JPK witness case adjourned for ninth time

. . .

Inline image 1

Vetea Guilloux at an earlier hearing: testified to assassination of JPK

JPK UPDATE | NEWS

Ninth adjournment for Vetea Guilloux

A former secret service agent in French Polynesia who accused fellow agents of killing a journalist has had his case adjourned for the ninth time in seven years.

Vetea Guilloux was charged with spreading "misleading and malicious accusations" in early 2005, after going public about the disappearance of a former Tahiti editor, Jean-Pascal Couraud.

In late 2004, Guilloux said that he had been at a staff party with other presidential agents when he heard two of them joking about drowning the editor, known locally as JPK.

Two of the agents have since died, their deaths raising serious questions.

Guilloux will return to trial in Paris, at the 7th courtroom of the 2nd Division in the Court of Appeal, a section of the French justice system focused on press law and personal rights.

. . .

An open letter for Oscar Manutahi Temaru

. . .

Reasons to keep Maohi media


> an open letter to President of French Polynesia, Oscar Manutahi Temaru 


Kia orana Mr. President,


Fourteen years ago today, a journalist named JPK disappeared from the island of Tahiti.

To this day, top secret documents remain on file, linked with this journalist, but denied to investigatory judges by a national security commission. 

Similar documents also link JPK with a separate investigation into Clearstream, the world's largest bank, a bank for banks. At no time since the era of nuclear testing have people French Polynesia come closer to the raw power of the French state, a savage mafia "melieu" involving intelligence services, judiciary and diplomacy. 

Disappearance of Jean-Pascal Couraud on 15th December 1997 saw the loss of an opportunity to expose hidden back-channels of global finance. 

A "secret, and secondary, banking system" as it was described next door in the Cook Islands, by a former prime minister, Sir Geoffrey Henry, during the 1995 Letters of Guarantee scandal. No one believed him then. Few believed JPK later.

A third person met with disbelief is Denis Robert, a man who exposed Clearstream as rotten to the core, reporting on "false assets" of some USD $1.5 trillion. 

That was in 2001, a year now famous not for that expose, but for the New York start of a so-called War On Terror. 

Over the years, at the same time as children, women and men were dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, Clearstream bank kept its legal department busy, filing more than 30 different defamation claims against Denis Robert, serving him with more 600 writs alleging malicious wrongdoing. 

Robert kept busy too, writing and releasing The Black Box, and, when that was also pulled from shelves by nervous publishers, retreating to the sanctuary of the arts, writing text for a graphic novel titled The Affair of Affairs.

All three books are of enormous significance to Tahiti because the resulting court cases were only cleared this year, a full decade after the first book of Robert was published. Significant because your Supreme Court stared down the world's biggest bank, telling Clearstream that regardless of the veracity of claims contained in the Robert books, all that concerned the court was whether he had, as an investigative journalist, acted with ethics and according to generally accepted practice. 

They found that he had. All 30+ defamation cases, and 600 writs, dismissed. As Robert said, it was > 

" A victory for journalism. " 

But the victory was much, much bigger than just journalism, and here lays the true significance for Tahiti Nui.

Bigger by far is the victory for democracy, and its reinforcment of recognition for the functions and role of the Fourth Estate. This year also sees the 50th anniversary for the mostly well-regarded Colombia Journalism Review. Their anniversary slogan >

" Strong Press .  Strong Democracy ."

This slogan might seem a bit ... rich ... coming from a nation that gave us the Global Financial Crisis, for which your country is paying dearly. That hosts secret finance centres so vast Time magazine reports the United States as the most corrupt country in the entire world. A country seeking extradition of Julians Assange, with presidential candidates publicly calling for prosecution or assassination of the Wikileaks founder. Perhaps a more accurate anniversary slogan for CJR might be >

"Weak Press. Weak Democracy."

Therein lies the point of this open letter. I am writing this as an open letter, not to show off a la Anglais. 

But to report having failed since 1998 to open up links between Tahiti news media workers and their colleagues across the independent Pacific. I did try to present a few proposals, that get occasional official and private interest, but still, after six years, no progress. I am writing an open letter because I did try and be diplomatic and make suggestions to people close with you, and other leaders ... but failed. 

And now this, these closures. 

As leader of French Polynesia, Mr President, your party has clearly and transparently stated aspirations towards self-governance, perhaps on the Cook Islands model, but more likely full independence. 

Anyone can understand your administration wanting to cut costs and would, if in your position, understand also the frustration of dealing with a biased press, even losing patience. Just as has happened among governments in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, with news media. 

