Monday, October 24, 2011
Private Paramilitary Training Complex Slated for Border Hits a Hitch | the narcosphere
Private Paramilitary Training Complex Slated for Border Hits a Hitch | the narcosphere
Private Paramilitary Training Complex Slated for Border Hits a Hitch
Posted by Bill Conroy - October 22, 2011 at 3:17 pmHowever, Opponents of Planned Facility Remain Wary of Shell Game Shenanigans
A paramilitary service company’s plan to develop a nearly 1,000-acre military and law-enforcement training facility near the California border with Mexico is now in the process of being scuttled by a foreclosure action on the property.
At least $1 million is still owed on the property by the company, called Wind Zero, according to the current notice of default obtained by Narco News — and some sources familiar with the foreclosure process indicate the amount owed, including interest and penalties, exceeds $1.5 million.
“The note [loan] on the property is in default, and we are going through the foreclosure process,” confirms Stewart Cowan, a San Diego attorney representing the note holder, Donna Perrine, who sold the 944-acre site to Wind Zero in 2007.
A check of public records for the Wind Zero property shows that the owner also is in arrears on 2010 taxes owed to Imperial County, Calif., to the tune of nearly $2,800. David Black, a senior planner with Imperial County, says he is not aware of either the foreclosure or the taxes owed with respect to the Wind Zero project.
“I was the project planner for that project, but I have not kept up on the foreclosure or tax matters,” Black says. “If they come in to apply for building permits, then it might become an issue. But nothing has been done on the (Wind Zero) project since they received approval in December of last year.”
The proposed Wind Zero project, which would be developed in three phases at a cost of up to $100 million (some $15 million for Phase 1), has been billed by Wind Zero as a privately operated, state-of-the-art training center that would employ up to 200 people and serve as economic boon to the small California border towns of Nomirage and Ocotillo, located in Imperial County some 80 miles east of San Diego and less than a dozen miles from the Mexican border.
The paramilitary training center is slated to include numerous shooting ranges allowing for some 57,000 rounds of ammunition to be fired off daily; a mock-up of an urban neighborhood for practices assaults; a 6-mile dual-use race track for teaching defensive and offensive driving (and for private-pay recreational use); an airstrip and multiple heliports; and enough housing and RV camper space (along with a 100-room hotel) to accommodate a small battalion of warriors.
Shell Game
Despite the money problems apparently afflicting the Wind Zero project, opponents of the development indicate that there is still some concern that a paramilitary front company, such as an affiliate of Xe (formerly Blackwater), could still purchase the property out of foreclosure and proceed with the project.
In fact, the planned Wind Zero training center is not unlike a similar project proposed several years ago in southern California by Xe, then called Blackwater (which, like Wind Zero, was founded by former Navy SEALs). Blackwater pulled the plug on that controversial project in early 2008 due to community opposition.
“There have been rumors floating around that Wind Zero [led by former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb] has some type of affiliation with Xe, and that it is possible Wind Zero could sell it’s interest in the project,” says Larry Silver of the California Environmental Law Project. Silver is representing the Sierra Club and the Desert Protective Council in a lawsuit against Wind Zero and Imperial County, Calif. — which has sanctioned the development of Wind Zero’s paramilitary training center.
Attorney Cowan concedes that there is nothing to prevent a company like Xe, or an affiliate of Wind Zero, from buying the note due on the property where the Wind Zero training center is slated to be constructed.
“They could show up at the courthouse in Imperial County and buy the note at the foreclosure auction,” he says.
Narco News attempted to contact Wind Zero top gun Webb, but phone calls were not returned. According to prior media reports, Webb insists Wind Zero is not affiliated with Xe, but rather he considers the East Coast company to be a competitor.
Webb addressed the issue in an interview with the San Diego Reader in January of this year.
From the Reader story:
Anger over Wind Zero’s proposal intensified in June 2007 when Brian Bonfiglio, Blackwater’s vice president, showed up at a presentation that Wind Zero chief executive Webb was giving at a community meeting.
