

              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 1  Num. 73
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")


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The local all-volunteer radio station, WEFT 90.1 FM, has a show 
that runs from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. every Saturday (Saturn's Day) 
morning. The show, called "News from Neptune," takes its title 
from a remark made by some television producer when asked about 
getting Noam Chomsky to appear on a show: "What? We can't have 
him on. That guy's from Neptune." The idea is, that if you try to 
talk seriously about a subject, beyond the pre-arranged, 
allowable limits already put in place by the mass media, you are 
going to sound (to the already brainwashed) as if you are from 
Neptune.

The following is an excerpt from the August 13, 1994, "News from 
Neptune" broadcast. Co-hosts are Carl Estabrook and Paul "The 
Truth" Muth.

[...]

CARL ESTABROOK: To comment on the crime bill: the... um, I 
actually did something I don't normally do, Paul. I sat and 
watched the debate on C-Span. I usually can't listen to these, uh 
this pond scum we have in the national legislature bat their jaws 
over things like this. But the other night, I wanted to hear this 
one simply because I was interested in checking what sort of 
report I had, uh we'd heard on the media, and the actual debate.

The whole thing is a bit of a mare's nest. The original crime 
bill, which the Clinton administration of course supported 
entirely, is a draconian piece of legislation, a repressive piece 
of legislation, something that *should* be defeated. Now what had 
happened, in its way through the Congress, is that the 
outrageousness of this bill was such that it had to be mollified 
in various ways. {1}. Various attempts to do some things um...

PAUL MUTH: The crime prevention, social spending, as it's called.

ESTABROOK: ...were added to it to try to take the edge off it. 
Exactly. And, I mean this is, you know, once again: people are 
not fools. All this trumpeting about building more jails, when 
the United States now imprisons twice as many of its citizens as 
the "Evil Empire" did at the height, I mean, the Soviet Union at 
the height of its power never imprisoned as many of its citizens. 
Never even came to, except to about 50 percent of the number of 
citizens the U.S. imprisons.

So to build more prisons is a questionable process. Anybody can 
see that. And so there was some attempt to say, "Well. We really 
do need various and sundry things that will stop the culture of 
crime." -- which is encouraged by American Capitalism. And so 
things like that were in it.

Well this was the thing that the troglodytes in the House 
objected. And the troglodytes all trooped into the well to say 
how much they objected to providing money for poor kids to play 
basketball after dark. And this became the symbol of what was 
wrong with the bill.

MUTH: "We've tried all that before. It didn't work, you know." 
Such a joke. {2}.

ESTABROOK: The bill is a terrible bill and it should be defeated, 
and the Clinton administration's a terrible administration and it 
should be defeated. So in *that* sense, the vote against the 
crime bill was good.

I *think* there's at least a chance that we're going to get back 
something worse, because of the machinations on both sides. The 
Democrats even *behaved* badly. Representative Brooks, 
apparently, "dissed" [i.e. showed disrespect to] the Republicans 
and they were all upset about *that*. I mean the real issue here 
was whether the "Texas po' boy" [i.e. Brooks] was nice to them or 
not. Um, and they also produced the actual...

MUTH: Now was this in the committee or something?

ESTABROOK: ...They actually produced the copies of this bill only 
at the very last minute! And then, uh Brooks said something 
unpleasant, to a few of these people. And that was the real issue 
here. So to see this as a triumph for democracy {3} I think is 
perhaps stretching a point. But we can hope, eh?

MUTH: Well, there's a whole lot bundled up in that. When you have 
to use a crime bill to try to get some of the aid to inner cities 
that is *so* necessary, and *so* warranted, from our earlier 
discussion. I mean, you don't have to apologize to some poor 
minority you see on the street. But it would be interesting if 
the State, uh...

ESTABROOK: Might be a place to start, yeah.

MUTH: ...well that's a personalist solution. I think it's 
actually more important for the State to actually make some 
redress.

ESTABROOK: Exactly. Exactly.

MUTH: And it's the...

