2004 q1

January

• 1: Well, we actually got through another year. I expected us to be in a bigger mess by now than we are—not that things are rosy. We still have the US' fiscal collapse to endure, and that may be underway already. It's not going to go quietly. No collapsing empire has ever gone quietly. As Albright said, What's the point of all this military if you don't use it? Just think of it as the father* of all armed robbery.
  *The usu word is mother, but we're talking about neoNazis here, and they're patriarchal.

  Awhile back UK MP Stephen Pound offered to put through a piece of legislation designed by public vote. Today was the deadline. The winner was, allow Britons to arm and defend themselves in their own homes. But this is not in line with British rule, and Pound dismisses it as ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained. I

  For 80 years the safety of the British people has been staked on the premise that fewer private guns means less crime, indeed that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger. Government assured Britons they needed no weapons, society would protect them. If that were so in 1920 when the first firearms restrictions were passed, or in 1953 when Britons were forbidden to carry any article for their protection, it no longer is.

  The failure of this general disarmament to stem, or even slow, armed and violent crime could not be more blatant. According to a recent UN study, England and Wales have the highest crime rate and worst record for very serious offences of the 18 industrial countries surveyed [despite] the strictest gun control laws of any democracy [sic]. BBC

  US occupation authorities in Iraq have imposed strict restrictions on the right of the Iraqi people to demonstrate, particularly in the capital Baghdad, in what Iraqi political analysts described as the real face of sugar-coated democracy clichés. A statement issued by the US-led authority and broadcast [yesterday] said no individual or group is allowed [even to] gather in streets, public places or buildings at any time without a prior [sic] from the occupation command. IO

  The Pasadena parade has a Starbucks float based on Guatemala. I wonder if it's a salute to the 50th anniversary of the US' demolition of Guatemalan democracy?

• 2: W served a summons in the Mariani RICO suit. TF · ICH

  US still making the mad-cow-came-from-Canuckistan noises. I wonder if they set this up to justify keeping the border closed?

• US has been playin' at nice to Iran since the 'quake, but the Iranians aren't fooled. T
• Sick of the hubbub over Steve Irwin. Did the crocodile show any interest in the baby? No, it wandered off. D'ya think he didn't know the animal? Yeah it was vaguely risky. Everything's vaguely risky. I'm far more miffed at parents that let the state stick god-knows-what of dubious value and safety in their children; far more damage is done by these shady innoculants than by crocodiles.
• 3: Ari Shavit: The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish… Haäretz

  I finally get around to telling CBC and CTV that they're lying about the loony going up, and ask them why. Again: when one lies about what ones knows to be readily verifiable, one blows away all reason for anything one says to be believed.
  
  Pretend you have a cache of gold, silver, and platinum so divided that on 2002 Jan 2 they were equal in value. This plot is the worth of the stash in US$ scaled to that day. By this measure the US$ has shrunk by 1/3 in two years but was almost unchanged the previous three. [Data from kitco.]

• 4: NYC truth mvmt puts up a banner. At least 20 women over the age of 40, of all ethnic backgrounds said, god bless you for being here. SE

  Wikipedia reverts the expansions I made to Runge-Kutta methods (adding Butcher's result and Fehlberg's coefficients) and Taylor series (filling a gap in NODE-method development). I have no idea why. Possibly because I pointed out that ECMA stands for something else (which I'd sourced—though everyone knows it around here—and which others have already reïnstated along with all the disambiguations). Oh well. Let 'em go check it. I checked it against the three numerical-methods books on my shelves. (And my undergrad was maths…I don't see any maths inclination in the page of the reverter. But such is Wikipedia! Them that knows are always the outnumbered.) Simon Preston got reverted but Gayle h. Martin didn't? Even though, I see, I put her in the wrong order! And yet American Idle is still up. It's very difficult to figure out what is acceptable behaviour with feedback like this.

  So I make a belated resolution: fu@k Wikipedia.

• The US is one of the stingiest, maybe the stingiest, developed nation when it comes to internat'l aid (especially after you deduct its pet Israel). And when it does give aid, it's something like this:

  A doctor working in Gondar hospital in Ethiopia wrote to me recently to spell out what this means. The hospital has none of the basic textbooks on tropical diseases it needs. But it does have 21 copies of an 800-page volume called Aesthetic Facial Surgery and 24 volumes of a book called Opthalmic Pathology. There is no opthalmic pathologist in training in Ethiopia. The poorest nation on Earth, unsurprisingly, has no aesthetic plastic surgeons. The US had spent $2m on medical textbooks that American publishers hadn't been able to sell at home, called them aid and dumped them in Ethiopia. JR

• Another bin Laden tape. This one mentions the Saddam capture (more likely an exchange from the Kurds).
• W renews sactions against Libya. HT (This is a complicated example. Libya ended a WMD program that was years from results, so in essence it gave up nothing. On the other hand, W has just shown, again, playing nice w/the US gets you nowhere.)
• 5: The US expressed public concern Monday about the close ties between the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, amid suggestions by US officials they may be working together to fan anti-American sentiment and undermine democratic governments in Latin America. VOA (Well isn't that the pot calling the window black.)
• DNA tests conclude the mad cow was born in Alberta. (Great. Now may be both countries can admit their safeguards are jokes and get on with repairs.)
• America and Britain rebuffed President Bashar Assad of Syria yesterday, telling him bluntly that Damascus must give up its weapons of mass destruction or face ostracism—even if neighbouring Israel keeps its nuclear arms. T, A (Mahathir was right.) Israel is in a unique position as the only state whose very existence is threatened even though Syria has only a few chemical weapons and Israel enough nuclear weapons and missiles to…I dunno, wipe out Europe? JR
• Ever wondered why he's called Will the Shill? FPP
• Another tax-dissenter trial gets underway. When McColl asked whether Social Security taxes were mandatory, [Judge] McBryde sternly said: We're not going to play this game. DFW (Translation: because we can't win it fair and square. I think the trial ended in what amounts to a summary rejection of the defense. JR)
• US prohibits passengers lining up for the loo on those long-haul QANTAS flights. G&M · A It is now clear that the US government has gone totally insane. If it were a human being then the diagnosis would be paranoid schizophrenia (with delusions of grandeur). Will the Australian government follow the US and also go crazy? S
• US consumer debt sets a record. Per-household, about $7000 in credit-card debt, another $11000 in car loans. NYP · WP IMF says the US debt threatens world economy NYT, NYT · SMH worries about a disorderly decline of the dollar. F US calls this trifling fiddlefaddle. VoA
• Israel's up to its trick in Nablus again.

  Mostly, the operation…has merited a few sentences in the back pages of North America's newspapers, including this one. Not even CBC, the network that stands accused by the National Post and myriad Jewish groups of a systemic anti-Israel bias, has given the siege more than a few seconds of airtime. Instead, the news focus just about everywhere has been on baby-dangling crocodile hunters and 55-hour marriage of a your-15-minutes-are-up pop tart, Princess Anne's killer terrier and Lady Diana's terror of being killed, heightened travel alerts and holiday cheer, Saddam's capture, crazy chicks (Paris Hilton) and mad cows, and SARS and Mars (the last three of which, admittedly, are important). TS

  (Mars is important?)
• 7: Carnegie Endowment for Int'nat'l Peace concludes Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq. (A fancy way of saying they lied.)
• Powell about Iraq WMD: This game is still unfolding. CNN (To adjust Dot Parker, what fresh @hit is this? These people just don't know when the jig's up. Or, more likely, they know that to admit the jig is up would be to admit they should be strung from it.) Saddam was a danger we had to worry about. (Since the Saddam regime posed only trivial risks, it follows immediately that the Bush regime is one the rest of us must worry about.) And even though there's no evidence for it, he claims to still believe al Qaeda and Saddam worked together. MSNBC
• 8: Troops replace Saddam's floor mosaic of GHWB with one of Saddam.

  USAF gives Bliar a tiny little reminder of who's got a dozen huge military bases in the UK and better be kept happy. BBC

• A few months ago, I was a 25-year-old law-school graduate who found out he had just passed the California Bar Exam. I was excited about a potentially long and prosperous career in the legal profession, getting married, having kids, contributing to my community, and living the American Dream. Peak Oil has caused me to seriously question how realistic this vision of my life is. LATOC

  (The forecasts for time of peak oil extraction rate median around 2010. A couple say this year. This site claims extraction has already droppoed each year since 2000. Well, I guess that's one way to enforce Kyoto. In any case, many—most—now living are going to have to cope with an oil supply that falls further and further behind demand. And the food supply of the developed world, both transport and production, is heavily reliant on oil.)
• 9: ConnerSneezer Rice admits there's no evidence Iraq hid its WMD in Syria. H · ND (Of course not. Iraq and Syria did not trust each other.)

  Adm. Moorer rips the US' latest attempt to bury the Liberty. HC

  36 120-mm suspicious mortar shells are dug up in Iraq—literally, they'd been buried at least 10 years. Initial field tests indicated blister agent but later lab tests came out negative. SH · G · WS · BBC The Carnegie Report affirmed that there had never been a military threat from Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction were poised just 45 minutes away to strike at hearth and home. The last-second discovery of a few dozen rusted out warheads from 10 years ago only underscored that the desperate attempt to find weapons of mass destruction to retroactively justify the war in Iraq had failed, and failed miserably. WC, WRH

  GWB: One of the most meaningful things that's happened to me since I've been the governor—the president—governor—president. Oops. Ex-governor. I went to Bethesda Naval Hospital to give a fellow a Purple Heart, and at the same moment I watched him—get a Purple Heart for action in Iraq—and at that same—right after I gave him the Purple Heart, he was sworn in as a citizen of the US—a Mexican citizen, now a US citizen. WH · S

• Dollar slips on surprisingly weak employment report. Q (Surprising? Der Vaterland's been outsourcing jobs faster'n a firedrill, how can it be surprising?)

• My family was one of Hitler's victims. We lost a lot under the Nazi occupation, including an uncle who died in the camps…my father went ballistic after finding my brother and me playing with a hand grenade…I remember the rubble and the hardships of austerity—and the bomb craters from Allied bombs…

  So why, now, when I hear GWB's speeches, do I think of Hitler? Why have I drawn a parallel between the Nazis and the present administration?…I've seen nothing to eliminate the possibility that Bush is on the same course as Hitler. And I've seen far too many analogies to dismiss the possibility. The propaganda. The lies. The rhetoric. The nationalism. The flag waving. The pretext of preventive war. The flaunting of international law and international standards of justice. The disappearances of undesirable aliens. The threats against protesters. The invasion of a non-threatening sovereign nation. The occupation of a hostile country. The promises of prosperity and security. The spying on ordinary citizens. The incitement to spy on one's neighbors—and report them to the government. The arrogant triumphant pride in military conquest. The diversion of money to the military. The demonization of government-appointed enemies. The establishment of Homeland Security. The dehumanization of foreigners. The total lack of interest in the victims of government policy. The incarceration of the poor and mentally ill. The growing prosperity from military ventures. The illusion of goodness and primacy. The new einsatzgrupen forces. Assassination teams. Closed extralegal internment camps. The militarization of domestic police. Media blackout of non-approved issues. Blacklisting of protesters—including the no-fly lists and photographing dissenters at rallies.

  There isn't much doubt in my mind—anyone who compares the history of Hitler's rise to power and the progression of recent events in the US cannot avoid the parallels. TO

  Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hilerian our Junta sounds as it threatens first one country for harboring terrorists and then another. It is true that Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured—or threatened—party before he struck. But he had many great predecessors not least Imperial Rome. Stephen Gowans' War in Afghanistan: a G$28 racket quotes Joseph Shumpteter, who in 1919

  described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the US in 2001: there was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented…The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors.

  We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors like the war on terrorism, or poverty, or AIDS into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands. [Vidal Dreaming War p44] SNZ

  More disturbing by far are the many eerie parallels between Adolph Hitler and GWB: A conservative, authoritarian style, with public appearances in military uniform (which no previous American president has ever done while in office). Government by secrecy, propaganda and deception. Open assaults on labor unions and workers' rights. Preemptive war and militant nationalism. Contempt for international law and treaties. Suspiciously convenient terrorist attacks, to justify a police state and the suspension of liberties. A carefully manufactured image of The Leader, who's still just a regular guy and a moderate. Freedom as the rationale for every action. Fantasy economic growth, based on unprecedented budget deficits and massive military spending.

  And a cold, pragmatic ideology of fascism—including the violent suppression of dissent and other human rights; the use of torture, assassination and concentration camps; and most important, Benito Mussolini's preferred definition of fascism as corporatism, because it binds together the interests of corporations and the state.

  By their fruits, you shall know them.

  What perplexes me most is probably the same question that plagues most paranoiacs: why don't other people see these connections? OLJ

  Here we go again. Another bone-head with a Bush-Hitler analogy…Why won't this thing die? Just because his grandfather Prescott Bush financed Hitler's rise to power, do they think that means George W. Bush has Nazi tendencies? That's absurd. Is it fair to say that just because the US government had to step in and shut down Prescott Bush's Union Banking Corporation operations in New York in 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, that this Bush should viewed with caution and skepticism? That's just silly.

  And who are these bloody Europeans who keep comparing Bush to Hitler? Take that German Justice Minister, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, who compared Bush's dealings on Iraq to those of Hitler. That really takes the cake, now doesn't it? What do the Germans know of Hitler anyway? Why should they feel empowered to warn the world of such impending dangers? Why couldn't they just shut-up and help us kill the Iraqis? TO

  (Herta Daeubler-Gmelin: Bush wants to divert attention from his domestic problems. It's a classic tactic. It's one that Hitler used. JR) There are problems comparing Shrub to Hitler. Hitler didn't have daddy's coattails as an escalator. Hitler went into battle for his country. Hitler could speak his native language. Hitler had a train of thought long enough to fill a book. Hitler not only knew where were the places he invaded, he'd toured a few of them in his youth.

