Don't Look at the Flash

[Guest guest]

> Wed, 08 Sep 2004 01:47:11 -0400

> palast

> Don't Look at the Flash

 

>

> DON'T LOOK AT THE FLASH

> September 8, 2004

> by Greg Palast

>

> On September 11, 2001, we Americans were the victims

> of a terrible attack.

>

> By September 12, we became the suspects.

>

> Not one single U.S. citizen hijacked a plane, yet

> President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft,

> through powers seized and codified in the USA

> PATRIOT Act, fingered 270 million of us for

> surveillance, for searches, for tracking, for

> watching.

>

> And who was going to play Anti-Santa, watching to

> see when we've been good or bad? A guy named Derek

> Smith.

>

> And that made September 11, 2001 Derek's lucky day.

>

> Even before the spying work could begin, there were

> all those pieces of people to collect - tubes marked

> " DM " (for " Disaster Manhattan " ) - from which his

> company, ChoicePoint Inc, would extract DNA for

> victim identification, work for which the firm would

> receive $12 million from New York City's government.

>

> Maybe Smith, like the rest of us, grieved at the

> murder of innocent friends and countrymen. As for

> the 12-million-dollar corpse identification fee,

> that's chump change to the $4 billion corporation

> Smith had founded only four years earlier in

> Alpharetta, Georgia.

>

> Nevertheless, for Smith's ChoicePoint Inc., Ground

> Zero would become a profit center lined with gold.

>

> As the towers fell, ChoicePoint's stock rose; and

> from Ground Zero, contracts gushed forth from War on

> Terror fever. Why? Because this outfit is holding

> no less 16 billion records on every living and dying

> being in the USA. They're the Little Brother with

> the filing system when Big Brother calls.

>

> ChoicePoint's quick route to no-bid spy contracts

> was not impeded by the fact that the company did

> something for George W. Bush that the voters would

> not: select him as our president.

>

> Here's how they did it. Before the 2000 election,

> ChoicePoint unit Database Technologies, held a $4

> million no-bid contract under the control of Florida

> Secretary of State Katherine Harris, to identify

> felons who had illegally registered to vote. The

> ChoicePoint outfit altogether fingered 94,000

> Florida residents. As it turned out, less than 3,000

> had a verifiable criminal record; almost everyone on

> the list had the right to vote.

>

> The tens of thousands of " purged " citizens had

> something in common besides their innocence: The

> list was, in the majority, made up of African

> Americans and Hispanics, overwhelmingly Democratic

> voters whose only crime was V.W.B: Voting While

> Black. And that little ethnic cleansing operation,

> conducted by Governor Jeb Bush's gang with

> ChoicePoint's aid, determined the race in which

> Harris named Bush the winner by 537 votes.

>

> To say that ChoicePoint is in the " data " business is

> utterly to miss their market concept: These guys are

> in the Fear Industry. Secret danger lurks

> everywhere. Al Qaeda's just the tip of the iceberg.

> What about the pizza delivery boy? ChoicePoint

> hunted through a sampling of them and announced that

> 25 percent had only recently come out of prison.

> " What pizza do you like? " asks CEO Smith. " At what

> price? Are you willing to take the risk?... "

>

> War fever opened up a whole new market for the Fear

> Industry.

>

> And now Mr. Smith wants your blood. ChoicePoint is

> the biggest supplier of DNA to the FBI's " CODIS "

> system. And, one company insider whispered to me,

> " Derek [smith] told me that it is his hope to build

> a database of DNA samples from every person in the

> United States. "

>

> For now, Smith keeps this scheme under wraps,

> fearing " resistance " from the public. Instead,

> Smith pushes " ChoicePoint Cares " - taking DNA

> samples to hunt for those missing kids on milk

> cartons. It's for, " the mothers of this country who

> are wrestling with threats " - you know, the pizza

> guy from Al Queda, the cult kidnappers. In other

> words, ChoicePoint's real product, like our

> President's, is panic.

>

> In Hollywood, Jack Nicholson picked up the

> zeitgeist: " If I were an Arab American I would

> insist on being profiled. This is not the time for

> civil rights. "

>

> Maybe Jack's right: screw rights, we want safety.

>

> But wait, Jack. We're both old farts who can

> remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1962, the

> Russians were going to drop The Big One on us. But

> we didn't have to worry, Mrs. Gordon told us, if we

> just got under the desk, covered our necks. And

> she'd warned, it will all be OK as long as we,

> " Don't look at the flash! "

>

> ChoicePoint's Smith admonishes that, if we‚d only

> had his databases humming at the airports on

> September 11, the hijackers, who used their own

> names, would have been barred from boarding.

> However, experts inform me that Osama no longer

> checks in as " Mr. bin Laden, " even at the cost of

> losing his frequent flyer miles.

>

> ChoicePoint's miles of files, the FBI's CODIS

> system, taking off your shoes at the airport, Code

> Purple days, the whole new Star-Spangled KGB'ing of

> America is the new " Duck and Cover. "

>

> Thank you, ChoicePoint. Thank you, Mr. Ashcroft.

> Thank you, Mr. Bush. We're safe now, as long as we

> don't look at the flash!

>

> ****

>

> Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times

> bestseller, " The Best Democracy Money Can Buy " and

> " Joker's Wild: Dubya's Trick Deck " - investigative

> regime change cards from Seven Stories Press. All

> are available here:

> http://www.gregpalast.com/store.htm

>

> This month, Palast will release, " Bush Family

> Fortunes, " the film based on his investigative

> reports for BBC television. View a 2-minute preview

> at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

>

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