More about Wolfowitz – worth reading

A Pentagon panel has cleared Paul Wolfowitz in its investigation of his involvement in his girlfriend’s Iraq junket.

Read much more on Political Cortex

Show Details for April 22nd, 2007

This week’s Guests:

  — ELAINE ZUCKERMAN — Does the World Bank empower the world’s women?

  – GREG PALAST — uncovers new election skullduggery; also, looks at the gun lobby.

 

– ELAINE ZUCKERMAN — Does the World Bank empower the world’s women?

http://www.glow-boell.de/media/de/foto/elainezuckermann.jpg

Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson will look at policies of the World Bank and related institutions, and their effects on women around the globe.  Our guest is Elaine Zuckerman, President and Founder of Gender Action, who previously worked inside the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank for two decades.

Elaine has a past history of reforming International Financial Institutions (IFIs) from inside. During the 1980s, she created the first World Bank advocacy program to prevent the harmful impacts of structural adjustment loans on the poor, especially women. In the 1990s, she created the first Inter-American Development Bank strategy for the Amazon. It prohibited further investments in roads, ranching and migration — which had damaged indigenous societies and the environment — and encouraged investments in health, water, sanitation, education and renewable resources. 

She has consulted for groups such as Oxfam.  For China, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe, she worked on gender, poverty, poverty reduction strategies, the social impact of macroeconomic policies and structural adjustment reforms, social investment funds, education and health financing, and rural development and environment projects.  Elaine studied in China for over three years during the Cultural Revolution, and speaks Chinese, French and Spanish.

The World Bank, headed by Paul Wolfowitz, is the largest public source of development financing on the planet, investing around $20 billion each year. Gender Action has found that over a trillion dollars of IFI investments made over the last 60 years have done too little to reduce poverty, especially that of poor women and girls. Females constitute over 70 percent of the world’s poor and poverty continues to feminize. Despite massive IFI investments in developing countries, per capita income has declined by over 50 percent in many African countries. 

International Financial Institution investments such as those of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank often aggravate discrimination against women and girls by intensifying poverty, trafficking in and violence against women, prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS.

Gender Action, established in 2002, is the only organization dedicated to promoting gender equality and women’s rights in all International Financial Institution investments such as those of the World Bank.

WEBSITE:
Gender Action  http://www.genderaction.org/

 

– GREG PALAST uncovers new election skullduggery; also, looks at the gun lobby.

 http://www.chartock.net/images/palast33.jpg

Journalist and author Greg Palast is a frequent guest on The Monitor.  Monitor co-host Mark Bebawi speaks to him just as the expanded paperback edition of his book, Armed Madhouse, is released.  The book has been called “at once scary, infuriating, fascinating and frustrating,” Palast himself has been dubbed “a fire-breathing investigative reporter.”

Armed Madhouse contains a new chapter discussing plans to steal the 2008 election.  Palast is working with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on election issues.

The interview includes one of Palast’s investigative interests since the 2000 presidential election, the disenfranchisement of millions of minority voters across the US by the Republican National Committee. 

Palast is finding that there are new techniques being used to specifically target Hispanics to prevent them from being able to vote.

The interview, taped earlier this week, includes an examination of the gun lobby and its intersection with the Christian Right lobby. 

WEBSITE:
http://www.gregpalast.com

 

BOOK:
Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans–Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild

Bill Maher’s clip on Regent Law School’s Transformation of the DoJ – including the non-FCC approved words

Brought to you by Crooks and Liars

Maher Blasts Regent Law School’s Transformation of the DoJ

On “Real Time” last night, Bill Maher laced into Monica Goodling and the Bush administration for appointing more than 150 graduates of a tier 4 law school to prominent position in the US government.

The Monitor strongly suggests that you visit Crooks and Liars every day.

Show Details for April 15th, 2007

This week’s Guests:

  — Independent journalist Wayne Madsen discusses the “loss” of Karl Rove’s emails

  – Election activist Nancy Tobi on what the powerful Election Assistance Commission is up to

 

– Independent journalist Wayne Madsen discusses the “loss” of Karl Rove’s emails

Monitor co-host Mark Bebawi’s guest today is Wayne Madsen.  Topics will be the missing emails of Karl Rove, and also Paul Wolfowitz of the World Bank.

Madsen is a Senior Fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a non-partisan privacy public advocacy group in Washington, DC. He is also a freelance investigative journalist, and has written for The Village Voice, The Progressive, CAQ, Counterpunch, and the Intelligence Newsletter. Mr. Madsen is the author of The Handbook of Personal Data Protection (London: Macmillan, 1992), an acclaimed reference book on international data protection law.