“There’s been a lot of negativity about this Blackwater [Xe] issue,” Webb says during a January 17 phone interview. “There’s this big conspiracy that we’re a shadow company for Blackwater, but it’s ridiculous. [Bonfiglio] showed up at the meeting, and I didn’t even know until afterwards. If we were associated, then the worst thing I could do would be to bring a member of Blackwater to a community meeting.”
Broker in the Weeds
However, sources told Narco News that in late September, about a month after the notice of default on the Wind Zero site was recorded, a broker from Texas by the name of David Keener contacted Cowan to make an offer on the property.
Cowan confirms that he was contacted by Keener, whom, he says, “made an offer on the property that was considerably less than the value of the note.”
“Donna [Perrine, the holder of the note] rejected the offer, and there was no deal made with Keener,” Cowan adds.
In a check of Texas corporation records, Narco News discovered that Keener is listed as the registered agent for MDJ Texas Reality Holdings LLC. Those same records show that MDJ is affiliated with a company called Holland Park Capital of Austin, Texas, whose registered agent is an individual named Mark Jansen.
A Form D Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities filing that Wind Zero lodged with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2009 lists Jansen as an executive officer and director of Wind Zero.
Narco News was unable to reach Jansen for comment. However, Keener, when contacted in Texas, did confirm that he knows Jansen and had a business relationship with him. However, Keener says he is now the sole owner of MDJ and it is no longer affiliated with Holland Park Capital.
Keener also says he was not representing either Jansen or Arlington, Va.-based Xe in the bid to acquire the Wind Zero property in Southern California.
Xe is owned by USTC Holding LLC, which counts as members of its board of directors former Bush Administration U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Clinton Administration General Counsel Jack Quinn, and retired U.S. Navy Admiral Bobby R. Inman. Listed as a director of Wind Zero is former Navy Captain and RAND Senior Management Systems Analyst John Birkler , according to Wind Zero's 2009 Form D filing with the SEC.
RAND bills itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, but, in reality, it has a long history of close ties to the military and private-sector warfare complex. RAND media spokesman Warren Robak told Narco News previously that “John Birkler and his involvement with Wind Zero is a private matter — it has nothing to do with RAND.”
Keener would say only that he was representing in his bid for the Wind Zero property “an investor from the East Coast who was familiar with the [Wind Zero] project.”
The environmental groups represented by Silver and the Quechan Indian Tribe (the land slated for the Wind Zero project is the site of a tribal burial ground) filed their separate lawsuits earlier this year in California Superior Court seeking a judicial order that will undue Imperial County’s approval for the planned Wind Zero project.
Silver says the Sierra Club and Desert Protective Council have no plans to drop their lawsuit, even if the Wind Zero property is sold — given the concern that a third party affiliated with either Wind Zero or Xe may still seek to purchase the property out of foreclosure (at a significantly reduced price) and move forward with the project under the existing development agreement with Imperial County.
“There is a hearing in the case set for Nov. 10, and we are prepared to ask the court to set aside the approval for the project,” Silver says. “If the judge says no, then we plan to appeal.”
A Grass-Roots Newscast Gives a Voice to Struggles - NYTimes.com
A Grass-Roots Newscast Gives a Voice to Struggles - NYTimes.com
A Grass-Roots Newscast Gives a Voice to Struggles
By BRIAN STELTER
Published: October 23, 2011
Hours after Amy Goodman, the host of the grass-roots newscast “Democracy Now!,” was arrested in Minnesota in 2008 while trying to cover protesters at the Republican National Convention, she was sitting in a network news studio above the convention floor, when a producer said: “I don’t get it. Why wasn’t I arrested?”
Evan Sung for The New York Times
Amy Goodman, right, interviewing Tawakkol Karman, left, a Nobel laureate, with an interpreter.
Ms. Goodman asked him, “Were you out on the streets?” No, he said, he had been in the studio the whole time. “I’m not being arrested here either,” she said she told him. “You’ve got to get out there.”
