Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Democracy, the MN DFL, and the Fourth of July

My Yahoo e-mail account was “deactivated” as a result of a vicious campaign being waged against me by the casino industry together with the leadership of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party--- Brian Melendez, Chair (see photo); Susan Rego, Secretary; and, Andrew O’Leary, Executive Director. Of course they had considerable help from the well-heeled members of the Summit Hill club, St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, and the MN DFL Business Caucus.

Melendez, O’Leary, and Rego have joined together with United States Information Services (USIS) the union busting outfit which is now into the “contractor business” in Iraq with its partner, the Blackwater Agency.

USIS was initially hired by Red Lake Gaming Enterprises and the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association to thwart our efforts to unionize the casino industry in Minnesota.

USIS is also a major player in investigations for the health insurance rackets with offices located throughout Minnesota.

In short, USIS combines to do all the dirty deeds that the Pinkerton Agency, the FBI, and the CIA are not allowed to do… from carrying out assassination plots overseas to disrupting union organizing campaigns--- domestically and abroad.

USIS does dirty work for Cleveland Cliffs and United States Steel. USIS is also employed by General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford to root out rank and file union activists opposed to concessions and plant closings.

An agent of United States Information Services (USIS), George Armstrong, has been placed in charge of the operation being conducted against me and the Red Lake Casino, Hotel, and Restaurant Employees’ Union Organizing Committee. The FBI dossier maintained on me was even turned over to Red Lake Gaming Enterprises by USIS agent George Armstrong and staff from the United States Department of Justice.

USIS agent George Armstrong was successful in engaging the cooperation of Warroad Police Chief Lawrence Wright who ordered, in a written warning letter that our union organizing committee halt distribution of leaflets on sidewalks in Warroad lest we be “arrested and fined for illegal distribution of printed materials while trespassing,” claiming that “…sidewalks are private property. Owners of this private property choose to allow the public to use these sidewalks for the sole purpose of walking. Permission has not been granted by the private owners of these sidewalks in Warroad for any other purposes.”

As expected, the attorney representing the City of Warroad backed up this definition of what sidewalks are and what they can’t be used for. One expects this kind of convoluted logic to be used by the Chief of Police in a company town controlled by the Marvin Family while making millions manufacturing shoddy windows and doors for over one hundred years.

When threatened with a multi-million dollar law-suit in the form of a claim for damages, the Warroad Chief of Police “reconsidered” his interpretation of sidewalks and leaflet distributions.

Armstrong began his career with Naval Intelligence. He then got a job based upon his “expertise” with the Federal Bureau Investigation. After being fired from his job with the FBI for demonstrating his “expertise” when a U.S. Senate over site committee found him to have been engaged in illegal surveillance methods including tampering with and opening U.S. mail, placing false information in government data files, falsifying information including his own and colleagues’ reports, and placing illegal taps on telephone lines, Armstrong then gained employment with USIS--- specializing in union busting.

For complete information on USIS visit their web page:

http://www.usis.com/

United States Information Services is a huge operation serving casino managements, corporate, banking, military, insurance, and reactionary and corrupt political parties from its offices all over the world.

Brian Melendez, the Chair of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, has never raised his voice in support of his 20,000 fellow Minnesotans who go to work in these smoke-filled casinos without any rights under state, federal, or tribal labor laws--- all employed under these Draconian conditions without a voice at work; and, all receiving poverty wages.

Melendez does continue to refer to these casino managements as, “Our Native American friends in the gaming industry.”

Some “friends” Melendez and the MN DFL have chosen.

Yahoo, Inc., and CenturyTel--- my current internet service provider, both admit that Armstrong has contacted them claiming to represent Brian Melendez and the DFL Executive Committee.

To date, Yahoo, Inc. has gone along with Armstrong, who was accompanied by FBI Special Agents in meetings with Yahoo, Inc. management. As a result, Yahoo, Inc. “deactivated” my e-mail account: red_finn_minnesota_progressive@yahoo.com without providing me with any verbal or written reason other than saying their Terms Of Service (TOS) allow them full power to arbitrarily “deactivate” anyone’s account without having to provide a reason; and, this they say, is what they have chosen to do with my account.

Yahoo, Inc.’s philosophy regarding democracy is perverted; but, quite fitting a philosophy for a dot com business which has made billions bilking the public in an industry wholly subsidized by the taxpayers where private industry is allowed to profit without any oversights or restraints.

CenturyTel management has a similar, but slightly different, story to tell. Their management claims they were approached by Armstrong and four FBI agents with a letter in hand, stating that I am a “designated security risk” to the United States government and that I am “indexed” as such in the files and records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that the “indexing” has been approved, in writing, by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III who has asserted in this letter that “subject is a known to the Bureau for dispensing views and engaged in activities inimical to the United States government, its domestic and foreign policies.” The letter goes on to state that I use “telephone and internet communication services including e-mail and blogging” to “achieve” these “goals and objectives.”

To date, CenturyTel, my Internet Service Provider (ISP) has refused to go along with the request to halt my internet services which I lawfully use (and pay for) under my First Amendment Rights of freedom of speech and association; no doubt they have granted the FBI the right to access my account as people are now reporting receiving e-mails from accounts claiming to have been created by me while using CenturyTel services.

In fact I sign my name to every single thing I write and distribute; I always have.

