractually required. (more…)

by Rep. Ron Paul

The scandal at Walter Reed is not an isolated incident. It is directly related to our foreign policy of interventionism.

There is a pressing need to reassess our now widely accepted role as the world’s lone superpower. If we don’t, we are destined to reduce our nation to something far less powerful.

It has always been politically popular for politicians to promise they will keep us out of foreign wars, especially before World War I. That hasn’t changed, even though many in Washington today don’t understand it.

Likewise it has been popular to advocate ending prolonged and painful conflicts like the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and now Iraq.

In 2000, it was quite popular to condemn nation building and reject the policy of policing the world, in the wake of our involvement in Kosovo and Somalia. We were promised a more humble foreign policy. (more…)

by Jeff Davis

You know all those draconian new “security laws” that were brought in after 9/11? Remember Dubya and Cheney and Rush Limbaugh swearing to us all on a stack of Bibles that they would never, ever be misused against ordinary Americans? There was always the implication that the Patriot Act would only be used against wicked, dark-skinned Muslims? Well, SER-PRISE, SER-PRISE!!

A Yahoo news article reports that “The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States…. And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data….FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.” (more…)

by Jeff Davis

It’s not just Walter Reed Medical Center that’s treating our “wounded heroes” from the Iraq War disgracefully; there’s plenty of incompetence, apathy, poor sanitation and chaos reign throughout the entire military health care system.

The neocons just love to say they support the troops. Apparently “supporting the troops” doesn’t include quality long term care or clean and sanitary conditions or even a responsive staff at the Walter Reed military hospital. One patient pulled a bandage off his leg and the sight of his injury left him screaming for over an hour. Apparently none of the staff noticed the screaming. A USA Today article notes “The newspaper reported on moldy walls, rats and roaches at the outpatient facility where soldiers are sent after their initial treatment at the main hospital… The panel heard wrenching testimony… ‘My life was ripped apart the day my husband was injured,’ said Annette McLeod, whose husband, Walter, was hit in the head by a steel cargo door while working in Iraq… She said that when hospital officials found out her husband had had trouble with math in high school, they tried to use that to claim he had a learning disability and was mentally retarded, and therefore didn’t qualify for treatment of a brain injury.” (more…)

by James Buchanan

A recent news article reports “More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq… Residents of Burlington were voting on a separate question calling for a new investigation into the September 11 attacks.” On the opposite coast, another news article notes that nothing could stop “a State Senate Committee in Olympia Thursday from hearing the case to impeach President Bush and Vice-President Cheney… Anti-war activists filled the hearing room and an overflow space while Republicans boycotted the event. A first-term Democratic Senator is sponsoring the proposal, which asks Congress to consider impeachment. Among those invited to lay out the grounds for impeachment was the mayor of Salt Lake City. Rocky Anderson has become a vocal advocate for putting the Bush administration on trial.”

If there were ever a massive grass roots effort to impeach a bad president, this is it! What makes the case against George Bush so compelling is that a brand new war or act of colossal incompetence is entirely probable as long as he stays in office. The neocons have been ginning up lies for a war against Iran for months. It’s only a matter of time before a new terrorist attack is fabricated so that Bush gets his excuse for war. (more…)

by Paul Craig Roberts

U.S. casualties (dead and wounded) have now reached 27,000 in a war that was supposed to be a “cakewalk,” over in a few weeks. If what four-star Gen. Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of NATO, told Amy Goodman in a March 2 interview is correct, U.S. casualties are yet in their early days.

Gen. Clark told Amy Goodman that shortly after 9/11 he was shown a Pentagon “memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran.”

That sounds exactly like the plan that neoconservative Norman Podhoretz set out in Commentary magazine.

The media have done a good job for the government of keeping the blood and gore out of the living room. Except for close friends or relatives of one of the 27,000, Americans have not been impacted by the war. They are even less aware of the consequences for Iraqis. (more…)

by Jeff Davis

Just to put a little perspective on how huge the immigration problem is in this country, the Houston Chronicle reports that Federal agents found 67 people at a stash house for illegals: “Federal officials have charged six men with harboring scores of illegal immigrants who were found packed into a house in a quiet southeast Houston neighborhood. The one-story residence was one of many stash houses that smugglers use in Houston for holding illegal immigrants until they can be moved elsewhere or released after relatives pay a fee, investigators said.”