Yet, your administration is stripping itself of an institution that the Supreme Court of France has just recently confirmed as of strategic importance, rightfully beyond the powers of even the biggest multinational threat. 

Murdoch may rightfully have his troubles with politicians globally, but it does not mean that BBC News should be in danger of shutting down. Nor is the PBS in the US facing closure. In Australia, the government slammed the door in Murdoch's face, hard, awarding the contract for Australia's world service, the ABN, back to their own state broadcaster, ABC, "permanently."

So seeing Murdoch named and shamed, and the News of the World forced to close its doors ... it might seem like a good idea for French Polynesia too - let's close down Tahiti Nui Television and Agence Tahiti Presse as well ! Especially the latter, for its historic bias against Tavini Huiraatira, remember? Back in the bad old days of Systeme Flosse?

Those days are over now, Mr President. 

I remember my disbelief when it was reported that 20,000 people protested through the streets of Pape'ete, possibly the biggest per capita demonstration across all of our islands. I remember Walter Zweiffel, from ever trustworthy RNZI, showing me shots on his digital, including a shot taken afterwards, among the detrius, of a discarded banner, hand penned, reading :

" La justice française = 4 parpaing ''

French Justice = 4 concrete blocks. A mafia style hit. Just like in the movie theatres. Common knowledge that amazing day in French Polynesia was news that JPK had not killed himself, but been killed by local GIP thugs acting under orders from some other thugs, from France, recently "retired" from the DGSE. A nexus of DGSE heritage centres on Corsica, well known as the birthplace of the French mafia. Just like was shown in the well known movie, The French Connection, and its depiction of the grimy streets of a fave Corsican hang-out since the Second World War, Marseille. 

But, wait, of course there is more, is there not Mr President? 

Corse is, also, home island for a curiously large number of judges and prosecutors on the colonial circuit, courtesy of the world renown Systeme Chirac. Not so much a confetti empire, as a spaghetti melieu. The kind of prosecutor who rings the commissioner of police and tells them to "close the file on JPK. Accept no more evidence."

I remember the delerium of the night of "Taui", when the people of Tahiti Nui confirmed you as their leader, not long after that huge, huge protest. To walk away, now, from that kind of journalist heritage risks insulting that memory. Of Jean-Pascal Couraud, and all his colleagues who worked alongside him, fighting word-for-word with the entire panalopy of the French state, sometimes, literally, hand-to-hand. 

Reporters like Reimuna Tufariua, for example.

JPK lost a fight, 14 years ago today, a professional battle turned deadly personal, but, like Reimana knew before, he, too, lost his battle, there was still a news war to be waged, media freedom campaigns to be won. Yet your own municipality broadcaster Te Reo Tefana is a sad shadow of its former self, stripped of resources, long lost as a global influencer. 

Among our mutual friends and associates, Mr President, your personal dislike for journalists is well known, viewing the task akin to feeding vultures, or so I hear. Thus, you risk falling victim to that most effete of French colonialisms, intellectual snobbery.

Factoid from the US > 

Four out of five "new" media sites online, like Facebook pages and Twitter profiles, point to "old" media sites like those provided, mostly free, by newspapers, radio and television. No doubt similar ratios apply in French Polynesia. 

Fact is, like it or not, mainstream mass media remain the main source of current affairs and governance information among ordinary French Polynesians, as they do, everywhere.  

In working towards a newly independent nation, Te Ao Maohi Ou, your presidency must urgently reconsider its reasons for closing down two pillars of your country's Fourth Estate. Days like this I remember the old cliche, "Don't get into Journalism if you want to stay Friends with anyone",  but as a journalist I must ask this question, it's my job, sorry about it.

My question to you as President is this > 

" If you do not trust the Fourth Estate, and do not trust your own people to run state broadcasting as an integral and fundamental part of an independent democracy, then why should your people trust you ? "

Fear not, Mr President, you are far from alone in the world facing this kind of question. In our already independent parts of the Pacific, all of us, politicians, press, pundits, an "arm-chair critic" like me, all of us, one big glorious mess, debating and grappling daily with issues surrounding news media, democracy, and all that stuff about freedoms and human rights.

I've seen the results of state broadcasting shut down in our own homeland of Avaiki, the Cook Islands. And Samoa. Cutbacks in Papua New Guinea. 

An alleged tourism success story, the Cook Islands is slowly polluting itself out of the market, an already unimpressive affair relying heavily on penny-pinching Kiwis and pissed-up Kangaroos. News media based in Rarotonga went from being the most trusted institution in the country in 1998 to least trusted by 2008, thanks to the machinations of former bikie fraudster turned preacher man, George Pitt. 