ESTABROOK: The local paper [i.e. Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette], 
Paul, is full of... You know, the headline in the local sad 
excuse for a newspaper is about the sale of drugs in the high 
school. Apparently someone was selling a little righteous weed 
over in the Urbana high school, and the cops suddenly came up 
with an "anonymous wiretap." The whole thing smells to high 
heaven. It sounds to me like what the cops were doing were wire 
tapping these people. They didn't have any warrants for it, and 
so they simply said, "Oh! Look what I found! I just found an 
'anonymous wiretap.'" {4}. It just happened they had an anonymous 
wiretap with 30 or 40 voices on it which they all identified and 
busted these people. Hey, look: these guys got to prove that 
they're doing something [sarcastically] "against crime." And it's 
a lot easier to bust a 15-year-old, you know, who's smoking an 
herb, than it is to do anything that really has to do with *real* 
crime, like the... uh, what really happens in the S&L scandal, to 
take an example quite at random.

JOHN (Studio engineer): [inaudible]

ESTABROOK: [Pauses] Well, put that up, John. John just said, "Or 
the gangs on Vine and Tremont street." Now it seems to me that 
what we have in a gang culture in this country is exactly the 
sort of thing being encouraged by this society. An American 
Senator said, just after the end of the Second World War, "Look: 
We can do anything we want with the American people, if we 
*scare* them enough." Now the whole gang issue is being a way to 
*scare* people, to convince people to give up their rights, to 
convince people to support a police culture, to vote more money 
for police and more money for prisons and more money for crime 
bills -- because if you don't, "The gangs are gonna get ya." {5}.

The gangs are huddling together as for warmth. The poor and 
deprived people that, in a society which is based on killing. It 
shouldn't surprise us that these things exist. They're encouraged 
by the society.

But what's stopping them is not more Rambo-like cops, white 
suburban adventure seekers who have guns and get to go into the 
inner city and shoot black folks (which is our present way of 
dealing with it). What's going to change it is *decent* jobs at 
*decent* wages -- not minimum wage; nobody can live on minimum 
wage -- *decent* places to live, and real things for people to 
do. Not flipping burgers at McDonalds.

John, over to you.

JOHN: No, I was just gonna say, I was just gonna say that minimum 
wage isn't all that bad. Only thing is, that I have to work 2 
jobs.

ESTABROOK: Well exactly. Of course you do. Minimum wage is not 
bad if you have 2 of them.

JOHN: Exactly. It works out much better that way.

ESTABROOK: A single person just might be able to live on *twice* 
the minimum wage.

MUTH: If you don't mind not having a life.

ESTABROOK: Yeah.

MUTH: Anyway. Moving right along. I don't want to be seen as 
being partial to the Clintons but, I mean, far be it from me to 
eschew a controversial issue, even though it might characterize 
me in that way. Uh, I don't know,...

ESTABROOK: Mr. Nader strikes again?

MUTH: ...Carl, if you've been watching the [New York] *Times*, 
whether they covered the same story that the [Washington] *Post* 
had. I only had it on hearsay, which is, an interesting thing 
that, this judge Sentell, who was the head of the 3-part, 
whatever, committee that selected Starr instead of uh, the other 
Republican, had meetings with Helms and Faircloth some days 
before and that he's also the judge that let Poindexter and North 
off the hook.

ESTABROOK: Yeah. We have a faction fight going on here, Paul. And 
it's a good faction fight, because it actually... When, uh when 
there's a faction fight in the American ascendancy, amongst the 
American elites, some things *do* come out. We had a faction 
fight at the time of Watergate, and we learnt more about American 
government, people learnt more about the American government from 
*that*, than we had from a lot of people like you and me *saying* 
exactly what turned out to be clear in Watergate, after the fact.

If a faction fight does develop around the Clintons -- and I 
thoroughly hope it does -- we may learn something about it. I'm 
very glad that they've got a guy who does seem to be fairly smart 
and has an axe to grind against the Clintons to *do* this 
particular prosecution. I *commend* the 3-judge panel who, for 
the worst possible motives, have produced a man who might really 
*not* participate in a cover-up of the Clintons' activities here. 
Go to it. And while we're doing it, let's rip the top off the 
*rest* of the S&L scandal and the RTC scandal. All this business 
about whether Altman said something inappropriate to somebody on 
several different occasions has far less to do with the fact that 
the Resolution Trust Corporation [RTC], which he headed, was 
itself one of the great scandals of the last part of the 20th 
century. Let's open this stuff up.

These elites get worried. Sometimes...

MUTH: You're, you're really serious that you think that someone 
with an axe to grind like that is...

ESTABROOK: It's the best we're going to get. It's the best we're 
gonna get.

People who were after Nixon had an "axe to grind." The Watergate 
folks. Nixon was never indicted on the *real* crimes he 
perpetrated in office. When Nixon...

