Another Mega-Confabulating Psyop Artist on the Internet

" ... At the heart of the matter, a U.S. Government UFO Working Group, dark secrets kept in the shadows under the guise of counter-intelligence operations of the United States Air Force, and decades-old rumors of extraterrestrial contact with 'something not of this world.' ... " - Gary Bekkum

By Alex Constantine

Gary Bekkum is upfront about it in his bio:

"Gary S. Bekkum is an independent 'occasional' rogue journalist & web author and researcher of material that blurs the distinction between fiction and reality."

There it is. No long-winded explanations required. Bekkum doesn't deny it - he's a shaggy-dog pusher, a natural for the Coast-to-Coast radio psyop. "In 2004, Bekkum created Starstream Research as an informal survey of exotic physics and consciousness concepts related to the survival or otherwise of the human race. The Starstream material now appears as the 'Spacetime Threat Assessment Report,' which is targeted to various select defense industry personalities."

Fiction ... or unadulterated kook programming, some might say. I happen to be one of them. More "blurring":

"Rogue journalist Gary S. Bekkum discussed his research on secret government documents, as well as UFO information and psychic premonitions. Project Stargate, the CIA-run program that used remote viewing for 'psychic spying,' ceased in 1995, and 89,000 pages of formerly classified material were then released. Some of the documents revealed predictions of events similar to 9-11, including mention of a 'Project 911' and drawings that resemble bin Laden, he detailed. Last hour guest, paranormal investigator Joshua P. Warren shared several different methods to contact the dead. ... "

Christ. "Psychic predictions of 9/11," occult channelling - fodder for the tabloids.

An alternative stirs to mind: Documented research that isn't fiction and addresses crticial deep political issues without stupid childhood fantasies - "aliens," "remote viewing" - because these distract from the covert crimes of the intelligence "services" and the bourgeois corporate culture they serve. Stare at the goats, not the jackals ... Why "blur the distinction between fiction and reality" at all if the purpose is not dissociation? Spooky Bekkumistic stretchers and War of the Worlds-style "blurring" are a smokescreen that only serve to conceal and dumb down.

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Give Churches a Choice: Give Up Tax Exempt Status or Give Up Lobbying

Marc Rubin
Examiner | November 21, 2009

For far too long many religious groups, most recently and most visibly the Catholic Church, have tried to have it both ways. They avail themselves of the constitutional separation of church and state to avoid paying taxes on their secular investments, and then violate the separation of church and state by maintaining a strong lobbying group in Washington to influence legislation.

Recently it became known that the Catholic Conference of Bishops was instrumental in authoring the anti-abortion amendment attachd the to House health care bill, a clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. And its a perfect example of a religious institution trying to have it both ways. ....

CONTINUED

http://www.examiner.com/x-6572-NY-Obama-Administration-Examiner~y2009m11d21-Give-churches-a-choice-give-up-tax-exempt-status-or-give-up-lobbying

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Sarah Palin's Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

Also see: "Sarah Palin and the Rapture"

What Sarah Palin's "Jewish People will be Flocking to Israel" Prediction Means
Bruce Wilson
AlterNet | November 21, 2009.

Palin's associated with a religious tendency whose leaders promote anti-Jewish conspiracy theory

It's commonly understood that statements such as Sarah Palin's prediction that Jews will soon be "flocking to Israel" indicate Palin holds apocalyptic beliefs. What's not understood is that she's closely associated with a religious tendency whose leaders promote anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, including one most commonly used by the Third Reich, in the 1930's and 1940's, to whip up anti-Semitic hatreds: the claim that a worldwide cabal of Jewish bankers manipulates the world economy and preys on working classes.

Stumping for her new autobiography, Sarah Palin has made a round of interviews with high profile media figures such as Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. In the Walters interview Palin justified her support for expansion of Jewish settler enclaves on Israel's West Bank with a strange prediction. Walters asked, "Now let's talk about some issues - the Middle East. The Obama Administration does not want Israel to build any more settlements on what they consider Palestinian territory. What is your view on this ?" Palin responded, "I disagree with the Obama Administration on that. I believe that, um, the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon because the population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead."

Why might Palin's prediction come to pass?

In the 1920's and 1930's, rising anti-Semitism was propelled, in part, by conspiracy theories alleging that Jewish bankers such as the Rothschild banking family controlled both the German and world economies through the manipulation of global money markets. Leaders in Sarah Palin's religious tendency have for years been promoting extremely similar conspiracy theories. Some of these allege that the Rothschild banking family heads an international conspiracy that dominates much of the world economy and controls the U.S.economy through the Federal Reserve.

