Fools The Constitution Religious Fanatics The Witch Hunters The Whistle Blowers CEOs and HMOs Ruin of the Ecosystem genocide Intellectual Dishonesty

"B-1 Bob" Dornan

In response to Congressman Dornan's late-night speeches to an empty House of Representatives, then- candidate Bill Clinton said "that boy needs a rabies shot!".

Judge scraps parts of suit Dornan filed against airline

By Pat Brennan, The Orange County Register

A Los Angeles judge Thursday whittled away two more pieces of Rep. Robert Dornan's lawsuit against United Airlines, in which he claims he was wrongfully kicked off an airplane.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Berg ruled that Dornan, R-Garden Grove, could not sue the airline for intentional infliction of emotional distress, nor could he base part of his lawsuit on laws requiring airlines to provide safe and adequate service.

Still intact, said Dornan's attorney, Scott C. Zeidman, are the most important claims: discrimination against the handicapped, because Dornan was on crutches at the time, and defamation.

Dornan's lawsuit contends that the pilot on an April flight from Los Angeles to Washington was taxiing down the runway when Dornan got into a disagreement with flight attendants. He said a doctor had ordered him not to sit upright because of recent hip-replacement surgery, and therefore he did not want to place his seat in an upright position for takeoff.

The pilot returned the plane to the terminal, and Dornan was heckled and booed as he was removed.

"I haven't the slightest doubt in my mind this will be resolved in my favor," Dornan said Thursday.

A spokesman for United declined to comment.

Register staff writer Danielle Herubin contributed to this report.

• Robert Dornan
  • US Congressman for the 46th District in California's Orange County
  • He lost to his Democratic opponent in the 46th Congressional District race, but said in a published report that voter fraud cost him the election.
  • According to latest news reports, Dornan now intends to sue his opponent in the Congressional election, giving new meaning to the phrase "frivolous lawsuit".
  • After losing in every other forum, an LA Times report on February 21, 1997 indicates that Bob Dornan now intends to ask his former colleagues in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to overturn the election.
  • Dornan's claims don't check out

• Rush Limbaugh
  • He really deserves his own page, on the order of the "Quotes from Dan Quayle" (Quayle)
  • Facts are not his specialty. Here's Rush on the environment.
  • Does anyone have a collection of such sayings? Mail it to me!

• General Curtis LeMay
  • US Air Force Chief of Staff
  • Author of "Project Control", a military plan designed to provoke nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Sent photo reconnaisance aircraft deep into the Soviet Union without the permission or the knowledge of President Eisenhower.
  • President Eisenhower had Curtis LeMay in mind when he spoke about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex".
  • Deliberately misled civilian leaders and the public about a supposed "bomber gap" and then a "missile gap", despite secret photographic reconnaisance evidence which clearly proved that no such gaps existed.
  • Deliberately hid his "JSCP" or plan for general nuclear war from his civilian superiors. Openly commented that he, not the President, should have final authority over the release of US nuclear weapons.
    • His own generals believed him to be an unstable "Dr. Strangelove" during the last years of his career.
    • Ran for Vice President as George Wallace's running mate; had to be restrained by Wallace when he openly advocated nuclear war.
    • Told Rand Corporation professor Kaufmann that he would consider it a victory if, after a nuclear war, only two Americans remained alive, if only one Russian survived.
    • Source: The History Channel, The Man who wanted to Start WW III, 19 Sep 98.
  • According to Robert McNamara, this superb combat commander thought nuclear war with the Soviet Union was inevitable, and wanted to get it over with while the Soviets "only" had 500 thermonuclear weapons

• Lawrence Mulloy It was a sound decision! Wrong, but sound!

  More than any other manager, Larry Mulloy was branded as responsible for the Challenger: accident.. In many eyes, he gave in to the vise-like pressures of schedule and cost and virtually signed the death warrants for seven astronauts. On Jan. 27, 1986, the eve of the launch, Thiokol engineers said the rubber O-rings sealing the four main segments of the 116-foot long solid fuel motor could be stiff and slow to respond in the next morning's freezing temperatures. When they recommended delaying the launch until the temperature was 53 degrees, Mulloy, then head of the solid rocket booster project office at Marshall Space Flight Center, exclaimed, "My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch, next April?"

  • NASA managers at Marshall, where the solid rocket program is managed, strongly objected to the Morton Thiokol recommendation, claiming the engineers did not have enough data to support their concerns, despite a known history of past O-ring erosion during flight. Since Thiokol engineers had no low temperature data below 53°F, they could not prove that it was unsafe to launch at lower temperatures. This philosophy of "prove it's not safe to fly" was a direct reversal of a long-standing NASA tradition of "prove it's safe or we won't launch." CBS News Space Consultant William Harwood.
  • "I was playing by the rules," he [Mulloy] said. "The data supported the decision. The people I relied on in the work group supported that."
  • Alan McDonald, the Thiokol engineer who warned of the danger, was fired by Thiokol (which denied any pressure from NASA managers) shortly after testifying about the accident. Mr. McDonald later told the commission that his administrative position was taken away as a result of his testimony. His statements were called "shocking" by William P. Rogers, the chairman of the commission, who added that the engineers 'were "punished for being right.".
  • More reports may be found at Challenger Disaster and Rogers Report
  • The Rogers Commission stopped far short of accusing Mulloy or anyone else of perjury, despite clear contradictions between what its investigators have learned and repeated statements under oath by NASA officials. Instead, the commission merely accused Mulloy of having "almost covered up" and of "glossing over" the truth.
  • "One can only wonder how many other launch-eve debates occurred during the previous 24 missions that were never mentioned because the flight turned out to be a success." "Finally, the commission charged engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center where the booster program was managed had a "propensity" for keeping knowledge of potentially serious problems away from other field centers in a bid to address them internally."
  • (Regarding the O-ring problem:) "Mulloy then instituted a launch constraint, meaning a waiver was required before every succeeding mission. Mulloy signed such waivers six flights in a row before Challenger took off for the last time."
  • "If there was a clear "winner" in the Rogers Commission report is was the astronauts. Nearly every concern raised by the astronaut corps was addressed and NASA managers privately grumbled that with the re-emergence of "astronaut power," the agency would become so conservative it would be next to impossible to get a shuttle off the ground."

