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PBS premiers Burns' Mark Twain biography. It has one gaping hole—certainly I recall no mention of it in the film nor is there a hint of it in the online `scrapbook'—Twain's prominence in the anti-imperialism movement is completely unmentioned. Is this a simple oversight of one of the most significant facets of Twains' life, a deliberate coverup of antipathy to US foreign policy, or a deliberate coverup of the policy itself? (Recall also Burns' misrepresentation of the Emancipation Proclamation and vague, tissue-thin coverage of the collapse of Reconstruction and the recession of blacks' rights in Civil War.)
Enron exec. J. C. Baxter found inexplicably dead. WRH (He wanted a bodyguard to be safe from suicide??) The medical examiner, Joyce Carter, rules it a suicide suspiciously rapidly. `It took Dr. Carter 23 days to rule that the Yates children had been drowned, but she was able to rule Cliff Baxter's death a suicide within 24 hours…before she even submitted the toxicology tests. HIR · WRH (Bushyknoll says he was shot in the head. BK)
sizeis Isreal, with almost twice as many (26.36) per 10 000 users in 2nd half 2001) as the next country [sic] (Hong Kong, 14.50) [Riptech p16]
Ambassador Robert Blackwell demands India honour the `sanctity of contract' and make good on the Enron debt, warning that India's hopes for `big-time international investment' could be harmed otherwise. FB (Careful; they might poison the spring of H1-Bs. Matloff)
merchants of death prizeor
best mass-murders awardor
guy that made the most bucks for killing the most poor people, most cruelly prize.…It's a shame Hitler is not still alive (though he probably wouldn't win).'—William Putney WRH
Nuclear power Israel fears Iran will be on equal footing in three years. Iran warns of `unimaginable' consequences if Israel attacks its reactor. Israel begs US and Russia to do something. [Jerusalem Post, Feb 6] [Agency France-Presse, Feb 8] GWB delivers `axis of evil' state-of-the-Republic speech. North Korea calls it `little short of declaring war.' Sen. Hagel worries GWB may be stepping into Vietnam-type quagmire. [AssocPress, Feb 6] Albright more or less calls it demented. C · JR
for the Olympics. He could get 20 years. The other passengers are made to keep their hands on their heads. FR (Why do people fly in the US anymore? BTW the same rule is in place for landing in
The Imperial City. AW)
Turkmenistan hopes the fragile Afghan peace will allow work to resume on the natural gas pipeline connecting to Pakistan. FB
evidencethat Iraq gassed the Kurds is a secret, and noöne else has been able prove it. (1988 March))
Mr. Zundel had disavowed Canada and moved to Tennessee, claiming he would never set foot up north and that it is Americans who have the right to free speech.G&M (If Zundel knew half as much as he claims he'd know speech is no freer down there than up here.)
Stupid White Men&warn; finally hits the streets, 4½ months late. MM (In three days it'll be #1 MM)
NY Times leaks the Office of Strategic Lies Influence.
GEM
·
FAIR
There is general outrage, even though the CIA's been feeding
disinformation via its overseas `news' services for decades.
[TWT
citing
CIA's Greatest Hits&warn;]
Perhaps that's the whole point of this exercise, to put on a big show
of not being exactly what you are.
Der Spiegel's cover is Powell, Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, & Rice as Batman, Conan, Rambo, ??, & ??.