  The unspoken truth is that Blair, too, is a menace. There never has been a time, said Blair in his address to the US Congress last year, when the power of America was so necessary or so misunderstood or when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day. His fatuous dismissal of history was his way of warning us off the study of imperialism. He wants us to forget and to fail to recognize historically the national security state that he and Bush are erecting as a necessary alternative to democracy. The father of fascism, Benito Mussolini, understood this. Modern fascism, he said, should be properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state, military and corporate power. DV

  On the very day FOX heads Gibson, Hannity, and O'Reilly were frothing over Hitler-Bush analogies, their sister organ New York Post described Herr Howie Dean as a Göbbels follower looking for his Riefenstahl funded by an Internet Gestapo. FAIR

  The basic stratagem of these so-called critics is to compartmentalize Hitler's legacy into a simplistic formula: Hitler created the horrors of the Holocaust and since Bush (the argument goes) has not created a Holocaust, Bush is not comparable to Hitler. What this formula fails to acknowledge, however, is that Hitler was not created in a vacuum, and he did not ignite the horrors of the Holocaust until he had corruptly obtained the political power to do so. It was the manner in which he attained this power that is analogous to the political machinations of the Bush dictatorship.

  Hitler disseminated great lies to obtain his political objectives. As O'Neill confirms above, so did Bush. Hitler fallaciously blamed scapegoats, primarily people of Jewish descent, for his nation's social ills. Bush blamed Saddam Hussein. Hitler destroyed civil liberties after the Reichstag fire through the Enabling Act. Bush destroyed civil liberties after the 9/11 terrorist attacks through the Patriot Act. Hitler used the Spanish Civil war as a testing ground for his military weaponry. Bush used Iraq. Hitler used complacency about or ignorance of history to launch the Holocaust, allegedly remarking in 1939 that nobody remembered the annihilation of the Armenians, over a million of whom, during WW1, were killed outright or died of starvation and disease during forced deportations. Bush used complacency about or ignorance of history—the media hyperboles that provoked the Spanish-American war, Lyndon Johnson's exaggeration of the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate American involvement in Vietnam, and the way Bush's father used the invasion of Panama to divert focus from domestic issues—to launch the war against Iraq.

  Hitler was adept at hiding his self-serving motives for war beneath a veneer of magnanimity. So was Bush. Hitler also scapegoated the disabled and homosexuals. Supporters of the Bush dictatorship, like Republican Senator Rick Santorum and Vice President Dick Cheney, also scapegoat homosexuals, while the US Supreme Court has all but abolished the anti-discrimination protections of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Hitler preyed upon racial hatreds. So does Bush, despite the contrary illusion he has tried to create by having sell-outs like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice obsequiously shuffling behind him.

  In fact, as I was completing this article, news reports revealed that, on the day after the birthday of famed civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and two days before the holiday that celebrates his legacy, Bush manipulatively took advantage of a Congressional recess to nominate Charles W. Pickering, a judge who has been accused of racial insensitivity, to a powerful position on a federal appeals court. Apparently the Bush dictatorship's concern about protecting the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq does not translate into a commensurate concern for minorities in the US.

  Finally, those who doubt that Bush is any different from Hitler in his callous willingness to sacrifice the lives of innocents need only be reminded of the case of Jerry Lee Hogue. Bush has repeatedly asserted that while serving as governor of Texas no innocent person had been executed under his watch. Yet, during this tenure, Bush repeatedly denied 30-day reprieves to death-row inmates, like Hogue, so that DNA testing, which could definitively confirm their guilt or innocence, could be performed.

  The investigative news program 60 Minutes sought to challenge Bush's boast by conducting posthumous DNA testing on the evidence in Hogue's case, only to be informed that, in accordance with Texas legal procedure, this evidence had been destroyed shortly after Hogue's state-sponsored murder. It is not hard to gauge the depravity of an individual who brags about the infallibility of the machinery of death while knowing that no evidence will ever exist to contradict him…

  But what makes it particularly ludicrous, and perhaps even dangerous, to ignore the analogies between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler's horrific legacy can be examined with the benefit of hindsight, while Bush's is still unfolding. Who can say, given Bush's contempt for civil liberties and international law, his exploitation of war for self-serving purposes and his willingness to use lies to wage it, how many deaths may yet occur…With Adolph Hitler the warnings were clear. The world simply chose to ignore them. With George W. Bush the warnings are equally clear. Can we afford to ignore them as well? P

  My problem with the Hitler-Bush pairing is not so much the comparison per se…but in the strange hysteria of Democrats about Bush as a leader of such consummate evil, so vile that any Democrat would be preferable…Bush is by definition a warmonger, but Wesley Clark, one of the contenders for the Democratic nomination, actually issued an order that could have sparked Armageddon. Back in the war on Yugoslavia, in his capacity as NATO's Supreme Commander, Clark ordered the British general, Sir Michael Jackson, to block Russian planes about to land at Pristina airport. Jackson refused to obey, declaring in one furious exchange quoted in Newsweek, I'm not going to start the Third World War for you. CP

• US is going to have essentially free access to Canadians' tax records. C
• In response to Washington's decision to start fingerprinting and photographing foreign visitors who carry visas this week, [Brazil] has begun exacting the same measures from US citizens in the name of reciprocity…many Brazilians admit they rather enjoy seeing Americans subjected to the stressful kind of review all too familiar to them in US consulates and airports. Y! (Turnabout is fair play. My cousin was musing last year about his entry to China. The official looked at the papers, basically said Oh, Canadian, okay and let him in. But the guy that had been in front of him—an American—was getting no end of hassle. Me cousin's parting words were it's 'cause Canada doesn't go pissing the world off every chance it gets. Now if we can just get Israel to stop forging our passports…) Before long even the British are getting the treatment. G (Although, to be fair, al Qaeda is more active there than most other places.)
• If anyone else had a SHIT-List of Jews, they'd be up on hate-crime charges. But Zionists get away with it. Mahathir was right.
• Paul O'Neill reminds us that the Cabal planned an invasion of Iraq before 9-11—even before it took power. B · PDN · R · Y! · SH (Oh—what, you didn't know already? How soon we forget that the US has been bombing Iraq nearly every day of the past 12 years. This fuss over O'Neill is missing the real 9-11 giveaway: US invasion of Afghanistan was planned out before 9/11. This feller didn't know that.) The loonycons blame Clinton. NM (I kinda think Kristol scored an own-goal with that one. In neoconland, everything Clinton did or planned is wrong; so if he was planning an invasion of Iraq, invading Iraq is wrong. Another problem in blaming it on Clinton is that it was still the neocons' idea in the first place: see the letter they sent him 1998 Jan 26 begging for regime change: We urge you…to enunciate a new strategy [which] should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power, signed Kristol, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. DV) Shrub quickly adopts the tactic N24 · WTVO lousy though it be. The Treasury Dep't wants O'Neill investigated as a leak with these claims. NCA · BBC (Which is as much as admitting he's telling the truth.)
• Fish get a mad cow moment as PCBs, dioxins, and pesticides are found in farmed salmon; highest levels in Scots fish, most of the UK's supply. The feed is the suspect. And here's a curious detail: Environmentalists have long criticised this aspect of the industry as it relies on wild fish being caught and ground into pellets to feed their captive cousins. They have pointed out that it takes three tons of wild fish to produce one ton of the farmed variety. It is, therefore, fundamentally an unsustainable industry. G (Note also that a good portion of the feed comes out as fishshit, concentrating pollutant under the pens. Hopefully the feed is bycatch and offal. Regardless, if the predictions…that by 2020 more farmed fish will be eaten than those caught in the wild are right, that means an awful lot of bycatch—and quite as much burden on the ocean's fish. Worse, most people won't realise it, except possibly that by 2020 the price of the fuel needed to make that bycatch will be no small factor in the price of the fish.)

• The effect of uranium weapons used by American and British forces is suppressed. Iraqi and foreign doctors report that radiation illnesses are common throughout Iraq, and troops have been warned not to approach contaminated sites. Readings taken from destroyed Iraqi tanks in British-controlled Basra are so high that a British army survey team wore white, full-body radiation suits, face masks and gloves. With nothing to warn them, Iraqi children play on and around the tanks. DV

• 10: If the Administration?s plans for a military adventure vis a vis the French materialize, we want to be right off the line with coverage…The Bush people want an administration change in Paris and we have to be careful not to mention any military assistance from our side. Diplomatic and economic pressure will be tried first. The French will cave in just like Brazil will stop its fingerprinting of US citizens. Either that or the World Bank and IMF will put them on the grill. Bush is visiting their president and will give him the word that we will not permit some third world state to dictate to us… TBRN (What fresh h@ll is this? I think there're two pieces here: a strange hint of a military move on France (!?!) plus intent to get the IMF to lean on Brazil for actions noted above. I can't credit the former; even if Hitler did invade France, not even the Shrubya admin can be that stupid. They got regime change in Canada w/o military, that I know of…What makes serious regime change in France credible is that Cheney is wanted in court there about a Halliburton scandal. UNO · GP)
• 11: Bliar admits Iraq's WMD may never be found; still appears to bleeve they existed last March. S

  Cape Breton workers blockade the loading of the remains of SYSCO because the US buyer hired out-of-province stevedores to do the work. Using local labour had been an optional under the Hamm gov't deal. [ATV news] (Hamm's Conservatives are rabidly pro-US. Chataway himself last spring tried to defend to me Shrub's conquest of Iraq; that shall be the last time he gets supper here.)

• No doubt there will be a great deal of denial on the part of those flag-waving true believers who eagerly shipped off other people's children to be killed and crippled. WRH (Yeah, I'm bettin' Coulter-O'Reilly-Horowitz-worshipper Ralph E. Hayes Jr. and crowd will find a way to dismiss it as a liberal-media hoax, or Clinton's fault—even though PNAC begged Clinton to invade Iraq. He's so screwed up he's got Self defense—a human right links on his pages yet completely denies the Palestinians have any right to defend themselves from the murderous Israeli invasion.)
• 3,000 newly-trained soldiers desert Afghan army 1/3 to 1/2 the force SW (That's the army manufactured by the US coalition. The same thing's happening in Iraq. Some have no doubt figured out they're being used by the imperial white man. Some have probably figured out what their life expectancy is. But I bet some went in fully intending to desert, to take back to the rebels free training and a peek inside the enemy.)
• 12: US Army War College report describes the invasion of Iraq as unnecessary, dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious. TWAT itself is unrealistic. S · CCT (USAWC just lost its budget.) Record compar[ed] Bush's strategy to [Kaiser and Nazi] Germany's M

  Cape Breton blockade continues. Campobellans getting more harassment from US customs. Prentiss drops Conservative leadership bid; Harper picks it up. [ATV news] (I'm betting MacKay won't go for it. We're sposed to know tomorrow. There's a little point south of Vancouver, belongs to the US but its land connection is all-Canadian. I wonder if anyone lives there?)

• Congress recently appropriated an extra G$87 [for OIL]…Alpine Power Co. of Roseburg wants to spend M$23 to install 51 windmills near La Grande. Altogether, these windmills would generate some 92 MW of electricity. Assuming that they could be run about 1/3 of the time…each windmill would produce about 5.3 GW·h/a…At the costs projected by Alpine Power Co, G$87 would buy 192,904 windmills. The total resulting electricity production [under the assumption] would come to more than 1 PW·h/a…more than ¼ of all US electricity consumption in 2000. CD
• [Home Sec'y] Blunkett wants existing powers to detain foreign terror suspects without trial to be extended to all British subjects. S
• The PooooOTUS of Very Little Brain: No President has ever done more for human rights than I have. [LF quoting NYDN citing New Yorker] (This guy builds extrajudical prison camps in foreign countries, remember? That's just a bit more like Hitler than Gandhi.)
• 13: Suskind Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the education of Paul O'Neill
  Astronomers discover a 30-m rock with about a ¼ chance of coming down in the next couple days. Before they give a warning, though, a new datum shows it's going to miss. BBC (Very tough call. The slightest mishandling would cause a panic as potentially devastating as an actual impact, and if an impact didn't happen, noöne would listen to those crazy astronomers again.)
• While Canada waffles, Venezuela decriminalises simple posession. BLO
• 15: The panel set up to investigate 9/11 is so unbiased and independent and arm's length that two of its senior officials, Philip Zelikow and Jamie S. Gorelick, were witnesses today. UPI

  W gets boos at the MLK grave. Y! (I dunno if he heard them, the booers were, as usual, bubbled off behind buses.)

• Jose Bono, Spanish politician: and our colleague Blair? He's un gilipollas integral. He's an imbecile. T (And if the uptight Telegraph can translat that as complete dickhead, who am I to disagree?)

• Last summer the Ayatollah, spiritual leader of Iraq's 60-70% majority Shi'ites, issued a fatwa calling for direct, democratic elections to a constituent assembly, torpedoing an American scheme to write a Constitution first. Imperial proconsul Paul Bremer then came up with his caucus plan, which is now effectively blocked by the Ayatollah's veto.

  Undeterred by prudence, Bremer is now launching a campaign to get Sistani to change his mind…even pushing Kofi Annan to lobby for the caucus plan. Annan has cited numerous experts, who all claim that a census couldn't possibly be taken in time, the security situation is too tenuous, and giving half a dozen other reasons why the liberation of Iraq just can't mean one person, one vote. AW

• Tour operators are forecasting that the extra security in the US will boost visitor numbers to its neighbour by up to a third… S (I was reminding the Hamm fascists Conservatives just today that they'd said we should go he'p kill a few thousand Eye-rackies 'cause our tourism would suffer if we didn't.)

