Piracy: It's As American As Apple Pie

I recently began reading Wealth and Democracy, a Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips. In the first couple of dozen pages, Phillips describes one of the most incredible open secrets I've ever come across. Many of the original American fortunes were accumulated through piracy on the high seas. Theft. Terrorism. Swindling.

Look into it. This is jaw dropping information. (Well, it was to me.) It's not disputed. It's undoubtedly real. Sure, you may have heard about England's Elizabethan era piracy, but what about post Revolution America!? Phillips borrows a quote from Harry S. Truman to open his book:

"The only thing new in the world is the history that you don't know."

Nope, we weren't absent during those wasted decades spent in one school or another. This information wasn't presented to us because it doesn't fit in with the popular pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps bullshit mythology we are fed as Americans. The fact of the matter is that fortunes are accumulated by swindling, with force of arms and with the complicity---and or overt support---of the regime in power. This is not a controversial statement at all. Spend a couple of hours reading and you will come to the same shocking conclusion.

Take a look at this brief except from Privateering, the American Revolution, and the Rules of War: The United States Was Born in "Terrorism" and Piracy By Jesse Lemisch:

The rules of war are laid down by militarily strong nations. These nations define their modes of making war as legal (although they do not always abide by their own rules), while criminalizing alternate modes of warfare rising from the limited strength of the militarily weak. During the American Revolution, the U.S. was militarily weak. It compensated for that weakness at sea by engaging in a very effective form of legalized piracy called privateering. Privateers were denounced by the British in ways that resonate with the denunciation of terrorists that we hear these days. When these Americans were captured by the British, they were not recognized as legitimate prisoners of war but were rather held in special camps, with reason to expect they would be hanged. After the Revolution, the U.S., as a small-navy nation, continued to cling to this mode of warfare, and refused to abide by international bans of privateering until it became a large-navy power and finally rejected privateering.

Note the significance of the last sentence in the above passage. After a method of swindling becomes too obvious, appearances need to be maintained. Institutionalizing the criminal enterprises with official bureaucracies, corporations and standard operating procedures masks the opaque darkness lying just beneath the surface. Needless to say, people who accumulate obscene wealth through despicable means don't appreciate upstarts trying to weasel in on the action.

To wit:

Tampa Man Ordered to Pay $180 Million for Satellite TV Piracy

His defense should have been that he was simply following in the fine traditions of Anglo American commerce:

A man who schemed to steal satellite television signals now has something much bigger than a cable bill to pay -- a whopping $180 million restitution order on which he is to make $500 monthly payments.

A full payback would take 30,000 years.

Steven R. Frazier also will serve five years in federal prison on a conspiracy charge. Frazier, 28, had pleaded guilty to a scheme to manufacture and sell devices that would decrypt satellite television signals and allow people to get premium service free.

Frazier's problem was that he didn't think big enough.

Iraq was a vast, virtually undefended, piggy bank sitting in the middle of a desert. The U.S. and Britain, the neo-Anglo American privateers, ganged up together, sought out their booty and simply took it by force.

Aaargh, Maty! Hoist the Jolly Roger. Pull her amidships and make ready to take on, cash, gold, priceless artifacts and, of course, lots of oil.

Aaargh!

The only thing new in the world is the history that you don't know.

P.S. Can you guess what the early American "privateers" (people who stole property from others on the high seas at gun point) did with their fortunes?

They opened banks.

Recommended donation $2.

posted by Kevin at 8:32 PM

CIA Pulls "Centrifuge" Pictures :.

Someone needed their vegetable juicer parts back. That story reeked so bad that I had to clip a clothes pin on my nose just to write about it:

The URL provided six pictures of alleged nuclear-materials-processing centrifuge drawings and actual pieces with explanatory text. Since then the six pictures have been removed. Here is the text with the six removed pictures.

June 26, 2003
CIA Statement on Recently Acquired Iraqi Centrifuge Equipment

The head of Iraq�s pre-1991 centrifuge uranium enrichment program, Dr. Mahdi Shukur Ubaydi, approached U.S. officials in Baghdad and turned over a volume of centrifuge documents and components he had hidden in his garden from inspectors since 1991. Dr. Ubaydi said he was interviewed by IAEA inspectors - most recently in 2002 - but did not reveal any of this.