Nuclear Weapons Council orders 3 years of research into nuclear bunker-busters. WP · LAT
Sierra Railroad announces its Power Train project, renting its spare diesel-electrics out as electricity sources. Each loco develops about 2 MW (for scale, my house has averaged 2.5 kW the past couple years). SR · UD
a typical rogue,a
kingpin of terrorism,and a
politically backward child
bereft of elementary reasonbent on using arms to change the DPKR's political system, and that he
and his group are well advised to stop acting recklessly.(It's odd the democratic republic of America [see 1776] would want to change the political system of the Democratic Republic of Korean Peoples (?), but…)
[GWB] asserted that the US nuclear and missile forces strong enough to destroy the world scores of times are) R · R GWB kicks off his Asian tour in Tokyo with: `[F]or a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific…. We were so very grateful for the [post-9/11] condolences and compassion of the Japanese people and the Japanese government' despite those two unfortunate mushroom clouds. [BBC Video] (I admit, he probably just dislexed `half a century' into `century and a half.' And decent Japan–US relations do go back about that far, which may be one reason MacArthur managed to patch things up post-'45. But the fact that GWB could say it without flinching still has nasty implications wrt a global kingpin. He is either a baldfaced liar, is badly disconnected from history, or doesn't cogitate well under relatively light pressure.) `I'm convinced the 21st century will be the Pacific century,' especially with that widening Atlantic rift. R (Watch: this'll be the century a space rock makes a Pacific splash or the south side of Hawai'i collapses again. R [CNN Feb 27]—I added this, mostly joking, out of my head Feb 25) But seriously, he confirms his desires for establishing a corporate virtual senate: `…open to trade and investment on a global scale…region where people and capital and information can move freely' WHdeterrent forceswhilst our forces for self-defense to defend our national dignity and sovereignty from the potential threat of aggression from the US pose athreatand can be used forterrorism.
Later, he would merely suggest it might be nice if China wouldn't kill people for worshipping w/o a license (see above). `Diversity is not disorder. Debate is not strife. And dissent is not revolution.' WH · FN · R (No; they're `outrageous conspiracy theories,' `malicious lies,' WH · WH · WRH · AS `anti-American'ism, and maybe even `domestic terrorism.' And be sure you stay within the free-speech zones! NR) He decries `misleading stereotype' of the US as a bully. (He has to decry it 'cause he can't refute it.) `It's important for you to know, and it's important for the people of my country to know, that my administration is committed to peacefully resolving issues around the world. We want issues resolved in a peaceful manner.' I wish they would commit some peace for a change, but how would atomic bunker-busters do this? (see Feb 19)
to assess Georgia's military needs,
the first deployment of US combat forces in the Caucasus region, adjacent to one of the world's largest oilfields.WSWS
Register reports that Windows XP reports your DVD habits back to Microsoft.
GWB (Charlotte NC Convention Center, Robin Hayes for Congress and
Elizabeth Dole for Senate): You know, I was campaigning in Chicago
and somebody asked me, is there ever
any time where the budget might have to go into deficit? I said only if we were at
war or had a national emergency or were in recession. [Laughter.] Little did I
realize we'd get the trifecta. [Laughter.]
WH
Let me tell you, that as a black woman I am keenly aware of the history of slavery. But do you understand that we are all slave s to this system? Do you understand that the media and Hollywood play a part kee ping the American people so fixated on Alley McBeal, WWF Smackdown, Moeisha and the Practice that we don't take time to read Creature from Jekyll Island, study the Internal Revenue Code and learn the Constitution?7F
You know, I remember campaigning in Chicago and somebody said, would you ever spend a deficit? And I said, only if we're at war or we had a recession or there was a national emergency. Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta. [Laughter.]WH
GWB threatens Congress to toe the line on his G$379 `defense' budget or he'll use his veto pen. R After all, the US `defense' budget is only 1/3 of the world's military spending. TWF Meanwhile FBI Director Müller stokes the fires and denies the Bureau's dragging its feet re the anthrax investigation R even though in December he'd `assured' Sen. DeWine it wasn't going to investigate prime suspects. TH (The Admin said it was stalled in Nov. SFC Come on you witnits; you've been at it over four months, how the hell can it take this long when you could finger bin Laden in less than a week? And with enough certainty to initiate starvation genocide in Afghanistan? Huh??? Know why? 'Cause it's looking like an inside job and the FBI's running into interacronym formalities, rivalries, stonewalls, and can't figure out who to trust. P The Whitehouse probably limited the 9/11 investigations for the same reasons—they knew it'd get so snarled up in itself they were safe.
