Paranotes 1999
by Al Hidell

Copiers, printers embedding invisible IDs
Your old office copier and ancient dot-matrix printer may be worth hanging onto. According to privacy advocate Lauren Weinstein, Xerox has confirmed that it and other manufacturers are now embedding "invisible" IDs in the background "noise" of their color copiers and printers. Ostensibly an anti-counterfeiting measure, the implementation of this technology means that every document created on these machines is traceable back to its source. Consequently, "anonymous" letters and flyers, long an important tool for people challenging the powers that be, may one day be impossible to create. (www.vortex.com/privacy)

Hirohito's hidden billion$
We fought World War II against two brutal dictatorships, whose armies committed horrific atrocities and massive looting against people of all ethnicities and religious persuasions. However, while the crimes of Adolf Hitler get virtually all the attention (and his Jewish victims virtually all of the ongoing reparations and cash settlements), the other dictator remains largely in history's shadows. Now, a controversial book is attempting to illuminate the issue.

Sterling and Peggy Seagrave's The Yamato Dynasty (Bantam Press) covers five generations of Japan's imperial family, but the most interesting sections from a conspiracy viewpoint deal with Japan's wartime Emperor Hirohito, who reigned until his death in 1989.

The book details the royal family's role in Japan's wartime looting of Asia - an operation codenamed Golden Lily - which involved the military, underworld figures, and respectable businessmen, and was headed by Hirohito's brother Prince Chichibu. The book alleges that Washington and Tokyo collaborated to keep Japan's looting a secret and make the world think that the fighting had left Japan too poor to compensate its victims. The book also asserts that the Emperor and his family were actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the war, rather than distant "figureheads."

Perhaps the book's most sensational claims regard two famous Americans who contributed to Hirohito's exoneration of war crimes and the cover-up of Japan's wartime looting. General Douglas MacArthur and former US President Herbert Hoover, the authors allege, walked away from the Japanese occupation with huge amounts of looted gold. 

After the war, Allied investigators declared Japan to be bankrupt, exempting it from paying meaningful reparations. (For example, British POWs only received US$48 each.) MacArthur, who headed the occupational government, inexplicably allowed Hirohito's own accountants to audit the emperor's wealth, which they severely underestimated. The authors believe that MacArthur, Hoover, and a clique of right-wing Americans believed that keeping Hirohito in power was the best way to protect US interests in Japan and shield Asia against Communist expansion.

The Seagraves contend that while Washington was declaring Japan to be bankrupt, agents of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) were recovering billions of dollars in Japanese war loot from mountain caves in the Philippines. Deposited in 176 bank accounts worldwide, some of the wealth allegedly ended up in the pockets of MacArthur and Hoover, while much of the rest was used to finance covert anti-communist operations.

As evidence, the authors cite documents linking MacArthur's staff and the teams in the Philippines working on the recovery operations, bank documents (including an account held jointly by MacArthur and Hirohito), and a letter from Herbert Hoover's son to the American Treasury requesting permission to sell US$100 million in gold bullion that was in his deceased father's bank account. (www.best.com/~dolphin/seagrave.html)

A transcript declassified in in 1993 of a phone conversation between FBI Director Hoover and President Johnson just one day after the assassination suggests that they already knew Oswald had been impersonated, based on CIA bugging and photo surveillance at the Embassy. "We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet embassy using Oswald's name," Hoover told the President, "The picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy down there."

The CIA has claimed since November, 1963 that the tape on which it recorded the call was "routinely" erased. Documents declassified in 1999, however, suggest the tape survived. They indicate that a Navy plane carried a top-secret package from Mexico City to Dallas the day after the murder. And a memo dated Nov. 27, 1963, from FBI headquarters to its office in Mexico City, suggests that the tape was on board that plane. The memo states: "If tapes covering any contacts subject (Oswald) with Soviet or Cuban embassies available, forward to bureau for laboratory examination and analysis." (Associated Press, 11/21/1999)

U.N. Secretary General Assassinated
The air crash that killed U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjsld nearly forty years ago has long aroused suspicion. Now, recently-discovered documents have confirmed that a bomb was planted on the plane carrying the crusading U.N. leader. The killing, codenamed "Operation Celeste" and carried out by Britain's MI5 and the American CIA, was part of an effort to prevent post-colonial Africa's mineral wealth from falling under communist control. Indeed, the bomb allegedly was supplied by a Belgian mining conglomerate, Union Miniere, which had extensive interests in the copper-rich Congolese province of Katanga.