The Feds charged six Mexicans who were running the stash house with immigration offenses and false imprisonment. Would anyone care to hazard a guess on how many of those illegals will, in fact, be deported and how many will end up getting visas or simply being released? (more…)

by Jeff Davis

Many Americans think that slavery in America involved only white Southern plantation owners and black slaves. The most lucrative part of slavery and the most cruel was the slave trade, which was overwhelmingly run by Jews. And not all slave owners were white. Some Indian tribes including the Cherokees bought slaves to help with their farms. When the Civil War ended, the Union was faced with the odd situation of Cherokees still owning black slaves. A treaty was drawn up in 1866 and the Cherokees freed their slaves (most likely under threat of invasion or after being compensated by the US government). Apparently these black ex-slaves and their descendents have been living as a racial minority, unassimilated, ever since. Today the issue of race in the Cherokee Nation has suddenly cropped up in a big way.

A Yahoo news article reports “Cherokee Nation members voted Saturday to revoke the tribal citizenship of an estimated 2,800 descendants of the people the Cherokee once owned as slaves. With all 32 precincts reporting, 76.6 percent had voted in favor of an amendment to the tribal constitution that would limit citizenship to descendants of ‘by blood’ tribe members as listed on the federal Dawes Commission’s rolls from more than 100 years ago. The commission, set up by a Congress bent on breaking up Indians’ collective lands and parceling them out to tribal citizens, drew up two rolls, one listing Cherokees by blood and the other listing freedmen, a roll of blacks regardless of whether they had Indian blood. Some opponents of the ballot question argued that attempts to remove freedmen from the tribe were motivated by racism.” (more…)

by Jeff Davis

In the last week, the Dow Jones stock market lost 535 points. 412 points were lost on a single day. Some investors were under the illusion that the market would just keep going up. A few overly optimistic folks took out loans on their houses to invest and are now in serious financial trouble. Financial experts blame the large drop on remarks by retired Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, who warned that a recession might hit sometime in 2007. His remarks were published Monday evening and there was a panic on Wall Street the next day.

This raises the question: Just how solid is the US economy if the opinion of one man can torpedo the stock market? The truth is the US economy isn’t that solid. Greenspan’s doubts about the economy are well-founded. Every year, we load up with millions of new illegal aliens who push our infrastructure to the breaking point. Our manufacturing jobs have been mercilessly outsourced, and Affirmative Action combined with talentless executives has driven both Ford and General Motors to the verge of bankruptcy. To highlight this downward spiral, Chrysler recently announced a lay off of 13,000 jobs. (more…)

by Ian Mosley

Let me put forth a hypothetical question. Suppose for the sake of argument that extraterrestrials have in fact visited this planet and that the government authorities have certain knowledge of this fact. Does anyone believe that our government would tell us? The US government has invariably treated us like children. They make up ridiculous stories such as the “Single Bullet Theory” and expect us to believe them. Even the earliest excuses for UFO sightings were meant for children. How could anyone mistake a weather balloon for a silver disk that flies faster than our best fighter and more maneuverable than a helicopter? How many decades did it take for stories about “foo-fighters” (mysterious round flying objects) seen in the last months of the Second World War to reach the general public? Politicians like Bush and Clinton like keeping secrets purely for the secrecy’s sake under the best of conditions.

A recent Yahoo news article reports “A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said Wednesday. ‘I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation … that could be a way to save our planet,’ Paul Hellyer, 83, told the Ottawa Citizen. Alien spacecraft would have traveled vast distances to reach Earth, and so must be equipped with advanced propulsion systems or used exceptional fuels, he told the newspaper. Such alien technologies could offer humanity alternatives to fossil fuels, he said, pointing to the enigmatic 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico — which has become a shrine for UFO believers — as an example of alien contact.” (more…)