Date: August 29, 2006 7:52:43 PM PDT
Subject: Fwd: Madsen ~ Aug. 28/29, 2006
*"WELCOME TO AMERICA, HOME OF THE "FREE PRESS":
IF YOU'RE A JOURNALIST, BEND OVER AND SPREAD 'EM!*
"'Preventive' screening of news agents is unusual in civilized countries.
Only a few tin-horn dictatorships --and now the United States under
President Bush-- limit admittance of, and travel by, foreign journalists.
(Israel, for example, severely restricts media access to the West Bank
and Gaza.) We're just lucky other countries aren't reciprocating in
kind and making life miserable for American ('Fox News') reporters ..."
Date: August 29, 2006 5:50:10 PM PDT
Subject: Madsen ~ Aug. 28/29, 2006
Wayne Madsen Report
"Jaded Tasks: Brass Plates, Black Ops & Big Oil, The Blood Politics of George Bush & Co." available directly from the publisher.
*Aug. 29, 2006 -- Reporting today from Copenhagen.* Three sole peace demonstrators maintain a lonely vigil outside the Parliament (Folketing) building in Copenhagen. They are protesting the first aggressive military action Denmark has taken in 150 years -- its joining with the United States in the military occupation of Iraq. They have been at the Parliament since October 19, 2001 and today marks day number 1775 since they -- along with an eternal flame -- have reminded Danish lawmakers and the public of the Danish government's culpability in joining the Bush and Blair administrations in the genocidal war in Iraq.
[Day 1775 for the lonely Danish Peace Watch outside the Parliament in Copenhagen.]
One of the peace vigil holders was more critical of the Danish left than he was of the neo-conservatives and extreme right wing parties who support the current government. He said the left, including the Social Democrats and the former Communists, were weak-kneed in the face of Danish neo-conservatism and militarism in support of the Bush/Blair global agenda. The fact that only three peace protestors stand in front of the Parliament, where the Social Democrats hold 47 seats, the Socialist People's Party 11, the Red-Green Alliance 6, and the Faroese Republican Party and Greenland socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit Party 1 each, speaks volumes to the fact that the left everywhere has lost its backbone, intestinal fortitude, and commitment to fight the militarists, the neo-conservatives, and the global corporations. Leftist parties have sold their souls to multi-national conglomerates and the banker's class at the expense of the workers, anti-militarists, and the poor.
Today, the three peace vigil holders had to contend with a very aggressive passerby from Israel. He accused the Danish Peace Watch members of supporting terrorism (a familiar mantra from the Israeli war camp and its U.S. interlocutors). The obnoxious Israeli provocateur demanded that the peace vigil members explain to him why they were displaying pro-terrorist propaganda on the street. Israel likes to claim that it is a democracy -- it might want to instruct its travelers to other countries to respect democracies abroad and curtail the tired old neo-con propaganda that many of us are just so damned tired of hearing -- whether in Washington, D.C. or Copenhagen.
*Aug. 28, 2006 -- SPECIAL REPORT FROM EUROPE.* Information visas (I-Visa) -- a Bush administration method for controlling the foreign media's coverage of the United States.
You're a foreign journalist and you want to visit the United States to cover a story. If you think it is as easy as hopping on an airplane, even if you are a citizen or resident of a visa-waiver country, guess again. Journalists wishing to travel to the United States -- whether they are with print, television, radio, or Internet media -- must first obtain an "I-Visa" from the U.S. embassy or selected consulates responsible for their jurisdictions. Freelance journalists who are not under contract to a U.S.-recognized media organization need not apply.
Journalists must fill out a detailed application in which they are required to outline what story they are writing about and they must personally visit the U.S. embassy and consulate for "administrative processing, biometric collection and a personal interview." Biometric processing at the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen entails having one's thumb electronically scanned. Journalists visiting some U.S. diplomatic missions for the interview cannot bring in "electronic devices (cell phones, PDAs, laptops ) [or] backpacks, suitcases, and attaché cases." At certain missions, U.S. embassy security personnel refuse to store such items during the interview process. Others confiscate cell phones and tag them for pick up after the interview process (needless to say, the interview process might last a bit longer if the local U.S. spooks decide to examine the journalist's cell phone call list and perform certain "modifications." At the Madrid embassy, the only bags that are permitted inside the compound are those having medical purposes, such as insulin kits.