A political hit-man mow working his magic in Samoa, his actual homeland, Pitt used multiple conflicts of interest in his favour, and to win repeatedly against competitors.He got an exclusive ten-year broadcasting license, signed, coincidentially enough, by an acting Broadcasting minister, a close mate, while the real minister was out of the country. The Pitt family still run papers, TV and a radio station, but Pitt split from his young wife, and moved to Samoa. 

In his absence, PMG has thankfully eased up on a daily diet of slimy innuendo and outright lies.   

Samoa sacked its state journalists, and now enjoys less scrutiny around all sorts of legislative misgovernance. Like the land title registration act, one that stripped thousands of matai landowners of all their rights, unilaterally reasssigning those rights to a much smaller group of head matai, by no other mandate or consultation than parliamentary fiat. 

Papua New Guinea is paying the price for its ignorance, after spending years listening to Australia rave on about free markets, and forcing the state broadcaster, NBC, to adopt corporate policies, effecting not quite closure, but certainly endless cutbacks to their ability to expose corruption surrounding the resource curse of mineral wealth. A logging company owns one of the two main daily newspapers, while the other is part of the global Murdoch empire, both welll known as proponents for extractive industries, and kind of soft on environmental issues.

Australia only woke up in recent years to the wisdom of leaving news media to those kind of players. Around 2005, aid agency AusAID started pouring millions into PNG state broadcasting, to start repairing decades of neglect. Decades of desperation, however, draw their ethical expense. 

The current PNG media council is mired in a not-so secret scandal, joining widespread concern, across an island region with a news media in seriously failing health, along with metropolitan partners in New Zealand and Australia. 

There is of course a complete media blackout in West Papua, our furtherest Melanesian cousin, mired for decades now in a dystopian genocide. 

I've seen cutbacks to state broadcasters right across all our Pacific Islands, on official advice from neo-liberal fundamentalists in New Zealand and Australia, still today pushing a regional trade agenda, that, if passed will strip all our independent islands of social, political and economic autonomy, forever, in favour of transnationals.

It is of no coincidence, Sir, that the first official post held by Roger Douglas, of Rogernomics fame, was as acting Broadcasting minister in 1972. Cue 1984, and radical changes were made by an allegedly Labour government that remain to this day, including to the state broadcaster, TVNZ, a corporate poodle required to dance for profit, whoever is government of the day. 

Today, it's allegedly a National party government, and they're so hot right now on the TPPA. Possibly means "French" Polynesia going independent, just in time to swap one form of serfdom for another. 

Instead of French domination ... try English. Maybe call it Colonialism 2.0 ... an offer you can't refuse ! 

So yes, cut back on state broadcasting and help starve the people of the very thing they need most to survive endless machinations of the multinationals > independent, investigative information. I strongly suggest considering an alternative.

Watchdogs, not lapdogs, of the Press. Attack dogs of the Fourth Estate, if need be. Ever alert. 

Mr President, you and your people are nuclear veterans. 

Survivors, victims of an era of mutually assured destruction, a time of superpowers, and presidential admonishments against the influence, sought or unsought, of the military industrial complex. 

In an original draft of that famous speech, Mr President, Eisenhour considered adding mainstream news to that mix, referring to a military-industrial-media complex, but went with the shorter version instead.

I remember as a teen feeling disgust, reading the slogan for the 24/7 nuclear air cover that America operated, around the clock, for decades, under the Strategic Air Command.

" The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. "

Still sounds so macho, so corny. 

So imperialistic. 

As an adult, sadly, I now know the bitter truth of that slogan, and how it applies across all facets of any putative democracy. In aspiring to greater freedoms, Tavini must accept greater responsibility with guardians of those freedoms, starting, not ending, with the Fourth Estate. 

We see erosion of those freedoms under the English system, with a toxic media empire under Murdoch, and, indeed, with French journalism, going hand-in-hand with arms dealing. 

A desire by Eisenhour to warn against a militiry-industrial-media complex seems as relevant today as it did then, if not more so. In an allegedly post-nuclear era among independent states, separate and vastly unequl, the only institution that can effectively and efficiently offer that kind of vigil, for all the people, Mr President, is a strong, proud and free, homegrown press.

It is your inalienable right right now, Mr President, as a French citizen, to demand fair treatment from any news source. It also within your current authority, and power, Mr President to empower and promote free, fair and independent information. To help, nay insist indigenous professionals and practitioners of local news enshrine their own codes of conduct and ethics, and demand local media accountability systems as the only condition, the only quid pro quo. 

