Another Open Letter to President Barack Obama regarding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its subordinate agencies: Strip some power from local managers, with headquarters taking greater control of promotions, discipline, hiring and policy decisions

U.S. aid agency, established under Bush, seeks to promote “economic freedom”

The coup d'état that rocked Honduras in late June and removed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from office, sending him into exile in Costa Rica, was preceded by a multi-million dollar build-up of foreign aid from a U.S. agency that includes on its board of directors the president of the International Republican Institute as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

That taxpayer-funded agency, called the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), oversees a multi-billion dollar foreign-aid fund called the Millennium Challenge Account. It was established in 2004 under the Bush administration as means of combating terrorism by funding development in poor nations under a strict neo-conservative free-trade model.

According to the political writer Pedro Echeverría V[1], Carlos Salinas de Gortari, a “known thief and assassin” came for a press opportunity in Oaxaca to aid the PRI governor. By coincidence López Obrador was in the midst of his weeks-long tour of the poorest Oaxaca towns.

Actually, Echeverria says, Salinas comes to remind the PRI politicos that he was their major promoter, permitting them to obtain positions that let them get rich.

The press celebrated him, along with Televisa, as he has begun to promote “the doll” Peña Nieto for the Presidency. (Noticias calls peña Nieto “the puppy”. )

Judges find U.S. government’s reasoning lacking in ICE snitch’s deportation case

The U.S. government’s ongoing, four-year effort to deport the House of Death informant back to a certain death in Mexico has once again hit a roadblock in the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

That court today ruled that the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) erred in reversing an immigration court judge’s most recent decision to grant the informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, relief under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT).

The appeals court also issued a sharp rebuke of the Justice Department-controlled BIA’s dismissive attitude toward Ramirez Peyro and his work as a U.S. government informant.

Lobbying records reveal his firm is targeting State Department and National Security Council

Lanny Davis, a long-time doorman for the Clinton agenda, has an interesting bedfellow in his latest lobbying assignment on behalf of the business interests behind the illegal putsch regime of Honduras.

Davis, a lawyer, neo-liberal Democrat and now a lobbyist employed by the D.C. office of global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, was recently retained by the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL in its Spanish initials) to hawk for the coup interests in Honduras,

An Open Letter for U.S. President Barack Obama Regarding Racial Profiling in the United States.

July 31, 2009

President Barack Obama

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I am a retired federal law enforcement officer. When I was forced out into retirement on March 3, 2006 by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a subordinate agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, I was 51. Because I decided to exercise my U.S. Constitutional Rights by filing a class action complaint of discrimination in 1995 with the EEOC in Detroit, Michigan and on May 10, 2002, in U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C. my fate was sealed. In 2007, our Hispanic class action suit got dismissed on one issue: Pattern and Practice Claim. Some members decided to pursue their cases by filing individual EEO complaints at the EEOC. However, I don’t know who is in charge at the EEOC under your administration, under different U.S. Presidents, American taxpayers used to get our letters or telephone calls answered by some federal agencies, now, very seldom a letter is answered.

Here's a translation of Carlos Fazio's hard hitting analysis of the Honduran Coup. The original, in Spanish of course, is at http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/07/27/index.php?section=opinion&article=019a1pol. It was in the July 27, 2009 issue of La Jornada, p.19. The translation is by William S. Stone wstoneoax@yahoo.com, former director of the Oaxaca program of the School for International Training. William wrote, for those of us fixated on Oaxaca,

Litigation also claims spook agency engages in wholesale spying on other federal agencies

The CIA was recently caught with its pants down.

As part of the course of his 15-year legal battle with the CIA, former DEA agent Richard Horn finally got the opportunity to demonstrate to the world that the emperor of clandestine activity has no clothes.

The secretive government agency is now coping with the embarrassing exposure of its deceit in a lawsuit filed by Horn, who previously served as the DEA’s country attaché in Burma (now officially known as the Union of Myanmar) from June 1992 to September 1993. In addition, the events that prompted the CIA’s lie appear to point to serious dysfunction within the agency that potentially poses a threat to the very U.S. national security it is charged with protecting.

DHS-ICE: Systematic Corruption, Racial Profiling, Mismanagement, Discrimination, Retaliation, and Harassment To Continue.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was formed in 2003.  Former President George W. Bush besides destroying our economy, he also destroyed the U.S. Customs Service, or at least the name, because the cancerous tumor (civil service career employees) was merely split into several agencies.  The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Inspector General (OIG), the alleged "watchdog" of all agencies was reduced in size, while DHS' OIG is growing and getting bigger.  Some of the cases or names mentioned in this report have been already covered by co-publisher Bill Conroy, author of the House of Death series.

I tried to get the attention of President Barack Obama, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. through channels but I got tired of waiting.  Since I will never receive justice or my day in court I will try to prove the justice in America which is supposed to be blind is not blind at all.

You all who follow these stories know that John Carman who used to write extensively about corruption at the U.S. Customs Service had an encounter with the FBI during an undercover "sting" operation.  Carman who was a licensed private detective (PI) fell into their trap and got federally indicted, convicted and sentenced, for a crime that after you read would make you wonder about our federal law enforcement system.  I have also a small business PI which am in the process of closing.  I got tired of receiving some questionable business proposals of people who want to hire me to do certain things, which a PI is supposed to do.  Sorry but I have been around the block.