[OBL] is—you know, as I mention in my speeches—I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death.(as is W)And he, himself, tries to hide, if, in fact, he's hiding at all.(just like W hides from protestors, newspapers, etc)So I don't know where he is. I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you…I truly am not that concerned about him.(The widely-repeated versionI don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priorityseems to be a mirage. =( ) (compare '01 Sep 13)I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region.We're at war to keep the peace.Zimbabwe. We do not recognize the outcome of the election because we think it's flawed. And we are dealing with—and we are dealing with our friends to figure out how to deal with this flawed election.(Well if there's anything on which W's an expoit, it's flawed elections.) WH- 14: GWB `deeply concerned about Iraq. This is a nation run by a man who is willing to kill his own people.' [R] (A: prove Iraq is such a nation (their War College couldn't do it). B: prove US isn't such a nation.) Egypt promises to urge Iraq to permit inspectors. R (This tidbit is presented as significant support. My, but they're desperate.)
- 15: Vreeland released on bail and allowed to reside at undisclosed location. FTW Saudis `will' tell Cheney to leave Iraq alone. G A missile-defense-shield demonstration, `4th successful test of 6.' BBC
- 16: `Infections caught in British hospitals are more likely to involve drug-resistant bacteria than anywhere else in Europe.' [JVIM quoting BBC] As I recall, the strain of streptococcus that literally snacks on vancomycin(sp?) was first found in Britain.
- 17: Pakistan church is bombed; GWB is `outraged.' [ND citing AssocPress] (He feels no outrage about an American bombing of a Beirut church which killed 15× as many, see mid '80s.) Prince Abdullah repeats Saudi opposition to any US strike against Iraq. `I do not believe it is in the US' interests, or the interests of the region, or the world's interest, for the US to do so. And I don't believe it will achieve the desired result,' he said.' R US stages `successful' missile defence test. [JVIM quoting AssocPress]
- 60% of Israel unhappy with Sharon. M (Notice how a `poll' is consent-manufacturing when I don't like the results and fact when I do?)
- Washington forgot to notify the Antarctic Larson B ice shelf that there's no such thing as global warming; an extra ±650 km³ (±500 Pg) of ice emigrate this year. BAS ('course an enormous amount of heat is needed to melt that extra ice so maybe this'll be a cooler year.) BBC (The claims in this article are a bit façile; eg the US could expand its agriculture production overall in warmer temperatures only if rainfall and humidity coöperate. And then there's the typically American `compensate the countries that lose with money,' as if money is edible.)
- PA passes law requiring ISPs to block websites selected by the state Att'y Gen'l. law · S
- 18: Jordan's King Abdullah II believes any US military action on Iraq would be too likely to snowball `completely awry' into `Armageddon' to be worth attempting. It could even backfire ripple effects in the US and Europe. It's just `common sense.' [JVIM quoting LA Times] (You want common sense from a man that can't eat a pretzel without doing himself mischief?) Iraq reënforces its north and west against expected US attack. [JVIM quoting Middle East Newsline] Thatcher says the EU is `fundamentally unreformable' and Britain should hook up with NAFTA instead because most of the world's problems, like Nazism and Marxism came from mainland Europe. [JVIM quoting London? Times] (Didn't Marx do much of his research and writing in London?? Wan't Hitler inspired to modernise Germany because of his tours of Liverpool and Manchester etc. in his younger days?? The NAFTA thought alone is enough to prove she's gone bats.)
- 19: US steps down the air patrol over NYC, keeps it up over Washington. (Now that their horse has nicely bolted, whitewash the barn.) CNN FL Fishermen want the `black water' dead zone explained. NN (And JVIM begins linking back to their source articles, thank goodness.)
- 20: Pete Stark (D CA): `Mr. Chairman, there are some of us who remember this world in the 1930s, when Hitler suspended the Bundestag to promulgate conservative ideology and not let people speak. It is a shame that the Republicans in the House, Mr. Chairman, have taken up that same ideology and are denying a chance for debate and open discussion of a budget. It does smack of fascism.' [Cong. Rec.]
CIA reässerts the Iraqi connexions to al Qaeda and reïgnores all the other, better connexions. [Y! quoting AFP] Ben-Eliezer: ceasefire could be announced within 2 days. (Could be. Won't be.) H
- US wants about M$100 to build a new Colombian army to protect its crude-oil pipeline.
