Asia is a land of communion

Asia is a land of the Spirit, hence of peace: Santi (wholeness).

Om Dyaun Santi,
Antharikshan Santi, Prithvi Santi
Apah Santi, oushadhayah Santi
Vishve devah Santi
Vishve nara Santi
Brahma Santi, Sarvan Santi
Santireva Santi, Sama Santiredhi
Om Santi, Santi, Santi.

Let there be peace of the sky
Peace of mid-regions, of the earth
Peace of water, plants
Peace of all the powers of the world
Peace of all the men of the world
Peace of God and all
May this peace be with me and with you
Om peace, peace, peace!
This Santi Mantra, recited at the beginning and at the end of a sacred action, sums up the holistic view of Asian religions.

Peace - and the Santi Mantra - must be at the beginning and end of everything.

Nothing is achieved by external discord or internal unrest, and nothing is accomplished in the world or human life unless it is grounded in peace.

Financial Scams and the Bush Family

The Enron scandal is but the tip of the iceberg. Fully documented by the U.S. and British media, the Bush family has been implicated in a string of financial scams since the 1980s.

The following text based on a compilation of press excerpts (first published in December 2000 in the wake of the U.S. presidential elections) is self-explanatory.

The personal links between the Bush and Salinas de Gortiari families are also documented. The Salinas family was closely tied to the Mexican drug cartel.

When Carlos Salinas was inaugurated as President, the entire Mexican State apparatus become criminalised with key government positions occupied by members of the Cartel. The Minister of Commerce in charge of trade negotiations leading up to the signing of NAFTA was Raul Salinas Lozano, father of Raul Junior the Drug kingpin and of Carlos the president.

Excerpts from the Western press:


The Bush Family and the Savings and Loans (S&L) Scandal (1980s)

In the 1980s, George W. Bush's younger brother Neil was involved in the Savings and Loan scam. According to the Los Angles Times, other members of the Bush family were also involved:

"As a director of the defunct Silverado Savings & Loan in Denver, Neil Bush [brother of George W] was found by federal regulators to have engaged in a conflict of interest by participating in the approval of loans totaling million from the S&L to his own business partners. In 1990, when George W. Bush's little-known firm, Harken Energy, was awarded a lucrative contract from the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, the deal was widely seen as an effort on the part of Bahrain's royal family to win favor with the White House.

In 1985, Jeb Bush [brother of George W. and Governor of Florida] interceded with officials of the Health and Human Services Department on behalf of Miguel Recarey Jr., the owner of a health-maintenance organization who later fled the country after being charged in what is believed to be the nation's biggest Medicare scandal. Jeb Bush received ,000 from Recarey for a business deal that never materialized. Likewise, Prescott Bush [brother of former President George Bush] has been accused of taking advantage of his brother's sympathetic approach to China to negotiate business deals in that country." (Los Angeles Times, 10 May 1992)

According to the Dayton Daily News:

"After Silverado, Neil got a million loan from the Small Business Administration and walked on it. Son Marvin Bush also has a spotty business record, and our own Gov. Shrub (George W. Bush) was accused of violating securities laws governing insider stock sales when he sold his shares of Harken Oil on the eve of the Persian Gulf war. (Nothing ever came of the allegations.)" (Dayton Daily News, 10 May 1992)


The Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) Scandal (1992)

According to the Wall Street Journal:

"Lawyers in class-action suit against Bank of Credit and Commerce International identify presidential sons George Bush and Jeb Bush as potential witnesses in their case."(Wall Street Journal, 10 March 1992)

In the course of his investigation, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in charge of prosecuting the BCCI case had looked into Harken Energy: In a December 1991 story the Wall Street Journal pointed out ''numerous links among Harken, Bahrain and individuals close to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.'' Stephens is one of them. Several years ago, the Journal said, Stephens arranged for a Swiss bank to provide Harken with million at a time when the bank was a partner with BCCI in another project. When snags developed, Stephens lined up Abdullah Bakhsh, whose business partners include an alleged BCCI front man and whose banker had been a large BCCI shareholder. Bakhsh became Harken's third-largest stockholder -- and also owns 10 percent of Stephens's Worthen Banking." (quoted in Common Cause Magazine, Spring 1992) "Stephens was the investment banker for Harken Energy, which in early 1990 won rights to drill for oil off Bahrain -- surprising since the company had never drilled an offshore well. Further questions were raised because presidential son George W. Bush, a friend of Stephens, serves on Harken's board. (The San Diego Union Tribune, 17 January 1992)