MUTH: He resigned before he could've because...

ESTABROOK: He was... [Contention for who will speak; both speak 
at same time] ... the indictment, the bill of impeachment went 
off. The bill of impeachment had nothing to do with the real 
crimes that Nixon had committed in office. What it had to do was 
what's properly described as a "third-rate burglary."

But the point was that Nixon had used the techniques that were 
always used: against the anti-war movement, against dissidents, 
against [the Black] Panthers, against anybody who was trying to 
make real social change in this country. He used those techniques 
against people who were within the system. And *that* couldn't be 
countenanced. Therefore Nixon had to be sent into the outer 
darkness.

Now that faction fight produced profound knowledge of the 
American government in the public at large. And that's why it's 
not repeated very often.

[...]

--------------------------<< Notes >>----------------------------
{1} Remember how Clinton shoved NAFTA down our throats. As Perot 
put it, "He opened the treasury and simply bought the vote." Will 
Clinton do the same in his attempt to revive this crime bill?
   BTW, Bill Clinton, if you're reading this: Concerned about 
crime? Take a look in the mirror.

{2} Beware of new taxes coming in the disguise of social welfare 
spending. *But*, it would be much preferred if the billions of 
dollars already at hand, wasted on the stealth bomber [See, for 
example: *Blank Check: The Pentagon Black Budget*, by Tim Weiner. 
New York: Warner Books, 1990. ISBN 0-446-51452-7. Especially 
chapter 4, "A Wing and a Prayer"], could have been used for the 
benefit of the people of this nation. That is my objection to 
socialism: It sounds nice, but (a) it is a disguise for more 
taxes and (b) it gets wasted. So little winds up going to what it 
was intended for.

{3} "...a triumph for democracy." That is, the defeat of the 
crime bill being seen as a triumph for democracy. Exactly. Who 
the hell actually *wants* this bill? I have noted the television 
media pushing the myth that "No representative would dare vote 
against this bill because it provides for 100,000 new police." 
But *really*, Is there such unilateral support for 100,000 new 
police in our lives? The TV media has been pushing this myth that 
the American people are all united in their wish for more 
friendly snoops in uniform giving us the willies as we drive by. 
But do we *all* really want this? Are we *all* going to be so 
upset if we are "denied" this great "gift" of 100,000 new police 
sniffing about?
   Another question: Are we perhaps a bit afraid to say that 
"Hell no. We don't want even *more* damn police!" You don't want 
to start getting traffic tickets, do you? You don't want to have 
them busting down your door at 4 in the morning, do you? Best to 
just nod your head and pretend that, yes, you want 100,000 more 
police.
   It's not the *representatives* who are afraid to object to 
more police. It is *us*, we the people, who have at least some 
fear of daring to openly object to it.

{4} The "anonymous wiretap". Here is a relevant quote from U.S. 
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, which I came across in a 
periodical called *Full Disclosure* (PO Box 903, Libertyville, 
Illinois 60048):

    Our government is the potent, omnipresent teacher, for 
    good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. 
    Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a 
    lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law, it invites 
    every man to come a law unto himself. It invites 
    anarchy.


{5} "...the whole gang issue is being a way to scare people, 
etc." As Michael Parenti said in one of his talks, "But *WHY*?" 
Why do they want to scare us into accepting their police state? 
Why do they want to lock more and more of us up?
   Hypothesis: Part of their tactic of enslavement is to wage a 
2-pronged assault on us. One emphasis is to restrict the "non- 
criminal" citizen's access to weapons. The other emphasis is to 
"felonize" a larger and larger proportion of the population. For 
example, now that we have the American people *by themselves*, 
with no help from Big Brother/Big Sister, cutting down on tobacco 
consumption, here comes the FDA to our "rescue." *Now*, when the 
issue is becoming irrelevant, it wants to regulate tobacco. By 
doing so, it can create a whole new class of "criminals", i.e. 
tobacco smokers. If they can felonize tobacco smokers, they can 
take away their weapons.
   Again, as Parenti has said, "But *WHY*?" Why do they want to 
enslave us? Aren't they "nice guys"? Why would they want to 
enslave us? Here is a hint: Don't expect the Nazis to be wearing 
SS uniforms this time around. Look for them to wear suits, ties, 
winning smiles, and to be seen, for example, as anchors on the 
CBS, NBC, and ABC Nightly News.

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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