For Ms. Goodman, that exchange expresses both a shortcoming of the network newscasts that many Americans consume and a strength of “Democracy Now!,” the 15-year-old public radio and television program. The newscast distinguishes itself by documenting social movements, struggles for justice and the effects of American foreign policy, along with the rest of the day’s developments.
Operated as a nonprofit organization and distributed on a patchwork of stations, channels and Web sites, “Democracy Now!” is proudly independent, in that way appealing to hundreds of thousands of people who are skeptical of the news organizations that are owned by major media companies. The program “escapes the suffocating sameness that pervades broadcast news,” said John Knefel, a comedian and freelance writer who started listening about four years ago and now tries never to miss an episode.
Though it has long had a loyal audience, “Democracy Now!” has gained more attention recently for methodical coverage of two news events — the execution of the Georgia inmate Troy Davis and the occupation of Wall Street and other symbolic sites across the country. Ms. Goodman broadcast live from Georgia for six hours on Sept. 21, the evening of the execution, and “Democracy Now!” reporters were fanned out in Manhattan from the first day of the protests against corporate greed.
“At the time, we had no idea if the protest would even last the night, but we recognized it as potentially an important story,” said Mike Burke, a senior news producer for the program. He noted that “it took NPR more than a week to air its first story on the movement.”
Distribution for “Democracy Now!” — which is live each weekday at 8 a.m. Eastern — comes from public, community and college radio stations; public access television stations and some PBS affiliates; the noncommercial satellite networks Free Speech TV and Link TV; and from the program’s Web site, DemocracyNow.org, which streams each hourlong newscast in full.
The producers say the program is broadcast on more than 950 stations. But because the distribution is cobbled together and because the program has no commercials, no Nielsen ratings are available.
The media, Ms. Goodman said in an interview last week, can be “the greatest force for peace on earth” for “it is how we come to understand each other.” But she asserted that the views of a majority of Americans had been “silenced by the corporate media.”
“Which is why we have to take it back,” she said, echoing the sentiments of many of her fans.
Friends and former colleagues describe Ms. Goodman as ferocious and persistent, traits that have not changed since the program’s inception in 1996 on five Pacifica Radio stations.
“On the radio, she sounded at times like a giant, at others a giant slayer,” said Jeremy Scahill, now an investigative reporter for The Nation magazine, who practically begged Ms. Goodman to let him volunteer for the program in 1997. She agreed and initially paid him $40 a day from her own pocket. On Facebook he lists the program as his college education.
“What drove us was telling stories we felt were being ignored, misreported or underreported by corporate media outlets,” Mr. Scahill said.
The program slowly gained more stations and, amid a dispute with Pacifica, which was later resolved, it established itself as a nonprofit news organization in 2001. The week of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the program began to be simulcast on television. Since then, Ms. Goodman said, “the growth has just been phenomenal.”
While many media outlets were faulted for playing down antiwar protests after the attacks, “Democracy Now!” covered such events extensively.
Some fans as well as critics describe “Democracy Now!” as progressive, but Ms. Goodman rejects that label and prefers to call it a global newscast that has “people speaking for themselves.” She criticized networks in the United States that have brought on professional pundits, rather than actual protesters, to discuss the Occupy protests.
Last week, no United States television network covered the filing of a lawsuit in Canada by four men who said they had been tortured during the Bush administration and who are seeking Mr. Bush’s arrest and prosecution. But one of the men, Murat Kurnaz, a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, was interviewed at length by Ms. Goodman and her co-host, Juan Gonzalez.
The nonprofit nature of the program means that the producers “never have to worry about how an advertiser might feel,” avoiding potential self-censorship, Mr. Burke said. But it also sharply limits the size of the staff. The program relies on volunteers to transcribe segments and, occasionally, to translate foreign-language interviews.
Ms. Goodman regularly helps raise money for stations that broadcast the program. The Internet has given the program a global audience and the ability to reach that audience for more than an hour a day. On the evening of Sept. 21, the live stream about the execution of Mr. Davis was viewed more than 800,000 times.