The Mexican Drug Cartel: What links to Raul Salinas de Gortiari? (1995)

According to the Houston Chronicle and the Ledger (Lakeland, Florida), Jeb Bush (brother of George W.) --before becoming Governor of the Sunshine State-- was a close friend of Raul Salinas de Gortiari, and brother of former President of Mexico Carlos Salinas. Raul --who was a leading member of the Mexican Drug Cartel-- is now serving a 27 year jail term for having murdered a political opponent:

"There has also been a great deal of speculation in Mexico about the exact nature of Raul Salinas' close friendship with former President George Bush's son, Jeb. It is well known here that for many years the two families spent vacations together -- the Salinases at Jeb Bush's home in Miami, the Bushes at Raul's ranch, Las Mendocinas, under the volcano in Puebla. There are many in Mexico who believe that the relationship became a back channel for delicate and crucial negotiations between the two governments, leading up to President Bush's sponsorship of NAFTA." (Houston Chronicle, 9 March 1995)

The personal relationship between the Bush and Salinas families is a matter of public record. Former President George Bush -- when he worked in the oil business in Texas in the 1970s-- had developed close personal ties with Carlos Salinas and his father, Raul Salinas Lozano. According to Andres Openheimer writing in the Miami Herald (February 17 1997):

"witnesses say former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortiari, his imprisoned brother Raul and other members of country's ruling elite met with drug lord Juan Garcia Abrego at a Salinas family ranch; Jeb Bush admits he met with Raul Salinas several times but has never done any business with him."

According to a report published in The Dallas Morning News, behind the scam was Raul Salinas Lozano, the family patriarch father of Carlos and Raul Junior. The former private secretary to Raul Salinas Lozano:

"told [U.S.] authorities [in testimony] that Mr. Salinas Lozano was a leading figure in narcotics dealings that also involved his son, Raul Salinas de Gortiari, his son-in-law, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the No. 2 official in the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and other leading politicians, according to the documents. Mr. Ruiz Massieu was assassinated in 1994." (Dallas Morning News, 26 February 1997).

According to former DEA Michael Levine, the Mexican drug Cartel was a "family affair". Both Carlos and Raul were prominent members of the Cartel. And this was known to then U.S. Attorney General Edward Meese in 1987 one year prior to Carlos Salinas' inauguration as the country's president.

When Carlos Salinas was inaugurated as President, the entire Mexican State apparatus become criminalised with key government positions occupied by members of the Cartel. The Minister of Commerce in charge of trade negotiations leading up to the signing of NAFTA was Raul Salinas Lozano, father of Raul Junior the Drug kingpin and of Carlos the president.

And it is precisely during this period that the Salinas government launches a sweeping privatisation program under advice from the IMF. The privatisation program becomes a multibillion dollar money laundering operation. Narco-dollars are channelled towards the acquisition of State property and public utilities.

Richard Barnet of the Institute for Policy Studies, testified to the US Congress (April 14, 1994) that "billions of dollars in state assets have gone to supporters and cronies" (Dallas Morning News, 11 August 1994). These included the sale of Telefonos de Mexico, valued at $ 3.9 billion and purchased by a Salinas crony for $ 400 million.(Ibid). Raul Salinas was behind the privatisation programme. He was known as ''Mr. 10 Percent" "for the slice of bid money he allegedly demanded in exchange for helping acquaintances acquire companies, concessions and contracts [under the IMF sponsored privatisation program"(The News, InfoLatina, Mexico, October 10, 1997).


NAFTA Negotiations with the Salinas Family

According to the Dallas Morning News report cited above, the Bush administration was fully aware of the links of the Salinas presidency to organized crime. Public opinion in the U.S. and Canada was never informed so as not to jeopardize the signing of NAFTA:

"Other former officials say they were pressured to keep mum because Washington was obsessed with approving NAFTA".

"The intelligence on corruption, especially by drug traffickers, has always been there," said Phil Jordan, who headed DEA's Dallas office from 1984 to 1994. But "we were under instructions not to say anything negative about Mexico. It was a no-no since NAFTA was a hot political football." (Dallas Morning News, 26 February 1997)

Michael Levine had confirmed that Carlos Salinas role in the Mexican drug cartel was known to US officials including U.S. Attorney General Edward Meese prior to his inauguration as President of Mexico.

