The Microcosm Post-Punk Extravaganza tour will by stopping at Northern in Olympia tomorrow (April 5, 7pm, 321 4th Ave, FREE!), so I decided to wade through some secret government documents for a Washington related edible secret. What I found is an unsurprising but disturbing incident when the state government raided the Puyallup Indian tribe over fish.
Under director J. Edgar Hoove, FBI field offices would dispatch summaries of “racial disturbances” which would be summarized and submitted to the President. The document above is excerpted from the summary for the week of 9/4/1970 – 9/10/1970.
Continue reading Washington’s Edible Secret
In the midst of the Vietnam War the American Legion hosted its national convention in Portland, OR with expected special guest, Richard Nixon. Resistance to the convention began to organize under the name People’s Army Jamboree (PAJ) in order to confront and shut down the American Legion and president Nixon.
As the People’s Army Jamboree became a national call to action everyone from the Governor of Oregon to the FBI became involved in infiltrating and attempting to shut down and side track the protesters. The media was fed rumors of looming violence that would make the 1968 DNC protests look like a walk in the park. The FBI planted no less then 12 informants, referred to as PD T-1 through PD T-12 in the confidential document attached here. In addition to mobilizing informants, the national guard, and riot cops the FBI also illegally peaked into the financial backing of the People’s Army Jamboree. The main source of money? a local potato chip empire:
Continue reading Portland’s Edible Secret: the People’s Army’s Potato Chips
The Edible Secrets Mobile Museum is coming to the west coast for the month of April! Our buddies at Microcosm Publishing are taking us on tour, covering ground from Seattle to Tuscon. In addition to our mobile museum (more below) will be the amazing Joe Biel schlepping a ton of amazing zines, books, DVDS, and showing his new documentary If It Ain’t Cheap, It Ain’t Punk about Plan-It-X Records. And as if that weren’t enough, the world famous touring vegan chef Joshua Ploeg will be making tasty treats from his new cookbook In Search of the Lost Taste. Its like a traveling super-date night: museum, dinner, and a movie!
The Edible Secrets Mobile Museum will answer all your declassified food questions. A voyeuristic insight into the US government; the museum installation is a collection of top-secret documents, dioramas, and artifacts that are like reality TV for politicos and foodies: assassinations by milkshake, subliminal popcorn cravings, Reagan’s love of hydroponics, and what could be a Black Panther’s most radical action—giving ice cream to small children.
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all photos by Brian Chase
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the infamous Rosenberg Communist Jell-O Box
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Fidel Castro milkshake diorama by Nate Powell
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research in progress
Tour Dates!:
April 1 PORTLAND (7pm, Artistery, 4315 SE Division St.,$12 full dinner, $5 suggested after dindin)
April 2 SEATTLE (7pm, Left Bank, 92 Pike St., donation)
April 3 BELLINGHAM (afternoon-evening, Bloom, 1320 Cornwall Ave., making raw specials as guest chef; film, art and demo in the evening by donation; Yogoman shows before and after with separate admission)
April 4 mystery surprise!
April 5 OLYMPIA (7pm, Northern,321 4th Ave., free)
April 6 EUGENE (7pm, Bad Egg Books, 112 E. 13th Ave., donation)
April 7 REDDING (House)
April 8 SACRAMENTO (6pm, Sol Collective, 2574 21st St., $5 suggested)
April 9 RENO (7pm, Rainshadow Charter School, 121 Vesta St., donation)
April 10 SantaRosa/Arcata/Eureka? *
April 11 OAKLAND (7pm, ISSUES, 20 Glen Ave. at Piedmont, donation)
April 12 SAN FRANCISCO (7pm, Needles and Pens, 3253 16th St., donation)
April 13 SAN JOSE (5pm, nameless house, 416 W. San Fernando, donation)
April 14 SANTA CRUZ (7pm, Sub Rosa, 703 Pacific Ave., donation)
April 15 DAVIS (6pm, Villanova House, 802 Villanova, donation)
April 16 FRESNO (7pm, C.A.F.E. Fresno, 935 F St., donation)
April 17 LOS ANGELES (7pm, Pieter, 420 West Avenue 33, Unit 10 in Lincoln Heights- park on the street NOT in the lot, thanks!, donation)
April 18 SAN DIEGO (7pm, Snowdrop House, 2754 Snowdrop St., donation)
April 19 PHOENIX (the Rusty Spoke, 1301 NW Grand Ave., donation)
April 20 TUCSON (the boxing gym)
April 21 PRESCOTT (5pm, Catalyst Infoshop, 109 N. McCormick St., donation)
Our new poster-zine “The Curious Case of the Communist Jell-O Box“ is available from Microcosm Publishing for only $2! The 21″x27″ poster-zine collects images and headlines from the newspapers of the 1950s to layout the history of alleged communist spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed by the US government on June 19, 1953. On the back side is a collection of classified US government documents from the CIA’s international propaganda campaign against the Rosenbergs and excerpts from the recently declassified Grand Jury transcripts. In a time of terrorist show-trials (Khalid Shaikh Mohammed) and politically motivated domestic spying, raids, and arrests (the Green Scare) – the story of the Rosenbergs is as important now as ever.