The live stream attested to “the hunger for this kind of information,” Ms. Goodman said. “Yet there was no network that was there to cover this moment throughout the night.”
Except, in a sense, “Democracy Now!” was able to be that network, at least for a night.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
'We Don't Need Warrants, We're ICE' | Crooks and Liars
'We Don't Need Warrants, We're ICE' | Crooks and Liars
October 23, 2011 07:00 AM
'We Don't Need Warrants, We're ICE'
Wingnuts are so fixated on the Second Amendment, they completely miss the Fourth. With the increasing militarization of police departments and federal agencies, such legal formalities as warrants go right out the window:
On the night of October 20, 2010, Angel Enrique and Jesus Antonio were in bed in their small, two-bedroom apartment in the Clairmont complex in Nashville. The doors and windows were all shut and locked.
Suddenly there was a loud banging at the door and voices shouting "Police!" and "Policia!" When no one answered, the agents tried to force the door open. Scared, Jesus hid in a closet. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began hitting objects against the bedroom windows, trying to break in. Without a search warrant and without consent, the ICE agents eventually knocked in the front door and shattered a window, shouting racial slurs and storming into the bedrooms, holding guns to their heads. When asked if they had a warrant, one agent reportedly said, "We don't need a warrant, we're ICE," and, gesturing to his genitals, "the warrant is coming out of my balls."
The Fourth Amendment strictly prohibits warrantless intrusions into private homes and the Constitution's protections apply to both citizens and non-citizens alike. In the absence of a judicially authorized warrant, there must be voluntary and knowing consent; ICE officers forcing themselves into someone's home does not constitute consent.
The ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee this week filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of fifteen residents of the apartment complex who were subjected to this large-scale, warrantless raid by ICE agents and Metro Nashville police officers.
FBI Criticized for Collecting Racial and Ethnic Data | Are We Safer? | FRONTLINE | PBS
FBI Criticized for Collecting Racial and Ethnic Data | Are We Safer? | FRONTLINE | PBS
October 21, 2011, 2:03 pm ET
E-MAIL THISArab-Americans in Michigan, African-Americans in Georgia and “broad swaths” of Latino-Americans communities across multiple states are some of the groups the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the FBI is “unconstitutionally” racially profiling.
Based on internal FBI documents [PDF] obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests, the ACLU accuses the bureau of targeting Americans “based on false stereotypes ascribing criminal propensity to minority communities.”
The group cites a 2009 Detroit FBI field office memo [PDF] as an example. The memo states that many of the 40 groups the State Department has designated as terrorist organizations originate in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and says that “because Michigan has a large Middle-Eastern and Muslim population, it is prime territory for attempted radicalizationand recruitment by these terrorist groups.” The ACLU asserts that the Detroit FBI sought to collect information about these communities without any evidence of wrongdoing.
“It’s counterproductive because it alienates local communities from their government, and it also sends the message that the government views prejudice as acceptable,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, in a conference call.
In a letter [PDF] to U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder, the ACLU argued that the documents show that the FBI is targeting Americans ”based upon their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion and political activities protected under the First Amendment,” and called for the Justice Department to tighten FBI restrictions.
Current FBI guidelines prohibit the use of race or ethnicity unless describing a specific suspect, but there is a broad exemption for issues of national security and border integrity operations. The ACLU’s letter calls for the attorney general to rescind that exemption, and to add religion and national origin to barred profiling criteria.
ACLU policy counsel Michael German – a former undercover FBI agent — told The New York Times that these documents, along with recently released anti-Arab and anti-Muslim FBI training materials [PDF], showed a “theme of mass suspicion of an entire group based on racial characeristics or religion.” As a result, he says, trained agents might be “predisposed to treating everyone from a particular group as suspect.”