U.S. President George Bush is regularly briefed by officials from the Department of Justice, the CIA and the DEA. In other words, at the time the NAFTA Agreement was signed, both Bush and Mulroney must have been informed that one of signatories of NAFTA had links to the Mexican Drug Cartel.

In 1995 in the wake of the scandal and the arrest of his brother Raul for murder, Carlos Salinas left Mexico to take up residence in Dublin. His alleged links to the Drug Cartel did not prevent him from being appointed to the Board of the Dow Jones Company on Wall Street, a position which he held until 1997:

Salinas, who left Mexico in March 1995 after his brother, Raul, was charged with masterminding the murder of a political opponent, has served on the company's board for two years. He was questioned last year in Dublin by a Mexican prosecutor investigating the murder in March 1994 of Luis Donaldo Colosio, who wanted to succeed Salinas as president. A Dow Jones spokesman last week denied that Salinas had been forced out of an election for the new board, which will take place at the company's annual meeting on April 16. Salinas, who negotiated Mexico's entry into the free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, was appointed to the board because of his international experience. He was unavailable for comment at his Dublin home last week." (Sunday Times, London, 30 March 1997).

Washington has consistently denied Carlos Salinas involvement. "it was his brother Raul", Carlos Salinas "did not know", the American media continues to uphold Salinas as a model statesman, architect of free trade in the Americas and a friend of the Bush family.

Militant Non-violence and the Politics of Protest


From Che Guevara to giant puppets, resistance to corporate control has come in many guises. Today's anti-corporate globalization movement is as diverse as it is dynamic, with a myriad of groups and tactics. But with the post-9-11 backlash against dissent, the increasing sophistication of the state security agencies, and its own struggle to bring its message to the mainstream, the movement is still battling to gain momentum in the U.S.

In his first CounterIntelligence effort, info-guerrilla Charles Maol talks with David Graeber, an Ivy League anarchist who has become one of the movement's most insightful voices.

Graeber teaches Sociocultural Anthropology at Yale University and writes for a variety of publications including In These Times and NYC Indymedia's Indypendent. As an organizer for the Anti-Capitalist Convergence against the recent meeting of the World Economic Forum in New York City, David was in the rare position of being an anarchist in the center of media attention.

A veteran of the movement's pivotal protests himself, Maol first met Graeber on the streets of Genoa, Italy during the actions against the G8 summit; demonstrations that were met with ultra-violent state repression.

The two had not seen each other since Italy. But in the moments before he rushed away from a heavily policed New York City, Maol was able to grab the professor for this illuminating discussion in which Graeber shares his thoughts on the state of the movement, the nature of anarchy, and the secret power of a guy in a fairy suit. He also issues an ominous warning about the lessons many activists are taking from this month's protests in New York.


Charles Maol: Hello David.

Can you tell us about how an Ivy League professor came to be involved with what is very much the radical part of the anti-corporate globalization movement?

David Graeber: Well, I have only become an Ivy League professor very recently. It is a job really, one isn't born that way. Actually, I come from a short line of radicals. My father actually fought in Spain (against Franco), so I was kind of a red diaper baby. I have always dabbled in activism and been interested in things like that, but to tell you the truth, until recently, the activist scene I encountered was kind of depressing and frustrating. It was very sectarian, a lot of sort of egoistic personalities and a lot of endless battles over what I thought to be very meaningless things. So, I usually didn't like the scene very much to be honest. In a way, the movement that exists now is the movement I always kind of fantasized about and always wished would exist. And all of a sudden it did, so of course I felt I had to join.

And that part of the movement is very much associated with anarchy.

Yeah.

In your piece 'Anarchy in the USA', you give a brief explanation of what anarchy is. Can you do that for us now?

Oh god, I am trying to remember what I said at the time. Anarchism, anarchy if you like, has always been essentially about the idea that people can manage their own affairs without rulers of any kind. Anarchy just comes from without rulers in Greek. Its generally been based on the principals of self-organization, voluntary association, and mutual aid and that you can have a society based on that rather than a society based on competition and various forms of systematic use of coercive force as an instrument of social control.

How does anarchy today relate to the globalization movement?