Madsen has some twenty years experience in computer security and data privacy. As a U.S. Naval Officer he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

WEBSITE:

www.WayneMadsenReport.com

ADDITIONAL ARTICLE OF INTEREST:

The Bush administration’s terrible luck with finding documents
By Glenn Greenwald
April 12, 2007
Salon
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/12/lost_documents/index.html

 

– Election activist Nancy Tobi on what the powerful Election Assistance Commission is up to

Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson’s guest today is Nancy Tobi of New Hampshire.  She is the author of numerous articles on election integrity, including “The Gifts of HAVA: Time to Ask for a Refund,” “What’s Wrong with the Holt Bill,”and the newly released “We’re Counting the Votes: An Election Preparedness Kit.”

She is co-founder of Democracy for New Hampshire, and Chair of the Democracy for New Hampshire Fair Elections Committee. Her writings may be found at www.democracyfornewhampshire.com.

She has recently attended two Election Assistance Commission (EAC) meetings, which are rarely observed by citizens.  She reports on her concerns about this powerful board, appointed by the President, that has mostly flown under the radar.  She believes that the Holt bill would have the effect of consolidating Executive power, and control over federal elections in the future.

ARTICLE:

“The EAC Gopher Bash”
April 14, 2007
by Nancy Tobi
OpEd News
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_070414_the_eac_gopher_bash.htm

QUOTE by Nancy Tobi:

“Agreed that no system is fraud-proof. Where there are elections there will be fraud. The question is how do you want to approach it, where do you start, what is your starting premise.

“I have come to believe that the starting premise is community. That
elections and voting are a civic function, and that representational
democracy is inherently a community-based system. When you lose that
component you lose the democracy. That’s what I’ve come to believe.
I’ve also come to believe that community exists everywhere in America in one
form or another, and that it needs to be unlocked if it is gated in some way.”

Show Details for April 8th, 2007

This week’s Guests:

  — Maritime expert and former ambassador Craig Murray on the 15 Britons detained by Iran

  – Well-connected? Citizen journalists investigate just HOW connected the right-wing is. 

– Maritime expert and former ambassador Craig Murray on the 15 Britons detained by Iran

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/images/2006/10/353899.jpg

Monitor co-host Mark Bebawi’s guest today is Craig Murray, former head of the British Foreign Office’s Maritime Section. He has written extensively about Iran’s detention of the 15 Britons on his web page and was among the first to note that the boundary was contested. A piece he wrote entitled, “How I Know Blair Faked Iran Map,” was published in the British Daily Mail. The sailors have now been freed.

Murray was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004. He is author of the book “Murder in Samarkand: A British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror.”

ARTICLE:
“How I Know Blair Faked Iran Map”
By Craig Murray
April 1, 2007
British Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=445896&in_page_id=1787&in_a_source

 

WEBSITE:
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk

QUOTE:
“Any life saved is a victory, and I am delighted that the maritime incident has been resolved with nobody being killed or even injured. That is the right perspective on this. Yesterday four more unfortunate British servicemen died in southern Iraq as a result of Blair’s crass Middle Eastern policy. Think of them and their families, and the 70 Iraqi civilians who on average will be killed today. Yes, rejoice at the 15 who came home safely today, but remember those who did not, and their families. Less than a week before the 15 were captured, the media received the confirmation that British government scientists believed that 655,000 dead in Iraq a year ago was a good estimate. That received almost no press coverage. The detention of 15 Britons for 10 days is more important than the agonizing deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. There was a revelatory moment on BBC Breakfast TV yesterday when Admiral Sir Alan West said he was sure we had been in ‘our’ waters. He corrected himself afterwards to ‘Iraqi waters’ but the slip reveals the mindset of the occupying forces.”

 

 

– Well-connected? Citizen journalists investigate just HOW connected the right-wing is. 

A representation of a section of the Internet. (Wikipedia)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg/600px-

The keyboards have been flying at ePluribus Media since they were among the first to break the story of Jeff Gannon two years ago. (Gannon, a sometime-White House reporter who tossed in timely soft questions at press conferences, was also a sometime-male escort.)

Now, ePluribus Media has meticulously pieced together a look at the web architecture of the Right Wing. Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson talks with two of the authors/researchers about their finds, and about citizen journalism.

Todd Johnston has been contributing to ePluribus Media since its inception. He co-authored the first story on Jeff Gannon there. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. in glaciology, focusing on rapidly melting Alaskan glaciers and more broadly on Earth systems related to global climate change. Johnston received a B.Sc. with High Distinction in meteorology and Honors in Geosciences, and a minor degree in mathematics from the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to that, he enjoyed a 15-year career as a musician.

Luaptifer is the pseudonym of another long-time collaborative journalist at ePluribus Media.  His current research question (see articles below) is, “Who is allowed inside of government firewalls? And how did they get there?”