The documents, discovered in 1998 by a South African Truth Commission researcher looking into an unrelated matter, implicate CIA chief Allen Dulles in the operation. One report refers to a meeting between MI5 and the CIA at which it was recorded that Dulles "agrees... Dag is becoming troublesome and... should be removed." Dulles then promises "full cooperation from his people." The documents also contain an order from a captain in South Africa's Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) - which apparently was a cover for operations that went far beyond oceanography - that "I want his [Hammarskjsld's] removal to be handled more efficiently than was Patrice [Lumumba]." Patrice Lumumba, the pro-communist first president of the Congo, was assassinated prior to the September 17, 1961 "accident" that killed Hammarskjsld. Prior to his death, the U.N. Secretary General had ordered U.N. troops into Katanga to assist Lumumba in dealing with what was likely U.S./British-sponsored unrest. (The Guardian, August 28, 1998).

Prescription Drug Danger
While the government spends billions of dollars a year to fight illegal drugs, it regularly approves and subsidizes legal prescription drugs, which have quietly become the third leading cause of death in America. Each year approximately 200,000 Americans die from prescription drug reactions, in contrast to the 41,000 who die in auto accidents, and some 20,000 who die from the consumption of illegal drugs. The International Coalition for Drug Awareness (ICDA), a non-profit group, which posted these numbers on its website, urges that we "take the responsibility to educate ourselves about what we are putting into our bodies and brains." (The ICDA)

Experiment May Destroy Earth
A nuclear accelerator designed to provide clues to the origin of the universe is now under investigation by an international group of physicists because there is a "small" chance the device could destroy the Earth. Brookhaven National Laboratories, one of America's foremost research labs, has spend some eight years building its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island, New York. In July of 1999, Brookhaven Director John Marburger formed a committee of physicists to investigate whether the project could go horribly wrong. Apparently, there is a tiny but real risk that the machine could create "stranglets" - a new type of matter made up of sub-atomic particles called "strange quarks" - which would convert everything they touch into more strange matter in an unstoppable chain reaction. An alternative scenario, thought to be less likely, is that the particles could form a black hole whose intense gravitational field would suck in all surrounding matter. Professor Bob Jaffe, director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT, assures us that "the risk is exceedingly small, but the probability of something unusual happening is not zero." (London Sunday Times, July 18, 1999)

States Have $Trillions in Secret Slush Funds
Literally trillions of dollars is controlled by politicians and bureaucrats in little-known county, state, and federal "slush funds," according to financial analyst Walter Burien. These secret funds are being spent on various profit-making ventures, even as taxpayers are being hit by local tax hikes. Burien began researching this issue in 1989, when he became involved in a group opposed to his state of New Jersey's record tax hike. He learned that virtually all of the state's non-tax revenue (from the Port Authority, the New Jersey Turnpike, the state's Waste Water Treatment Plant, and various state-owned stock and insurance funds) was simply not reported in the official state budget. The budget, upon which the tax hike had been based, only considered the revenue produced by state tax receipts. For the other numbers, he had to obtain a copy of the lesser-known state comprehensive annual financial report. In the case of New Jersey in 1989, this "hidden" revenue totaled some $80 to $90 billion. According to Burien, "If they had combined the entire operations owned by the state government as a whole, they could have stopped all taxation in the State of New Jersey." To obtain your own state's comprehensive annual financial report, Burien suggests you contact your state's auditor general or treasurer's office, as well as your local newspaper. However, don't expect your newspaper to tackle this story. In the case of New Jersey, Governor James Florio had appointed sixteen current editors and reporters to various paid positions in state government prior to the tax hike. (The Spotlight, June 12, 1998)