Journalists must also provide their addresses in the United States and the names and addresses of people they will be interviewing. So much for freedom of the press and the protection of journalists' sources.
The real rub comes with the I-Visa application fee. Journalists who believe they can pay the 85 Euro (US$ 108) fee in Germany and Denmark by check, cash, or credit card are out of luck. Certain U.S. embassies, like those in Copenhagen and Berlin, through a bank wire contrivance, require visa fees to be paid into special bank accounts established by the various U.S. embassies. In Germany, the Bush cronies have cut a deal with a small outfit called Roskos and Meier OHG, a 23-person subsidiary of the giant banking consortium, Alianz Group. Roskos and Meier has only been around since 1994 when Messrs. Roskos and Meier formed their company to provide insurance and financial services in the Berlin-Brandenburg area. Now they have a lucrative sweetheart deal with the U.S. embassy to confirm that visa fees have been paid from individuals applying for visas at the Berlin embassy and Frankfurt consulate. The visa payments go to a special account established at Dresdner Bank AG Berlin, Bank Routing Number (BLZ): 120 800 00, Account No. (Kontonr.): 405 125 7600. In Denmark, the journalist visa money (600 Danish Kroner) is wired to a special embassy account at the Jyske Bank Reg. No. 5013, account number 200200-2. Internet banking or bank-to-bank payments are not permitted. The U.S. embassy in Helsinki requires journalists to pay 85 Euros into Nordea Bank account #221918-16629.
In Spain, $100 in Euros must be deposited with the Banco Santander Central Hispano (BSCH), bank account: 0049-1803-54-2210316035. In China, a visa application fee of 810 RMB (US$101) can only be paid at selected branches of the CITIC Industrial Bank. In the United Arab Emirates, the $100 application fee must go to the National Bank of Abu Dhabi. In Cyprus, 46 Cyprus Pounds (US$ 102) lands in special LAIKI Bank account "American Embassy - MRV -- Account Number: 070-21-074824."
Morten Torkildsen, a special investigator for the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, stated the following concerning the Nicosia U.S. embassy's favorite Cypriot bank in a 58-page report on Slobodon Milosevic's secret foreign holdings. "Popular (LAIKI) Bank, the island's second largest bank, allowed a group of Yugoslav-controlled front companies to operate in defiance of U.N. sanctions. These companies supplied Mr. Milosevic's government with fuel, raw materials, spare parts and weapons to pursue wars in Bosnia in 1992-1996 and in Kosovo in 1998-1999." LAIKI's largest shareholder (at 22 percent) is the powerful Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC). Even with all the questions surrounding LAIKI Bank and its involvement in money laundering for Milosevic and his regime, the Cypriot bank easily purchased Belgrade, Serbia-based Centrobanka in January 2005.
Just think of all the various and differing U.S. embassy visa application fee requirements and bank accounts in all the countries around the world. Considering all the other financial malfeasance in the Bush administration, to what degree are these accounts audited? Can anyone spell "slush fund?"
*UPDATE: 8/29: If one requires proof that there is massive fraud in the U.S. visa issuing process,* consider this news story from the Aug. 27 edition of the newspaper The Hindu: "A senior State Department official has been charged with accepting gifts and trips to Las Vegas and New York with exotic dancers from an Indian national to speed up the visa process for a jewellery company. The official, Michael John O'Keefe, deputy Non Immigrant Visa Chief at the American Consulate in Toronto was indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday. Sunil Agrawal, a native of India and the chief executive of New York-based STS Jewels, has also been charged. It is said that Agrawal sent the State Department visa official the names of employees who needed to work in the company and O'Keefe apparently scheduled them outside the normal visa process. According to the indictment, O'Keefe supposedly "fast tracked" the applications and brushed aside objections from a subordinate who had noted that terrorists use jewellery to raise money. In return for the expedited service, O'Keefe was plied with gifts. Friday's indictment, however, describes a scheme in which O'Keefe fast-tracked applications and approved some that had been rejected. The prosecution has said that this June after five approval visas for STS Managers, O'Keefe and two exotic dancers flew to Las Vegas."