- 21: The UK threatens to shoot first (nuclearly). Officials in Washington and London privately predict that military action to topple Saddam Hussein was likely to be launched at the end of the year. LDT US and SK begin practicing for a Korean `Police Action' II. BBC An oral smallpox therapy is unveiled. NS (
If smallpox has been eradicated from nature, why was this research ongoing?Ah, it has wider application. That's good.) Unhappy with Canada's lack of enthusiasm for its Terror War, US starts grumbling about Canadian connexions to al Qaeda. NP (Note: Québec has a large potential for hydroelectric generation and already transports a goodly amount of electricity from Labrador (which Québec claims) to NY; Washington is surely covetous. However, the org in question seems to have been dissolved some time ago, and the source of the accusation is not exactly spotless. F Hopefully a little stronger story will be concocted before the starving and bombing begin.) GWB is frustrated he can't just unilaterally declare Mideast peace. JP (Dear child, it's hard to undo centuries of history and decades of US meddling.)- 22: GWB says war with Iraq is not imminent. [ABC quoting R] (Knowing his command of English negations [Jan 5] and how many important Washington statements re Iraq have been flat lies [1990 July 15, 1990 Sep 11] war is obviously imminent. And see comments of yesterday.) `If the US does decide to attack Iraq, Britain is the only country likely to offer support, with potentially disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.' GU (But if a US attack is not imminent, so what? And just what is that last bit, a threat?)
- 23: Washington Post reveals that the US spent 20 years and millions of bucks producing Islamic fundamentalist gradeschool textbooks and sending them to Afghanistan. ENC [ENC quoting WP] World leaders take a first step in openly acknowledging the real root of terrorism. JP The next step is to admit who's causing most of the poverty.
Startup of Radio Sawa, another US propaganda broadcaster in the mideast. ‘Fortunately, a large number of people in the Arabic world are not taken in by the Bush regime's clumsy effort to brainwash youth…The US has consistently been a good exporter of its short-term myopic interests, and a bad promoter of the ideals of the value system on which it was founded. That may explain why outside Europe, the US of the post-WWII era found itself more in the bad company of ruthless dictators, rather than in the good company of democratically elected leaders. The chances are the Arab youth themselves will split the strategy: take the US sound and discard the US agenda.’ BA
- 24: Microbiologist
Dr. FluSteven Mostow dies in plane crash. KCP He may have been the pilot. GFT He had warned in Jan of the liklihood of influenza pandemic in near future.We will never be able to control the flu like we control polio, like we control smallpox. Because the flu virus isn't stable. It mutates. And it is smarter than we are.CNN · JR) (And does it have to do with chemtrails and/or exobiology? EU) US `believes that Muslims have reached a strategic juncture that could result in a Middle East war.' MNL (You can just hear them add a muttered `with any luck.') US claims to have found an Afghan biowarfare lab. R British claim US found an Afghan biowarfare lab. [Y! quoting R]Nothing overly surprising in this North Co Times article lauding the reopening of schools in Afghanistan that were supposedly outlawed by the Taliban. But look what it admits:
But the festivities could not obscure the sorry state of Afghanistan education:…schools are in ruins and are insufficient for the 4.4 million school-age children…even before [the Taliban took power in 1996], schools in Kabul rarely were open because of factional fighting that began when the pro-Moscow government collapsed in 1992.In other words not all the problems were caused by the Taleban. Regardless of what the Taleban were really accomplishing, there should be hard questions about what the West was (not) doing to help. And we should pay careful attention to what's done the next while.- 25: Israel rattles its sabres. WP (It'd be awful disappointed if there were a peaceul solution.) US stews about Syria wanting nuclear toys. MNL
- NY and DC grand juries find Ashcroft has major conflicts of interest. [JR quoting FTW]
- 26: Possible Osama sighting. N India insists it would not shoot first. CNN
- 27: GWB (Grand Hyatt, Atlanta GA, Saxby Chambliss for Senate Dinner):
I'll never forget one time in Chicago when a reporter said, would you ever de ficit spend? And I said, well, only—only if we were at war, only if there were a national emergency, or only if there is a recession. Never did I believe we'd get the trifecta. [Laughter.]WHGWB (Palmetto Expo Center, Greenville SC, Graham for Senate Luncheon):