• Edward Teller
  • Hungarian-born American physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb and provided the theoretical framework for the hydrogen bomb.
  • Teller believed the scientists at Los Alamos were too ambivalent about developing the next generation of nuclear weapons, and that an independent facility was needed.
  • A deeper antagonism between Teller and many of his former colleagues developed when J. Robert Oppenheimer was accused of disloyalty on the basis of some past associations. Teller made no accusations himself, but when Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked, many of his friends blamed Teller.

The Constitution of the United States of America

• J. Edgar Hoover
  • He blackmailed eight US presidents
  • The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover Tuesday, February 9, 1993. For nearly fifty years, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover amassed secret files on America's most prominent figures, files he used to smear and control presidents and politicians. FRONTLINE reveals how Hoover's own secret life left him open to blackmail by the Mafia and offers a startling new explanation why the FBI allowed the mob to operate unchallenged for over two decades. Producers: William Cran, Stephanie Tepper.
    • Among his victims were Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Congressman Abner Mikva and Senator Adlai Stevenson
  • Official and Confidential by Anthony Summers
  • "The FBI mailed Dr. King a tape recording made from microphones hidden in his hotel rooms which one agent testified was an attempt to destroy Dr. King's marriage. The tape recording was accompanied by a note which Dr. King and his advisors interpreted as threatening to release the tape recording unless Dr. King comitted suicide." Source: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans Book II Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities United States Senate
  • "Every American ought to be scared to death about how little it takes for the American government to search you and seize your property," said G. Watson Bryant, another Jewell attorney. "I am more afraid of the FBI than I am of being blown up in some park someplace by some lone bomber," he said. "They are the people who scare the hell out of me." Oliphant on Freeh and Hoover
  • E. Michael Kahoe Former FBI section chief pleads guilty, admits destroying Ruby Ridge report
  • Vladimir Galkin The FBI apparently hasn't been told that the Cold War is over
  • Keeping Tabs on the F.B.I. A critical Nightline report: "The FBI today is a sloppy, unresponsive, badly managed, uncooperative, and out-of-touch agency that is aggressively trying to expand its control over the American people."
  • The F.B.I.: A Special Report A critical Nation report: "Despite the bureau's influence over a broad terrain of American life, independent examinations of the "B," as special agents refer to it, have been rare." An organization called TRAC is compiling data on the FBI, the IRS, the BATF, and the DEA. (now requires authorization)
  • The IRS is also being criticized for disregarding the constitutional rights of American citizens.
    • In part, this is due to mismanagement and incompetence.
    • But overzealous enforcement and malice, including tax assessments against citizens that have no legal foundation, targeting of middle and lower-income people for audits, and property seizures spurred by the desire for advancement within the IRS, have also been reported by IRS agents.
    • "We are going to see a picture of a troubled agency, one … one that all too frequently acts as if it were above the law" —Sen. William Roth, R-Del

• Joe McCarthy Speeches
  • McCarthy, Joseph Raymond 1908-1957 American politician. A U.S. senator from Wisconsin (1947-1957), he presided over the permanent subcommittee on investigations and held public hearings in which he accused army officials, members of the media, and public figures of being Communists. His charges were never proved, and he was censured by the Senate in 1954.
  • He achieved national prominence and power with his sensational and unsubstantiated accusations against those U.S. officials (frequently in high positions) he termed "Communists."
  • His House Un-American Activities Committee competed with the Salem witch trials and the Soviet KGB in destroying innocent citizens. His actions provided the English language with a new word: McCarthyism.

• Pat Buchanan (From FAIR's Steven Rendall)
  • Buchanan, who opposed virtually every civil rights law and court decision of the last 30 years, published FBI smears of Martin Luther King Jr. as his own editorials in the St. Louis Globe Democrat in the mid-1960s. "We were among Hoover's conduits to the American people," he boasted (Right from the Beginning, p. 283).
  • In a 1977 column, Buchanan said that despite Hitler's anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was "an individual of great courage...Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path." (The Guardian, 1/14/92)
  • Buchanan devotes a chapter of his autobiography -- "As We Remember Joe" -- to defending Senator Joe McCarthy. He advocated that Nixon "burn the tapes" during Watergate, and he criticized Reagan for failing to pardon Oliver North over Iran-contra.

• Robert Bork, who very nearly became a justice of the Supreme Court, has suggested scrapping the Constitution and the Bill of Rights Bork Goes Nuts
  • "Robert H. Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L.J. 1 (1971). The first half of this article builds on Herbert Wechsler's call for 'neutral principles' in Supreme Court adjudication (see supra p. 25), extending the doctrine to the definition and derivation of principles as well as their application. The Court is found lacking. Judge Bork then attempts to derive some neutral principles in the free speech area, concluding that '[c]onstitutional protection should be accorded only to speech that is explicitly political' and excepting speech that advocates the overthrow of government or other violations of the law."
  • As an appellate court judge, he upheld a law (later overturned by the Supreme Court) prohibiting the dissemination of birth control information by physicians to married couples. Griswold v. Connecticut 381 U.S. 479 (1965)