In the 1980's and 1990's that conspiracy theory was folded into a apocalyptic meta-conspiracy narrative claiming that Jews and "Illuminati" controlled, or were close to controlling, the US government and were plotting to implement a "New World Order." The narrative went on to claim that the Jewish/Illuminati conspiracy was imminently ready to call up hundreds of thousands of foreign troops hidden on US army bases and in National Parks, who would round up patriotic Christians and pack them into trains which would bring them to internment camps where, in some versions of the narratives, those Christians would be slaughtered via machine guns, guillotines, ovens, or poison gas.

While there are secular versions of that New World Order meta-conspiracy narrative, most of the narratives are rooted in Christian apocalyptic end-time narratives that envision, with the coming of the New World Order, the rise of a murderous, tyrannical anti-Christ figure. But the fusion of anti-Jewish conspiracy theory with an anti-Christ narrative has precedent.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, probably the single most destructive work of anti-Jewish propaganda ever created, was first popularized through being printed as the final chapter in Russian Orthodox priest Sergei Nilus' 1905 book The Great within the Small and Antichrist, an Imminent Political Possibility. Notes of an Orthodox Believer. Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's chief ideologist, tells of being given a copy of Nilus' book in 1917, while Rosenberg was studying in Moscow.

In short, this comes around to a concept widely promoted by Christian Zionists such as Christians United For Israel Founder, Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee, of the "fishers and hunters":

"Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the LORD, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." - Jeremiah 16:16, KJV

Hagee and other Christian Zionists interpret that passage as a prophecy which applies to current-day Jews worldwide.

Christian Zionists, broadly speaking, are Christians who think God wills it that all Jews live in Israel - and who go to elaborate lengths to bring that about. Regardless of whatever differences there might be between John Hagee's and Sarah Palin's respective brands of Christianity, the two seem to share a narrative common to Christian Zionist theology, that a terrible upwelling of anti-Jewish hatred will in the end-times cause Jewish citizens of every nation on Earth to make aliyah and move to Israel.

"Fishers" are, in that expected scenario, evangelists who try to convert Jews to Christianity and coax them to move to Israel. "Hunters" are overt anti-Semites who will come to hunt and kill those Jews who have not listened to the "fishers" and moved to Israel. ...

CONTINUED

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/politics/144111/what_sarah_palin's_%22jewish_people_will_be_flocking_to_israel%22_prediction_means/

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Consumer Group Responds to Governor Schwarzenegger's Incorrect Claims About the Impact of Medical Malpractice Caps

Oct 29, 2009

Consumer Group Responds to Governor Schwarzenegger's Incorrect Claims About the Impact of Medical Malpractice Caps

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Consumer Watchdog
sent the following letter to Congressional leaders today in response to a
letter sent by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in which he
incorrectly cited California's draconian limits on the legal rights of injured
patients as a successful cost containment tool. Consumer Watchdog is a
nonpartisan nonprofit with offices in California and Washington, D.C. The
Governor's October 27, 2009 letter is available at
www.gov.ca.gov/archive/press-releases/.

October 29, 2009

The Honorable Harry Reid
Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Mitch McConnell
Minority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable John A. Boehner
Minority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, Madam Speaker and Mr. Boehner,

Tuesday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote you regarding his views on health care reform. While Consumer Watchdog has detailed its views on comprehensive federal health reform many times over the past year, we write today in response to a particular element of the debate addressed by Governor Schwarzenegger, in which he incorrectly cited California's draconian limits on the legal rights of injured patients as a successful cost containment tool.

The plight of injured patients and families subject to unjust legal restriction in California has been well documented. Jury-ordered compensation been slashed by a one-size-fits-all damages cap unadjusted for three decades. Too many children, seniors and people with limited wage loss are unable to get legal representation and are locked out of the justice system altogether because of the restrictions. (See "Malpractice Law May Deny Justice," by Dan Costello, Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2007. For video testimony about the real impact of caps see http://www.JusticeForPatients.org.)

That human toll, however, is not the subject of this letter. Our purpose is to correct Governor Schwarzenegger's analysis of the relationship between malpractice caps and malpractice premiums.

California has, indeed, maintained severe caps on malpractice liability for doctors for more than 30 years, but the Governor ignores the fact that the caps did nothing to reduce doctors' insurance premiums for the first 13 years of the law. We have documented that premiums for California doctors went up by 450% between 1975 and 1988. Only after California voters enacted the comprehensive insurance regulatory system, known as Proposition 103, did doctors begin to see relief from skyrocketing malpractice rates. (You can read our study at http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/documents/1008.pdf.)