• In fact, it is the other way round. British and American foreign policy is itself based on a series of highly improbable conspiracy theories, the biggest of which is that an evil Saudi millionaire genius in a cave in the Hindu Kush controls a secret worldwide network of tens of thousands of terrorists in more than 60 countries (George Bush). [cf the ¼-million terrorists the US maintains in over 130 countries AN, CD] News reports frequently tell us that terrorist organisations, such as those which have attacked Bali or Istanbul, have links to al-Qa'eda, but we never learn quite what those links are. According to two terrorism experts in California, Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud, this is because they do not exist…By the same token, the US-led invasion of Iraq was based on a fantasy that Saddam Hussein was in, or might one day enter into, a conspiracy with Osama bin Laden. This is as verifiable as the claim that MI6 used mind control to make Henri Paul crash Princess Diana's car…With similar mystic gnosis, Donald Rumsfeld has alleged that the failure to find weapons of mass distraction, as Tony Blair likes to call them, shows that they once existed but were destroyed…And yet it is the anti-war people who continue to be branded paranoid, even though the British Prime Minister himself, his eyes staring wildly, said in September 2002, Saddam has got all these weapons…and they're pointing at us! AW

• Saddam Hussein warned his fedayeen militia against throwing in their lot with the Islamic militants flocking to Iraq to fight US forces, according to a document found with the deposed dictator when he was captured. The ousted leader told Iraqi militants that Muslim extremists had a different agenda to the Ba'ath party because they wanted to launch a religious war and establish an Islamic state in Iraq. In contrast, the aims of Saddam's supporters were limited to the expulsion of US-led coalition invaders and a return to secular power in Baghdad. H (We knew this before the invasion, too. Osama and Saddam did not like each other, had irreconcilable goals, and thus did not work together. It was thought the US threat might be enough common goal to cause them to cooperate, but it didn't even do that. Saddam had the only secular gov't in the middle east—and no, I didn't forget Israel. The US went in and destroyed it, while whining about fundamentalist regimes.)
• CBS bars PETA and MoveOn ads from superbowl. R · S (Pro sports are a tool to keep what's left of the masses' minds filled with thoughts that are no threat to the bosses. It's at cross-purposes to commingle controversial issues of public importance.)
• Israeli ambassador to Sweden trashes pieces by an Israeli-born artist in the Stockholm Museum of National Antiquities. ST · HF Y! Sharon praises the act—it would have been forbidden not to have acted on the spot. AJ · BBC (But woe to those who do to Israel as Israel does to others.) Israel promises to boycott a genocide conference unless Sweden disowns the installation. CNA (Perhaps that's the real motive.)
• World press pans US Mars shot BBC (Note the BBC's spoilsport spin. However, people should be wondering why a country terabucks in debt with a dying manufacturing sector (incl machine tools) and laregly stripped of natural resources with rampant poverty is talking moon bases and manned Mars missions. Americans seems to be prime spoilsports themselves: 61% of 1003 polled are against W's plan. Even among Republicans, more oppose than favour. HT) NASA, meanwhile, is axeing the Hubble. M As the NY Times will say shortly, it is actually a cruel hoax to pretend that Washington can afford to do anything new. IPSN This from a man who never cared a whit for space exploration in his entire spoon-fed career, a man who never even once visited the famed Johnson Space Center in Houston while serving as Texas governor. And you just know half the impulse for this inane new idea is so Shrub can get himself flown to the space-shuttle launch pad and have his picture taken in a shiny spacesuit. How cute. SFG
• US intends permanent military occupation of Georgia. BBC
• Entergy and the NRC both…defended the leisurely pace of the planned repairs, which won't start until 2007. Entergy says that there's no rush to fix the [decade-old] problems with [Indian Point's] emergency system because a breakdown isn't likely in the first place. CP (We learn from history that we never learn from history.)
• Mahathir recommends Saudis sell oil for gold to avoid holding the bag when the buck tanks. CNN
• So much for the penny-pinching Scot: However, debt levels are not consistent across the country, according to the findings. People in Scotland have the highest average personal debt with 48.5% of the population in the red to the tune of £7,848 each. G
• EU ministers are not yet considering selling off euros to strengthen the dollar. (One detractor of the OIL-as-currency-war theory suggested others would sacrifice their own currencies to prop up the dollar. Japan tried it for awhile. Europe's not so keen.)
• The Economist—prewar Bushlicker—tries to explain how the US' ducking and diving on giving the Shia what they want—elections, now, not Allah-knows-when—is not an attempt to avoid democratising Iraq. E In the meantime, it remains unclear if Iraq can hold together and become a peaceful, liberal democracy in which no group subjugates any other. (Well, democracy is basically a polite word for mob rule anyhow.)
• I guess the Moussaoui trial has thoroughly collapsed, we're now being given a new 20th hijacker. L6
• 18: British Air 208 Miami to Heathrow diverted to Nova Scotia when female passenger take fatally ill. Second passenger, male, drops dead before reaching Heathrow. Tomorrow a 19-y-a female dies on a Virgin flight. W
• Rivero tends to claim Drudge is not reliable—internet spokesman for the Bush/Clinton cocaine cabal, a plant. Possibly; witness their subtle promotion of Drudge.

  Mark McKinnon [was] director of advertising for Bush's 2000 Presidential campaign and now for his reëlection…

  I think when viewed through a historical lens the role and importance of the Whitehouse press corps today have diminished—perhaps significantly, Mark McKinnon says. Drudge—Matt Drudge's popular Internet blog—and non-stop cable news have created a virtual real-time news network… [Auletta Fortress Bush New Yorker 2004 Jan 19 p53 & 65]

• 19: Israel bombs Lebanon, in retaliation for an Israeli soldier shot on the Lebanese side of the line. AN · S · IA The UN determined that the armoured Israeli bulldozer was in Lebanon when Hizbollah shot at it. GDN Powell proves once again that Mahathir was right. WT

  Iowa caucuses show suspicious activity. Zogby predicts Kerry 25%, Dean 22%, Edwards 21%, Gephardt 18%. FauX predicts Kerry 29%, Dean 22%, Edwards 22%, and Gephardt on 16% based on entrance polls. Actual results: Kerry 38%, Edwards 32%, Dean 18%, Gephardt 11%. (WRH reader letter) Wondering about the Iowa upsets? Well, let's check the ballots. Oh, wait; there aren't any. Well, let's check the machines. Oh, wait; we're not allowed to. All but two counties in the Iowa Caucuses used DRE e-vote technology. And we'll never be able to verify the results. WRH citing SOS

• 20: Millionaire bigbiznizperson Belinda Strohnik declares for the New Conservative leadership. Yeah, that's such a counterweight to the millionaire bigbiznizperson Paul Martin. She's also a Mulroney fan, apparently.

  Shrub gives another Stuff the Union speech. I'm told there was applause at the point he said PATRIOT was going to start expiring soon. The closest he gets to mentioning the OBL boogeyman—who in fact has been just as #1 Wanted under Bush as under Clinton—is It is tempting to believe that the danger is behind us…That hope is understandable, comforting and false. The rest is a steaming load that'd feed Africa for a year. CFFTIM · WFC · MF · IPSN Just delivering we have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire with a straight face is worthy of an Oscar. G&M Or For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible…and no one can now doubt the word of America. CD (In a few days we read America's allies and competitors are likely to interpret Kay's findings very differently: that America's word—or at least its intelligence findings—cannot be fully trusted. SMH)

  In his third State of the Union, Bush moved from nuance to nonsense. The president pretended that his original invasion had been inspired by something he termed weapons of mass destruction program-related activities instead of the weapons themselves. Not only did this contradict literally hundreds of statements by top administration officials who clamed to have clear, positive proof of actual weapons—Cheney even spoke of reconstituted nuclear weapons—it is also rather difficult to figure out what in blazes it is supposed to mean. As a reader suggested to me in an e-mail, If the bill collector calls, I will inform him that I have a checkbook which is evidence of possible intent to develop bill-paying programs. That should satisfy him. AP

• Municipal Association of Police Personnel refuses to apologise to Kurt Johnson after a human rights finding of racism. (Now, as I understand it, they impounded his car because they misread his documents, and returned it next day without apology. Racism aside, I'm not too damn happy about cops that think they're above the common courtesy of apologising for making a mistake. And these were trained, experienced men? Lord help us.)
• WTF?

  Members of Congress who have suddenly mustered up the spine to go after the Bush war criminals for their pathological lies about Iraq's non-existent WMD may be persecuted for treason. The neocon cabal is beginning to make the case for imprisoning—or possibly executing—members of Congress who oppose the war in Iraq, writes Thomas J. DiLorenzo. Naturally, the totalitarian/neocon case for imprisoning or executing the Bush administration's political opponents is based on precedents established by Abraham Lincoln. DiLorenzo cites an article by J. Michael Waller appearing in Insight magazine, an appendage of the Washington Times, the voice of the Washington DC neocon establishment (and also owned by the convicted felon and self-proclaimed Messiah Sun Myung Moon)…

  Waller mentions Lincoln's suspension of the Bill of Rights and throwing politicians and newspaper editors in military brigs for disagreeing with him about the Civil War. While none have suggested such extreme measures in the midst of the war on terrorism, Lincoln's approach illustrates the deadly seriousness of political responsibility in wartime and draws a fine line between legitimate political dissent and aiding the enemy, Waller explains.

  None have suggested? Maybe Waller should follow the rantings of his fellow so-called conservatives…

  [Saddam Hussein's] gruesome qualities matter less to the Left than the fact of his confronting and defying the US, the Islamophobe Daniel Pipes believes. In its view, anyone who does that can't be too bad\—never mind that he brutalizes his subjects and invades his neighbors. The Left takes to the streets to assure his survival, indifferent both to the fate of Iraqis and even to their own safety, clutching instead at the hope that this monster will somehow bring socialism closer.

  Pipes made his name by harassing college professors in much the same way followers of the Nazis did in the early 1930s. For all his effort, Bush appointed Pipes to the board of the US Institute of Peace. For Pipes and his ilk, peace rides bare back on a cruise missile. The sound of freedom is a six year old Iraqi girl screaming as she bleeds to death after a cluster bomb hits a nursery school. PT

  (The easiest way to understand Pipes spew is to substitute Jew for Muslim and think Germany c1940. Exercises: Muslim[-immigrant] customs are more troublesome than most…West European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene. [The Muslims are Coming! The Muslims are Coming! National Review 1990 Nov 15] There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces. Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues, and temples. Muslim schools require increased oversight to ascertain what is being taught to children. [Jerusalem Post 2003 Jan 22 p9] The facts that the US backed Saddam's gassing of his own people, if he did it at all, and backed Iraq in its war with Iran because Iran needed punishing for booting the US' pet Shah, and that the US okayed the invasion of Kuwait, are all nonexistent to Pipes.)
• New Statesman, a magazine owned by a close political ally of the chancellor, refers to Fony Bliar as a man who doesn't really know who he is. More technically, he is diagnosed as a psychopath capable of reïnventing himself with remarkable dexterity, like an actor…What most people call spin—the routine lubricant of all political gearboxes—is, in Blair's case, eloquent self-delusion on a heroic scale. M (It does smack of a heavy-handed attempt to promote Brown over Bliar. But if you admit that one side can use media in such shady ways, you must admit the other side can as well.)
• The Canadian gov't doesn't want to investigate itself re Arar. So it cobbles up documents accusing him of being al Qaida, leak them to a journalist, and persecute the journalist (not the leaker—never the leaker) instead. (That's my read of ATV's report.)
• Now France figgers on banning beards, too. IBN (This is really trampling religious freedoms. The bible prohibits rounding the corners of one's beard, which is generally taken to mean thou shalt not shave. This is, esssentially, demanding a permanent denial of one's religion—a scarf can be reapplied at the end of the day; beards do not grow back so fast.)
• Now, just two little changes to the product's box: change product's name to Elite Military Deserter, then add small-type footnote near box bottom, Note: AWOL (absent without leave) and desertion (defined as AWOL beyond 30 days), are actual crimes—crimes with no statutes of limitation. This Action Figure is 30 years overdue his court-martial. Fast, easy fixes and KB Toys resumes being a socially responsible company with wholesome, honest products. VFP
• US-provided lawyer for an Aussie locked up in Gitmo says there's no way to get a fair trial R and that seems to be a-okay with the Howard gov't. In war situations, and this is a war against terrorism, military commissions have been the normal way in which matters that require a trial are addressed. ABC (That's the scary-@ss thing about war-on-toady's-excuse @hit. We're at war, so we can do to you whatever the fu@k we want, so don't kick up any fuss!)