I've heard argument about the state keeping hands off the media, that funding news media may even be unconstitutional. This is colonialistic nonsense put about by vested interests. In fact, the constitution of France not only endorses freedoms of the Press, it calls for its plurality. In closing down TNTV and ATN, Mr President, you risk offending the spirit if not the letter of that constitutional guarantee. 

Don't make the same mistakes we've already made in the independent Pacific. Learn from ours. That's how mistakes are supposed to work. 

Don't help people trying to tear down Maohi journalism, help us build up an independent "industry" whose only job is to warn you and your people against all threats, local or foreign. 

JPK may be gone. But, as his brother once said, in a funny kind of way, JPK is still doing his job today. Help his colleagues keep doing theirs. 

kia manuia,

jason

. . .


. . .

how golden is silence in france?

20100507 taiwan france clearstream affaire
Message from avaiki.nius@gmail.com:

How golden is French silence?

 

EDITORIAL

 

Deafening silence from Paris regarding nearly one billion Euros in court fines illustrate the width and depth of corruption that faces continued inquiries into disappearance of a former Pape'ete editor.

 

Neither left or right wing parties commented on fines for bribes associated with the 1991 sale of French frigates to Taiwan.


President Nicolas Sarkozy refused to comment about the court fines. 


So too did the opposition.


News about the heavy fines broke during usually raucous question time – a time which recently saw opposition singing of the national anthem as a symbolic protest – for the first time in half a century.

 

No such patriotism for the frigate affair.

 

"The beneficiaries of fraudulent commission payments in China and Taiwan, some made in France, remained unknown because of military secrecy", reports Reuters news agency.

 

During the 2000s, military intelligence opposed requests from French investigating judges Renaud Van Ruymbeke and Xaviere Simeoni, appointed by the Ministry of Finance under left wing minister, Laurent Fabius, and the right, Francis Mer and Thierry Breton.

 

Intelligence officials refused to hand over lists of the recipients of commercial commissions, reported in 1991 by Thale and DCN, the state Directorate of Naval Construction, as under a procedure then required.

 

As Sarkozy backs off plans to remove investigatory powers from judges, the lack of response from all sides of the political spectrum raises questions about just how golden silence really is in France.

 

And how much information former Pape'ete editor Jean Pascal Couraud had in his possession when he disappeared in 1997.

 

Meantime, local media in Tahiti appear to have stopped referring to links between Pascal and multiple investigations involving widespread corruption involving the military and foreign affairs, including Clearstream.

 

LINKS

 

Silence politique en France sur l'affaire des frégates

Sarkozy renoncerait à la réforme de la justice avant 2012

 

 . . .



Google Docs makes it easy to create, store and share online documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
Google Docs logo

long missing editor still centre mega scandal

. . .
 
NEWS | 12TH ANNIVERSARY JPK
 

Former Papeete editor Jean Pascal Couraud today remains at the centre of French political megascandal – 12 years after he went missing.

 

Just yesterday, the judge investigating the disappearance of Couraud made his third formal request to courts in Japan.

 

"Investigations have revealed a significant financial transaction from Polynesia to Japan, during a economically and legally questionable property deal, conducted in 1995 among a group of investors led by Tahitian Reginald Flosse, son of Gaston Flosse, and Japanese businessmen in the EIE Resort Group," Justice Jean-François Redonnet is quoted as saying by Le Monde daily.

 

He is asking for more information regarding a once secret bank accounts held by former French president, Jacques Chirac, and his French Polynesian counterpart, Gaston Flosse.

 

At the same time, Redonnet issued instructions to police to look up FICOBA records for evidence of any Chirac bank accounts between 1996 and 2002.

 

Previous requests to Japan courts have seen officials at the Tokyo Sawa Bank say they could not find details for any accounts prior to 1999.

 

Meantime, Flosse, the man at the centre of allegations surrounding the disappearance of Couraud saw his party re-elected to power last week – from a jail cell.

Flosse was detained for questioning on corruption charges.

 

However the majority of just one vote has been called into question because Flosse cannot attend sittings of the territorial assembly.

 

Jean Pascal Couraud went missing on a full moon Monday night, 15th December 1997.

 

Hours before he disappeared, Jean Pascal Couraud had been set to expose links to the world's biggest banking scandal.

 

JPK has not been seen since then.

 

His body has not been found.

 

Couraud's disappearance helped cover up what leading French judges call the "black box" of global finance – Clearstream.

 

Including a truly astonishing us$1.5 trillion in "false assets", L'Affaire Clearstream is the French version of the US Enron scandal – 1000 times larger.

 

Questions remain.

 

Where Enron in the US went into meltdown with us$14 billion, Clearstream is an unexploded dirty bomb centring around "false assets".

