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The majority of the American public is not used to reading anymore. It is much easier to sit on a comfortable chair at the end of the day and listen to TV commentators who offer information that has usually been approved by the higher ups — the transnational corporation who owns the CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, FOX or the many others. The result is what happens daily around the world in the name of democracy…

Here’s just another example:

How to covertly train paramilitaries, censor the press, ban unions, employ terrorists, conduct warrantless searches, suspend habeas corpus, conceal beaches of the Geneva Convention and make the population love it

JULIAN ASSANGE (investigative editor)
Monday June 15, 2008

Wikileaks has obtained a sensitive US military counterinsurgency manual. The manual, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004), may be critically described as “what we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places”. Its contents are both history defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies and guerilla movements world wide, history making.

The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of “psychological operations” (propaganda) to make these and other “population & resource control” measures more palatable.

The document has been particularly informed by the long United States involvement in the El Salvador. However it is worth noting what the US Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert E. White had to say as early as 1980 (in documents obtained under the FOIA):

The major, immediate threat to the existence of this government is the right-wing violence. In the city of San Salvador, the hired thugs of the extreme right, some of them well-trained Cuban and Nicaraguan terrorists, kill moderate left leaders and blow up government buildings. In the countryside, elements of the security forces torture and kill the campesinos, shoot up their houses and burn their crops. At least two hundred refugees from the countryside arrive daily in the capital city. This campaign of terror is radicalizing the rural areas just as surely as Somoza’s National Guard did in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, the command structure of the army and the security forces either tolerates or encourages this activity. These senior officers believe or pretend to believe that they are eliminating the guerillas.[1]

Selected extracts follow. Note that the manual is 219 pages long and contains substantial material throughout. These extracts should merely be considered representative. Emphasis has been added for further selectivity. The full manual can be found at US Special Forces counter-insurgency manual FM 31-20-3.

To read more click here

By Tamaryn Waters

Taken from Tallahassee.com 

The 2008 KIDS COUNT Data Book, which compiles a state-to-state look at various trends in child welfare such as infant mortality, high-school dropouts and children living in single-parent homes, puts the state’s overall ranking among the bottom third of all the states. Last year Florida was ranked 32nd.

The report is part of a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

While Florida made improvements in six out of 10 areas, the report calls for “fundamental, urgently needed detention reform,” according to the foundation. The rate of detained and committed children ages 10 to 15 in custody was 165 per 100,000 compared to the 125 per 100,000 children nationwide.

“Florida must engage in a frank and transparent discussion about the importance of investing wisely and attending to Florida’s children. We don’t have a minute to waste,” said Roy Miller, president of the Children’s Campaign.

Click to read the entire article

Members of the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights (CACFR) traveled to Tallahassee, FL, today (Wed. June 11) to meet with Townson Fraser, Governor Charlie Crist’s deputy chief of staff and legislative affairs director. During the almost hour-long meeting, the issue discussed was Senate Bill 1310, the law introduced in the Florida legislature by State Rep. David Rivera, from Miami, which passed both the Florida House and Senate, and should go into effect on July 1.

We were there to insist that Governor Crist veto the law for reasons outlined during the meeting.

“Not only is the law unfair and discriminatory,” Fraser was told. But if allowed to take effect it will only create greater chaos and pain in a community already rattled by federal regulations that limit family visits to once every three years; limits remittances; and defines who family members one can visit and send remittances to.

Rep. Rivera claims 1310 will help Florida regulate travel to Cuba, calling it a terrorist state. What the Miami republican fails, or refuses, to realize is that Cuba travel is already heavily regulated by the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury through OFAC.

At a time when Florida is facing cutbacks to education, health care for children, social services and a host of much needed state services due to a receding economy, Rivera and his ilk want to create and even costlier bureaucracy which will only mirror at times federal law and regulations. At the same time, 1310 will probably put a number of Cuba travel providers out of business creating greater unemployment and loss of revenue to the state.

In a hot 90 degree day in Tallahassee, more than 100 Cuban Americans from Miami also traveled all night in buses where we all participated in a rally after the meeting with the governor’s office. From children to elderly citizens participated peacefully, asking the governor to veto 1310.

Stay tuned for further developments…

Alvaro F. Fernandez

Florida Senate Bill 1310, which will further limit the ability of Cuban families on both sides of the Florida Straits to stay in touch with each other, is both cruel and discriminatory, say members of the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights (CACFR) as they prepare to take their case to the governor’s office in Tallahassee on Wednesday morning. Joined by a group of other organizations and Cuban Americans from Miami, Commission directors will meet with key staffers from the governor’s office to discuss how this bill will negatively impact not only families, but businesses, jobs and in the end, Florida residents’ pocketbooks.  A peaceful demonstration is planned for that same morning in Tallahassee in front of the Capitol Building and the governor’s office. A group of Miamians will have traveled all night in buses to attend the rally.

“Our hope is to stop this cruel and discriminatory law from going into effect on July 1,” said Alvaro F. Fernandez, Commission president. “If 1310 does become law, family travel to Cuba would become even more arduous and expensive. It is why we will appeal to the governor’s humanity and understanding of what is good for our state and our people,” added Fernandez.

“It is a sad state of affairs when for the sake of electoral politics basic family rights are violated”, said Silvia Wilhelm, Commission executive director. “I thought we had seen the end of it after the 2004 regulations.”
CACFR was created in June 2004, solely for one purpose, to combat the cruel regulations imposed by the Bush Administration limiting family travel to Cuba to once every three years, with no exceptions, not even for humanitarian reasons. Included in the new measures was a limit of remittances one could send to those family members. Most insulting, some felt, was the fact that the administration deemed fit to define who a Cuban family member could be — excluding aunts, uncles and cousins, for example.

A recent Florida International University (FIU) poll revealed that 66 percent of Miami Cuban Americans were in disagreement with these regulations. Two years ago when there was hope that U.S. Rep. William Delahunt would present a bill in Congress eliminating the anti-Cuban family measures, more than 14,000 persons signed a CACFR petition in favor of the Delahunt bill.

The Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times have both written editorials very critical of the Florida legislation (SB 1310) which takes effect July 1. Businesses affected by the new Florida measure on travel to Cuba have categorically stated they will file a lawsuit against the state if the legislation is signed by Governor Crist. According to experts, this is a losing case for the state and will therefore end up costing all Florida taxpayers in court expenses and time wasted.

The state has yet to address Senate Bill 1310’s regulations and procedures. Companies flying to Cuba at this time are at a loss as to what the next steps will be. Experts agree that one of the immediate results of the law will be chaos. It is also expected that the 45-minute air flight will be prolonged since a third leg to the flight will probably be added making the trip also more expensive.