• In his memoir The Right Man, Frum admitted that he originally came up with the idea because his boss, chief speechwriter Michael Gerson told him to find a way to justify a war against Iraq and he thought it would be really cool to make up one of those axis-things we had to fight against in WWW2. I swear I'm not making this up. His original term, axis of hatred, was later transmuted into evil to take advantage of the theological language that Bush had made his own since 9-11…

  Little did we know at the time that the Axis of Evil screw-up was not just an exception to the rule; it was how the Bush administration did business, no less in domestic policy than in foreign affairs. One of the lesser-noticed, but most revealing incidents in Paul O'Neill's memoir once-removed, The Price of Loyalty, also takes place during the first Bush State of the Union. As O'Neill tells it, he woke up on the day of the address to read on the front page of the New York Times that the president was planning on using some cockamamie calculation—provided by a mistaken midlevel OMB employee—to justify nearly G$700 in tax cuts. Furious and nearly shaking with disbelief, O'Neill tried to head it off but was informed that since the document had already been leaked to the media by the White House political staff, it was too late to correct it. How in the world, he wondered, could Rove and company decide to do things like this and not even consult with the people in government who know what's true or not? Who was in charge here? This is complete bull****. AP

  (That was a Yes, Minister epsidoe.)
• Rummy's considering starting a fresh war by shooting up Lebanon. JP probably citing J (They've been psyopping for a war w/Syria since victory was declared in Iraq. But it's not bearing fruit; they may be getting to the just do it stage.)
• 22: US comptroller-general David Walker blasts the growing deficit. PG

• The general trend is away from the antiquated punch cards that caused so much grief in Florida and toward electronic voting machines. But these have problems of their own. One recent instance occurred, fittingly enough, in Florida, just a few weeks ago. In a special election for a state House seat, touch-screen machines reported 137 blank ballots. The margin of victory was only 12 votes. MJ

  (Actually, the punchcards were one of the smallest problems in FL. But since elimination of the paper trails was the real goal, punchcards got all the play.)
• 23: David Kay resigns empty-handed of Iraqi WMD. ABC Says the stockpile never existed HS · KCAUTV although CBC claims he later changed it to moved to Syria. Charles Duelfer takes over. WTNH He used to be a Clinton-Saddam gobetween. NM
• Powell admits the possibility that Iraq had no WMD. Y!
• Canadian judge proves Mahathir was right, cites national-security (aka fabrications that'd never withstand open scrutiny) document as sole reason to keep Zundel locked up. C
• Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader claims wife Cherie believed from the start that Bush stole the election. TI (Fony Bliar's getting really short on friends.)
• 22: Ralph Klein cops (Edmonton) apparently pitch a shackled prisoner down an elevator shaft. They pretend it was an accident and that the kid threw himself at the door hard enough to open it. G&M · FFT Oddly enough, the elevators are operated by Thyssen-Krupp. That's a name straight out of the Nazi era. Technicians from the company…noticed the elevator was…hanging from a cable. Duh. I (Actually, door may have been accidentlly omitted; see further up the article.)
• Powell: What is the open question is, how many stockpiles they had, if any. And if they had any, where did they go? If they didn't have any, why wasn't that known beforehand? G&M (It was known beforehand, you moose-twit.)
• 25: Kay repeats I don't think they exist re Iraqi WMD G and although there was a lot of stuff ent to Syria, it's far from certain there were weapons. SCO (For Kay to say this is a big surprise. To this little skeptic Kay had all the markings of a lickspittle who'd find WMD if he had to smuggle them in himself. Now, Kay is enough of a bootlick to say it's the CIA, not the Whitehouse, that needs to do a recheck—even though IIRC the CIA was saying last year the WH was doing the exaggerating.) Aussie foreign minister thinks Kay didn't look hard enough, or something. SMH
• Jack Straw strill trying to rewrite history. This desperate move is the clearest indication we have to the true nature of the war. P
• Momentary flash of sanity: judge rules against Silverstein's double insurance claim. IHT
• 26: Scott McLellan (WH mouthpiece): Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction, they used weapons of mass destruction on its neighbours and on his own people, and they failed to account for the weapons and weapons programs. . . . Given his history and given the events of Sept. 11, we could not afford to rely on the good intentions of Saddam Hussein. G&M (Once more, with feeling: Iraq had no WMD last year; Iraq used WMD on Iran with the full sipport of the US, who provided WMD tactitians and materials; if Iraq used WMD on Iraqis the US helped in the coverup and deflected internat'l outrage; there was no connexion between Saddam and 9/11.)
• A piece of PATRIOT is ruled unconstitutional. The judge's ruling said the law, as written, does not differentiate between impermissible advice on violence and encouraging the use of peaceful, nonviolent means to achieve goals. RMT
• Sigh. I now fear and despise my own government almost as much as I do Shrubya's. WRH (Five years ago I paid Zundel no mind. Now I think there must be something substantive to his ideas. IE my government has made him into a martyr. And I no longer reserve judgement on Strutting Martinet.)
• Mirror reporters pose as traffickers and get offers for the purchase of children at UN camps run by British Christian organisations. Blonde girls draw higher prices than dark boys. M
• 28: Whitehouse denies it ever claimed Saddam was an imminent threat to the US. Urgent, comparable to the Cuban missile crisis, but not imminent. Rummy used immediate. TA (Can't you just picture thier media minions going through all the public record noting the words that were used and coming out the end saying Aha! Aha! We never said imminent! They can't catch us on actually saying imminent! So we'll deny that!) Fony Bliar now seems to be the last important bleever in Iraqi WMD. G
  
• Powell denies the US is trying to encircle Russia. IHT
• Anti-war nations took bribes before war began according to the US-run Iraqi provisional gummint. Investigation launched into claims that Saddam Hussein used oil to win support around the world I (Still awaiting investigation of the countries that took bribes and kickbacks from ShrubCo to join the coalition of the willing. We know there were some, because some countries who refused to join up said they'd been plied.)
• Kay not only sticks to nonexistent-WMD talk, but turns it up a notch. WP
• 29:
  

• When I confronted the foibles and fallacies of President Bill Clinton, Christian conservatives hailed me a hero. I was deluged with congratulatory emails and letters. Their appreciation for my work could not be expressed loudly or often enough.

  However, when I confront the foibles and fallacies of President George W. Bush, those same Christian conservatives call me every dirty name in the book. I am suddenly their enemy. Their songs of praise for my work have turned into a cacophony of hate. But amazingly, I am saying the same things now that I said then. So, what has changed?

  I submit that what has changed are the attitudes and principles of vast numbers of Christian conservatives. Where once they stood for truth, they now stand for political parties. NWV

• Orders for durable manufactured goods dropped 1.8% this month, losing all the gain in December (1.6%). USAT (Call it the Christmas burp. Surprise and unexpected are not the words I'd use. The article hints the December number has been fudged upward to make things look better.)
• US trade deficit for January: G$43.1 (an average of M$58/hr). USAT (But That is a sign of a stronger US economy, ya sure.)

February

• Now air travellers in the US need government approval. WSWS (Frankly, IMO, anything to discourage air travel is a good thing. Airliners are hideously energy-costly devices for what they accomplish and should simply be abolished. My worry is, how are rail passengers treated? I have a vague idea this harassment of air travellers is a ploy to reduce flights to save on energy…and Mike Rivero suggested it was to save aviation fuel for the military.)
• 1: Times New Roman 14 becomes official font of the US gummint. Courier New 12 now obsolete and unacceptable. /. citing ABC (I wonder how many days of agonised debate at the public expense that took.)
• 2: Another empowdered letter shuts down Senate offices, Bill Frist's, the very day W asks congress for complete elimination of homeland-security building-decontamination research. G (This is what Shrub actually does after he's done babbling about the continuing terror threat.)

• The most tyrannical of Washington's new allies is Islom Karimov, the ex-Communist dictator of Uzbekistan, who allowed US troops to set up a large and permanent military base on Uzbek soil during the Afghan campaign in late 2001. Ever since, the Bush Administration has turned a blind eye to the Karimov regime's brutal suppression of opposition and Islamic groups. Such people must be shot in the head. If necessary, I will shoot them myself, Karimov once famously told his rubber-stamp Parliament.

  Although the US State Department acknowledges that Uzbek security forces use torture as a routine investigation technique, Washington last year gave the Karimov regime $500 million in aid and rent payments for the US air base in Khanabad. Though Uzbek Muslims can be arrested simply for wearing a long beard, the State Department also quietly removed Uzbekistan from its annual list of countries where freedom of religion is under threat. N

  (The US loves a dictator, so long as he is on their side. If none is present, one will be installed.)
• 6: More air-travel deterrence: proselytising pilots. most [passengers] looked at each other in alarm, fearing they were being flown to New York by a religious fanatic. G (Seen any of that new thingy on A&E about air travel? Abusive and arbitrary check-in clerks? Flight crews that sing at you withou mercy? After dumping billions into the airlines post-9/11, the US is doing all it can to discourage air travel. Which, as I said above, is not a bad thing…just odd.)
• 8: Shrub gives fireside chat at which tricky questions are asked for which he lacks answers. The night before the CBC was running something showing what the US really got up to in Iraq every night—terrorising the populace. This night 60 Minutes shows how much like Vietnam the situation is. The media definitely have new marching orders: Bush is now untenable. Kerry is lined up as the replacement. Like Poppy and Clinton. Too, the media know their credibility v Internet went down the tubes, and some of that must be recovered for control to be maintained.

  The NYT reports that there has been an uptick in criticism of the White House from a chorus of conservative newspaper columnists, radio hosts and television commentators that he has counted on throughout his presidency to give powerful punctuation to his initiatives, proposals and defenses. Conservative Bob Novak criticized Bush for delivering the most ineffective State of the Union address in recent years. Former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan said that on his appearance on Meet the Press, The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse. [Even Will the Shill CP] wrote this Sunday it was surreal for a Republican president to submit a budget to a Republican-controlled Congress and have Republican legislators vow to remove the waste that he has included and that they have hitherto funded. AP

  citing NYT Bill O'Reilly makes good on his promise to apologise if there were no Iraqi WMD. But he blames it on Tenet, not W. ABC · UKN (Never mind that Tenet had given warning of 9/11. TMH)

• Canada is required by NAFTA to sell 60% of its natural gas to the US. When Canada begins to experience the energy shortage, they may seek to change the terms of that law. The US is unlikely to allow them to do so. LAC

  So that's why we Nova Scotians are getting none of our NG—you can be sure Ottawa will make as much of that quota out of the politically impotent Atlantic region as it can.

  When the cost of food soars [beacause the oil's running out], the only way to control the population will be through the institution of a fascist style police state. The Patriot Acts and related legislation are the foundation of that state. [Ibid]

  Actually, the foundations were laid decades ago. The beloved Kennedy placed a few of the stones. PATRIOT is more like one of the spires of the fascism cathedral, latterday and very visible.
• 9: Karzai asks for int'nat'l help, the opium thing is so out of hand. [BBC on CBCNW] (BBC does not mention that the Taliban had just about killed the Afghan drug trade.)

  US claims al Qaeda is inciting the Iraqi resistance by creating animosity between the Sunni and Shia. (Isn't that like trying to incite animosity between Hatfields and McCoys?)

  CNN raises the Was W AWOL? question! (They definitely have new marching orders. Yep. Definitely.)

• Scandal flares up around Paul strutting Martinet (tho it happened under Crouton): some M$110 of public money filtered through pro-Liberal media organisations. Like Rivero says, the last official act of any government is to loot its public. (A bigger scandal, though, is what's being done to Zundel. Not a peep about that so far.)
• Janet Jackson's "costume malfunction" made international news; that same half-time show featured the [virtually unnoticed] wearing of an American flag by performer Kid Rock…Title 4 Chapter 1 Section 8 (d): The flag should never be used as wearing apparel…or drapery USH
• 10: WRH coming back up to speed. Yay! =)

  Whitehouse feels need to reply to the AWOL business, producing records showing W got paid—for nine days in the missing two years. A normal ANG member would have attended twenty-four 2-day weekend drills and two 2-week summer encampments: a total of 68 days. PHXN (Is that in wartime too? This-all is another clue that Kerry has been chosen as next president: Kerry has no fewer than three purple hearts from Vietnam—as well as the testimony of a comrade whose life he saved. But if that weren't bad enough for Bush…there are now claims that he didn't turn up at all. M)

• Exposure of Wilson's wife as CIA agent has not gotten him to shut up. SPI (It was a minor revelation anyway. I think most of the world knows diplomatic spouses and staff are often spies.)
• St Paul (6-1) joins Minneapolis in condemning PATRIOT. PTC Also New York. NYCC
• Pentagon defiant on its Guantánamo wretches, spueing slop typical of those giddy with pure power and thirsty for more. NYT
• 14: W5 runs story on David Hudak. The FBI and the State Dep't had both decided Hudak was okay—but the ATF, of Waco and OKC, ignored all that. Handily acquitted, he was reärrested because his visa had expired while he was in jail for the charge which just been shot down. (All this I already new.) The Cretin gov't prohibited Canadians from testifying in Hudak's defense while sending gov't agents to tetify against him. And yet Hudek claims to still have a dream of running a counterterror school—in other words, he still hopes to help the two governments that terrorised him fight baddies that are often their own creation. I think Hudak has a screw loose.
  A story somewhat on the other side of the bed. Supposedly in '97 Hudak had been charged at home with unsafe explosives storage and having prohibited weapons.
  Hudak, through his attorney, John Lawit, noted there was no time limit stamped on his passport and denied staying in the US beyond the time permitted…Assistant US Attorney Nicholas Perry conceded there was no time stamped on the passport. RR On Feb 12 the judge gave a prelim ruling that the passport was still valid.
  But his defense attorney wonders why the US company that sold Hudak the devices has not been pursued with the same zeal…Hudak's attorney, Bob Gorence, said Hudak was induced to purchase the items by Halliburton Corp. - the major US conglomerate once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. MA Hudak said the company, Jet Research Center, called the deal a blue light special and sold the devices, which had failed inspection for use in military weapons, to Hudak's commercial demolition company for about $1.35 apiece, far less than what he would have paid for other similar explosives. HH But Officials with Halliburton, a Houston oil company once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, have said the sale was conducted after Halliburton sold Jet Research Center to another company. RF
• Iraq chaos after worst week yet SH (Still think Saddam was running it all from that little hole? H@ll, even the US gave up on that one when it resorted to that al-Qaeda claim a few days ago.) Nevertheless Britian has sold Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of sub-machine guns, pistols, riot shields and smoke grenades into this chaos in the past few weeks alone yet UK arms manufacturers last night called on ministers to help them win a greater share of the American-bankrolled reconstruction of Iraq S (That good ol' military-industrial complex.) As the violence continue[s]…on two American talk shows, Paul Bremer admitted the US was now pinning its hopes on the UN, an organisation it had written off as irrelevant… I
• UK troops can do their share of losing Iraqi hearts and minds. I · G
• Rabbi Daniel Lapin: I consider it crucially important for Christians to know that not all Jews are in agreement with their self-appointed spokesmen…Listen to a rabbi whom I debated on the Fox television show hosted by Bill O'Reilly last September. This is what he said, We have a responsibility as Jews, as thinking Jews, as people of theology, to respond to our Christian brothers and to engage them, be it Protestants, be it Catholics, and say, look, this is not your history, this is not your theology, this does not represent what you believe in. He happens to be a respected rabbi and a good one, but he too has bought into the preposterous proposition that Jews will reeducate Christians about Christian theology and history. Is it any wonder that this breathtaking arrogance spurs bitterness? LR
• Now the 9-11 commission wants to interview Bush & Dick. Bush & Dick agree—but only if Bush & Dick get to pick & choose which commissioners are present. [LF citing NJSL] But Bush & Dick have nothing to hide, nosireebobjimbubba. (For those who've been in a coma for five years: Almost 3,000 people died when terrorists hijacked four airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in southwestern Pennsylvania.
• 16: A Texan so damn fool as to try to drive to Vancouver without finding out which Vancouver ends up in the wrong country with an unauthorised grenade in her glove compartment. KTV
• Though neglected by major media in the US, international news sources have reported that French law enforcement authorities have made US Vice President Dick Cheney the target of a criminal investigation for his role in a massive bribery scandal during his time as chief executive at the Halliburton firm. GR
• 17: Now it's the Liberals losing MPs: Bryden jumps, possibly to the Conservatives.