• Senator Jesse Helms
  • Senator Jesse Helms reveals his priorities while discussing U.S. support for Chile and Argentina:
  • "But there are values that are more basic to human dignity than democratic values. Our democratic values are intended to support these more basic values, and in that sense are subsidiary to the more fundamental human rights..."
  • "The right to property, for example, is one of the most fundamental of human values ... [in those countries] such benefits have been restored, even though some lesser rights - that of a free press, or democratic processes, have been suspended in varying degrees."
  • -- Furgurson, Ernest B. Hard Right the Rise of Jesse Helms. 1st ed., New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986. -- p.189
  • Mr. Helms sent a letter to these (Salvadorian) partisans that said: "Ambassador Pickering has been the leader of the death squads against democracy. Mr. Pickering has used his diplomatic capacity to strangle liberty during the night." Senator Helms was censured by the Senate for conducting his own foreign policy. Luckily, Ambassador Pickering escaped murder.
  • Senator Helms is the author of the famous comment that the President of the United States had better have a bodyguard if he visits Senator Helms' state.

• The CIA
  • According to the London Times, the United States helped to organise a covert training programme throughout Latin America, at least until the early 1980s, that led to a string of kidnaping, torture and deaths. Dirty War in Latin America
  • Philip Agee wrote a book in 1975 that describes his experiences as a CIA agent in Latin America between 1960 and 1968. Because he named names, he had to write it in Europe, dodging CIA agents. As of 1997, he still can't get a US passport.
    • The jacket says "Until recently, former CIA Director Richard Helm's plea that "You've just got to trust us. We are honorable men." was enough
    • Attempts by the CIA to ban publication failed, so the State Department revoked Mr. Agee's passport.Haig v. Agee (US 1981)
  • Victor Marchetti wrote "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" before that, but it was heavily censored by the CIA.
  • Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini weren't always wrong...
  • Links to intelligence sources online

• Richard Nixon
  • The only president forced to leave office due to his own misconduct, Richard Nixon saw nothing wrong with committing felonies in the pursuit of his objectives.
  • "Like many other federal agencies at the time, it [the FAA] was suffering from the fact that the White House was inhabited by a group of men who meant to dismantle the complex counterbalances of American government and put in their place the personal rule of President Richard Nixon." Destination Disaster: The Risk of Flying
  • Nixon Sought 'Ruthless' IRS Chief to Obey Orders . On tape, President Nixon described the ideal IRS commissioner: "I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do what he's told, that every income tax return I want to see I see, that he will go after our enemies and not ... our friends."
  • the Brookings Institution burglary
  • Watergate and the Washington Post history.
  • Nixon's resignation letter
  • Readings from the Nixon Tapes from ABC News Nightline

• How Cops Go Bad
  • The people you count on for protection against criminals may in fact *be* criminals.
  • In most large police forces, a small percentage of aggressive cops do the dirty work. The rest simply punch their time cards, respond only when called and wait for their pensions. "The small number of aggressive officers every department has, and needs, are the ones we rely on to clean things up."
  • Unfortunately, under pressure to produce, to show activity, to get collars, they sometimes disregard the law themselves.

Genocide

• The Ottoman Turks
  • Their "ethnic cleansing" of the Armenian Christians led Adolph Hitler to comment "Who remembers the Armenians today?"
  • Turkey says Armenians side with Russia and begins on April 24, 1915 to deport them, putting to death all who resist. Some 1.75 million Armenians will be deported, 600,000 will starve to death in the Mesopotamian desert, one-third will survive.

• Pol Pot
  • Between 1975 and 1979 Pol Pot was prime minister of the infamous "killing fields" Communist government .
  • His radical Maoist version of Communism centered on a return to a utopian agricultural society and rejection of modern urban life. The populations of Cambodia's cities were forced to evacuate the cities, move to the countryside and engage in agricultural labor.
  • In the forced mass exodus, the government caused the deaths of an estimated 2 million Cambodians through imprisonment, torture, overwork, starvation and execution

• Ratko Mladic
  • Bosnian Serb general; he, too, sought to emulate the Holocaust
  • Srebrenica
  • Mladic and Karadzic indictments

• Radovan Karadzic
  • Helped found and assumed presidency of the Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1990; Forced to relinquish official position after indictment on war crimes charges, 1996
  • Srebrenica

• Zeljko Raznjatovic (Arkan)
  • Serb paramilitary "ethnic cleanser". His bandit groups, "Arkan's Tigers", are believed responsible for the terror attacks that have forced millions from their homes. He is also believed respondible for the killings of hundreds of thousands of non-Serbs living in Yugoslavia.
  • Believed responsible for atrocities in Vukovar, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Zepa, Srebrenica, Pec, Raczak, Gorazde, Bihac, Borovo Selo, Brcko, Prijedor, Bijeljina, Zepa, Dubrovnik...

• Slobodan Milosevic
  • Leader of Yugoslavia since 1989, his policy of removing existing autonomy agreements has resulted in the revolt of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Kosovo and Montenegro appear likely to secede, as well.
  • His "ethnic cleansing" policies, aimed at expelling non-Serbs from "Greater SErbia", are believed responsible for atrocities in Vukovar, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Zepa, Srebrenica, Pec, Raczak, Gorazde, Bihac, Borovo Sele, Brcko, Prijedor, Bijeljina, Zepa, Dubrovnik...
  • Vukovar

• Leopoldo Galtieri
  • Dictator of a military regime which murdered some 30,000 Argentines during its eight-year rule.
  • He led Argentina into an insane war with Great Britain over the Malvinas/Falkland islands.
  • He now remains a living fossil from a cruel regime which banned modern maths and beamed television ads proclaiming "Silence Is Health" into people's homes while quietly torturing and murdering thousands upon thousands of its own people.
  • If I say you live, you live, if I say you die, you die," Galtieri threatened a young woman...