And there is no consistency in the visa fee program. At the U.S. embassy in London, they accept credit cards (but no debit cards) or bank transfer or bank cash payments (bank Giro) to a Barclays Bank special account.
Bush regime to foreign journalists: "Achtung! Papers please!"
What happens if the Bush cronies decide they do not like the story a foreign journalist will be pursuing? They will reject the I-Visa application -- no explanation necessary. But if the rejected journalist expects a refund of his or her $108, $102, or $100, he or she can guess again. According to the U.S. embassy in Germany, "refunds of this fee are rarely granted, and generally only in cases in which the embassy has made an error in processing the visa application. In the case in which a visa request has been refused or an applicant has erroneously paid the fee twice, a refund will not be approved." In Denmark, it does not matter if the U.S. embassy screwed up the application processing or not, refunds are not made under any circumstance.
What happens if the visa payment confirmation is delayed for some reason. Well, the journalist can call the U.S. Visa Information Service. But it is at a cost. Callers are charged 1.86 Euros (US$2.37) per minute. In Spain and Andorra, the U.S. embassy in Madrid has figured out another phone scam. Landline phone inquiries about U.S. visa status in Spain cost 1.09 Euros per minute but if someone calls on a cell phone, the charge is higher, 1.51 Euros per minute ($1.93/minute). That can get pretty expensive if some bureaucratic nincompoop puts a caller on hold. If a journalist phones the U.S. visa line in Spain from, say, Morocco or Portugal, an additional $10 per transaction charge is assessed. But you can charge that to your Visa or Master Card.
Only certain U.S. diplomatic missions process I-Visas. If you're a journalist in Greenland or the Faeroe Islands and you want to cover a story in the United States, you must make a long trip east to Copenhagen before you travel west to the United States. The same cumbersome process goes for journalists in the Maldives (they must fly to Colombo, Sri Lanka), East Timor (figure on a trip to Jakarta, Indonesia -- not friendly territory for East Timorese), Sao Tome (you must go to Libreville, Gabon), San Marino (visas only obtainable in Rome), Liechtenstein (no good to go to Zurich, which is a hop, skip, and jump away, you must go to the embassy in Bern), Monaco (no trip to the U.S. without going to the embassy in Paris first), and Grenada (not without a trip to Bridgetown, Barbados). There are countless other similar roadblocks thrown in the way of journalists wishing to travel to the United States.
In some cases, foreign journalists who carry the necessary I-Visa are, nevertheless, subjected to humiliating questioning and strip searches at U.S. airports. One Danish journalist was required to slip down to his skivvies, bend over, and have some perverted Homeland Security official stick his finger up his rectum. Some female journalists from such friendly countries as Britain and Australia have been handcuffed and sexually groped by other Homeland Security lechers and lotharios. Meanwhile, the Bush administration's grand dame of international public relations, Bush's gal-pal Karen Hughes, who might even put off a Homeland Security sex maniac, continues to insist that she is improving America's image abroad. As far as most international journalists are concerned, she is a complete joke. And so is George W. Bush. The State Department web page comically posts the following message from Bush to U.S. visa seekers: "America is not a fortress; no, we never want to be a fortress. We're a free country; we're an open society. And we must always protect the rights of our law -- of law-abiding citizens from around the world who come here to conduct business or to study or to spend time with their family." Yeah, right. And Bush thinks jamming fingers up the asses of arriving journalists is part of living in a free country.