In fact, in 2002 and 2003, medical malpractice insurers were attempting to push doctors' premiums skyward in California as in the rest of the nation. Our organization used Proposition 103's right to challenge insurers' rate proposals and fought off $66 million of attempted rate hikes. That is, even with the longstanding and severe malpractice caps in place, doctors in California were facing the same insurance hikes at the beginning of this decade that faced doctors everywhere.

In our challenge to a proposed rate hike by one of California's largest medical malpractice insurers, SCPIE, the company's Vice President and chief actuary James Robertson testified:

While MICRA was the legislature's attempt at remedying the medical malpractice crisis in California in 1975, it did not substantially reduce the relative risk of medical malpractice insurance in California. (A copy of the SCPIE testimony is available at http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/documents/2058.pdf.)

The reason California doctors have fared comparatively well is not the limitations on patients' rights in California, but the voter-imposed limits on insurance company profiteering. We would be pleased to provide more details on this issue.

Sincerely,
Douglas Heller, Consumer Watchdog

cc: The Honorable Max Baucus
The Honorable Christopher J. Dodd
The Honorable Charles E. Grassley
The Honorable Mike Enzi
The Honorable Charles B. Rangel
The Honorable Henry A. Waxman
The Honorable George Miller
The Honorable Dave Camp
The Honorable Joe Barton
The Honorable John Kline

Members of the California Congressional Delegation
The Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog
Douglas Heller of Consumer Watchdog, +1-310-392-0522 ext. 309

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS262369+29-Oct-2009+PRN20091029

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Lockerbie Megrahi Lifespan Row

Lockerbie row reignited as Megrahi exceeds life expectancy when released

Three months after the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, American families of victims question medical advice

Ewen MacAskill in Washington, Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent, Ian Black, Middle East editor
guardian.co.uk | 20 November 2009

Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is taken from Greenock prison to Glasgow airport. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Three months after the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the families of American victims of the Lockerbie bombing have reignited a row over the medical advice that allowed him to be freed early from his 27-year sentence.

Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds from prison in Greenock on 20 August after the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, received advice that he was terminally ill with prostate cancer. It was said that the Libyan, who was convicted of carrying out the bombing, only had three months to live.

Relatives of the victims have been monitoring the release, counting down the days; today that three-month period passed.

Rosemary Wolfe, the president of Justice for Pan Am 103, which represents families of the 270 people who died, and who opposed the release, said: "It does not surprise me that he is alive and well. It was a major mistake for the Scots to let him go. It is just horrible."

Today a Democratic senator in New York called for the "immediate" return of the Libyan former intelligence agent to prison in Scotland.

"The bottom line is Megrahi should have never been released in the first place but it would be even more outrageous if he were to be able to live a long and free life after his release," said Charles Schumer, in a letter to the prime minister, Gordon Brown.

Megrahi has been treated at Tripoli's medical centre but has not been seen in public since September, when he was photographed in a wheelchair, coughing badly, looking frail and surrounded by visiting African MPs.

His brother, Mohammed, said 10 days ago Megrahi was in hospital but it is not clear whether he is still there or being cared for in the family's villa in the Dimashq suburb of the capital.

Megrahi's Scottish lawyer, Tony Kelly, said his client was alive, but refused to make any further comment.

"He's very ill," an Arab source close to the case told the Guardian. "His condition hasn't improved. It's just a matter of time."

Libya's state-controlled media has had nothing to say about the convicted Lockerbie bomber in recent weeks except to insist in October that he was alive after an incorrect media report that he had died.

The Libyan government has been anxious to avoid any further publicity since the international row over the hero's welcome given to Megrahi when he flew home.

The importance of the move was underlined by the fact that he was escorted by Saif al-Islam, the influential son and likely heir of the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The negotiations for his release were conducted by one of Libya's most respected officials.

The hope in Tripoli – as in London – is that relations with the UK, focusing on billions of pounds worth of business, investment and oil, can now develop quietly without further controversy.

In an interview earlier this month Gaddafi brushed aside a question about Megrahi's release, saying: "It is a matter of concern for the British, Scots, Americans. We are not really concerned about it."

The British and Scottish governments were braced for the row being rekindled as the three-month date was reached. They have sought to play down the damage done in the US by the release, but there is a lingering resentment in America and a renewed bout of publicity will not be welcomed by the governments.