• The Laconia Incident
  • On September 12, 1942, the German U-Boat U-156, commanded by Captain Werner Hartenstein, sank the British liner Laconia 800 miles off the coast of South Africa.
    • Upon surfacing, Captain Hartenstein discovered that the Laconia had been carrying 2000 Italian POWs, as well as 100 Polish cadets and 800 British civilians, including women and children. Two thirds of the Italians and most of the civilians had survived the sinking.
    • On his own authority, Captain Hartenstein decided that a rescue effort was needed. He radioed for assistance, in English, in the clear. He then notified the Commander of U-Boat forces, Admiral Karl Doenitz, who dispatched an additional two U-Boats, U-506 and U-507, and the Italian submarine Capalini, to assist.
  • US Captain (later Brigadier General) Robert C. Richardson, based on Ascension island, was notified of the sinking by the British Admirality.
    • Captain Richardson dispatched a B-24 Liberator bomber flown by Lt. James Harden to the scene.
    • Lt. Harden found three U-Boats on the surface, guns unmanned, flying red crosses, each towing a string of lifeboats.
    • Lt. Harden dropped such supplies as he had to the survivors, and then radioed Ascension for instructions.
    • Captain Richardson sent a terse order: "Sink sub at once!"
    • During the subsequent attack, U-156 suffered slight damage, but two of the lifeboats were destroyed, killing more than 100 civilians.
    • U-156 was forced to withdraw, but despite the attack, U-506 and U-507, later joined by the Italian submarine Capalini, continued until they were met by Vichy French rescue vessels.
  • As a result, Adolf Hitler ordered Admiral Karl Doenitz to sink all survivors of future U-Boat attacks.
    • Doenitz refused, saying that such an order would destroy morale. Hitler agreed, and the order was modified to prohibit future rescue attempts (the "Laconia Order")
    • After the war, Admiral Doenitz was tried by the Nuremburg Tribunal for war crimes, based in part on the "Laconia Order", despite evidence presented that US submarines in the Pacific had exactly the same orders.
    • Source: The History Channel The Laconia Incident September 6, 1998

Religious Fanatics

• The Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini
  • He did his best to return his nation to the Dark Ages
  • "Following the revolution that deposed Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi, Khomeini returned in triumph to Iran in 1979, declared an Islamic republic, and began to exercise ultimate authority in the nation."
  • Khomeini issued a "Fatwah" against Salman Rushdie for publishing "The Satanic Verses" and held American diplomats hostage.

• The Taliban of Afghanistan
  • In yet another religion-based attempt to set the calendar back a thousand years, Taliban has banned women from schools, work, and public places and imposed ritual mutilation of criminals.
  • Much like the students of the Red Chinese "Cultural Revolution", the Shi'ah takeover of Iran, and the American religious right, Taliban rebels seek to impose their ideas of "proper behavior" on their fellow citizens by whatever means are available.

• The Reverend Lou Sheldon
  • By preaching the religion of hate, he turned the religion of Christianity on its head
  • "I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty; we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." - Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue
  • "The federal government is running a network of whorehouses." Lou Sheldon, December, 1995 House School Hearing
  • Rev. Trosch and C. Roy McMillan, Executive Director of the Christian Action Group in Jackson, Mississippi, believe that clinic escorts and clinic defenders act as "accomplices," and therefore, are fair game for right-wing, anti-abortion vigilantes. McMillan, a weapons specialist who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, believes that, "Twenty five years later I have not changed my opinion as to the justification of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam...I assume the enemy I killed were not Christian like me."
  • Pat Robertson has argued explicitly against the separation of church and state: "They have kept us in submission because they have talked about separation of church and state. There is no such thing in the Constitution. It's a lie of the left, and we're not going to take it anymore." The Christian Coalition.
    Robertson also inveighs aginst the "erosion of morality" he perceives in the United States. Apparently he hasn't read his bible thoroughly...
  • Jerry Falwell "I hope I live to see the day when we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"- Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, 1979
  • Ralph Reed drops his pretense of nonpartisanship. ABC reports on the Christian Coalition Nightline.
  • Louis Farrakhan Religious bigotry is most visible in the US on the part of the christian religious right, but it's by no means unique to them. In his attempt to justify his trips to countries the US considers enemies, such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and the Sudan, Farrakhan challenged reporters who claimed that slavery existed in the Sudan today: "Where is the proof?"
    • Of course, the reason Farrakhan was so eager to deny that such a horrible practice exists in the Sudan is because the country is ruled by Islamic co-religionists-and most of the slaves are Sudanese Christians. That's why Farrakhan denounced accusations of slavery as either racist or part of a Jewish conspiracy to tarnish his image. At a news conference last March he laid down a challenge: "If slavery exists why don't you go as a member of the press? And ... if you find it," Farrakhan added, "then ... come back and tell the American people what you have found."
    • So two reporters for the Baltimore Sun did just that. Gilbert A. Lewthwaite, a veteran foreign correspondent, who is white, and Gregory P Kane, a black columnist, went by charter plane deep into Sudan. They bought [two] boys for $500 each - the cash equivalent of five cows - from an Arab trader in Manyiel, a remote village in the southern province of Bahr el Ghazal.
    • Time Magazine reports the same story.in its July 1, 1996 issue. "As for Farrakhan, the paper tried to get his comment on the story, but he never returned its calls."
  • Religious Cults e.g. Scientology, Heaven's Gate, Jonestown (LA Times)
    On the theory that one person's religion is another's cult, many scholars argue that there is little rational difference between the beliefs espoused by mainstream Christianity and, say, Heaven's Gate. The resurrection of Christ, though attested to in the Gospels, is no more verifiable than is the cultists' belief that they would become intergalactic gardeners.
    Hecht, of UC Santa Barbara, says that cults and religions put forth "symbolic narratives" that make untestable claims to "ultimate truth." And both serve a not always pleasant function of dividing a community into "those on the inside and those on the outside." A cult, he says, is essentially a religion that you don't like or understand.
  • Scientologists, members of a cult founded by science fiction writer Ron Hubbard to avoid taxes, go to great lengths to silence their critics. In view of the fact that the basis of their "beliefs" is that the earth was invaded by space aliens 75 milllion years ago, that's understandable. In the process, however, they've destroyed other, more valuable, services. Here's what some judges have had to say about scientologists.
  • There are, however, organizations dedicated to the preservation of the First Amendment People for the American Way and The American Civil Liberties Union
  • The Religious Tolerance page has descriptions of major religions and cults, including a page dedicated to the anti-cult movement