  Some province calls out the riot squad w/tear gas against some students protesting tuition hikes, but I missed the part of the story saying which province. [CBC Newsworld]

• For these [sometimes imaginary] violations America bombed Iraq, and economically cutoff all trade, forcing other nations to do the same, causing devastation and millions of dead children, but in response to violations committed by Israel, America continues to fully support and send billions of dollars and weapons and assistance to this violent state.

  Throughout all of this, the American people just watched silently, with ignorance, the fact that other nations are suffering deeply because of American policies, only to benefit one state, Israel, on the account of all the Arab nations.

  And some Americans wonder why they are so hated. [And some non-Americans wonder why America's so hated!] AAP

• A side note: outlandish claims of Jewish casualties is nothing new. They claimed 6,000,000 in WWI, too, believe it or not. And, as historian/journalist Michael Hoffman has pointed out: There are two early Holocaust tales from the Talmud. Gittin 57b claims that four billion Jews were killed by the Romans in the city of Bethar. Gittin 58a claims that 16 million Jewish children were wrapped in scrolls and burned alive by the Romans. [Judaism's Strange Gods, Michael Hoffman (Independent History, 2000)] The Bible abounds with outlandish claims of Jewish casualties, as well. CPP

  I try to be careful with Steele, but I found this:

  the voice here refers to [the cry caused by] the Emperor Hadrian who killed in Alexandria of Egypt sixty myriads on sixty myriads, twice as many as went forth from Egypt. The voice of Jacob: this is the cry caused by the Emperor Vespasian who killed in the city of Bethar four hundred thousand myriads, or as some say, four thousand myriads. C&H

  In such use, myriad means 10 000; thus four thousand myriads would be 40 000 000; four hundred thousand myriads would be 4 000 000 000; and sixty myriads on sixty myriads might be 360 000 000 000. The least of these would be the population of an entire continent at that time.

  There were four hundred synagogues in the city of Bethar, and in every one were four hundred teachers of children, and each one had under him four hundred pupils, and when the enemy entered there they pierced them with their staves, and when the enemy prevailed and captured them, they wrapped them in their scrolls and burnt them with fire. C&H

  400×400×400 = 64 000 000; Hoffman seems to have undercalculated.

  Interesting—not in itself proof of exaggeration re Hitler of course, but there is much motivation and room for exaggeration. It does tend to hint at a masochistic affection for exaggerating victimhood.

  If Hadrian and Vespasian are not bizarre errors but later insertions, maybe we're reading a history of the Apocalypse which was to occur before this generation has passed away. So what of the Tribulationist thinkers among the Shrubites? But then, it doesn't affect Dominionists, who may be scarier.

• We stand by Israel, writes Irving Kristol, because America is an ideological nation, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear. We and Israel are democracies, the Arab countries are not, and that is all there is to it.

  That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.

  But this is nonsense, and Kristol knows it [or should]. When Britain and France declared war on Hitler on September 3, 1939, FDR did not come to the defense of France and Britain. He delivered a fireside chat that night promising the nation America would stay out. There will be no blackout of peace here, FDR promised us. When France fell in May-June of 1940, pleading for planes, FDR sent words of encouragement. Not until 18 months after the fall of France did we declare war on Hitler and not until after Hitler declared war on us. Thus, we did not go to war to defend democracy in Britain or France. We went to war to smash the Japanese Empire that attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Kristol is parroting liberal myths.

  India is democratic and 200 times the size of Israel. Yet in India's wars with Pakistan, we tilted toward Pakistan. Why? Because the Pakistanis were allies, and India sided with Moscow. That India was democratic and Pakistan autocratic made no difference to us.

  In the Cold War the US welcomed as allies Chiang Kai-shek, Salazar, Franco, Somoza, the Shah, Suharto, Syngman Rhee, Park Chung Hee and the Korean generals, Greek colonels, military regimes in Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey, Marcos, and Pinochet because these autocrats proved far more reliable than democratists like Nehru, Olaf Palme, Willy Brandt, and Pierre Trudeau. ACM

  Buchanan forgot to mention Guatemala. The US has destroyed more democracies than it has salvaged, assuming it has actually salvaged any (look into what the US did to France). To be sure, we must remember that FDR immediately began research into means to trick Americans into wanting to go play in WW2.
• Union of Concerned Scientists blasts the science of the W administration. Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, called the report biased and said he was troubled that some very prestigious scientists had signed the statement. [/. linking UCS, W, SMH, NYT, G] (Curious. Why troubled? Scientists having the scurrilous thought that they can do science better than W and industrial lobbyists?)
• Martinet tries to buy his way out of the scandal by giving a few bucks to veterans on whom biological and chemical agents were tested ~50 a ago. [CTV News] He later recovers the losses by reducing Maritime transfer payments.
• US federal debt tops T$7. S (Then there's the states' and citizens' debts atop that.)
• Mahathire was wrong as far as the EU president goes—and the Zionists are gonna give him a hard time for it. SMH
• They musta been embarassed into some sense—Britain may abandon its persecution of Katharine Gun for revealing the US' spying on UN delgates. G
• 21: Halifax declares a curfew for a second night, and starting an hour earlier (10 pm). (Now, I've got no problem with a vehicular curfew in a snow-clearing crisis. But this applies to pedestrians, too. This is alleged to be a free country! But that's what happens under state-of-emergency powers, it goes to heads. Fortunately I don't live in Halifax.) Emperor Martinet grants permission for some of the snow to be dumped in the harbour. (Yeah. Halifax is crapping Lord knows how many ton each day into that ocean harbour, but they need special permission to dump snow in it. What they don't need a federal permit for, is to set up a big heater and melt the snow into the storm drain which empties into the harbour. So they're doing that too. [Municipal gov't source] This is a sane country?? No. It's about power trips for Ottawa. It's about them reminding us who's the boss. Or maybe it's just about boosting the GDP. Anyway, it's stoopid.)
• 23: Hedgkashn Sec'y Rod Paige calls the US' largets teachers' union a terrorist organisation. He later calls it a bad choice of words.
• Iraq, even under the US' thumb, continues its territorial claims on oil-rich Kuwait. CD
• The irony of it was that [Spirit's] operating system was doing exactly what we'd told it to do. EET (Ayuh. Kaputeys are strange that way, very literal-minded little bugs. There is no domain that so well demonstrates the law of unintended consequences as kaputeys. What they told it to do, BTW, is very like what AT&T told its switches to do in the late '80s; reboot on failed assertion. Offhand I'd say from 2 to 4 nines' worth of the time, it's the right thing to do. But when, inevitably, rebooting causes the assertion failure… HC)
• Can't get you boxcutters, guns, Mace, and leafblowers aboard an aircraft? No prob. Take a liquor bottle. The TSA's regulations are entirely geared toward their content, not dual-use. After going through this extensive screening process, here are these two guys who could break a beer bottle and put it against anyone's throat…Nahuina called Continental Airlines and was further distressed to learn that beer, wine and liquor bottles are, indeed, allowed in airline cabins. SS
• Libya is refusing to accept the bribe to take the fall for the Lockerbie downing. BBC (Nor should they. Fletcher's wounds could not have been inflicted from the Libyan embassy. The only information linking Libya to the disco bombing was radio traffic planted by the Israelis. While this leaves the US bombing of Libya, which killed Qadafi's daughter, with no justification and boosts the revenge theory for Lockerbie, the US had enough advance notice to warn its diplomats off PanAm flights. Richard Fuisz, a CIA agent who claims to know who the Lockerbie bombers were and that they aren't Libyan has been gagged by US national security flummery since 1994 Oct after partially confiding in congressional aide Susan Lindauer. SH Consider that Iran had much more immediate and eye-for-eye motive. Indeed, the original line of inquiry was into the Iranin motive; but GHWB leaned on Thatcher until she announced that inquiry was against the national interest. I'm sure it's pure coïncidence that blame shifted from Syria et al to Libya only and immediately after the former said yes to the '91 Whack Iraq and the latter no. WSWS (Considering the US had been waging war on Iran since 1980 there must've been something the US wanted to keep hidden not to let that theory be explored.) This was even the original line of inquiry J. Thomas Thurman, the FBI guy who supposedly IDed a piece of electronics as used exclusively by Libyan intelligence was eventually given the boot as, literally, an unqualified liar—fabricating forensic evidence in the OKC and WTC bombings with no formal forensic qualifications. SH) There's only been a single conviction for Lockerbie, of a Libyan, and there's much opinion that it was inappropriate. Jim Swires, father of victim: We think there has been miscarriage of justice. Thank God that Britain does not have the death penalty. WSWS Robert Black, architect of the trial, derided the prosecution's very, very weak circumstantial case and was absolutely astounded Scottish judges would convict anyone, even a Libyan on such evidence. WSWS
• Israel's deputy defence minister Ze'ev Boim speculates Palestinians may have some genetic defect that causes them to do all this terror. An MK replies that whoever says that Palestinian behavior is caused by a genetic defect has a brain defect himself and the values of a racist fascist…[Boim is]returning to the same kind of primitive, sickening and dangerous racism from which the Jews have suffered for many generations. H (We aren't allowed to compare Zionists with Nazis SFBV even though Israelis do it.)
• It's claimed Saddam is going insane. P (Very clever. This way, either he never stands trial as incompetent to do so, or whatever he says what WMD he ever had being USUK supplied etc can be dismissed by USUK as ravings.)
• Flotsam (trash) drifting into a Pacific-current attractor has now accumulated into a raft the size of central Europe. NFR
• Kerry sticks up for the Zionists' wall. P (It is ironic that this act of terror [Sunday's bombing] takes place on the eve of consideration by the International Court of Justice of Israel's security fence. Yeah, it is ironic those attacks nearly always happen just when Israel most needs them. Also note that Kerry was waffly about the fence in October, hinting it was another barrier to peace. Democrat strategist Steve Rabinowitz—there's a clue, Sherlock—said The word barrier was not even in the lexicon back in October when we only talked about fences and walls. Uh. Okay.)

  Kerry's other challenger Ralph Nader is an Arab, a Semite. Much of the leadership in Israel is composed of members of the Jewish religion who are predominantly descendants of white Europeans, not Semites. Their racist politics and policies in Palestine and Israel and in refugee camps throughout the Middle East have impoverished, denigrated, and in hundreds of thousand of incidents have brutalized and massacred the Semites among them, relegating them to the lowest escheleons of society. PC ([ie Israel is the biggest antisemite going.)

• Moviegoer dies of coronary. MB (It probably happens every day. But because it happened during Passion, it's news. Not news, news. The rubbish phluf stuff media fill most of their space with because it's not important and thus miffs noöne important.)

• After answering all of their questions, I asked one of my own saying, You have all learned in school that we live in a free country; that everyone is free to come and go as they please, seeking life, liberty, and happiness. If such is the case, each of you should easily be able to give me the name of one person who lives their life free from interference by other people, organizations, laws, and the State.<\q> Once again, you could hear a pin drop. No hands were raised. Sheepish looks were everywhere. I could hear the gears grinding, but no names were offered. STR

  In his three California high school classes, this teacher got only one offer of a free person; someone's uncle Mike, mafioso.
• Gary Doonesbury Trudeau bets k$10 there's no proof W is not a deserter from the Alabama ANG. D

• The whiteness of the cast [of Passion] speaks to a decidedly un-Christian truth that lies near the heart of this republic. Simply put, nailing a white Jesus Christ to the cross on film will generate a far more emotional response from the American viewing public than the crucifixion of a savior who actually looks like he is from the Middle East…

  The fact of Christ's non-whiteness is borne out in the historical record, and in biblical scripture. Right off the bat, the Book of Matthew describes Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod. Egypt is in Africa, and is populated by brown-skinned people. For my money, this would be the last place on earth I would go to hide a white baby from an angry King.