The British embassy and its consulates in the US received hundreds of letters and phone calls expressing hostility to the release.

Conservatives in the Scottish parliament are pressing MacAskill to publish Megrahi's medical papers as well as the latest updates on his health. Under the terms of the release Megrahi is required to update officials in Scotland every month via a video link on his medical status.

Bill Aitken, the Scottish Tory justice spokesman, said: "Megrahi lost all rights to patient confidentiality when he became Britain's worst mass murderer. Scotland is still sickened by the sight of his hero's return to Tripoli."

At the time of his release MacAskill was at pains to say the three-month lifespan was an estimate. But he relied entirely on a report by Dr Andrew Fraser, the head of medical services for the Scottish prison service, stating that Megrahi's health had declined significantly in the weeks before his release. "The clinical assessment therefore is that a three-month prognosis is now a reasonable estimate for this patient," Fraser said.

Wolfe, from South Carolina, whose 20-year-old stepdaughter Miriam was killed by the bomb aboard the transatlantic flight in December 1988, said she had put in a freedom of information request seeking details of Megrahi's health but had been unsuccessful so far.

"If he was dying, I would want him to stay in prison. I would want him to be made comfortable but not let him go," she said.

Another relative, Susan Cohen, from New Jersey, whose daughter Theodora was killed on the flight, also opposed the release. "Scotland was shameful in this and the whole British government. It is absolutely sickening. I am very angry," Cohen said.

"He is in the hands of Libya and when he is dead, we want to see the body. If he had been in Scotland, we would have at least believed it when told he was dead," she said.

The US ambassador to Britain, Louis Susman, likened the Lockerbie row with Scotland to a "little fight … but you don't get divorced" when he visited Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister and Scottish National party leader, last month.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/20/megrahi-health-lockerbie-bomber

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Racial Politics, Internet Fraud & the "Mayor of West Oakland"

Also see - "Cannery: Black Panthers Strike Again"

West Oakland, internet fraud, and developers: a Lower Bottom scandal
Jonathan Bair | SF GATE
November 18 2009
[Thanks to Mister Mister for the lead]

Marcel Diallo

Today's East Bay Express tells the story of a fraudulent email defaming a West Oakland activist [entire story attached below], sent by another West Oakland activist. Earlier this year, an email purporting to come from Max Allstadt, a good-government and arts advocate who worked on live/work legislation among other issues, was sent to a variety of politicians and nonprofit leaders, using homophobic and racist language. Mr. Allstadt suspected the email came from a West Oakland entrepreneur named Marcel Diallo, whose grant request was spurned by the Community Development Block Grant Board, of which he (and InOakland's own V Smoothe) is an elected member. Several months and several lawyers later, Mr. Allstadt had strong evidence of the culprit, and told his story to the Express.

Marcel Diallo, who owns the personal internet account from which the defamatory email originated, earned a fair amount of local and even national renown for his drive to create a black cultural district in the neighborhood known as Lower Bottom (or, officially, Prescott - Oakland Point). Railing against hipsters and developers using racially-loaded language, Mr. Diallo sought to create a self-sustaining district of new homes and businesses marketed toward black professionals. Ultimately, however, his businesses failed, despite receiving almost a quarter of a million dollars in city grants, and he was bailed out by the area's largest developer, Rick Holliday of Central Station. The irony was not lost on East Bay Express reporter Robert Gammon, who wrote:

Indeed, records indicate that by late 2008, Diallo might have ended up on the street if it had not been for Rick Holliday. The local developer purchased Diallo's foreclosed home on Pine Street from Diallo's mortgage lender and then allowed Diallo to keep living there. Holliday also provided Diallo with inexpensive space in his nearby condominium development for the Black Dot Cafe. In other words, the black empowerment leader who had become one of the East Bay's loudest voices against gentrification is being propped up financially by a prominent white businessman from Emeryville.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/inoakland/detail?&entry_id=51942#ixzz0XQOWVbLg
------------------------
You Don't Know Jack
By Robert Gammon
East Bay Express | Nov. 18, 2009

There's strong evidence that Marcel Diallo Jack, the self-styled "mayor of West Oakland," perpetrated a racist Internet fraud on a local activist.

Oakland activist and political blogger Max Allstadt was the victim of a vicious Internet fraud that could have happened to anyone. A scam artist set up a fake e-mail account, disguised as Allstadt, and then sent out an ugly e-mail full of racist and homophobic invective. Allstadt was stunned, but decided to fight back, and through a series of court-ordered subpoenas, he uncovered strong evidence that the person behind the fraudulent e-mail was Marcel Diallo, a well-known black-empowerment activist and self-styled "mayor of West Oakland" who was featured earlier this year on CNN.