This is what scares these cowards like Melendez, Rego, and O’Leary along with the casino managements. After all, if I am writing anything that is untrue, all they have to do is respond… I have even offered Melendez, Rego, and O’Leary the opportunity to use my own blog for their responses to me; they have refused. Instead, they engage in these dirty tricks and dirty deeds like little Hitlers--- goose-stepping back-wards as they trample on our democratic rights. On numerous occasions I have offered my blog space to Floyd Jourdain to respond to charges I have made against casino managements.

Google, Inc. management is refusing all comment although it is quite apparent they are tolerating a counter intelligence type operation directed against me and my blogging as can be seen by the vicious nature of the anonymous blog postings and web sites they have allowed to be operated against me. Google has tolerated the misuse of my own blog name in order to confuse those using the Google search engine to locate my blogs.

This can readily be seen by clicking the link below and clicking on each listed “blog” link:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ui=blg&q=thepodunkblog&btnG=Search+Blogs

Four of the six blogs listed are phony blogs designed to skew and disorient the Google search engine. The intent of these blog listings is quite obvious as they have no other intended purpose.

Someone has taken the time to create such phony blogs for each of the headings for every topic I have blogged. Again, these cowards could have simply created their own blogs and provided a response.

Melendez has gone on and on about what a terrible person I am using the MN DFL State Central Committee list serve while barring me from the same list serve... this takes a brave individual to do this... sometimes I wonder how the human race produces such pathetic excuses for human beings.

Previously, a supporter of Mike Hatch employed in the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office--- and a MN DFL Congressional District Chair--- was linked to creating such phony blogs rather than responding to what I have written; all with the intended purpose of skewing search engines. It is amazing that these political hacks have time for such games as real problems working people are experiencing go unresolved. Again, the police and prosecutors say there is nothing illegal about such activity… but, come on, even a school child can recognize this as sleazy and unethical behavior.

Taking that such activities on the part of the FBI, Minnesota DFL Executive Committee, United States Information Services and Homeland Security may not be illegal and within the guidelines of permitted Constitutional activity recognized by U.S. Attorney General Gonzalez, which I do not accede to, such activity is highly unethical and immoral--- the epitome of a corrupt political machine trying to save a rotten capitalist system which has spawned this political mess in the same manner as the health care mess and the dirty war in Iraq.

My blogging and e-mailing is carried out in the same spirit and intent as leaflets and pamphlets previously written, published, and distributed by our Founding Fathers and Mothers; including Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and the washer-women and glass-blowers of Jamestown who organized the first strike in America; while the content of what I write is no more “inimical” to the United States than the words of Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, or Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

It is ironic that during another time and another period, noted author and Communist--- Howard Fast--- was black-listed and hounded for writing a novel about Thomas Paine--- writer, citizen-activist and patriot.

These charlatans and political hacks who pass themselves off as “leaders” of the MN DFL pathetically call for more “studies” and “research” into the cancer cluster on the Iron Range while irresponsibly evading calling for immediate implementation of single-payer, universal health care in order to provide real assistance to those suffering the consequences of these cancers and their families who will continue to be plagued with a horrendous pile of medical bills for the rest of their lives.

Melendez, Rego, and O’Leary have more in common with Elmer Gantry and Pat Robertson than with democratic principles.

No wonder the rest of the world is laughing--- when not crying and anguishing in the pain and misery in the wake of this dirty war in Iraq and the untold suffering people are forced to endure by this rotten imperialist stage of capitalism which has turned cannibalistic.

Capitalism is “inimical” to the human race and democracy.

Brian Melendez, Susan Rego and Andrew O’Leary were hand-picked by “Cadillac Mike” to continue running the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party on behalf of the Mondale-Kaplan-Ceresi crowd.

What this Summit Hill club along with the DFL Business Caucus and their cronies in the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce really resent is when working people actually articulate positions in opposition to their own racist, pro-business, pro-war policies which have allowed working people to suffer and die as the corporate community profits through the exploitation of labor and real estate swindles; not to mention the tremendous wealth that has been accumulated through boot-legging and illegal gambling turned into an empire of state protected liquor stores and casino operations.

This corrupt little bunch of arrogant, well-heeled politicians and their well-paid political hacks now living, appropriately, in what used to be the servants’ quarters on Summit Hill, have twisted the concept of democracy into something so perverse that it has no association with what the founders of this Nation ever intended.

Yahoo, Inc. acknowledges that they turned over to the FBI the entire contents of my Yahoo e-mail including correspondence, and over 4,500 names and e-mail addresses along with phone numbers, addresses and in some cases employment information. Brian Melendez and the leadership of the Minnesota DFL has enabled the FBI and USIS to obtain a list of some 4,500 peace, labor, and social justice activists across the United States and Canada… talk about doing dirty work.

Oh, I forgot to mention something… Yahoo, Inc. has been a long time business partner with USIS in China aimed at subverting trade union activity in Wal-mart’s operations.

A concept and what it means, which you may want to ponder while sitting around the picnic table with family, relatives and friends this Fourth of July--- a concept which is increasingly becoming a distant, alien, strange and foreign concept perverted by the big-money crowd here in Minnesota: democracy.

An after-thought---

Had Brian Melendez and his wrecking crew of Susan Rego and Andrew O’Leary put as much effort into a campaign for single-payer, universal health care as what the delegates to the last state convention instructed him to do instead of trying to silence me, the Minnesota DFL Legislative Caucus would have passed single-payer, universal health care legislation. Buses filled with thirty thousand Minnesotans would be rolling towards the Cities insisting Pawlenty sign the legislation… as we are well aware, single-payer, universal health care is universally accepted and supported by Minnesotans regardless of party affiliation.