  The earliest renditions of Jesus, painted by the first Christians called Essenes in the catacombs of Rome, depict a person with brown skin. During the time of Roman Emperor Justinian II, a gold coin featuring an image of Jesus was minted. This coin, which today can be seen in the British Museum, depicts a man with demonstrably non-white features and tightly curled hair. Finally, there is the Book of Revelations, which bears out the crafting of the Essenes and the Roman coin-makers by describing Jesus as having hair like wool, feet the color of burnt brass, and who resembled jasper and sardine stones. Jasper and sardine stones are both brown, as is burnt brass…

  The ugly truth which never even occurs to most Americans is that Jesus looked a lot more like an Iraqi, like an Afghani, like a Palestinian, like an Arab, than any of the paintings which grace the walls of American churches from sea to shining sea. This was an uncomfortable fact before September 11…Now, to suggest that Jesus shared a genealogical heritage and physical similarity to the people sitting in dog cages down in Guantanamo is to dance along the edge of treason. TO

• [Passion] shows that then—as now—revolutionaries who organized the oppressed to fight their oppressors were often kidnapped on midnight raids, illegally detained, brutally beaten, convicted before phony show trials, and sentenced to death, often because a fink ratted them out. CL

• Shrub limits his interview with his 9/11 commission to an hour. R (And don't try telling me he's a busy man; he's been the vacationingest Prez the US has known.)
• 29: Chavez calls Shrubya an asshole. R Well, Shrubya should be used to that by now. Though I expected more colour and nuance from a Latino former paratrooper =)

March

• US gets rid of Aristide TT · WSWS · TO · UPI · AoL · H · WSWS again. (I'd been doing a little cleaning and came across an article from 2001 Jun about Emmanuel Constant, son of one of Papa Doc's top generals, the leader of FRAPH, Haitian opposition/rebel/terror group, who was apparently backed by the CIA. I wasn't paying as much attention to the US then as I've been since 9/11.) Aristide manages to claim to have been kidnapped DN · NFB before his telephone gets cut off. Notice how the French of whom the US was so derisive the past year or so now seem to be on their side again. UNO (Happy bicentannial of liberty, Haitians!)
• 2: Super Tuesday. MD has patched its voting machines by wrapping them in tamper-proof tape. Y! This apparently offended one machine into sufficient snit that its polling place had to resort to paper ballots. This was to get around the fact all MD's machines had two copies of the same lock. All 16000 machines could be opened by any one of the 32000 keys. Y! Paper also came out in GA's Effingham Co FOX and about a sixth of CA's Alameda Co polls. San Diego Co was about the same. And then the paper ran out. And it's expected to take weeks to count the paper. So anything you've heard about this is the final count for Stupor Tuesday is @hit. TVH (But it must be pointed out that part of the problem is the infernal complexity created by this American nonsense about stuffing as much as possible onto a ballot. Half the story is about the mixups handing out Dem ballots to Reps and vice versa.)

  One thing absolutely amazed me. With very few exceptions, the voters really loved the machines. They raved about them to us judges. The most common comment was That was so easy. I can see why people take so much offense at the notion that the machines are completely insecure. Given my role today, I just smiled and nodded. I was not about to tell voters that the machines they had just voted on were so insecure. I was curious that voters did not seem to question how their votes were recorded. The voter verifiability that I find so precious did not seem to be on the minds of these voters. One woman did come up to Joy and complain that she wanted a paper ballot to verify. But, Joy managed to convince her that these machines were state of the art and that there was nothing to worry about, which was followed by a smile and a wink in my direction. I just kept quiet, given the circumstances. As an election judge, my job is to make the election work as well as possible, and creating doubts in the voters' minds at the polls does not figure into my idea of responsible behavior. Avi Rubin

  (It's bad enough that electors don't care about how the votes get counted, but poll officials? Of course, it's mostly persons with sucker faith in The System that end up in the job. I'm not sure I'd bother working an election that used voting machines, but too, I've decided to never work one again anyway.)

  In the beginning of the election, we printed a zero tape of each machine. I found this to be the kind of charade that a confidence man would play when performing some sleight of hand. So, the machines printed each candidates name with a zero next to it. Somehow, that is supposed to mean that there are no votes counted on the machine? [more Rubin]

  That's clearly a residual procedure from the mechanical machines, probably mandated by a law somewhere. It meant nothing to the mechanicals, and yet, I assure you, it means even less in electronics.

  If you thought Rod Paige was funny, try Cheney: If Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two to three years, the kind of tax increases both Kerry and Edwards are talking about, we would not have had the kind of job growth that we've had. A net loss of over 2 million jobs is job growth? DFW

• 4: Then we have Labour Sec'y Elaine Chao saying GWB doesn't sign this report re the 2004 Economic report predicting 2.6 million new jobs. But check page 4 of the report. BH

  Legal advisors to the British cabinet conclude Whack Iraq was not authorised by UNSC resolutions. WT

• More disturbing is that the advice of [Britain's] attorney [General] became more pro-war precisely at the time new intelligence came in saying that Saddam's WMD programme was not nearly as advanced as the government's September 2002 dossier claimed. Moreover, it suggested Iraq did not pose any threat, let alone an imminent one, to Britain or the US. G (We who were agin Whack Iraq were right all along—it was neither legal nor defensive.)
• Not only does Shrubya exploit 9/11 images in his campagin ads—political advantage is, after all, why 9/11 was done—but so does Mastercard, putting a shot of that Iwo-Jimo-ish retrieval of the 9/11 flag on its cards. [CNN]

• Simple empirical observation says conspiracy is a very common form of political behaviour. The mysterious thing is not that some poor deluded fools insist on seeing conspiracies, but how it is that, for so long, so many otherwise apparently intelligent people—most of Anglo-American political science, for example—have, until very recently, managed not to notice that conspiracy is an everyday and rather important part of the phenomena they purport to be studying. [Let's have] a couple of examples:

  Since its formation in the 1920s until its demise about five years ago, the Economic League collected and spent, in today's money, millions of pounds every year working against the British left. It may have spent as much as the Conservative Party since World War I. Yet there was not one academic essay about the Economic League between its formation and 1980. Not one in sixty years. No account of British domestic politics in the twentieth century can be anything but hopelessly incomplete without incorporating the Economic League, but I have never seen one that does.

  Academic American history somehow manages to skip over the fact that in a 5-year period in the '60s one President, the probable next President, and the most important black leader since the war were victims of assassinations which were never investigated properly and remain unsolved…

  The most powerful interests in Britain and the US don't want their conspiratorial activities examined; and gee whiz, it turns out that being interested in conspiracies is intellectually forbidden in both societies.

  Of course there's one obvious exception…Since 1918 we have all been officially encouraged to believe in the existence of one conspiracy: the red menace. S

• 5: Stewart convicted. Speeches made about preserving the integrity of the system. (Since most of the worst corporate pillagers of the past few years are yet free even of charges, it cannot be the integrity of the SEC system which context would mean was implied, but that one of those hidden changes of context was made: the system in question is actually the one favoured by the neocons, of keeping women barefoot pregnant and chained to the oven. I have no especial love for that Living flummery, believe me. Everytime me mother tuned the thing in I got fresh conviction of the correctness of boob toob. But Stewart was not taken down for titchy two-bit stock transactions. The ilk that occupy the executive cannot stand to see a woman accomplish what she has, and simply grabbed their best chance to take her out. That she's now somehow been found guilty of lying about a crime that had so little evidence the judge dismissed it before giving it to the jury…)

  Why is Martha Stewart going to go to jail for lying to federal officials, while Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT), who repeatedly lied the nation into an immoral, illegal and costly Iraqi war, is treated liked an elder statesman? This isn't fair. JR

  (Screw Lieberman—Bush and Dick and Rummy and all lied too!)
• All members of this family are Canadian citizens and Canadian citizens have basic rights, including access to appropriate consular assistance when outside of Canada. said Foreign Affairs mouthpiece Kimberly Phillips re the Khadr family, known and self-professed al-Qaeda terrorists. TS Yet a Canadian with no obvious terror connections was sent by Canada to Syrian torture by US proxies? What fresh horse@hit is this? (And I guess he's not the only one, but he's the only one I can specifically remember right now.) Isn't it funny how the actual terrorists are treated so much better than the might-be-but-aren't terrorists? Canuckistan is right. (Other stories SI · P)
• GOP fuming that MoveOn ads should be pulled, claiming they're funded by soft money in an effort to influence a federal election. Y! ('course they don't don't mind the so-called Nat'l Endowment for Democracy buying elections in other countries.)

• In South Beach Miami, there is also a very interesting museum that specifically features posters and artifacts of wartime propaganda. On the 6th floor of the Wolfsonian Museum, there were many posters from WWII from various countries from both sides of the war, including from America, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and so on. We found one poster that was printed in 1942 in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to be especially interesting. The text read BOLSJEWISME IS MOORD! which translates, according to the placard beside it, as BOLSHEVISM IS MURDER!. However, there was no reference to the fact that the letters J-E-W were inserted into the word or why it was. It's something that most people would most likely not notice. Most people don't have a clue about the fact that Jews were prominent leaders in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Was this omission an oversight or further evidence of the unwritten rule against offending certain powerful sensibilities?

  The placard explained how the poster graphically featured the horrors of a young girl raped, a man tortured and murdered, and Christianity under attack, as shown in the shattered crucifix on the ground, committed at the hands of the Bolsheviks. This was designed by the Nazi Germans to play on the Europeans' anxiety of the savageness of Red Army of the Communist Soviet Union. What is interesting is that, just like in the overall American and European discourse, the role of Jews, many of whom were leaders in the brutal Bolshevik Communist Soviet Union, has been airbrushed out of history, just like it was deleted out of the placard at the museum, even while staring you in the face from the poster. In fact, a couple of top German politicians were recently publicly admonished for making a public reference to the significant role that Jews played during the Bolshevik Revolution and Communist Soviet Union.

  This all fits into the pattern of the strong taboo against speaking about Jews at all in connection with anything negative, no matter how justified. Holocaust lore has created a potent taboo against criticizing specifically Jewish political actions. In today's post Holocaust environment, Jews are to be viewed either in a uniformly positive light or as victims. This surely benefits Israel's ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing against the non-Jews in Palestine-Israel, not to mention their privileged status here. The fear of the smear of anti-Semitism is deliberately intended to diminish all legitimate protest against Zionism and its crimes. Expect to see still more Holocaust Museums, Holocaust classes in both public and private Christian schools, movies, cartoons, artifacts, etc. coming soon to a neighborhood near you! R

• WTF is Waihopai? LF (Ah. It seems to be a New Zealand nest of US spooks.)
• And WTF is the Forest Service doing to those NM ranchers? LN
• Will the PM turn his Back on Bush? S Blair called yesterday for a change in international law to legitimise preëmptive military action T (In other words, No.)
• Kerry assures the Nazionists he'll continue the US habit of vetoing UNSC resolutions that interfere with their ethnic cleansing of Palestine. NYT (Mahathir was right.)
• [CSIS's screed] accuses Zundel of being a dangerous preacher of anti-Semitic, white-supremacist hatred. Even if he doesn't advocate violence, it reads, he is dangerous because he's seen as a guru by extremists who do embrace violence…To Mr. Zundel, this is guilt by association. How others interpret and apply his writing is not his business. G&M (What Jesus said was used and is being used by a lot of people to justify violence. On the other paw, CSIS would almost certainly have thrown Jesus in solitary.)
• Zimbabwe info minister: These Americans who are pontificating about human rights and democracy would not recognise these things even if they hit them on their faces. So go and tell the imperialist to go to hell. A
• Hayes feels the consequences of the Shrub prezdensity—but I bet he still don't git it. REH I'm sitting on my schadenfreude.
• US begins to abandon Baghdad; troops withdrawn from the center of the city, bases cut by more than half. AT
• Abul Abbas, supposed plotter of the Achille Lauro incident, captured last year, supposedly dies in US custody. MSNBC (A lot of condition-of-anonymity about it.)
• Disney rides into trouble with story of cowboy who conquers the Middle East Hidalgo is the true story of Frank Hopkins, US cavalryman, Buffalo Bill performer, who supposedly won the Ocean of Fire, a supposed 1000-year-old supposed 3000-mile horse race through the deserts of Arabia from Yemen to Syria. The problem is, Frank Hopkins was almost certainly a fabulator and a confidence man whose tales of heroic deeds were little more than tall stories. There is no mention of him in US Cavalry records, or in accounts of the Battle of Wounded Knee, or in the extensive records of Buffalo Bill's travelling show. His name does not crop up in Teddy Roosevelt's voluminous correspondence. There is no evidence that the Texas-Vermont race was even run. He was never photographed in the saddle, except as an old man re-enacting the exploits of his youth. As for the Ocean of Fire, it too appears not to have taken place, either in 1890 or in any other year of its supposedly glorious 1000-year-old history. And even an insanely convoluted 3000-mile race from Yemen to Syria would finish somewhere in Armenia. Much of the damning evidence…has been unearthed by an equestrian exploration group called the Long Riders' Guild, which got wind of the Disney film early in the production process and took huge offence at the notion of a big-budget production glorifying a horseback exploit that never took place…Disney's response to this barrage of criticism has been awkward, not to say contradictory. The film's screenwriter, John Fusco, clings to the notion that his story is based on rigorously checked historical sources…But last week a documentary aired on the History Channel, a Disney subsidiary, borrowed much of the Long Riders' research to trash Hopkins' claims. Disney's executive director of international publicity, Nina Heyn, was quoted last year as saying, in an apparent moment of unguarded honesty, that no one here really cares about the historical aspects, a line the company has been careful not to repeat since…The film's release date has been postponed twice, perhaps because of the awkward resonances of last year's Iraq war…A tale of [cowboy] conquest of the Orient, based on entirely false pretences…Now where have we heard that one before? I
• Washington-based International election monitors Pax Christi USA are going to whitewash the '04 Florida count. JEB feigns outrage. R