The Witch Hunters

• Wenatchee Police Officer Robert Perez: Modern - Day Witch Hunter
  • He is currently re-enacting the Salem Witch Trials in Wenatchee, Washington.
  • Wenatchee Sex Ring: The Backlash! "[P]eople charged with thousands of counts of child rape ("a lifetime's work," writes Rabinowitz), of police officers driving children around town where they point out molesters "passing on the sidewalk," of the pastor sexually attacking young girls in the middle of Sunday sermons."
  • CCLA Wenatchee status report The accused who could afford to go to trial have been acquitted. But any number of impoverished, illiterate and non-English speaking people have pled guilty in plea-bargains.
  • Kathryn Lyon: A Journalist Threatened with Prison "The journalists who brought this story to the world, and who continue to publicize the behavior of officials, have been subpoenaed and all the material they collected in their investigation is being demanded be turned over."
  • Witchhunt Links Several pages of links concerning allegations of Ritual Satanic Abuse, False Memory Syndrome, and the abrogation of Constitutional rights in child abuse cases.
  • Alleged Witchhunt Cases
  • Creative Therapeutics - Sex Abuse Hysteria - Salem Witch Trials Revisited
  • Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
    -- George Santayana.

  • for recent discussion of the Wenatchee child molestation allegations.

  • More articles are collected here.
  • It's been done before: Salem Witch Trials Chronology
  • Salem Witch Museum Education - Salem, Massachusetts (History)
  • The Burning Times
  • Utah puts 11 year olds on their public sex offender list.

• The McMartin Preschool Case
  • At 6 years duration, it was the longest US criminal trial in history; at a cost to the state of $15 million, it was the most expensive. No convictions were obtained.
  • According to Frontline, this case is often cited as triggering the wave of pre-school sexual abuse cases during the mid-1980s.
• Little Rascals Daycare Center
  • During the winter of 1988-1989, Edenton police attended a Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) seminar. The first allegation of abuse followed shortly afterwards.
  • One theory is that the first mention of abuse followed the accidental hitting of a child at the day care; another story has the first allegation following intensive questioning of a child by his mother under the guidance of a SRA course attendee.
  • Frontline did a three-part series on this case entitled Innocence Lost the Plea
• Frontline and other cases including usenet searches
  • Fells Acres Day School, Malden, Massachusetts 1986-7. "Police encouraged the parents to question their children about what happened at Fells Acres, and to be persistent if the children did not initially disclose abuse."
  • Wee Care Nursery School, Maplewood, New Jersey 1988. "The investigative techniques, which were later condemned by the appellate court, included repeated leading questions to the children, promises of treats and gifts to the children if they recounted abuse, and the use of anatomically detailed dolls."
  • Country Walk, Florida 1985, featuring county prosecutor Janet Reno. When in 1993 Janet Reno was nominated for Attorney General by Bill Clinton, many commentators criticized her handling of the case, especially the methods employed to elicit a confession from Ileana. Critics claimed she used the sensational case to boost her chance for reelection. Others celebrated Reno as a heroine, however. The case became the subject of a book, Unspeakable Acts, which was later made into an ABC television movie. Nor was it her only controversial child abuse case; fortunately for him, 14 year old Bobby Fijnje was smart enough to refuse a plea bargain, and was acquitted.
  • Wenatchee, Washington
    • 1995 The Robersons maintained their innocence throughout the investigation and trial. Some of their supporters characterized the prosecutions as "payback" by Perez; Roberson had been looking into whether Perez had been railroading poor uneducated people (many of them members of Roberson's church) into jail through the sex ring prosecutions.
    • Many journalists covering the cases noted that all of the defendants who could afford a private attorney were acquitted or had charges dismissed; most of those who had public defenders received prison sentences. All of the adults accused of being part of The Circle were poor; many are illiterate, and some have been tested as significantly below average intelligence.
  • Rev. Nathaniel Grady and the Bronx Five New York 1985-6 The primary witness against Grady was a three year-old boy who, Grady's attorney says, was coached by police and prosecutors to give damning testimony by giving him candy and stickers, and hugging him when he told stories of abuse by Grady
  • Dale Akiki, Spring Valley, CA 1993 Dale Akiki was found innocent of 35 counts of child abuse and kidnapping in 1993. The highly publicized acquittal was viewed by some commentators as symbolic of the move away from a national wave of hysteria about satanic and ritual abuse. Ten years after the McMartin case, the public, and jurors, seem to be more skeptical of cases based primarily on children's testimony.
• The Bakersfield/Kern County Ritual Abuse Case
  • This was the first large Multi-Victim Multi-Offender (MVMO) child abuse case in North America. Two couples, Alvin & Debbie McCuan and Scott & Brenda Kniffen, were tried in 1983, found guilty, and given centuries-long jail sentences.
  • The girls, Becky and Dawn were repeatedly questioned. They confirmed what their Step-grandmother had said. Over many months, their disclosures became increasingly bizarre. They said that had been hung from ceiling hooks, beaten with belts, rented to strangers in motels and been forced to act in "kiddy-porn" movies
  • The McCuan/Kniffen convictions were overturned on appeal. The two couples were released from jail in 1996-AUG, after having spent 14 years in prison, isolated from each other.