Dr. Ubaydi told us that these items, blue prints and key centrifuge pieces, represented a complete template for what would be needed to rebuild a centrifuge uranium enrichment program. He also claimed this concealment was part of a secret, high-level plan to reconstitute the nuclear weapons program once sanctions ended.

This case illustrates the extreme challenge we face in Iraq as we search for evidence of WMD programs that were designed to elude detection by international inspectors.

We are working with Dr. Ubaydi to evaluate the equipment and documents he provided us.

We are hopeful that Dr. Ubaydi�s example will encourage other Iraqis with knowledge of Saddam�s WMD programs to come forward.
posted by Kevin at 1:42 PM

Bill Gates Takes U.S. Taxpayers for $471 Million in a Single Swindle :.

I wonder how many of these U.S. Army machines will be Longhorn/Athens DRM enabled?

This commentary from Slashdot sums it up:

I never figured out if it was corruption, or just incompetence. These machines are DEFINITELY being purchased with Windows licenses already in place. Microsoft basically tells the government rep: "if you want a decent volume purchasing agreement from us you have to agree to license Windows for every PC separately". For this you get N copies of Windows, N copies of Office, and a FEW copies of some backend software like Exchange, IIS, and a few MSDN subscriptions thrown in for good measure. The Microsoft reps moan and groan and convince the government people that they have really made a great deal. The article mentions an 89 percent profit margin...I'd guess its closer to 98 percent. You don't even get a copy of the media for each machine. A few hundred CDs and an signed piece of paper and another Microsoft sales rep laughs all the way to the bank. Congratulations American taxpayer.
posted by Kevin at 2:41 PM

Wave Wand: *poof* Nuke Component Unearthed in Baghdad Back Yard :.

The CIA showed CNN parts of what the CIA says is an Iraqi gas centrifuge. And the location of this "Exclusive" briefing: CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia...

Oh my.

I'm almost starting to feel sorry for those imbecile spooks. They're not even able to make up interesting stories anymore. But I'm guessing that the average house cat knows more about nuclear weapons than the average American. Watch them---the average Americans, not the cats---wave their flags and say, "Yep, we told ya so. Dem Eye-Rakkies was gonna blow us up somethin' awful! Good thing we done blowed 'em up first! Yee HAAAA!"

Isn't it interesting that the CNN article gives the impression that this piece of metal---which looks like the grinder plate from a decent quality vegetable juicer---could be critical to building a nuclear weapon?

Let's assume, for a moment, that the chunk of metal on display at the GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH CENTER FOR CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE is actually a component of a gas centrifuge. And, let's assume, for a moment, that the thing was actually recovered in Iraq. Ok, so far? Well, this is where the story gets weird. I won't mention how many gas centrifuges would have to be running continuously, for YEARS, before enough enriched uranium could be recovered to make a single nuclear weapon. You wouldn't believe me if I told you, so I'll let The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists say it:

Iraq had been using two methods: One program involved building giant �calutrons,� a clumsy technology the United States had abandoned in the 1940s.... The second method�and certainly the modern method of choice�was to build a �cascade� of centrifuges to separate the fissile constituents of uranium from the non-fissile. A cascade consists of thousands of centrifuges, all of which must be able to withstand spinning at extraordinarily high speed.

Inspectors discovered that although the Iraqis had brought in centrifuge experts from Germany and purchased specialty steel from German and Swiss companies, they had spoiled most of the material�failing to shape it properly or otherwise maltreating it. Essentially, the Iraqi centrifuge program was a failure. And if the Iraqis were to depend on producing weapon material through the centrifuge process�rather than trying to obtain it on the black market�experts say it would probably take five or six years.

CNN deserves a public face slapping for this one:

The CIA has in its hands the critical parts of a key piece of Iraqi nuclear technology -- parts needed to develop a bomb program -- that were dug up in a back yard in Baghdad, CNN has learned.

The parts were unearthed by Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi who had hidden them in his back yard under a rose bush 12 years ago under orders from Qusay Hussein and Saddam Hussein's then son-in-law, Hussein Kamel.