That's an interesting question. Its funny, because in the media its always represented as the violent fringe. But, in a lot of ways, I think it's the real heart of the movement, or better said, it is its soul.It's certainly the inspiration for what makes the movement so effective. Much of what is new about it and much of what's so inspiring about it for others comes from the anarchist tradition.

When you're protesting you're recognizing the authority of the people that you oppose even as you oppose them.

The idea of direct action for example; the difference between protest and direct action is that when you're protesting, in a certain way, you're recognizing the authority of the people that you oppose even as you oppose them. You say, "We wish you would stop doing this, we wish you would do that instead.What ever you're urging the powers that be to do, you are recognizing them as the people who, on some level, legitimately have the right to do that.

Direct action is exactly the opposite; it's acting as if their power is completely illegitimate. So that, direct action is: if the people ruling the world are creating problems, you try to solve them yourself without any help from them and dare them to stop you, or alternately, you directly try to stop them from doing what they're doing. That's what makes it direct. It's unmediated. Of course, direct action ties into the spirit of direct democracy, which also comes out of the anarchist tradition.

So all of those ideas really come out of anarchism more than anything else.

I have noticed that a lot of young people are drawn to direct action oriented demonstration. Why do you think so many people, especially young people, college kids, etc. are bypassing traditional forms of political action and moving toward direct action?

Interesting question. I think that a lot of people in America in general are incredibly disillusioned with politics, but I think that's even part of the way politics is supposed to work. It's interesting, this kind of post-Watergate phenomena. One is no longer outraged to discover that politicians are crooked or that they are liars. People come to just accept that, and in a way that reinforces power.

Pervasive cynicism is the best thing for the people that are running America right now.

People become so cynical that any idea of changing things within the system has just vanished. And in a way this pervasive cynicism is the best thing for the people that are running America right now. So I guess direct action is almost the exact opposite. It incorporates a cynicism about those whom we should be cynical about but will not accept cynicism as a pervasive way of looking at the world.

You mentioned that the mainstream core of America is disillusioned with politics and I think that's true. How much do you think the people that are involved with direct action, and anarchists for that matter, take into account public opinion, take into account mainstream information flow?

It's an endless debate. I think that a lot of us are aware that most people in America, probably most people accept 75% of the weight of anarchy, there's a lot of common ground, but there is no way you can get what anarchist really are and what they are really about through the mainstream media. So there is a terrible frustration about how you reach those people. All they hear is that these are violent, stupid, nihilistic people that reject all forms of organization, civilization or anything else.

How do you get a message through to people who don't have access to Indymedia - who don't have access to some of the more arcane forms of communication that we ourselves adopt.

So there is always the dual temptation to see if there is some way you can hijack the corporate media, to get across the message, some glimmerings of the message, and the endless frustration when that proves impossible.

You mentioned Indymedia, what role do you think the Independent Media Center and other alternative news sources play in this movement?

I think its enormous. I think its incredibly important because when doing actions in the past, this was one of the things that was so depressing and frustrating. Getting involved in protest of any kind in past decades, really until independent media came along, or until the web and so forth came along, one really felt as if one was acting in a vacuum. One would do these incredibly interesting, beautiful, passionate, expressive displays, this amazing theatre, and there was this feeling that aside from anybody who happened to be walking down the street, no one would know you did it. The corporate media would just not cover it, at all, unless it was enormous, and then they would probably lie about it, and even then only a tiny percent of what went on would be covered, by definition.

In America there is a whole industry dedicated to making sure people have no idea what is going on in the world.

So, there was this incredible frustration. And there is much more of a feeling now that you can do something, and you know that it echoes somewhere. There is a community at least that will always know what you're doing and a broader public which will have access to it; something that never occurred before. So it's magnified the effect of what we do a thousand times and it becomes, I think, a much less alienating experience.

You mentioned information flow via the web, etc. Getting back to the issues of globalization and the corporate control of media, do you think the American masses have the information, or the knowledge base, if you will, to think about appropriately or discuss with import the issues of globalization?

No, no, absolutely not.

I think that billions of dollars are spent every year to keep the American public ignorant. I think that if you go to Burma or Madagascar or Chechnya or Patagonia and ask the average person you meet what's going on in the world, they will give you a view twenty times more detailed and accurate than if you went to Nebraska and talked to the average person on the street. And that's because no one bothers to lie to those guys, they don't have to, they're powerless. But for people in America there is a whole industry that is dedicated to making sure they have no idea what is going on in the world.

NOW YOU KNOW!