From Microcosm Publishing:
This awesome “poster zine” shows the sordid shared history between Jell-O and nuclear secrets. Wait. What? Yep, Jell-O and nuclear secrets. Packed with espionage and intrigue, this super sweet poster (featuring declassified documents!), details the not-so-well-known connections between America’s favorite jiggly fruit snack and the Manhattan project, government propaganda campaigns, and executed spies (or were they?) Ethel and Julius Rosenburg. It’s totally like a John Grisham novel … only, y’know, not stupid and predictable and terribly written. There’s always room for J-E-L-L-O. And nukes! And the truth! It’s a little preview of our upcoming book Edible Secrets!
The good folks at Microcosm Publishing put out a super cheap compilation from things they’ve published over the last 13 years. And its only $1! Plus there is an excerpt from our upcoming book Edible Secrets! A super cool double page info-graphic connecting the CIA’s MKULTRA program to Judas Priest, the Unabomber, Charles Manson, and even Prince!
To celebrate our thirteenth anniversary, we put together this compilation of work from our authors and artists. It’s a super cheapo deal so you can check out things in our catalog that you may have missed or find your new favorite artist. With something from virtually everyone we’ve published before and new work from Al Burian, Liz Baillie, Keith Rosson, John Isaacson, Nate Beaty, Cristy Road, Michael Hoerger, and others! What more could you want for just $1?
 In this secret memo to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, his assistant Gordon Chase expresses concern with an arranged meeting between the First Lady and Juanita Castro, Fidel Castro's sister. (Issued 8 June 1965; Declassified 15 September 1995) Making the rounds in the news this week (Guardian UK, Reuters) are revelations made by Juanita Castro in her new memoir, Fidel and Raúl, My Brothers: The Secret History. Juanita is Fidel’s younger sister who defected from Cuba in 1964 to settle in the United States, and became a public advocate against her brother’s Communist regime. The biggest revelation in the book is that while still living in Cuba, Juanita worked covertly for the CIA.
According to Juanita, as a CIA agent she received coded messages through music over a shortwave radio, transported secret messages in tin cans, and used her home as a safe house, all to aid the safe movement of covert CIA agents and anti-Fidel Cubans.
Juanita’s life and work after her defection from the island in 1964 was no longer as a covert CIA agent, but as a public propagator against her brother’s regime. Juanita traveled to many Latin American countries, probably on a US bank roll, to speak out against her brother and Communism, notably during tense elections in Chile and the Dominican Republic.
While on her post-CIA agent international speaking tour against her brother’s Communist regime, Juanita Castro came to Washington D.C. in 1965 to testify to a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Through her deep government connections, it was arranged for Juanita Castro to also meet with the First Lady during the trip. As this now declassified document shows, this did not sit well with everyone at the White House.
The declassified memo was authored by Gordon Chase, an expert on Cuban affairs in the White House, and assistant to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. Chase’s response to the proposed meeting between Juanita Castro and Lady Bird Johnson is expressed bluntly, though without much reason:
…”while I don’t think any great harm will come from such a meeting… I am not in favor of getting Juanita this close to the First Family.”
Apparently putting your life on the line to be a secret agent of the CIA, and then being a public spokeswoman against your Communist brother is not enough to guarantee you a visit to the White House. Of course, in the thick of the Cold War, no Communist fear was irrational. Perhaps Gordon Chase was losing sleep believing Juanita Castro’s years of work against her brother’s regime was all a ploy to get “close to the First Family” so she could enact her devious, nefarious plan.