U.S. officials emphasized this was not evidence Iraq had a nuclear weapon -- but it was evidence the Iraqis concealed plans to reconstitute their nuclear program as soon as the world was no longer looking.

The parts and documents Obeidi gave the CIA were shown exclusively to CNN at CIA headquarters in Virginia.
posted by Kevin at 3:01 AM

Music Industry Desperation :.

The spectacle of seeing evil, greedy people in suits and ties squealing can only be described as delicious. It's probably not good for one's karmic load to take so much pleasure from this, even though the people in trouble are macro scale criminals. But hey, everything in moderation. Watch what happens when their stupid lawsuits do nothing to stop the file traders. The state will be called into action to rob people at gun point in order to recover the "lost revenue":

A recording-industry trade group said Wednesday it plans to sue hundreds of individuals who illegally distribute copyright songs over the Internet, expanding its antipiracy fight into millions of homes.

The Recording Industry Association of America said it hopes to curb illegal song downloading by tracking down the heaviest users of popular "peer to peer" services like Kazaa and suing them for thousands of dollars in damages.

"We're going to begin taking names and preparing lawsuits against peer-to-peer network users who are illegally making available a substantial number of music files to millions of other computer users," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a conference call.
posted by Kevin at 2:57 AM

Using Donations to Buy Dangerous Books

A couple of generous Cryptogon contributors enabled me to purchase these books. I hope that you will check out these incredible works for yourself:

Building with Earth: A Guide to Flexible-Form Earthbag Construction by Paulina Wojciechowska

The Encyclopedia of Country Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book by Carla Emery

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour

The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure by Joseph C. Jenkins
Note: Most of this book is available online.

Thank you so much!
posted by Kevin at 2:43 AM

Orwell Milestone Sees Little Fanfare :.

The centenary of George Orwell's birth passed with little fanfare Wednesday, but the author of some of the most chilling vocabulary of the 20th century has become as much a part of Britain's culture as its closed-circuit cameras and favorite reality TV program.

A great many of the millions who tune in to Channel 4's "Big Brother" night after night - watching ordinary people sleep, eat and argue - probably have not read "Nineteen Eighty-Four," Orwell's 1949 vision of a totalitarian society where people are kept in line with the warning: "Big Brother is watching you."

CCTV scans shopping centers, parking lots, offices and street corners in Britain's cities and picturesque towns, an omnipresent security tool.

Orwellian, some would say.

"Nineteen Eighty-Four," published the year before Orwell died of tuberculosis in 1950, was a bitter look at a totalitarian state. In it, Orwell created a Ministry of Truth, the Thought Police and Newspeak - including such lasting terms as "unperson," "thoughtcrime" and "doublethink" - "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

His reputation was first won with the 1945 novel "Animal Farm," a satire of Stalinist communism, depicted as a farm where the animals take over the barnyard. It, too, contributed a lasting phrase to the language: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, born June 25, 1903, in Bengal, India to an upper-middle-class British civil servant. He was educated at England's prestigious school Eton but did not go to university.
posted by Kevin at 2:19 AM

DOD Attempted To Plant WMD In Iraq :.

I figured it was something like this. Take it with a grain a salt. Take it any way you can:

In a world exclusive, Al Martin Raw.com has published a news story about a Department of Defense whistleblower who has revealed that a US covert operations team had planted �Weapons of Mass Destruction� (WMDs) in Iraq � then �lost� them when the team was killed by so-called �friendly fire.�

The Pentagon whistleblower, Nelda Rogers, is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the Defense Department. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq.

According to Al Martin Raw.com, �Ms.Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense.

The information that is being leaked out is information �obtained while she was in Germany heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel, involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the Department of Defense and/or the Central Intelligence Agency.

�According to Ms. Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq,� reports Al Martin Raw.com, an online subscriber-based news/analysis service which provides �Political, Economic and Financial Intelligence.�

Al Martin is a retired Lt. Commander (US Navy), the author of a memoir called �The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider, " and he is considered one of America's foremost experts on corporate and government fraud.

Ms. Rogers reports that this particular covert operation team was manned by ex-military personnel and that �the unit was paid through the Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, which is also very commonplace.�

According to Al Martin Raw.com, �the Ag Department has often been used as a paymaster on behalf of the CIA, DIA, and NSA and others."