*WELCOME TO AMERICA. IF YOU'RE A JOURNALIST, BEND OVER AND SPREAD 'EM!*
Right now, it is fortunate that most countries are not reciprocating against U.S. journalists in kind. In fact, there are very few countries that require special visas for journalists. The United States and a few tin horn dictatorships are among the few countries that restrict admittance and travel for foreign journalists. Israel severely restricts media access to the West Bank and Gaza. On the other hand, Cuba provides freer access for foreign journalists than does the United States. It is just that a vocal jingoistic minority in southern Florida and their lickspittles in the Bush administration don't want any American journalists to witness for themselves the relative freedom for foreign journalists to report from Cuba. Ask Cuban authorities about the total lack of restrictions on journalists reporting on and photographing conditions inside the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay from their side of the fence and then consider the draconian restrictions places on U.S. and foreign journalists inside the U.S. military concentration camp.
If the Republicans and neo-cons are not run out of Washington soon, the situation for American journalists abroad may change dramatically. And the public's right to know will be the major casualty in such an event.
*Aug. 28, 2006 -- Another personal data leak from the outsourcing firm that became infamous as the company that approved Mohammed Atta's and Marwan al Shehhi's student visas after 9/11.* Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Systems (A.C.S.), responsible for maintaining the Department of Education's federal direct student aid program, caused the leak of personal data, including Social Security Numbers, dates of birth, and financial information on 21,000 federal student loan recipients.
A.C.S., it will be recalled, was the firm that managed the Immigration and Naturalization Service (I.N.S.) Student Processing Center in London, Kentucky. On March 11, 2002, six months after Atta and al Shehhi allegedly flew planes into the World Trade Center, their Venice, Florida flight school, Huffman Aviation, received I.N.S. visa approval forms from A.C.S. granting Atta and al Shehhi their student visas for their stay in the United States.
A.C.S. also purchased scandal-plagued IMS from Lockheed Martin on August 24, 2001. IMS had run the WorkNet "welfare-to-work" program for Pinellas County, Florida. Janet Gifford-Meyers, a lawyer in the Pinellas County Economic Development office and Rick Dodge, the Economic Development chief for Pinellas County, blew the whistle on contract fraud involving IMS. The firm hired people to harass Gifforf-Meyers and Dodge. One harasser threatened Gifford-Meyers with the loss of her unborn baby. In April 2001, Gifford-Meyers was said to have committed suicide from an overdose of barbiturates. After A.C.S. bought IMS from Lockheed, Dodge was fired by the Pinellas County Administrator in August 2002.
Aug. 28, 2006 -- When a Zogby presidential poll recently provided respondents with the biographies of candidates in lieu of their names, former two-term Alaska Senator Mike Gravel scored an impressive 4.9 percent, beating out by a comfortable margin Delaware Senator Joseph Biden and Iowa's Democratic Leadership Council poster boy Tom Vilsack. Gravel tied 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry and was slightly behind the rather weak-resuméd Hillary Clinton. No potential Democratic presidential candidate scored more than 14.8 percent in the Zogby poll.
Although Gravel has been well received by the local media in New Hampshire, Iowa, and Connecticut, the national corporate media has largely ignored him while lavishing their attention on candidates like Biden, Clinton, Kerry, and John Edwards. WMR has endorsed our friend and neighbor Mike Gravel. You can find out more about his campaign and positions by visiting Mike Gravel for President 2008. Our other friend, Louis Vandenberg, is running as the Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives in the California 44th District. The Republican incumbent, "Captain Earmark," Ken Calvert, is one of the most corrupt (but also one of the most "Christian") members of Congress. And like most GOP Christian members of Congress, Calvert has a sex scandal record with the police. This, according to a November 27, 1993 Corona, California police report: I noticed that the male subject (Calvert) was placing his penis into his unzipped dress slacks, and was trying to hide it with his untucked dress shirt." Calvert told the cop, covering his crotch with his hands, "We're just talking that's all, nothing else." Not surprisingly for a Republican "born-again" Christian, charges against Calvert were never filed. The woman, Lore Linberg, told the police that she was arrested for prostitution and being under the influence of heroin. She also admitted to having "shot up" one week before she was found with Calvert and was on methadone at the time of the arrest. She would not tell police whether Calvert had paid her for sex. To this day, Calvert insists he and Linberg were only talking and Linberg insisted that although her pants were unzipped, they were buttoned and zipped up at all times. Family values once again at work in the Republican Party. Time to send "hands on crotch" Ken back to his old pickup joints in Corona.
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