• Dr Haruna Kaita: Let me make something clear, I am not against vaccination per se because there are genuine vaccines that help prevents diseases, but when a fake drug is brought in disguised as a vaccine, we have obligation to kick against it. Professor Emiritus Shehu himself will bear witness to this if he recall the incidence of CSM (Meningitis) immunization campaign in an area called Mayobelwa in former Gongola State. The communities were given vaccines for protection against the CSM, but what happened? After just a few weeks, there was a massive outbreak unprecedented in the history of the country there, and it was mostly those who were given the vaccines that were affected in that outbreak. Even himself, the Professor, said at that time that he could not explain the phenomenon, but we know now from recent discoveries that those vaccines were carrying a virulent that induced the disease in those vaccinated. There are other instances in other third world countries like Philippines, Mexico and so on. This is what is casting doubts on the vaccines brought for immunization on people in the third world. And for your information, even America has stopped the use of OPV, and many western countries have also stopped it because they discovered that it causes the polio that it is suppose to protect people from. AA

  He also found estrogen, which he insists will cause sterility. LS (Seems unlikely from one dose, but in a child, small and developing…)
• 8: Interim constitution signed in Iraq. CNN · WT 12 of the 13 Shia who signed immediately denounced the document and pledged to have it revised. It will be very difficult to get a permanent constitution, since 5/6th of the governortes must agree. G&M
  
  So he picked a bad time to try to learn to read, ease up =D
• 9: Faked-up antijudaism at Claremont McKenna college. AZT · PN Kerri Dunn is eventually charged with filing a false police report and insurance fraud. CCT
  
  That death ray sounds like Spiny Norman =D
• 911 days after 9/11, bomb kills 170 Spanish train customers, officials blame Basque separatists. Basque politician Arnold Otegi figures al Qaeda, which isn't much saner, but noted that ETA has always phoned in warnings; Interior Minister Angel Acebes said there'd been no warning. CE In fact it looks like a big tug-o'-war is brewing as to whether to blame Basques or al Qaeda. The Nazionists MN will no doubt go for al Qaeda, and perhaps help the process along a little with suspicious vans and mail. SB · R The British seem to want it to be Basques. #10 (The Basques may be a British creation. EIR BTW the letter claiming the bombing for al Qaeda was accompanied by one claiming an al Qaeda attack on the US is just about ready. R Don't overdo it, guys. Geeze, we've got an election coming up; what if Martinet decides to pull off the same stunt snd blame it on Québec separatists, or Maritime separatists, or BC separatists, to distract from the mess the Libruls are in and leverage some of that foul post-9/11 law before its sun sets?) The van was indeed one of those white vans, and the letter was written by a group known to have made false claims before (if it even exists B); but still the silly analysts speculate about this being al Qaeda's first coöperative operation. [ABC News London] (Actually, since al Qaeda and ETA are liable to have USUK roots, coöperation not such a weird idea.) Fortunately some of the Spanish public aren't being fooled. R Other than a deranged cop who shot up a baker. AJ Many more turned out to vote than last time, and the PP's prebombing comfortable lead in opinion polls (if you trust such things) fell to 37% with the Socialists taking 43%. S In seats, the Social/Popular went from 125/183 to 164/148. SPI Zapatero immediately declares Whack Iraq and the occupation to be disasters, Bush and Blair liras, and pledges to pull Spain's troops out of Iraq on/by July 1. R (Expect to see the US do some high-class sputtering over this outcome.)

  If the attacks could be connected to ETA, the resulting fury would be directed towards the Basque separatists. If the attack was perpetrated by al Qaeda, however, that fury would roar towards Aznar himself. He would be held personally responsible for those deaths because he involved Spain in the invasion of Iraq despite the disapproval of some 80% of Spain's citizens. If the attack was perpetrated by al Qaeda, it would be seen as revenge for Spain's role in Iraq…

  The [silver] lining is this: The bombing took place on Thursday. Two days later, the people of Spain were battering down the doors of government offices demanding information, demanding truth…The government is hiding information. They think we're idiots.…They've been lying to us and we won't know the real truth until after the election. Two days… was all it took for the people of Spain to become impatient, to pressure their government for the truth. When they did not get it, they threw that government out on its ear. For America, a nation approaching the 1000th day in which their government has not provided the truth of September 11th, this is a lesson… WRP

  Americans aren't used to mobs who think…After the bombing, Spaniards didn't shout: They hate us because we are good! or Spain is Number One! or otherwise pledge their religious devotion to the consolidated Spanish state. Not at all. Instead, they said: that jerk at the top brought this on, because he sold out the nation to appease the Bush administration…There was a wave of good sense which amounted to the following: let's stop making these people mad by invading and occupying their country.

  Put that way, the proper response to terrorism is clear: if you are doing something to provoke it, stop!…It is not caving in to the bees to stop poking a stick into their hive.

  Why didn't Americans respond similarly after 9-11?…We were all supposed to pretend that the US government was 100% pure and innocent and had never done anything to anyone…There were a few who dared state the obvious…they were promptly rounded up and either investigated for their ties to the hijackers, or were jeered at and told to leave the country. It was straight out of Orwell, but it worked. LHR

  Perhaps the tactics of fascist dictators were too fresh in Spanish memory. It's later claimed Aznar demanded suppression of evidence that pointed away from ETA. Aznar personally called the directors of El País, Jesús Ceberio, in Madrid, and El Periódico, Antonio Franco, in Barcelona, to tell them there was not the slightest doubt that ETA was responsible…Even the UNSC issued a resolution on the day of the attacks blaming ETA, on the insistence of Madrid, which said it had irrefutable evidence of involvement by the Basque separatist group. The embarrassed Security Council is now preparing to annul the resolution. CD
• 12: Athan Gibbs dies in traffic accident. He had invented TruVote machines, which may have been honest. He had said I've been an accountant, an auditor, for more than thirty years. Electronic voting machines that don't supply a paper trail go against every principle of accounting and auditing that's being taught in American business schools. FP
  
• The EPA is fretting about the vapours emitted by microwaved popcorn; they think it causes lung cancer. [ATV News] (You must have flourine in your water, but don't inhale your popcorn. What fu@king idiots.)
• The British Home Sec'y is charging the wrongly convicted £3000 per year for their upkeep. SH
• 15: NASA announces Sedna, largest solar-system find since Pluto. From 2000, about defining planet: A'Hearn and others say it's reasonably likely that another object as big or larger than Pluto will be found orbiting the Sun even farther out. What happens then? Start the fight over again. S

• This time last year, in his legendary presentation to the UN on why the US had to invade Iraq, our Secretary of State said, Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by…Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden. Powell displayed satellite photos of a camp in northeastern Iraq where, he said, terrorists were making bombs and poisons like ricin…

  Many of us missed miss the full import of Powell's very next line: Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein-controlled Iraq.

  Back in the Hussein era, the whole north of Iraq was a US-enforced no-fly zone. The Kurds enjoyed de facto independence…[Rice said in 2001 July that Saddam does not control the northern part of the country.] So it was a tad misleading to demand Hussein's ouster on grounds that he harbors a deadly terrorist network—when it was not Hussein, but a Taliban-like crowd of Islamic radicals in the USAF-protected north, doing the harboring.

  My question after hearing Powell's speech was: If we've really got rock-hard intelligence about terrorists sitting in some squalid little mountain camp, why haven't we…dropped a Tomahawk missile onto this poison factory? [cf Clinton-Sudan]

  Now NBC News offers an answer: We didn't deal with Zarqawi's…poisons camp because we needed it. For Colin Powell's UN speech. And for the war in Iraq. Citing US military officials, NBC News reports that over many months last year, the Bush administration had several chances to take out the Zarqawi boys. But…the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.…

  We left known terrorists free to kill and kill again—so that we could one day point to them and cry, Terrorist, terrorist! and, in the ensuing panic, invade an oil-and-tragedy soaked, yet unrelated, nation. MT

• Face the Nation decides to catch Rummy out on the we didn't say Iraq was an imminent threat lie. BF (Granted, in the provided quote he didn't actually say Iraq is an imminent threat. He said Iraq is not not an imminent threat, and the US' most immediate threat. To me, it's a hair not worth splitting in earnest, but there'll be those who try.)
• 16: Ray Co TN bans homosexuals, in the same courthouse used by the Skopes trial. (By Sunday they're forced to withdraw the resolution.)

  9/11 became a political football on that very day, and it has since been punted all over the playing field. The GOP has tried relentlessly to throw the blame at Clinton, but on Tuesday, the game took a bizarre new turn. According to an editorial in the New York Post, John Kerry is to blame for the attacks of 9/11. Yes, you read that right. John Kerry did it.

  The article, written by Paul Sperry and titled The Warning Kerry Ignored, claims that Kerry was given a warning some months before the attacks of security problems at Logan Airport, where two of the planes originated, and failed to handle them properly. He sent the warning, received from an FAA agent in Boston, to the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General. According to this FAA agent, and according to Sperry, this wasn't good enough. Because of Kerry's failure, the article argues, 3,000 people are dead.

  Hm. [So, then, what about that big ol' mountain of warning the Bush league ignored?] WRP

• The Republinazis have even found the chutzpah to attack 9/11 families who don't like Shrubya. Even the ones who voted for Shrubya. Dimbaugh outright accuses them of being Demonazi shills. Chris Matthews is only a bit subtler. BF
• Event Source, one of the subcontractors feeding the US troops in Iraq, claims not to have been paid since before the Shrubya-turkey showpiece. It wants M$87 out of Halliburton, the supercontractor, or no more hot meals for the troops. (Last month Halliburton was accused of overcharging the gov't for feeding troops. Where's the money going?) MSNBC
• 17: Mt Lebanon hotel, of Baghdad's Karrada district, blown up. Locals claim the hotel was hit by a US air-dropped missile. The US claims a car full of artillery ordnance left a crater 7m across and 3½m deep. (Which is more likely to leave a crater?) Although the hotel was mostly used by Iraqis and Arabs, with no coalition occupiers nearby, the US blames Islamic extremists like Ansar al-Islam or suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. BBC (Zarqawi, based beyond Saddam's control, was left alone by the US pre-OIL to help provide excuse for OIL. MT)
• Jamaica's not going to recognise the US' new Haitian gov't until a Caribbean Community vote. Venezuela's not recognising it at all. SBS
• Celucci sez Canadian cities could get terrorised if we don't do what Shrubby wants. [ATV news] (Is that a threat or a promise, Mr. Celucci?)

• As a 20-year-old photographer documenting the country's struggle over the Vietnam War, Ken Light snapped the picture of John Kerry at a peace rally in Mineola…

  Light did not photograph Jane Fonda on that warm June Sunday in 1971. The actress, who is reviled by many Vietnam veterans for her vocal stance against the war, did not even attend.

  But when opponents of the Democratic presidential hopeful began e-mailing Light's picture to one another four days ago, it depicted Fonda standing by Kerry's side. The photo had been doctored.

  I'm horrified, said Light, 52, who grew up in East Meadow and now heads the graduate photojournalism program at the University of California at Berkeley… [NN citing ND]

• US troops in Iraq are having to use unarmoured humvees in combat zones. The ANG 1462nd transport unit is covering the machines in bulletproof-vest panels discarded by Livingston Co police. [NN citing ML]

• Asked on CNN's Late Edition if the war was worth the lives of the 564 US soldiers killed, Rumsfeld said, Oh, my goodness, yes. There's just no question…25 million people in Iraq are free.…

  A recent interview with an unidentified soldier just back from Iraq is revealing. This soldier, a medical corpsman, says, We don't care about Iraqi deaths. It's something that does not even count. The hospital was told not to keep count. The Iraqi infrastructure does not keep an account of the deaths anymore.…[He] was asked what Arabic he had been taught in order to do his job. He said, They teach us a few words and phrases. Stop. Get down. Kneel. Shut up.

  One year later, Americans who question the logic of the military occupation of Iraq and the effectiveness of the current war on terror are hearing those same words from the Bush Administration. MW

• Zapatero tonight rejected US Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry's call for him to reconsider plans to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. BN (Mercans are not being offered an actual choice in November. Warmonger Shrub, or warmonger Kerror.)
• 18: Wolfowitz: The Spaniards are courageous people. I mean, we know it from their whole culture of bullfighting. MH (Winning hearts and minds.)

  Speaking of our best friends:

  The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation inflated the number of sources providing crucial information about the Air-India disaster in a confidential report provided to the RCMP a few months after the sensational explosions that killed 331 people, B.C. Supreme Court heard Thursday. The FBI had received information about the Air-India disaster from one source but advised the RCMP that the information had come from several people… G&M

• 19: Apparent assassination attempt on Taiwan's president and VP, the day before an election seen by China as a plebiscite for war. G (He's narrowly reëlected. USAT)

• No, The Passion is not anti-Semitic. That's why right after The Passion opened, a Pentacostal church in Colorado was adorned with this uplifting sign: The Jews Killed our Lord Jesus. Now where could they have gotten that idea from?…We're talking classic anti-Semitic images—the sneering Caiaphas with his gray rabbi beard, draped in a shawl of money, manipulating the passive Pilate, lecturing him about how best to serve Rome, as if, as [New Republic's Leon] Weiseltier put it, that Rome was a colony of Judea. CL

  (Gee, like Washington DC is a colony of Tel Aviv? Maybe that's what Gibson's trying to tell us. He is a conspiracy theorist after all.)

• Surely, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a key player on all the fronts that were in play, had a very long list of responsibilities. No time for diversions on Friday, right? Wrong.

  Rice took time out of the middle of the day to address a secretive gathering that included global media mogul Rupert Murdoch and top executives from television networks, newspapers and other media properties owned by Murdoch's News Corp. conglomerate. Rice spoke at some length via satellite to Murdoch and his cronies, who had gathered at the posh Ritz Carlton Hotel in Cancun, according to reports published in the British press. The Guardian newspaper, which sent a reporter to Cancun, revealed that Rice was asked to address the group by executives of the Murdoch-controlled Fox broadcast and cable networks in the US. The Fox family includes the Fox News cable channel, which the Guardian correctly describes as hugely supportive of President George Bush.