Accordng to the Al Martin Raw.com story, another aspect of Ms. Rogers' report concerns a covert operation which was to locate the assets of Saddam Hussein and his family, including cash, gold bullion, jewelry and assorted valuable antiquities.

The problem became evident when �the operation in Iraq involved 100 people, all of whom apparently are now dead, having succumbed to so-called �friendly fire.� The scope of this operation included the penetration of the Central Bank of Iraq, other large commercial banks in Baghdad, the Iraqi National Museum and certain presidential palaces where monies and bullion were secreted.�

�They identified about $2 billion of cash in US dollars, another $150 million in Euros, in physical banknotes, and about another $100 million in sundry foreign currencies ranging from Yen to British Pounds,� reports Al Martin.

�These people died, mostly in the same place in Baghdad, supposedly from a stray cruise missile or a combination of missiles and bombs that went astray,� Martin continues. �There were supposedly 76 who died there and the other 24 died through a variety of 'friendly fire,' 'mistaken identity,' and some of them � their whereabouts are simply unknown.�

Ms. Rogers� story sound like an updated 21st Century version of Treasure Island meets Ali Baba and the Bush Cabal Thieves, writes Martin.

�This was a contingent of CIA/ DoD operatives, but it was really the CIA that bungled it, Ms. Rogers said. They were relying on the CIA�s ability to organize an effort to seize these assets and to be able to extract these assets because the CIA claimed it had resources on the ground within the Iraqi army and the Iraqi government who had been paid. That turned out to be completely bogus. As usual.�

�CIA people were supposed to be handling it,� Martin continues. �They had a special �black (unmarked) aircraft to fly it out. But none of that happened because the regular US Army showed up, stumbled onto it and everyone involved had to scramble.

These new Iraqi �Asset Seizures� go directly to the New US Ruling Junta. The US Viceroy in Iraq Paul Bremer is reportedly drinking Saddam Hussein�s $2000 a bottle Napoleon era brandy, smoking his expensive Davidoff cigars and he has even furnished his Baghdad office with Saddam�s Napolean era antique furniture

The Iraq Debacle Du Jour has evidently been extensively documented by the DIA debriefing teams with �extensive tape recordings of interviews with the Iraqi returnees, the covert operatives (as well as their affidavits).�

Al Martin Raw.com has dubbed this �Operation Skim Iraq.�
posted by Kevin at 12:16 AM

"Enemy Combatant" Was FBI Informant :.

The American al-Qa'eda operative unmasked last week as having planned to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge was first detained in March, and has been used by the FBI for months as a double agent, it was reported yesterday.

US authorities waited until last week to announce a plea bargain struck with Iyman Faris, a Pakistani-born lorry driver ordered to scout out terror targets, including the New York landmark.

They did not say that Faris, who was also ordered to study ultralight aircraft, and the possibility of derailing a train into a chemical storage facility in Washington, had been under FBI control for months.
posted by Kevin at 11:41 PM

Is It Random Noise, Or Is Something Coming Down?

What follows is pure speculation, and might simply be a collection of random events. I have no firm information on anything. I'm nervous. I feel like something is about to happen, so I'm ruminating in the hope that some of you guys can clarify, confirm or disconfirm. What follows is presented in no particular order.

This is long, so here are the bullet points in case you don't want to read it all:

* Stock Market Rising on Dumb Money Infusion
* Cyberwar: Weird Network Scan/Pre-Attack Underway Now
* Missing Boeing 727
* Greek Special Forces Intercept 700+ Tons of Explosives
* "Fatal Blow" to the "Media Serpent"?
* The Fourth of July is Approaching

Here are the details:

Stock Market Rising on Dumb Money Infusion

Sheep (retail investors) are buying stocks. Unemployment is bad and getting worse. The housing market is beginning to stumble. When I drive around, EVERY office building has FOR LEASE signs out front. The summer is statistically the worst time to be in the market, yet the whole damn show has been rallying. Has the recent run up been a set up for yet another clock cleaning?