Judi Bari and Earth First! Update
In September, 1999, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there was merit in an appeal filed in April by a legal team representing the late Judi Bari, an Earth First! organizer who was left permanently disabled by a car bomb on May 24, 1990. [Bari died in March, 1997, from breast cancer. Her article appears in Paranoid Women Collect Their Thoughts, edited by Joan d'Arc.] The three-judge panel ruled that, because of the appeal's merit, three Oakland, CA police investigators and several FBI agents are not entitled qualified immunity in the case. The judges stated that there was merit to the Bari legal team's contention that the police and FBI agents acted in concert to falsely accuse Bari and fellow organizer Darryl Cherney of responsibility for their own car bombing. The bombing took place during the "Redwood Summer" of 1990, during which the environmental activist group Earth First! threatened logging industry profits through several protest actions. At the time, authorities had claimed that the car bomb belonged to the Earth First! organizers and had exploded accidentally en route to a planned "terrorist" action. Bari and Cherney's attorney, Dennis Cunningham, declared that the court's swift action in the case "suggests that the justices understand what's behind eight years of trial delay and stonewalling by the police and the FBI." Bari's partner Darryl Cherney said that the court ruling "is as significant for activists as the recent revelations about the FBI and Waco." (The Press Democrat, September 25, 1999)

Kissinger Has Hand in East Timor
On the heels of last issue's look at economic motives for the West's involvement in Kosovo ["Banker$ and Generals," Issue 21] comes word that the latest U.N. hotspot, East Timor, happens to be the location of the world's largest single deposit of gold. Valued at $40 billion, the gold deposit (as well as a significant amount of copper) is being mined by a company called Freeport McMoRan. In 1967, it was the first foreign company to be granted an operating permit in East Timor (a province of Indonesia) after a 1966 U.S.-backed coup installed Indonesian dictator General Suharto. Company officials were introduced to Suharto by future Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who today earns $500,000.00 a year as a Freeport board member. Secessionist movements in two other Indonesian provinces, Aceh and Irian Jaya, are likewise thought to be motivated by the revenue produced by the region's abundant natural resources. (The Wisdom Fund)

 DNC: Voting Rights Act is Unconstitutional
In August, 1999, attorneys for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) made an extraordinary request: they asked a federal district court panel to declare the 1964 Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. The legal maneuvering took place during a hearing on a DNC motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Democratic presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche and Democratic voters from Virginia, Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona. The 1996 suit alleges that then DNC Chairman Donald Fowler violated the Voting Rights Act when he ordered state Democratic parties to disregard the votes of thousands of Democrats who voted for LaRouche in the 1996 presidential primaries. In a letter dated January 5, 1996, Fowler also warned that any state delegation that included delegates pledged to LaRouche would be denied access to the Democratic National Convention. The warning was reminiscent of the 1964 Democratic National Convention, where party leaders refused to allow the pro-civil rights Mississippi Freedom Democrats a seat at the Convention. Ironically, Fowler's letter justified his unconstitutional actions by making the baseless charge that LaRouche was a "racist." Debra Hanania-Freeman, LaRouche's national spokeswoman, thinks it significant that the DNC selected attorney John C. Keeney, Jr. to argue its case. She charges that Keeney's father, Jack Kenney, "played a key role in the Department of Justice's unlawful targeting of Lyndon LaRouche, and is also widely acknowledged to be one of the key enforcers of the Department's 'Operation Fruehmenschen' - the overtly racist plan to target African-American public officials for investigation and prosecution." She went on to charge, "This is the gang that Al Gore has chosen to run his bid for the Presidency and to deliver the Party's nomination to him by locking everyone else out." (New Federalist, August 30, 1999)

Columbine Update
The Washington Post (4/29/99) reported that Columbine High gunman, Eric Harris, was on a prescription antidepressant called fluvoxamine or "Luvox." The Post did not mention the drug's side effects, only that the Marines rejected him since he was on the drug. Fluvoxamine is indicated for the treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and is not approved in this country to treat depression, though it is marketed as an antidepressant in other countries.