• Oakland County Prosecutor Richard Thompson Malicious Prosecution?
  • Or Ecclesiastical Court:? Clark acknowledged that the Christian Coalition, which has about 1.7 million members nationwide, has a "pro-life, pro-family and traditional values" agenda of its own. Ralph Reed Jr., leader of the national coalition, is also scheduled to speak, along with Oakland County Prosecutor Richard Thompson.
  • After four failed murder prosecutions against Dr. Jack Kevorkian, and after being voted out of office, he insisted on yet another trial. But on January 10, 1997, his replacement dropped the charges.
  • Thompson speaks at Christian Coalition political rally
  • Kevorkian acquitted again
  • After victory, new trial for Kevorkian
  • 'Dr. Death'
  • Time: 3/18/96 The Ninth Circuit Rules on the Washington Law
  • Time: 4/15/96 Defining the Right to Die: The Second Circuit Rules

• Kenneth Starr Another Malicious Prosecution?
  • (UPI) Starr has been a controversial figure almost from the start, and was heavily criticized for being a part-time independent counsel while conducting a lucrative law practice. .
  • Democrats were especially incensed when Starr represented tobacco companies in their ongoing battle to avoid federal regulation while he was investigating President Clinton, who had taken steps to limit tobacco ads the administration said were aimed at children.

  • After spending 17.2 million dollars without result, Starr quits. After more criticism, Starr reverses that decision. And spends 13 million more. Is Pepperdine seeking Bible-Belt accreditation? [Starr's] "nationwide speaking tour" concerning his Whitewater investigation surrounding the president and first lady...has taken him to Clinton critic Pat Robertson's Regent University (previously known as the Christian Broadcasting Network University) in Virginia Beach for a keynote address in October 1996...

  • Former Oklahoma Attorney General lambastes Starr
  • Has Starr gone too far?
  • The Lewinsky scandal: Newspapers and television shows across the globe have been avidly reporting the allegations against Clinton, but almost uniformly, it is American society that is on trial, not the president's conduct.
  • Prosecutorial Abuse Kenneth Starr is not alone in his fanatical pursuit of his idea of right and wrong. Hundreds of times during the past 10 years, federal agents and prosecutors have pursued justice by breaking the law. They lied, hid evidence, distorted facts, engaged in cover-ups, paid for perjury and set up innocent people in a relentless effort to win indictments, guilty pleas and convictions. Federal laws permitting police to keep property seized from person accused of drug related crimes are reminiscent of the Roman system of "tax-farming". Here's what the Supreme Court has said about civil forfeiture.

• Tomas de Torquemada
  • Spanish Dominican monk who was appointed grand inquisitor by Pope Innocent VIII (1487). Under his authority, thousands of Jews, suspected witches, and others were killed or tortured during the Spanish Inquisition.
  • A Dominican, he became (1483) inquisitor general of Castile and Aragón. His reputation for cruelty derives from the harsh procedures that he devised for the Spanish Inquisition. He was largely responsible for the expulsion (1492) of the Jews.

• The Paparazzi and the Tabloid Press
  • And the people who buy their trash.
  • The major London tabloids -- The Sun, The Mirror, The Express, The News of the World, and The Daily Mail -- have been the main purveyors of intimate, sometimes swimsuit-clad, photographs of Princess Diana, paying papparazi sometimes millions of dollars for their images.
  • As of August 31, 1997, they are implicated in hounding Britain's Princess Diana to death.
  • "Diana was killed early on Sunday in a high-speed car crash in Paris trying to dodge the attention of photographers who, she often complained, made her life a misery by dogging her every move."
  • Despite claims that many celebrities manipulate the press, the tabloids have made the lives of any number of individuals into a hell on earth.
  • In the US, they may yet succeed where government has failed, and cause an abridgement of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
  • Shunned by the "legitimate press", papparazi nonetheless have press cards. French Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou says it may be time to think about that.

The Whistle Blowers

• The "Military-Industrial Establishment" deals with "whistle blowers".
  • Ernest Fitzgerald, a cost control expert working for the Air Force Department, disclosed massive cost overruns on the C-5A program to Senator William Proxmire.
  • The Pentagon took its revenge on Mr. Fitzgerald by phasing out his job after deciding that his appointment as a permanent civil servant had been awarded through a computer error. It turned out that the computer had never erred before.
  • The Federal False Claims Act, 31 USC 3729 - 3733, is intended to protect government whistleblowers.

• The NASA deals with "whistle blowers".
  • Alan McDonald, the Morton Thiokol engineer whose warning that launching the Challenger in sub-freezing conditions was risking an explosion, was fired by Thiokol shortly after testifying before the Rogers Commission.
  • Mr. McDonald later told the commission that his administrative position was taken away as a result of his testimony. His statements were called "shocking" by William P. Rogers, the chairman of the commission, who added that the engineers were "punished for being right.".
  • In a highly unusual vindication occasioned by the intense media scrutiny of the accident investigation, Mr McDonald was later rehired by Thiokol (where he is now a vice president), while the managers who had overruled and fired him were themselves fired.
  • The other engineer fired with McDonald, however, has not been so lucky. Although rehired with McDonald, Roger Boisjoly would become both a national hero and a professional pariah. Although widely lauded for his courage in alerting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and his company to the dangers in the design of the space vehicle's booster rockets and for his frank testimony to a presidential commission investigating the accident, he has paid a terrible personal price for his actions. He was ostracized by most of the 1,600 residents of Willard, Utah, where Morton Thiokol is based and where, just three years earlier, he had served as mayor. And his life at Morton Thiokol, which made the faulty booster rockets, became unbearable.