The FBI says it does not investigate “solely” based on religion, race or ethnicity. ”Certain terrorist and criminal groups are comprised of persons primarily from a particular ethnic or geographic community, which must be taken into account when trying to determine if there are threats to the United States,” Michael P. Kortan, an FBI spokesman, told the Times.
As a part of its “Mapping the FBI” project, the ACLU filed a lawsuit this summer challenging the FBI’s refusal to release documents about eGuardian, the bureau’s nationwide database that collects Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to help detect and prevent terrorism-related activity. As we reported earlier this year in Are We Safer?, SARs have become one of the primary weapons in the war on terror, and the files of tens of thousands of Americans have been put in national databases.
Friday, October 21, 2011
New Tools from @TRACReports For Tracking ICE Prosecutorial Discretion « Detention Watch Network: Monitoring & Challenging Immigration Detention, Immigration Enforcement & Deportation
New Tools from @TRACReports For Tracking ICE Prosecutorial Discretion « Detention Watch Network: Monitoring & Challenging Immigration Detention, Immigration Enforcement & Deportation
New Tools from @TRACReports For Tracking ICE Prosecutorial Discretion
OCTOBER 21, 2011
via Jeff Lamicela, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse:
TRAC has launched a bundle of new report series, with accompanying data tools and regular updates, which allow the public to monitor ICE’s exercise of prosecutorial discretion in the Immigration Courts, as spelled out in Director John Morton’s June 17, 2011 memorandum. TRAC’s new tools allow tracking by charge, nationality, and location (state, court or specific hearing location).
The most recent data, current through July 2011, show that there has not as yet been any meaningful upturn in cases where the person charged has been allowed to remain in this country. Indeed, during the three most recent quarters, the proportion of individuals allowed to remain in the country is now below 30 per cent, down from levels in 2010.
However, Immigration Courts varied widely in the proportion of cases in which deportation orders were granted — from a low of 28.8 percent in the New York City Immigration Court, up to 98.8 percent in the Lumpkin, Georgia Immigration Court. Among nationalities, cases resulting in deportation orders ranged from highs of 86.8 percent for individuals from Mexico and 84.4 percent for those from Honduras, down to 13.1 for individuals from Eritrea and 20.7 percent for those from Ethiopia.
TRAC’s latest report can be viewed here.
For the accompanying data tools which allow tracking by charge, nationality, and specific location, go to:
TRAC is also releasing today an updated report on Immigration Court processing times which continue to increase, and are now 30 percent longer than average dispositions times during FY 2009.
Accompanying data apps have been expanded to allow tracking disposition times both by type of outcome, and by original charge:
To keep up with TRAC, follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Enough Is Enough » Enough is Enough Rally
Enough Is Enough » Enough is Enough Rally
WHEN: October 29, 2011 • 12 noon
WHERE: U.S. Capitol West Front Lawn
WHY: Democracy will not die on our watch
"Sometimes an institution becomes too sick to fix itself…Sometimes an institution, like an individual, needs an intervention, from people, from friends, from outside."
— Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost
America is at a crossroads. Our political system itself allows powerful special interests and party ideologues to have more influence with our elected Representatives than average people. Washington has ground to a halt amidst cynical electioneering while tens of millions continue to suffer in this struggling economy. It is clear that Congress has become “too sick to fix itself.”
These are reasons to be discouraged. However, we love our country and we must summon our dignity, strength and the spirit of unity. We must resolve to restore a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Giving up is not an option.
Hundreds of people from all over the U.S. are signing up to speak out at the US Capitol on October 29 about how Washington's dysfunction and corruption have impacted their lives. Our personal stories, one after another after another, will announce our determination to rescue Congress from the corrupting influence of money.
On Monday after the rally, we will go to Congress together and talk to our representatives. We will persist with the intervention every week until we are heard. We ask you to go to the district offices of your representatives to continue the intervention.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP on Facebook
and invite your friends
SIGN UP TO SPEAK on Oct 29
SIGN UP TO ORGANIZE locally & online
SIGN UP TO LOBBY FOR THE PEOPLE The Citizens Lobby
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