Sources say that Luvox "can activate mania in susceptible patients." The manufacturers prescription insert states Luvox should be used cautiously in patients with a history of mania. Symptoms of "mania" include: "provocative, intrusive, or aggressive behavior." A National Institute of Mental Health webpage lists the following symptoms of mania: inappropriate elation, inappropriate irritability, grandiose notions, disconnected and racing thoughts, markedly increased energy, poor judgment, and inappropriate social behavior. All of these symptoms appear to be applicable to the actions and grandiose ideas of Eric Harris, which included a plan in which, after killing their fellow students, the two would escape to an Island in Mexico and then return to the US to crash a plane into New York City.

In a related story, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reported on 5/22/99 that the son of the FBI's lead investigator in the Columbine tragedy was one of the students who produced a 1997 videotape that shows trenchcoat-clad students armed with weapons moving through the school's halls and then blowing up the school. Incredibly, FBI spokesman Gary Gomes claimed there was "no conflict of interest."

The son of agent Dwayne Fuselier is alleged to have worked on the video with student Brooks Brown, who was at that time friendly with future shooter Dylan Klebold. Agent Fuselier's son graduated from Columbine in 1997, and neither he nor Brooks Brown has been linked to the 1999 killings. Ironically, although some have labeled Eric Harris as the "mastermind" behind the April 1999 attacks, he did not become involved with the so-called Trenchcoat Mafia until some time after the prophetic video was produced. 

Information from Goddard's Journal: http://www.erols.com/ igoddard/journal.htm

Studies on Prozac-induced mania can be found at: http://igm.nlm.nih.gov

Uncle Sam's Holy Grail
As part of a new and aggressive effort to track down parents who owe child support, the Feds have created a wide-sweeping data-monitoring network which will track nearly every working adult in the U.S. Never before have they had the legal authority and technological ability to locate delinquent parents, asserted the Washington Post on 6/27/99, while at the same time providing "the potential to keep tabs on Americans accused of nothing." This little known network was established under the 1996 welfare overhaul system called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which calls for all employers to file reports on every person they hire, as well as the wages of every worker, and send this information to state child-support agencies. State officials then gather the data, along with unemployment and child-support data, and report this information to ACF officials. The new system will also require financial institutions, at the behest of federal officials, to provide them with details of the financial holdings of ostensible "delinquent parents." This huge centralized database, which will cross-reference personal information on hundreds of millions of American citizens, has been called by civil libertarians, "the Holy Grail of data collection."

Nuke Plants Have Y2K Problems
Investigations are being conducted in several countries operating nuclear power plants and research reactors to ensure that the Y2K problem does not affect the safe operation of these plants. The International Atomic Energy Agency (www.iaea.org) has contacted its member states to exchange information regarding diagnostic and remedial actions being taken or planned at worldwide nuclear installations. In response to a questionnaire on the State of the International Community with regard to nuclear energy and the Y2K problem, the IAEA received the following disconcerting responses:

Bulgaria: Yes, there are some specific problems concerning the embedded systems. [We have] difficulties, because some of the vendors didn't answer or their answers were not reliable.

Finland: Contingency plans are under preparation. The vendor assurances of year 2000 compliance are not always reliable. Making assessing and testing programs for large systems like process computer systems requires much special know how. To find suitable time and other resources for large system testing is challenging. 

Federal Republic of Germany: In German nuclear power plants, the control systems of the highest level do not use computer systems but hard wire control systems. However, other systems with relevance to safety and operational systems may be affected.

Hungary: The planned countermeasures do not contain yet contingency considerations.

Japan: The Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) has identified some specific problems with regard to the Y2K problem, and has reconstructed some systems, and will continue to try to solve problems by allocating some budget by the year of 2000. Spain: No detailed results available so far. Contingency plans possibility is contemplated.

USA: The industry's Y2K program has identified problems in plant security computers, data recorders, radiation monitoring systems, plant process systems (feedwater control, turbine control, and heater drain level control), steam leak detection systems and diagnostic systems. The NRC has no indication that significant Y2K problems exist with safety systems for the systems that directly affect the ability to safely operate and shut down the plant. It should be noted that the Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear plant has identified a Y2K problem with the Radiation Data Monitor System (RDMS), which is a vendor package. This package has been determined to be not Y2K compliant, and the vendor has indicated it has no plans to make this system Y2K compliant. Several plants use this device.