• Frederick Whitehurst
  • The FBI has ordered Frederic Whitehurst, a Ph.D. chemist who is the FBI's leading scientific expert on explosives and bomb residue, not to speak to the press about matters likely to be contained in a 500-page Department of Justice Inspector General report about the FBI crime lab.
  • FBI retaliation against FBI whistleblower Frederick Whitehurst prompts a presidential rebuke

• Whistleblower pages
  • The Qui Tam Information Center has a news page at Whistleblower News
  • The National Whistleblower Center is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization that advocates civil rights/liberties by protecting the employee's right to "blow the whistle" on major issues of public importance

CEO Compensation and HMOs

• Class War in the USA?
  • CEO Pay Rises 56% in 1992
  • During the 1980s, the Rich Got Richer, the Poor Got Poorer
  • Distribution of wealth in the USA more unequal than in any other industrialized nation
  • While cutting employee health care, pensions, and pay, CEOs of US get millions.
  • How CEO Pay Got Away.
  • In 1988 there was a bitter strike by Hollywood screenwriters, partly over the studios' insistence that the writers accept a reduction in their share of the rerun payments called residuals. During 1987, the total received in residuals by all 9,000 members of the Writer's Guild was $58 million, while Michael Eisner's compensation was an estimated $63 million.
  • Last year, Disney's awarded [Michael] Ovitz, a former Hollywood talent agent, an estimated $93 million in cash and stock options to leave after about a year on the job. The move sparked a pair of lawsuits from angry shareholders who argued Ovitz did little to earn his money and that Disney's board of directors was caving in to Eisner's wishes..
  • Time Magazine presents a three part series entitled "Corporate Welfare", describing tax breaks and other benefits given to large, multi-national companies. Part 1 Corporate Welfare Part 2 Fantasy Islands Part 3 The Empire of the Pigs

• Frank Lorenzo
  • In the past, few Continental workers were happy. In the 1980s, the then-owner, Frank Lorenzo, tried to create a megacarrier by splicing together Continental, Texas International, People Express and New York Air. He also bought the dying Eastern Airlines and folded it in, too. He used the bankruptcy courts to kill contracts with unions, which despised him. He also slashed costs while funneling cash to other enterprises. Eventually, the Department of Transportation declared him "unfit" to own a U.S. airline. By SCOTT MCCARTNEY Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
  • Spin Control: Richard Danforth, who was Lorenzo's director of public affairs, has a different perspective. Frank Lorenzo's own comments ("The virtually unassailable power of pilots' unions to close down airlines has effectively neutered management's bargaining position") are presented in a New York Times interview.
  • Following deregulation of the airline industry in 1978, Petzinger writes, Lorenzo revolutionized the economics of the business, helping transform air travel into a low-cost commodity. But in his drive to cut costs and because of his habit of reneging on promises, he became ``the most hated man in corporate America, gutting the livelihoods of his employees and leaving a trail of massive failures in his wake,'' Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Petzinger Jr.
• Roger Smith
  • In the 1980s, Roger Smith preached teamwork while practicing tyranny.
  • Subject of the movie Roger and Me
    • This sympathetic and unorthodox account of Flint, Mich., residents' struggle to find work after the closing of the Flint's General Motors factory won Moore recognition as one of the country's most outspoken workers' rights advocates. General Motors has made $34 billion in profits over the past fifteen years after eliminating 240,000 jobs.
    • The flamboyant hit-and-run tactics he used in "Roger and Me" -- badgering then-GM president Roger Smith to visit Flint and see its desolation first hand -- came to typify the director's style.
  • Moore has published a new book Downsize This!: Random Threats From an Unarmed American. You work hard, the company prospers -- and you lose your job!.
    • Since he refused to cross a picket line for a book signing, he's now been banned from Borders Bookstores.
    • Award for the 1996 election year has to go to Bob Dole. Still in shock the day after losing to Pat Buchanan in the New Hampshire primary, Dole said he didn't realize that jobs and the economy were that important to the voters. Whoa! Next!
• HMOs
  • Everyone agrees that there's something wrong with the US health care system. But powerful forces are arrayed against any attempt to reform it.
  • According to a CNN survey , people are [generally] pleased with their personal medical coverage, but those who belong to a health maintenance organization tend to believe their HMO cares more about saving money than it does about them....
    • 59 percent complained managed care makes it tougher to see a specialist.
    • 51 percent worry that the quality of treatment has gotten worse. .
    • 55 percent say HMOs care more about money than about providing the best treatment.
  • A Time magazine article replays the Health Insurance Association of America's $10 million "Harry and Louise" ad campaign in discussing the industrys latest attempts to defeat health reform:
    • A provision in one bill would ensure that a woman could have direct access to an obstetrician (a specialist, after all) throughout her pregnancy.
    • Another would allow emergency care anytime a "prudent layperson" would consider it appropriate.
    • Another would remove bonuses for doctors who restrict care.
    • Not mentioned in the Time article is a bill that would prohibit HMOs from firing doctors who tell patients all of their options.
    • But the industry isn't going to take these fixes sitting down. "We need to start fighting like we're in a war," says HIA counsel Melody Harned.
  • Here's Families USA's article on managed care and medicaid.
• The credit card industry
  • Time Magazine article on bankruptcy reform

Destruction of the Ecosystem

• What do the loggers do for a living when the last tree has been harvested?