He arrived at his current immersion in independent investigation due to civic distress after the 2004 election.  He has done computer consulting, and holds a Ph.D. in biology, investigating how diverse organisms interact at molecular levels.

ARTICLES:
(New collaborations of Todd Johnston and luaptifer)

The GOP, GeorgeWBush.com and the Line that Jumped the Congressional Firewall
Mar 27, 2007
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/3/26/22612/9031

 

Who is Michael L. Connell? Part I: The Atwater School of Politics
Mar 28, 2007
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/3/28/143050/889

 

Who is Michael L. Connell? Part II: Behind the firewall.
Apr 02, 2007
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/4/2/6328/14926

WEBSITE:
ePluribus Media Journal – Citizen Journalism, for the people, by the people   http://www.epluribusmedia.org/

BCCI, Bush, Bin Laden & Saddam – they are connected, just not the way you may think

Good primer article on the money links between all these rather interesting people…

Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI Bank

Show Details for April 1st, 2007

This week’s Guests:

  — Former DA, and former member of Congress during Watergate, Elizabeth Holtzman on the firings of the federal prosecutors

 – Independent journalist Daniel Hopsicker, discussing his research on 9-11, Part Two

 

– Former DA, and former member of Congress during Watergate, ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN on the firings of the federal prosecutors

http://www.robertsilvey.com/notes/images/holtzman_1.jpg

As the furor builds about the firing of at least 8 federal prosecutors, The Monitor welcomes someone uniquely positioned to discuss this.  Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson will discuss the prosecutor purge with former DA and former member of Congress Elizabeth Holtzman. 

She writes, “Deploying [federal prosecutors] to conduct witch-hunts of politicians of opposing views or to suppress votes is a blatant misuse of their important power.  If Rove or President Bush tried to do this, it is they who need firing.”

 

Elizabeth Holtzman was the youngest woman elected to Congress, where she served for eight years, including the Watergate era.  She was subsequently elected District Attorney of Kings County (Brooklyn), the only woman ever elected DA in New York City, serving for eight years. Holtzman was also the only woman ever elected Comptroller of New York City, where she was responsible for the management of $50 billion in the city’s five pension funds and the issuance of more then $20 billion in NYC debt. She currently works with Herrick Feinstein, LLP, and lives in New York City.

Holtzman, who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, wrote in January 2005 that it was time to put impeachment of George W. Bush on the table.  She asserts that an abuse of power—a serious and grave abuse of power—provides the grounds for impeachment.  The grounds in her book “The Impeachment of George W. Bush” include deception in taking the country to war in Iraq, indifference to human life in Katrina and Iraq, illegal wiretapping and surveillance, torture, and leaking classified information.

ARTICLES:
“Questions for Karl Rove and President Bush”
By Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper
March 29, 2007
The San Diego Union-Tribune
http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070329/news_lz1e29holtzma.html

“The Impeachment of George W. Bush”
By Elizabeth Holtzman
from the January 30, 2006 issue
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/holtzman

 

BOOK:
The Impeachment of George W. Bush (Nation Books, 2006)
By Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper

QUOTE from today’s Washington Post:
“About one-third of the nearly four dozen U.S. attorney’s jobs that have changed hands since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.
The people chosen as chief federal prosecutors on a temporary or permanent basis since early 2005 include 10 senior aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, according to an analysis of government records. Several came from the White House or other government agencies. Some lacked experience as prosecutors or had no connection to the districts in which they were sent to work, the records and biographical information show. … Three of the closest advisers to former attorney general John D. Ashcroft also have become U.S. attorneys in the past two years.”

from “Prosecutor Posts Go To Bush Insiders;
Less Preference Shown for Locals, Senators’ Choices”
By Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 1, 2007; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/31/AR2007033101158.html?nav=rss_politics

 

 

– Independent journalist DANIEL HOPSICKER on oddities he has found re Sept. 11, Part Two

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Independent journalist DANIEL HOPSICKER will discuss some of the gumshoe work he did in Venice, Florida to unravel oddities about the flight schools, Mohamed Atta and the attacks on September 11.  His information seriously clashes with the official 9/11 story.  Monitor co-host Mark Bebawi continues with this interview, which started last week.

Hopsicker is the author of Welcome to Terrorland, Mohamed Atta & The 9-11 Cover-up in Florida (2004: Mad Cow Press). He has also done several series of articles on voting machine companies, as well as on the Duke Cunningham scandal.  Hopsicker lives in Venice, Florida.

 

WEBSITE:
www.madcowprod.com

 

BOOKS:
Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-up in Florida

Barry & ‘the Boys’: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History

FILM:
Documentary Mohamed Atta & the Venice Flying Circus