D.C. Unprepared for Y2K
Although it doesn't run a nuclear power plant, the Washington, D.C. government has acknowledged that it is far behind in fixing its critical Y2K problems. With six months left in the year, only 41 percent of the District's computer systems have been fixed, according to the June 28, 1999 edition of The Washington Post. The District is planning a massive New Year's Eve mobilization of emergency personnel to ensure that critical city services are not interrupted. Police will be stationed at more than 120 locations across the city, working 12-hour shifts to provide emergency services. Warming centers supplied with food and cots will be opened. The D.C. General Hospital will have 175 extra staff members on site. These are just a few of the 88 contingency plans which the District is working to put into place by the end of the year. Similar efforts are underway across the U.S., according to The Post. The D.C. Police Commander has stated: "We want to reassure the residents and visitors to the District that even if Armageddon comes, we will assist and protect the public."

 Hyde Bill Seeks to Curb Asset Seizures
An odd Legislative Quartet has enlisted the support of the ACLU and the National Rifle Association, as well as groups of bankers, lawyers, realtors, developers, property owners and anti-tax activists, to curb what it sees as systemic abuses by law enforcement of Asset Forfeiture laws. The group, chaired by Republican Henry J. Hyde, author of Forfeiting Our Property Rights: Is Your Property Safe From Seizure?, also consists of Democrat John Conyers, conservative Republican Robert Barr, and liberal Democrat Barney Frank. The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, also called the Hyde bill, sailed through the House Judiciary Committee in June of 1999 after a 27 to 3 vote, and it is expected that some version of this reform will get full House approval.

The Hyde bill would overhaul the current criminal forfeiture laws by shifting the burden of proof in civil cases from the defendant to the government, forcing government prosecutors to produce "clear and convincing evidence" that the assets were "tainted." The Hyde bill would give defendants a chance to get their property back with interest, and it would also provide indigent defendants access to government paid lawyers. Civil Forfeiture laws currently do not have any of these provisions. Police groups are outraged about the Hyde bill, claiming that "these laws aren't about taking property from innocent grandmothers." They argue that the "clear and convincing" standard would deprive police of a crucial deterrent. It would also deprive them of large sums of money. The Justice Department is upset about the bill, as the Washington Post explained on June 23, 1999, "partly because its forfeiture fund raked in a whopping $449 million last year, up from $27 million in 1985."

AIDS-Tainted Blood Sold by Arkansas in 1980s
Intravenous drug use and unprotected anal sex are an unfortunate fact of life for many of our nation's prison inmates. This is one reason why, in the 1980s, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled that prison plasma was too unsafe to be used for the manufacture of blood products inside the United States. Apparently the FDA did not deem the lives of Canadians worthy of similar protection when it allowed the states of Arkansas (under Governor Bill Clinton) and Louisiana to sell the blood of its prison population to our northern neighbors. In February, 1999, a group of Canadian hemophiliacs who were infected with HIV and hepatitis C from that blood supply filed a $5 billion lawsuit against the FDA, Arkansas, Louisiana, their prison systems, and Health Management Associates (HMA), which ran the Arkansas prison plasma program from 1978-1984. It is now known that even when tests for AIDS and hepatitis became available, they were not always used. Furthermore, needles were not always sterilized before the bloodletting, and many inmates now claim to have been infected when they gave blood. Francis Henderson, founder of HMA and chairman of its board, has defended his company with the claim that that prison plasma was no riskier than other kinds, and that AIDs cases simply did not exist in the South in the 1980s. (The Economist, March 13, 1999)

Satanic Child Sacrifices Said to be Common
The tiny headline and brief 5-sentence article suggested a routine news story in the back pages of a recent issue of the Toronto Globe and Mail. However, the headline was anything but routine. "Children Sacrificed to Satan," the respected newspaper reported. The article, based on official Bogota, Columbia police statistics and official statements, notes mundanely that "About 15 children are kidnapped each day in Bogota to be delivered to satanic sects, forced into prostitution, or illegally adopted." Most of the children are "sacrificed by satanic sects," according to a police official. The official went on to report that a smaller number are kidnapped "for their organs."