Interviews and public records suggest that Diallo sent the fraudulent e-mail as revenge for a vote Allstadt cast while serving on a West Oakland city advisory panel. A nonprofit that Diallo controls had requested a $150,000 grant from the panel. Public records indicate that Diallo desperately needed the money after losing at least three properties to foreclosure. But Allstadt voted with a majority of the panel to turn Diallo down. After the vote, Allstadt said Diallo angrily confronted him and threatened him.

Determining who sent the fraudulent e-mail was anything but easy. The fraudster set up an e-mail account with Google under the name, MaxAllstadt@gmail.com, but the Internet giant refused to disclose the identity of the scam artist without a subpoena. So Allstadt, a carpenter by trade, borrowed some money, hired lawyers, and filed a libel suit against unnamed defendants. "Luckily, I had the resources that allowed me to borrow the money," he said in a recent interview. "If I hadn't, I would have had to just sit there and take it."

The information provided by Google revealed only that the fraudster had set up the e-mail account while using an Internet connection from Comcast. So Allstadt's lawyers subpoenaed the cable provider. But after being contected by Comcast, Diallo's attorney, Raymond Willis, intervened in the case in an attempt to block the subpoena, saying he represented Black Dot Artists, a nonprofit that Diallo runs out of his West Oakland home. However, the judge allowed the subpoena to go forward, and Comcast revealed that MaxAllstadt@gmail.com was set up using an account established and maintained by Diallo, according to legal documents provided by Allstadt.

Neither Diallo nor his lawyer returned phone calls for this story. But in court documents, Willis argued that anyone could have sent the racist e-mail because he said it came from a wireless account that's available to the public at Diallo's Black Dot Cafe. If true, then the wireless access also was probably available to others in the immediate vicinity. However, Google revealed that the person who set up the e-mail account did it at 2:47 a.m., so it likely didn't come from the cafe because it isn't open at that hour. In addition, the cafe and Diallo's nearby home are in a sparsely populated neighborhood, thereby severely restricting the number of people who could have used the wireless access — and known Allstadt. It also should be noted that Willis maintained in court documents that the Internet account belonged to Black Dot Artists, but the Comcast records showed that it was registered to Diallo, personally, at his home.

Moreover, public records raise serious doubts about Diallo's truth telling over the years, at a time when his various enterprises have been awarded at least $250,000 in city funds. For starters, the spoken-word poet's real name isn't Marcel Diallo; it's Marcel Diallo Jack. And for the past decade, records strongly indicate that the "mayor of West Oakland" has been living — at least part-time — in an apartment on the other side of town. Since 2000, he has been registered to vote at an apartment on Park Boulevard near Interstate 580, and county records show that he voted at a polling place just off Park in last November's election.

Public records also show that by the time that Allstadt and Diallo had their alleged run-in early this year, Diallo's financial world was crumbling. Among the three properties he lost to foreclosure by late 2008 was his sometime home on Pine Street near the Port of Oakland. Plus, according to court records, he had been evicted from his Park Boulevard apartment for failure to pay rent.

It was a startling turnaround for the West Oakland artist. At the beginning of the decade, he started buying up property in the far reaches of West Oakland. His plan was to establish a black-cultural district in the traditional "lower bottoms" neighborhood. "I think he was really trying to build up that part of the city," said City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel, who represents West Oakland and said Diallo and his friends have "an entrepreneurial spirit."

Over the years, Diallo has preached black empowerment while denouncing gentrification and railing against young white hipsters. Although some viewed him as little more than a divisive race baiter, his message drew followers, especially among artists, young progressives, and the city's black establishment. He was featured favorably in stories in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, and the East Bay Express. In 2008, Mayor Ron Dellums appointed him to the city's cultural arts commission. And this summer, he made national news when CNN profiled him.

But public records indicate that he never had the financial wherewithal to keep his fledgling black-cultural district alive. From 2004 to 2006, he purchased several West Oakland homes at the height of the housing boom. It soon became apparent that he couldn't pay his many mortgages, despite the financial grants he had received from the city over the years for after-school arts programs.

In 2007, mortgage lenders foreclosed on two of his homes after he failed to make his monthly payments. And a year later, he lost his home on Pine Street to foreclosure. But he was stubborn. Court records show that two of his lenders were forced to take him court in order to get a judge to legally evict him from their property. His landlord on Park Boulevard also sued him for eviction when he stopped paying his rent.