  The Last Tree

  • When the Easter Islanders cut down the last tree on their island, they must have realized intellectually that they were eliminating their only source of food. But they did it anyway. And started eating each other.
  • When environmental activists in the USA try to persuade the government and people of Brazil to save the biodiversity and trees of the Brazilian rain forests, they are met with two objections: who's going to pay for it, and why haven't you done this in your own country?
  • Unfortunately, Rush Limbaugh and his dittoheads persist in mistaking anecdotes for data.
• The Forest Conservation Archive News from forest conservation activists worldwide.
• The Aral Sea Disappears The Soviets' diversion of water for irrigation has bequeathed a host of economic and health problems. This story comprises much of the first chapter of Al Gore's Earth in the Balance.
• Exxon repeatedly said that the risk of oil spills is extremely remote, and that double hulled tankers are too expensive and unnecessary. Then, in 1989, they proved the opposite with the Exxon Valdez.
  • Equally disturbing was the behavior of Exxon in handling the disaster. Although the oil industry always assured that should a spill occur, they would be well prepared to take immediate action, this event demonstrated that these concerns for environmental welfare were merely empty statements initially made as a means to gain access to the oil.
  • Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: Fate and Effects in Alaskan Waters 25 research paper abstracts presented at an ASTM Symposium in April 1993.
• Global Warming The evidence for global warming created by non-natural causes is becoming more compelling.
  • The American Meteorological Society is one supporter of this view. There are, however, contrary views. One such objects to "The AMS demands that the scientific debate on climate change should be confined to the peer reviewed journals. This would clearly exclude everyone else from debate...". Rush Limbaugh apparently supports this view.
  • There are more credible critics of the global warming theory. They point to satellite data which has shown no discernible warming over the past eighteen years.
  • The political will to take effective action to control the causes seems to be lacking. See the Time magazine article concerning the administration proposals for dealing with the problem.
    • Special interest groups (the same folks who brought your the "Harry and Louise" ads) are spending millions on TV ads and web sites to defeat the modest proposals that have been suggested. Here's another discussion of lobbying efforts.
    • The European Union proposes a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emisssions from 1990 levels; the Japanese propose 5%, the US proposes *no* reduction, and Mobil has taken out a full-page ad in the 24 November 97 Time magazine opposing even the US proposal.
  • the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contains some of the evidence. The Global Commons Institute provides some possible scenarios. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains its own global warning page. The United Nations Information Unit for Conventions (IUC) maintains a web site which includes a guide to climate change.
• Nuclear Energy has been touted as a safe, clean. limitless supply of power. To date, however, there have been major accidents in Canada, Great Britain, the Urals, Three Mile Island (March 28, 1979), and Chernobyl (April 26, 1986). The problem of disposing of waste products has not been solved.
  • Time Magazine coverage 1986 -1995 A comprehensive series of Time magazine news articles about the Chernobyl accident.
  • The Accident and a Chernobyl site
  • The Injuries IAEA Bulletin 383 Clinically observed medical effects of the Chernobyl accident.
  • Chernobyl
  • Chernobyl Facts Here are gathered some links to the documents related to Chernobyl disaster on a Belarus page.
  • Ukraine A Ukraine home page, with extensive Chernobyl materials.
  • Project Polyn "Polyn" is a Russian word meaning "Chernobyl". This database at the Russian Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" is based on a recent official version of events published in 1992.
  • Project Polyn: description of the accident.
  • Other Accidents (from Time Magazine): Chalk River, Windscale, Idaho Falls, Brown's Ferry, Three Mile Island, Tsuruga, Kerr-McGee
• Dixie Lee Ray, former boss of the Atomic Energy Commission and governnor of Washington state, repeatedly pointed out that the liquid waste holding tanks at the Hanford plants were built to last for centuries.
  • Aside from the fact that they began leaking within decades, this ignored the fact that the half-life of the materials to be stored is tens of thousands of years.
  • Hanford is the only federal reactor with a design similar to that used by the Soviets at the Chernobyl plant
  • Dixie Lee Ray would go in front of the cameras and say, "I would eat plutonium. I'm not worried, you know, these isotopes don't worry me."
• Nuclear Weapons Accidents There have been 21 known accidents involving aircraft and Nuclear Weapons from 11 April, 1950 to 21 January, 1968. Of these, three weapons are not accounted for. Here's another page at Greenpeace. And here's a page listing Soviet submarine losses.

• An Environmental Disaster Timeline
  • Environmental Pollution links
  • The Toxic Ten: Major polluters according to Mother Jones
  • Was Malthus right? His "Essay on the Principle of Population," published in 1798, predicted a gloomy future for humanity: our population would grow until it reached the limits of our food supply, ensuring that poverty and famine would persistently rear their ugly faces to the world.
  • Will we run out of gas?

• Why does the Government DO these things?

  Lobbyists

  • In a nutshell, money talks.
  • In fairness to the government, frequently the only people who understand complex technical issues are employed by industry. It is politically impossible to pay government workers enough to attract the "best and brightest".

• It is also common wisdom that political contributions, while seldom rising to the level of outright bribes, do get the contributor a hearing s/he might otherwise not achive.

Intellectual Dishonesty

• Who owns your work?

  Taborsky vs. USF

  • Convicted of stealing his own ideas and notebooks, an idealistic young scientist sits in jail.
  • His crime? In a case with widespread implications for universities increasingly dependent on corporate research grants, he was jailed for "stealing" his own notebooks and ideas and then refusing a judge's orders not to exploit them. He is fighting for what he believes are the intellectual property rights of thousands of faculty members and graduate students.

• The multi-page form you are required to sign in order to get a job as a lab assistant can land you in jail, long after the project you were hired for has been abandoned by the people who hired you.