It's looking like the Fed is going to cut rates one last time. The previous 13 cuts have done nothing to turn this ship around. That might be because interest rate cuts don't address the main problem, which is that companies don't want to pay employees a salary that would allow those employees to buy the goods and services the companies sell. How can the rate cuts "Jump Start" the economy if companies are laying people off? The argument that lower interest rates encourages companies to hire people is bullcrap.

People with money to invest, discouraged by the 1/4% interest rates paid on cash, might be rolling the dice on stocks in an attempt to earn a better return. Watch out, brother.

From Yahoo news:

There is no denying it: the bull is back. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has risen 13 percent this year, while the Nasdaq composite is up 23 percent. Individual investors are leading the charge back into the stock market, according to some brokerage firm executives who look closely at trading behavior.

"What we're seeing is the retail investor has been getting back into the market since the last couple weeks of March in a pretty broad manner," said R. Jarrett Lilien, the president and chief operating officer of the E*Trade Group, an online financial services business, who added that he was surprised by the shift. "There was a big question: When will broad-based retail come back to this market? All of us thought it would take years of healing time."

Cyberwar: Weird Network Scan/Pre-Attack Underway Now

Back on June 16, NF, a long time Cryptogon reader, made me aware of the following information that was posted on Steve Quale's website:

June 16
Steve shares an email from a P.I. warning of recent escalating Internet chatter regarding Net attacks in progress and to come. He claims that this industry wide attack is from a foreign cyber terrorism group. It has allegedly obtained e-mail addresses of users industry wide from a variety of sources, including several other database companies similar to his own private investigation business. As a result, e-mail addresses of their customers and other database companies have been receiving false or malicious attempts to access accounts for the purpose of identification theft. This investigator feels there will be a concerted cyber attack in conjunction with a "9-11 sized event". Steve shares this is not a probing attack to check defenses, but an actual attack. Steve comments on the impressive stock market rise today - the largest in the past 12 months closing up 200+ pts. at 9318.96 stating it's no coincidence. Major manipulation transpiring.

I didn't go public with this because I wasn't able to confirm anything. I saw no evidence of an ongoing attack.

Today, there is evidence that some sort of organized network reconnaissance is taking place that may or may not be related to the information above. The application that is doing this does not spread via the normal channels of email and web server exploits; it must be installed by some local process. When I read this, it sounded to me like some application might have downloaded a trojan horse via its "Auto Update" functionality and that renegade code is now running. It's easy to see how this would work. Microsoft operating systems are routinely downloading "critical" patches from Microsoft. Apple recently force fed shit down its users throats when OSX's automatic update knee capped the iTunes application.

Additionally, the trojan is taking great care to mask its activities with noise. It appears to be phoning home, but just where home happens to be is not clear. When it fails to phone home---when it fails to deliver its scan results to its handler---it deletes itself. In other words, the code's author wants it to exist in the wild as long as possible by evading detection... But for what?

The goal might me to identify systems that are open to attack via some other known or unknown exploit, one not necessarily related to the current activity. Once these vulnerable systems are identified, an unstoppable blitzkrieg attack could be unleashed across the Internet in a matter of seconds. It would happen very fast because all of the targets are known in advance.

Nerds are investigating. They have dubbed it Stumbler (an unfortunate, yet obvious reference to Netstumbler, the popular Wi-Fi network discovery tool):

Intrusec Alert: 55808 Trojan Analysis

Trojan Picks Up Steam, Baffles Experts

"Stumbler" Distributed Stealth Scanning Network

Missing Boeing 727

We've all been hearing about the missing 727 from Angola. There are a several reasons why this story absolutely REEKS:

1) The guy accused of taking the aircraft is from an aviation company in Florida. (Is it some kind of sick joke that his name happens to be Padilla? Remember accused dirty bomber, Jose?) The entire state of Florida is basically a CIA cutout operation. Covert operations (including those related to the 2000 election and 9/11) have been run out of Florida for at least 50 years.

2) The aircraft was taken in Angola. Again, Angola has been a center of CIA activity for at least 40 years.

3) The aircraft has been converted into a tanker. This could indicate that the thing is going to be turned into a guided missile with VERY large payload. An even worse scenario would be that the tanks could somehow be used to disperse VX or some other chemical or biological agent.