Not under his watch.
The CIA’s non-profit venture capital firm In-Q-Tel made headlines last week as it bought a stake in a software firm that tracks and monitors social media sites. Turns out the “Q” in In-Q-Tel is cleverly named for the 007 character “Q.” As “Q” did for James Bond, In-Q-Tel is financed and tasked with the mission to keep the CIA up to date with the rapid pace to technological advance.
Yes, the CIA has privatized high-tech R&D named for a fictional character.
Noah Shachtman of the Wired blog Danger Room broke the story on In-Q-Tel’s investment in Visible Technologies, a software business that monitors social media sites. Visible Technologies’ software crawls the web, gathering up everything from Tweets to Amazon.com book reviews, and brings it all together for efficient monitoring.
Here he is talking about it with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!:
In-Q-Tel is a non-profit venture capital firm financed directly from the CIA’s (alway classified) portion of the Federal Budget.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has always been veiled in secrecy, its their bread and butter. In fact, when the CIA was created by Congress with the National Security Act of 1947, the bill itself was partially classified; Congress voted without being permitted to see the entire bill. And to this day, the CIA’s budget is classified; Congress approves the funds without knowing their purpose.
Apparently the CIA is not alone in the world of classified budgets, commonly referred to as “black budgets.” We asked Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News to clarify the world of black budgets for us.
[The] CIA’s annual budget is probably somewhere in the $5-10 billion range. The whole thing (with only minor exceptions) is classified.
But [the] CIA… is just one of the 16 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community. The total budget for the National Intelligence Program last year was $47.5 billion, not including another $10+ billion for the Military Intelligence Program.
The black budget was a staggering $57.5+ billion in 2008! Is it any wonder programs like MKUltra were able to happen and that secret prisons and illegal interrogations occur to this day?
(Steven Aftergood is the director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy and the author of the blog Secrecy News.)
{originally published 2 October 2009}
Despite last minute, unprecedented campaigning to the International Olympic Committee by President Obama, Chicago has lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics. Meaning no Oprah lighting the Olympic flame and no twilight future for South Side Chicago; that now belongs to Rio de Janeiro.
As Dave Zirin explained in his recent column and on Democracy Now!, “To greater or lesser degrees, the Olympics bring gentrification, graft and police violence wherever they nest.” Not only would Chicago’s South Side have been ground zero for the gentrifying juggernaut of grandiose Olympic infrastructure but, too, for resistance, rebellion, and repression. In the name of national security, Chicago would have been flooded with police, FBI, and notorious private security forces like Blackwater -who patrolled the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Zirin also mentioned the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. Mexico City hosted the 1968 Olympics and dealt with the grassroots resistance by opening fire on the protesters. Over 500 students and workers were killed. As Kate Doyle puts it, the Massacre is “Mexico’s Tiananmen Square, Mexico’s Kent State: when the pact between the government and the people began to come apart and Mexico’s extended political crisis began.” As recently declassified documents show, the FBI and CIA played a roll in the putting down of the resistance, citing concerns of Communist infiltration and even the involvement of the Black Panther Party!
Wherever the Olympics are, we can expect the three R’s to appear: resistance, rebellion, and repression. An unfriendly reminder of this occurred this past week in Pittsburgh at the meeting of the G20. Restricted civil liberties and a heavily armed police force attempted to deter and deflate the power of the people. With the help of Homeland Security grants the police acquired and utilized a litany of tactics and not-always-lethal weapons to disperse and arrest protesters. (Great coverage of the protests by Democracy Now! here.) Including the first use of the LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) as a crowd control device against protesters in the US. It had previously been used to defend against Somali “pirates,” among other things.
Other developments this week only reinforce a continuation of repression and secrecy under the Obama Administration. For one, President Obama dismissed the G-20 resistance outright, alienating much of his base as NGOs, grassroots groups, and unions came out to protest and demand change. A US Judge ruled against the ACLU, who was seeking documents connected to the CIA’s destruction of videotapes documenting post-9/11 interrogations that were admittedly “harsh,” and most likely involved torture. And Democrats in Congress have bowed to pressure from the FBI, dropping privacy protections from a revised PATRIOT Act, meaning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court will continue to have easy access to bank, library, and doctor records.
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