I still believe that the real threat to our national security is within our own federal departments and agencies and the people who are running these government organizations at the taxpayers' expense.

El Consejo Nacional Contra las Adicciones (CONADIC) reveló que el 21 de julio que entre los años 2002 a 2009 creció el número de consumidores de drogas ilícitas en México, de 203 mil a 361 mil; un incremento de 51%. La cifra refleja el fracaso de dos sexenios panistas en materia de prevención y atención de las adicciones.

La frase “Para que la droga no llegue a tus hijos”, tan difundida por el gobierno federal, no tiene sustento. Hace mucho que las drogas llegaron a nuestros hijos. La narcoguerra no ha servido para disminuir la oferta en las calles ni el número de consumidores. Para lo que sí ha sido efectiva es para empeorar la ola de violencia que ha cobrado la vida de diez mil personas en los últimos tres años.

El gobierno federal ha descuidado las áreas de prevención y educación al lanzarse a combatir al narco sin un plan integral de largo plazo. En los siguientes puntos trataré de explicar algunos factores que influyeron en el fracaso de las iniciativas.

According to the International Harm Reduction Association US politicians have moved to counter President Obama's decision to continue the federal funding ban on needle exchange in his 2010 budget.

"The move follows a series of activist protests in America in July 2009, after the President went back on one of his campaign pledges and continued with the funding ban which has existed in the USA since the 1980s."

Read the full story here.

An example of how legacy US Customs used to manipulate the US Treasury's OIG in order to retaliate against Customs employees who tried to use their U.S. Constitutional Rights

On December 16, 1999, RICHARD I. LEAF, Special Agent in Charge (SAC), Office of Inspector General (OIG), Office of Investigations, U.S. Department of the Treasury, P. O. Box 723, El Segundo, CA 90245 sent a memorandum to MICHAEL C. TARR, Assistant Inspector General for Investigations regarding a complaint.

RICHARD I. LEAF had already decided to open an investigation under case number 1999-0567 regarding a referral from the U.S. Customs Service’s (Customs) Office of Internal Affairs (OIA) HQ, Washington, D.C. basically directing LEAF’s office to investigate this writer for telling “a subject arrested for smuggling marijuana into the United States, not to cooperate with agents of the USCS, Office of Investigations (OI). It was also alleged that this writer asked a special Assistant U.S. Attorney be released from custody, however, once released, the subject failed to appear in court.

(Editorial by the daily El Libertador of Honduras)

These are the coup leaders: 1) Carlos Flores Facussé; 2) Rafael Leonardo Callejas; 3) Cardenal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez; 4) Adolfo Facussé; 5) Armida de López Contreras; 6) Schucry Kafie; 7) Elvin Santos; 8) Emilio Larach; 9) Enrique Ortez Colindres; 10) Pastor Evelio Reyes; 11) Felícito Ávila; 12) José Alfredo Saavedra; 13) Jorge Canahuati; 14) Jorge Yllescas; 15) Juan Ferrera; 16) Juan Ramón Martínez; 17) Carlos López Contreras; 18) Billy Joya; 19) Ana Abarca; 20) Rafael Ferrari; 21) Juan José Pineda; 22) Vilma Morales; 23) Marcia Villeda; 24) Renato Álvarez; 25) Ramón Custodio; 26) Rafael Pineda Ponce; 27) Olban Valladares; 28) Pastor Oswaldo Canales; 29) Ricardo Maduro; 30) Romeo Vásquez Velásquez; 31) Porfirio Lobo Sosa; 32) Ricardo Álvarez; 33) Antonio Rivera; 34) Guillermo Pérez Cadalso; 35) Mauricio Villeda; 36) María Martha Díaz; 37) Antonio Tavel Otero; 38) Luis Rubí; 39) Toribio Aguilera; 40) Ramón Velásquez Nassar; 41) Elán Reyes Pineda; 42) Luz Ernestina Mejía; 43) Martha Lorena Casco; 44) Rodolfo Irías Navas; 45) Rigoberto Chang Castillo; 46) Mirna Castro; 47) Gabriela Núñez; 48) Hugo Llorens.

Democrats: Breaking President Obama? - Only if he fails to deliever what he promised on his campaign.

President Obama and the US Congress must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate DHS and all subordinate agencies.  DHS and these agencies keep wasting American txapayers dollars at will without any oversight.  Allegedly they operate under the oversight of the DHS' Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) but only on paper and not actions.

The Thin Blue Line is behind her Supreme Court nomination

If you paid any attention to the mainstream media during the initial days of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings over the nomination of Bronx-born Judge Sonia Sotomayor, you understand that some white men [spelled Republican Senators] have a problem with her.

They seem to think she is one of those “activist” judges who is a “bully” on the bench and who has some ‘splainin’ to do to the American public. That’s the gist of the racist portrait that has been painted of the judge by her opponents, most fearful in the canyons of their brains of having their conceptual framework of white privilege undermined [reverse racism as they deem it] should she ascend to the high court.