From ABC News:

Workers at Luanda Airport in Angola watched dumbfounded on May 25 as a Boeing 727 taxied down the runway and took off � without permission. The plane � which ABCNEWS has learned was refitted to haul diesel fuel tanks, making it a potential flying bomb � has not been seen since.

The man the U.S. government suspects of piloting the 727 is Benjamin Padilla � a U.S. citizen from Florida. Padilla, too, has vanished, and his family is worried.

See Compromised, by Terry Reed, for a description of operation SEASPRAY. The CIA and U.S. Army special forces run a secret air traffic control system that allows any aircraft to slip inside U.S. airspace undetected. I can hear the shrill screams of "Bullshit!" erupting from the peanut gallery. Yeah, well, that's how the real drug shipments move. Fake tail numbers. Insurance scams. Stolen aircraft. Cut out companies. Covert operations. Read that ABC News story and then decide for yourself if any of that sounds similar to what is described in Compromised. I don't know what that plane is being used for, but I am 100% sure that it's nothing good.

Greek Special Forces Intercept 700+ Tons of Explosives

The explosive yield from this would be easily equivalent to or greater than that of a tactical nuclear weapon. From MSNBC:

Greek special forces boarded a cargo ship carrying 750 tons of explosives Sunday and forced it to port for inspection, authorities said. The Comoros-flagged Baltic Sky was escorted by coast guard vessels to the tiny port of Platiyali, 145 miles northwest of Athens, for a "detailed search," said a statement from the Merchant Marine ministry.

"Fatal Blow" to the "Media Serpent"?

Chris, over at Back2Iraq, just put this out:

The Middle East Media Research Institute is reporting that Al Qa�ida chief of training Abu Muhammad Al-Ablaj issued a communiqu� to the Kuwaiti paper Al-Watan saying that Al Qa�ida is about to deal a �fatal blow� to the �head of the international media serpent that serves the American whims and interests.� (Fox News? New York Times? CNN?) He also claims that Al Qa�ida has an independent brigade operating in Iraq.

This scares me to death, since a �fatal blow� could mean a major (radiological?) strike on Times Square in New York, around which most major media in the country have clustered�including the magazine I do work for.

The Fourth of July is Approaching

Let it suffice to say that July 4 holds special significance to people who don't realize that the U.S. has already been taken over and destroyed from within. Also, large numbers of these people will be outdoors, at night. Explosions associated with chemical/biological/radiological weapons might be mistaken for fireworks.

Well, that's all, folks. Keep your eyes and ears open and let me know if you learn anything.
posted by Kevin at 12:07 PM

Permaculture Seedballs Seized by Sacramento Police in Dawn Raid :.

Organic gardening = Terrorism?

This morning at around 7:00 a.m., Sacramento police officers paid a visit to the WTO mobiization Welcome Center and seized over 100 permaculture seed-balls. The police claimed that the seedballs were illegal under statute 12.48.090, which is "Possession of prohibited weapons during a parade or demonstration". The fact that the seedballs were sitting idly at the edge of the parking lot, drying in the sun, rather than being part of a "parade or demonstration" was an irrelevant distinction to the police.
posted by Kevin at 11:58 AM

Takedown: French Anti-Globalisation Leader Jose Bove Jailed :.

If you stand for clean food, you better get ready to see the inside of a jail cell:

He has become a standard bearer of the movement against economic imperialism and his incarceration is likely to boost his popularity among opponents of globalisation.

The mustachioed 49-year-old sheep farmer has become increasingly known around the world for his protests, which have targeted junk food, US trade tariffs and the risks to the environment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

He spent a month and a half behind bars last year for taking part in the demolition of a half-built McDonald's restaurant in Millau in 1999.

The 10-month sentence he began serving on Sunday was the accumulation of two convictions -- four months for destroying a stock of GM seeds at a site in France owned by Swiss biotech giant Novartis in 1998 and six months for ruining GM rice plants at a laboratory in Montpellier in 1999.

The sudden police raid sparked a spontaneous protest outside Millau police station, where around 50 of Bove's supporters set a hedge on fire and hung up a banner says "GMOs - stop crackdowns on unions". Another demonstration was planned to take place outside the Villeneuve-les-Maguelone prison at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT).
posted by Kevin at 11:54 AM