  Although she is not there in person, the presence of Rice underlines the importance of Rupert Murdoch's news operations to the Bush administration, which may face growing criticism that it led the country into war on false pretenses ahead of November's presidential election, the Guardian account of the Cancun gathering explained. SC

  This is the alleged human who can't be bothered to talk publically under oath to the 9/11 commission. Even mainstream net news notices this.

  But for days, she was left to stew in her own poisonous juices, trying to explain why she won't talk in public and under oath to the terror commission but she has time to be interviewed by every network this side of the Home and Garden TV. ND

• Vaterland Security now seeking liason to entertainment industry, to make sure only good things are said about der Vaterland. This is nothing new, the Pentagon's been doing it for years. Y!
• George Galloway accepts damage award and public apology for part of the took money from Saddam smear job. BBC
• GWB continues to link Saddam and al Qaeda, even after himself admitting it's a lie. SH
• US and Israel already manoeuvering and psyching to ignore the ICJ's verdict on the wall. JTA
• 22: Israel murders the founder of Hamas, their former(?) beneficiary. (This will provide Sharon years of excuses for atrocity, vitally needed when his pet wall is condemned.) It's condemned by nearly everyone—incl Jews and Israelis—with the US a notable but unsuprising exception. In fact Rice as much as says it was a good idea. Some of the things being talked about by the Israelis…might provide new opportunities. CD Well, one of the things Israel's been talking about for months is arbitrary killing of anyone it dislikes anywhere in the world. They had announced in January their intent to kill Yassin. SMH Of course the US vetoes a UNSC resolution condemning the murder. (Israel welcomes US veto of UN resolution on Yassin killing H imagine my fu@king shock. The US could have saved some face and condemned the excessive use of force; Yassin's movements were quite regular and he could've been taken out by a sniper, if his death was the real goal. But Israel chose to use a helicopter-lauched missile, which killed at least seven bystanders and injured 15 more [TW citing NYT] proving Sharon's goal was terrorism and more terrorism. But when it comes to Israel the US lacks the cajones even for that.) We are reminded of one of the exceptional attributes of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. How he constantly drew a clear distinction between true Judaism and Zionism and between the practitioners of Judaism and Zionist perpetrators. The followers of Judaism were never considered by the Sheik to be an obstacle to true peace. Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss
• The US is getting a bit blatant about calling its colonial governors ambassadors. G
• Kerry accuses Chavez of being detrimental to US interests and calls for regime change. CNN
• After Kerry left the plane, the Navy Captain came up to us, apologized and said basically that he knows Kerry is a jerk and that we should be glad we don't have to deal with him every day. BLR
• EU fines M$ nearly G€½. Shrub admin whines. IW (And some think the demand to expose APIs will bite Open Source, by allowing M$ to demand royalties. R)
• Another close link between MI5 and al Qaeda is revealed—top man Abu Qatada. ICH · ML It was investigation into Madrid that blew this open&mdashl;was Straw trying to hide this when he was so quick to blame ETA?
• Alameda Co accuses Diebold of not adequately performing its obligations re their voting machines. TS

• Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the WTC…that they would try to use an airplane as a missile. Rice told the commission that she had misspoken; the commission has received information that prior to 9/11, US intelligence agencies, and Clarke, had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missiles. SC

  Ah, so the mountain of evidence that this possibility had indeed been thought of by those in gov't charged with thinking such things had become so large that not even the commission or Rice could deny it any longer.

• The first hint of what might be in store came last month when OPEC announced its decision to withdraw 1m barrels of crude oil a day from the market. OPEC is worried about the weakening value of the dollar: it has lost one-third of its value in just under two years. Since OPEC sells oil for dollars, the oil-producing countries are losing precious revenue as the value of the dollar continues to erode. And because oil-producing countries then turn around and purchase much of their goods and services from the EU and must pay in euros, their purchasing power continues to deteriorate. CD

  OPEC has motives beside raising the price: why should they feed the US' Zionist-driven war machine against fellow Arabs and Muslims?
• 25: Israel floats a bizarre story of a child suicide bomber who showed up at a checkpoint two hours after the film crew and was gonna blow himself up for a posthumous hundred sheckles. BBC · PP It had been pushed hard by Israeli embassies, brandishing the antisemite label and bias against Israel whine and threats to have dissenting reporters dismissed. And they make good on those threats. CNN sources say the network has bowed to considerable pressure on its editors. Israeli officials boast that they now have only to call a number at the network's headquarters in Atlanta to pull any story they do not like. G
• 26: US troops attack another Tikrit family in their car. SMH · ST · AN (Another had been fired upon in January, passing a convoy. LF) This is probably a major motivator for the attacks on American contractors the next week.

  The latest outrage in Iraq will surprise nobody, given the brief history of the Bush regime, which has the blood of at least 13000 innocent civilians on its hands…US troops machine-gunned a car in Tikrit last night, wounding six women and children, the male driver, and murdering a boy of three years of age. Because they were traveling along a road in their own country.

  Get your fucking hands up, NOW!! shouted the US soldier, thrusting his gun into the face of a terrified six-year-old boy. That is documented on TV and that is how the US armed forces treat the Iraqi civilians. That is also why the average Iraqi is too terrified to stop his car when ordered to by this invading horde of mass murderers…

  US armed forces deny the incident happened, despite it having been confirmed by the driver of the vehicle, the hospital authorities and independent news sources. P

  North Americans must be pretty dim. Who wants to be a millionaire asked one what the latitude of the north pole is: 0, 45, 90, or 180 north. He didn't know, and neither did the audience: they offered a three-way split on 0, 90, and 180. I later find that the Canajns around me have no better idea than the Mercans in that studio. It was a k$64 question, so someone knew better than I that it was a hard question.

• WTO rules that the US must permit online gambling or face trade punishment. Rep Goodlatte (R VA): It cannot be allowed to stand that another nation can impose its values on the US and make it a trade issue. Of course it's supposed to be perfectly all right for the US to impose its so-called values on anyone else, not least via the WTO. Indeed Antigua and Barbuda argued [to US hypocrisy] because it wants to allow American casino operations to operate land-based and Internet-based subsidiaries overseas. SPI
• 28: FOX talkinghead Brit Hume, defending W's jokes about welching on promises of Iraqi WMD, tells the families of US troops killed in Iraq to get over it. CB (I am a Hume; Brit shames the clan. I shouldn't gloat over his son's suicide, but truth is I'm glad there's just that much less of that diseased branch of the family.)
• GHWB lashes out at elites and intellectuals on the campaign trail who say unkind things about W. Y! Will there ever be term limits on this guy? He was president for eight years while Reagan played the role, four years as himself, and he's been president as George W. Bush since 2000. [Grandma & Grandpa at UKN]
• 30: CNN cranks up its lie machine a bit prematurely. Last night, David Letterman ran clips of video of a March 45-min W speech in Orange Co FL. Tyler Crotty, the son of the Orange Co chairman, who's actually sposed to be a big W fan and had been up all night in anticipation, could not stay awake; he fidgeted, checked his watch, and even dozed off. CNN's Daryn Kagan claimed We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video. Kyra Phillips warned that We're told that the kid was there at that event, but not necessarily standing behind the president. But the video was authentic and the Whitehouse didn't complain. Letterman then replayed Kagan and Phillips saying An out-and-out, 100 percent absolute lie. The kid absolutely was there and he absolutely was doing everything we pictured via the videotape. (CNN did retract it all and apologise but almost too late for the taping of the next night's show.) L6

  Cunningsleeza's going to testify after all. Now, who vets the questions? BBC Cave? not quite. The Commission signed away any chance with the other Whitehouse minions, and the option to recall Rice—and lately she's been as contradictory as Nova Scotian weather. UKN And what's the good of their subpoena power if they won't use it? Why is the commission bending over backwards to please the White House when it's supposed to be fiercely independent and bipartisan? AW

• In the US, the dead now have more right to privacy than the living. In the past week or so, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals decided there's no longer any need for search warrants C · PM, the Nevada supremes decided that identification papers must be provided on demand RJ, yet the federal supremes figure releasing the Vince Foster photos would invade the dead man's privacy. SOS (Granted, there was some dissent over the first two decisions.)

• It is hard not to believe that Clarke's defection is a hoax. The target audiences are the media sources and personalities who are still trying to promote the Bush Regime's Official Story…Since the 911 Truth Movement is now very publicly challenging the Official Story, the White House surely enlisted Richard Clarke's defection in order to help the media define the level of permissible dissent…the Left Gatekeepers continue to represent Richard Clarke's actually very narrow divergence from the Bush Regime's propaganda as significant. Meanwhile, every chance they get they repeat the ludicrous elements of the 9-11 Official Story as if no one has yet heard the WTC7 mystery… GR

  Clarke's testimony to the Commission was interesting, but he is little more than a distraction. There were more cameras on Clarke than anyone else during the two-day national broadcast of the 9-11 Commission. In reality Clarke's testimony was nowhere near as interesting as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Myers' testimony the day before. I'm not questioning Clarke's sincerity at this time, just the timing, which was not chosen by Clarke. His book was released at a time of the Whitehouse's choosing…

  The members of the commission have no interest in a thorough investigation of 9-11…Phillip D. Zelikow, the Executive Director of the Commission, has been called upon to resign by the 9-11 Family Steering Committee. These are family members who lost loved ones that day who have closely followed the Commission. Zelikow actually testified, privately, in front of his own Commission regarding his participation in the team that helped the Bush administration transition into office. Zelikow participated in briefings on Al Qaeda before 9-11 as a member of this team, working with the Bush administration. In 1995 he co-authored a book with Condoleeza Rice…The Commission is an utter joke. [PM quoting GR]

  Though he has no vote, the former Texas lawyer arguably has more sway than any member, including the chairman. Zelikow picks the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning for witnesses. He also picks which fights are worth fighting, legally, with the White House, and was involved in the latest round of capitulations—er, negotiations—over Rice's testimony…In effect, he sets the agenda and runs the investigation…

  There's a raft of evidence to suggest that Zelikow has personal, professional and political reasons not to see the commission hold Rice and other Bush officials accountable for pre-9/11 failings…

  • He and Rice worked closely together in the first Bush White House as aides to former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft…Rice reportedly hired Zelikow…
  • Zelikow and Rice [coauthored] Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft
  • Zelikow directed the Aspen Strategy Group, a foreign-policy strategy body co-chaired by Rice's mentor Scowcroft. Rice, along with Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, were members.
  • Zelikow also directed the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age under co-chairman James Barksdale, a Bush adviser and major Bush-Cheney donor. A 9/11 commissioner, Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, also served with Zelikow on the task force. (Interestingly, the pair serves together on yet another panel—The National Commission on Federal Election Reform…)
  • Zelikow and Rice were reunited when George W. Bush named him to his transition team for the National Security Council. Rice reportedly asked Zelikow to help organize the NSC under the Scowcroft model, which was insular and steeped in Cold War worldview
  • Richard Clarke says he briefed not only Rice and Hadley, but also Zelikow about the growing al-Qaida threat during the transition period…

  AW

  Bob Kerrey—the most outspoken commission member—grabbed the national political spotlight by angrily demanding to know why the US had not landed more commando killing teams or launched full invasions before 9/11…The fact that it's unpopular, that it's difficult, that our allies are not necessarily with it shouldn't deter a president. We had a round in our chamber and we didn't use it…I absolutely do not believe that just because a commander-in-chief sits there and said, Gee, this thing is unpopular therefore I can't do it, I don't think that's a good argument…Just look at these blood-soaked war-makers Cohen, Albright and Rumsfeld being bashed for not being aggressive and ruthless enough! Think of all the wars, bombings, covert actions, assassinations, embargos, bullying these three monsters have carried out for this empire. And imagine what it means that people are now supposed to believe they have (all along) been too lax and restrained!…

  No one should doubt that this Senator Kerrey knows a lot about what he is proposing. On February 25, 1969, this same Bob Kerrey led a team of six Navy SEALS into the tiny Vietnamese fishing village of Thanh Phong. Kerrey personally helped slit the throats of the first family of villagers they jumped. His death squad then rounded up the remaining unarmed inhabitants. One survivor, Bui Thi Luom, later said: I thought they would let us go after they saw we were only women and children. But they shot at us like animals. It was a cold-blooded massacre at short range, for which Kerrey got the Bronze Star and a lifetime label of war hero.

  A question: What does it mean when the ruling class brings back a war criminal like Bob Kerrey and gives him the spotlight to lecture government officials and the public about the need for even more ruthless military aggression? Bob Kerrey is now being widely mentioned within the Democratic establishment as a possible vice presidential running mate for John Kerry… AI

• George Friedman, chairman of…Stratfor, said the US had settled on WMD as a simple justification for the war and one which it expected the public would readily accept. That much is a precise echo of Paul Wolfowitz. [Friedman said the admin] never wanted to explain the complex reasons for invading Iraq…[which] primarily, was the fact that Saudi Arabia was facilitating the transfer of funds to al-Qaeda, was refusing to cooperate with the US…If we held Iraq we felt first there would be dramatic changes of behaviour from the Saudis…the Iranians…[and] the Syrians. N

• For years, I have heard that the government should be run like a business. Now we see what happens when the government is run like a business. Our schools beg for crumbs. Our children go without food, health care, and, sometimes, even housing. Because the defense industry is the most powerful hammer for enriching the ruling class, every issue before this country becomes a nail. We therefore live in a world in which we are globally hated, and live in fear of reprisal both abroad and in our own country.

  A government run like a business, devoted to profit above all other considerations, is what we have now. And it is not run by those who produce anything, but by those who live off the labor of others. It is run by those who believe that their profits are so sacred that they are entitled to kill and destroy populations all over the globe in order to sustain and increase them. AOL

  Canadian politicos spue government should be run like a business too. Chiefly the likes of Stronach she ain't alone. Lemme ast ya: do you want a gummint run like Enron or Bre-X?
• US trade deficit for March G$46.6, or M$62.6/hr. B

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