Indeed, records indicate that by late 2008, Diallo might have ended up on the street if it had not been for Rick Holliday. The local developer purchased Diallo's foreclosed home on Pine Street from Diallo's mortgage lender and then allowed Diallo to keep living there. Holliday also provided Diallo with inexpensive space in his nearby condominium development for the Black Dot Cafe. In other words, the black empowerment leader who had become one of the East Bay's loudest voices against gentrification is being propped up financially by a prominent white businessman from Emeryville.

As Diallo's fortunes plummeted, Max Allstadt's were on the rise. The young white activist had moved to West Oakland several years earlier and hooked up with a group of friends who were challenging the neighborhood's traditional black and progressive power structure. Allstadt's clique includes Sean Sullivan, who ran unsuccessfully against Nadel in the 2008 council primary, and Rebecca Schneider, a city employee who operates the blog ABetterOakland.com under the pseudonym, VSmoothe. Allstadt himself is a guest blogger and frequent commenter on Schneider's site, (and also has posted several strongly worded criticisms of this reporter in comments at EastBayExpress.com). He also is politically active and won a spot last year on the West Oakland Community Development Block Grant board, which recommends financial grants to worthy nonprofits.

Allstadt's alleged clash with Diallo occurred in March of this year after the poet asked the block grant board for city money for his West Oakland urban farm project, Village Bottoms Farms. According to city records, Diallo's nonprofit requested a $152,000 city grant over two years. But at the March 14 meeting of the board, Allstadt and his friends instead voted to award city funding to an established urban farming nonprofit, City Slicker Farms.

In court documents, Allstadt alleged that Diallo was angry about the vote. "You're in trouble man, you voted against the people," Diallo said, according to a statement Allstadt filed in Alameda County Superior Court in an effort to obtain a restraining order against Diallo. According to Allstadt's filing, Diallo also said: "You're not going to be comfortable walking around your block. ... You're not going to be comfortable in West Oakland. I'll make sure of it."

Twelve days later, the racist e-mail was sent from Diallo's Comcast account to numerous people across the city, including local politicians, according to court records. Nadel told Full Disclosure that she received a copy. The e-mail was obviously intended to make people believe it came from Allstadt. Besides bearing his name, it mentioned the block grant board and ABetterOakland.com. It also mentioned "Mr. West Oakland himself," in an apparent reference to Diallo. It derisively referred to gays as "queens" and blacks as "sambos" and "jigaboos." It concluded by stating: "It's high time we Drained the Bay of Black People."

In an interview, Allstadt said he first learned of the e-mail when a friend phoned him about it. "My heart was pounding; I was shocked," he said. "I was also kind of scared. To be framed for being something that I'm not, especially living in a town that has ethnic tensions, it's potentially dangerous." Allstadt also was worried that the e-mail would destroy his reputation because it had been blind-copied to an unknown number of politicians and political activists.

Allstadt said he immediately suspected that Diallo had sent the fraudulent e-mail because of his block grant vote and their alleged confrontation. But it took months for him to uncover the evidence that points toward the 37-year-old Diallo. Finally, when he discovered that the e-mail came from Diallo's Internet account, Allstadt approached the Express to tell his story.

As for Diallo, his fortunes continued to nosedive after not receiving the grant. One bright spot came in May, when the Oakland City Council awarded him $50,000 to seismically upgrade his Black New World social club down the block from his Pine Street residence. The grant, however, appears questionable, considering that the building is a rusted, corrugated metal shack with at least one large hole in the side. As for Village Bottoms Farms, it's a gated vacant lot, and the only thing that appears to resemble a farm is a mid-size planter with some tomato vines in it.

In May, the state also placed a $13,125 lien against Diallo for failing to pay California taxes, county records show. And on October 30, two of Diallo's mortgage lenders recorded filings with the county, saying that they were going to sell two of his properties — the Black New World social club and Village Bottom Farms — at a foreclosure auction this week on the courthouse steps. It's unclear what will happen to the city's $50,000 grant if Diallo loses the Black New World to foreclosure, too.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/you-dont-know-jack/Content?oid=1428761

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GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx used the Phrase "Tar Baby" on the House Floor

By Paul Bedard | usnews.com | November 19, 2009

" ... Foxx had used the term 'tar baby' on the House floor and had suggested that the murder of gay student Matthew Shepard was not a hate crime. ... "

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/washington-whispers/2009/11/19/gops-foxx-republicans-passed-civil-rights-act.html

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