 

Clearstream is at least thirty times bigger than the Madoff scandal – and that was back in 2001, almost a decade ago.

 

An official police inquiry into JPK dates back to October 2004.

 

However there has been no inquiries into Clearstream anywhere lower than Parliamentary level – despite involving "false assets."
 
. . .

doubts over clearstream witness

 




By Philippe Madelin | Journaliste | 07/10/2009 | 10H58

RUE89



An observation about my colleagues talking about a witness, Rondot, at the Clearstream trial. It is horrifying to hear the journalists, including radio, on a repeating loop: "General Rondot, the master spy".

We can talk about master spy Vetrov or Commander Paul in the Farewell affair. Not for Rondot, who began his "spy" career by getting fired from the SDECE for carelessness when stationed in Bucharest, before being rehired by Pierre Joxe as an advisor at the Ministry of Defense.

The least of his errors were of little note throughout his life, taking notes in order to compile a service history of army.

Moreover, by his own admission, Rondot dislikes being called a spy; he prefers "intelligence officer". Do his colleagues really know the difference?

In the process, they relate a series of exploits. Including the arrest of "Illich Ramirez Sanchez, alias Carlos to Khartoum. Forgetting to clarify that Carlos has been rolled by the CIA to the former DST, the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance. 

Banned from foreign missions, the DST could not lead an open operation.

Never mind: the DST tasked Rondot with covering the operation. The Sudanese secret service, glad to get rid of Carlos, crammed him with sleeping pills. In other words, "Carlos the Jackal" was delivered, bound hand and foot, for French officers to come and pick him up.

The 'official' version is typical of this curious general. Most exploits about Rondot draw from the same barrel. He has extensively popularized his role without worrying too much about evidence.

Suggesting that only he could succeed where the whole team failed.

The secret account of Chirac in Japan 

Ok, one last thing for the road: the case of Chirac's secret account in Japan. Concerned about his police career, Rondot was the main informant for the press in this case. The Chirac account has even been investigated in Japan, he said. Which is possible, too. He found nothing consistent, while suggesting that there was a catch.

But, as Nicolas Beau reported in Bakhich info, when Rondot was interviewed 3rd June by Jean Francois Redonnet, a judge from Tahiti, and asked to clarify his thinking, Rondot agreed (in minutes) that he held no credible evidence. Nicolas Beau wrote:

"[Questions from the judge] are accurate, point by point, against the digressions and smokescreens of the visibly embarrassed General. So, the questioning turns assassin for Rondot who recants, contradicts himself and fails to provide any consistency as to his role in this affair over a Japanese account .

The judge tries, ten years after the fact, to discover the cause of a possible assassination of journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud, who was investigating the assets of Flosse and Chirac in Japan. "

Nicolas Beau deservers even more credit for publishing this information as he was himself a great paragon of this secret Japanese account affair, devoting an entire book.

If you read the detailed account of the Clearstream trial by Pascal Junghans in The Tribune this Monday, October 5, you will find that Rondot continues to show fuzzy, uncertain, contradictory evidence, based on his own notes which have little legal value.

So when we called Rondot Master Spy, it is necessary to question the journalists who continue to follow the same legend. 

It is true that "Master Spy" sounds better than "intelligence officer".

Read also Rue89 and Eco89

Elsewhere on the Web

 


shaking the trees

. . .

Perhaps, he mused, the novel could be a radical, risky combo of fact and fiction.

Could be a simple bluff. Publish rumours, anecdote, speculation. Outright sensationalism. See what shakes out from the trees. Some see right through it. Others might give a lead, a tip, a leak, maybe even a whole fat dossier. Might be made up, it might not. Might make some lucky guesses.

Censorship angles, possible shutdown, research safe haven options. Always have back up.

. . .

about who killed jpk

. . .


ABOUT

This is an exploratory blog.

Part of agency efforts to find the easiest way to write a novel online, publishing updates as you go.

With as little fuss as possible between publishing online and publishing offline via digital printerys. Large rooms with millions of copies of dozens of different templates, all blank, waiting for someone to click on buy and automatically trigger a custom book - including hard cover.

LINKS

http://www.lulu.com/
http://www.cafepress.com/
http://www.cafepress.com.au/ (for Asia Pacific)

. . .

nightmare

.  . .

Long shafts of white, swelling, gently.

A lull, a calm, a magic, a vague sense.

Impending doom.

. . .

Again. And again.

Nightmare, second nature.

"Many people told us they have dreams," says a colleague, fatigued.

. . .

question is who killed jpk

. . .

Light slides by,
train windows by night,
rippling o'er river roil.

. . .