I was campaigning in Chicago one time and a fellow said, would you ever allow for deficit spending, would that ever enter your vocabulary? I said, well, under certain circumstances: only if we're at war or there was a national emergency or there was a recession. Little did I realize we'd draw the trifecta. [Laughter.]WHA group of geophysicists comes up with more heavydense of global warming. NP (This looks like a lotta smoke and mirrors at first, until you remember that when advancing in a planar front heat does not dissipate as it would from a point or linear source. In fact the more I think about this experiment the better I credit it.) US still opposing a court that could make it accountable for its butchery. R (It's hoped this court will come into existence in a couple of years, and it is not designed to try crimes committed beore then. So whatever the US wants to do to Hussein and other `nuisances' they have to do ASAP.) Arabs unanimously adopt Prince Abdullah's plan: they will recognise Israel if Israel will recognise Palestine at pre-1967 borders.. AN Another `suicide' bombing in Israel. WP · INN (Does anyone else think Israel's engineering some of those bombings itself to stir up the hatred for Palestine against the proposed settlement? Who knows? We don't. But apparently Israel keeps a load of Palestinian informants/moles etc. G&M) US is trying to stop peaceful reünification of China. PD (See, if it's peaceful, less market for military product.)
- 28: Into a jury's hands is placed the fate of James Sabzali, a Canadian tried in a Philadelphia court for exporting Welsh water-purification equipment from Canada to Cuba while contracted to a Canadian subsidiary of a US company, breaking a US law which Canadian law requires him to ignore. Many US products, like Coke and Winstons, are already openly traded with Cuba. (So I figure the real problem is that it was non-American useful stuff, not American useless crap.) M · CBC [B quoting Nat'l Post 2001 Aug 28] [C quoting CanadianPress] And there's much talk among Mercan Poobahs that it may be time to lift this embargo anyway. So this is a glorious instance of American bullying and Canadians rolling over and letting it happen. (Of course the US would be the first to squall if anyone tried prosecuting one of them for doing something that was legal at home but not legal elsewhere; this is their prime complaint about the World Court and the proposed Internat'l Criminal Court.)
- 29: GWB (Hyatt Regency Dallas TX, Cornyn for Senate Luncheon):
You know, when I was campaigning in Chicago, in the general election, somebody said, would you ever deficit spend? I said, well, only if we were at war, or there was a national emergency, or we were in a recession. Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta. [Laughter.]WH- 31: GWB: `As you know, we're studying safe levels for arsenic in drinking water. The scientists told us we need to test the water glasses on 3000 people. Thank you for participating.' DR
I discover that Canada's `disastrous' immigration laws, by which `almost anyone and everyone is allowed into the country,' somewhere along the line let in a Soviet-born child of dissidents, an alleged PhD in history who knows at best as much history as one of those US highschool students who can't find the US on a map, a frothing egotist who thinks the US is just great and Canada basically sux but regardless left the US to come here and now lives in Vancouver (granted, probably our most `American' city) wasting our precious water and bandwidth, a contrarian who squawks `don't blame the victims' (which I daresay is notwhat the Chomsky camp does anyway;* they blame the victims' government, not the same thing at all, 'specially since nothing resembling democracy ever had anything to do with the US prezadensity) and then advocates offing a woman who was treated worse than a broodmare (meanwhile squalling about Islam's abuse of women) while the real villain walks free to abuse some other poor soul (face it, if even that judicially murderous TX couldn't find an excuse to shoot her full o' poison…), and a much bigger loser than John Walker Lindh (What kind of a guy grows up in the USSR, moves to his beloved US, and then moves to a country he hates—Canada?) named Jamie Glazov. (Doncha love them German-type interminable sentences =) A laff riot. Proof anyone can say anything on the Internet. (So's Branton.)
*Jared Israel affirms he's not blaming the victim. ENC Although, I've learned it's not fair to lump all dissent together into the
Chomsky camp.Chomsky is astructuralist,a denier of conspiracies (cf JFK TB1), who basically saysyeah the US is evil but it's something that just happens, Gödel-Escher-Bach-like, out of the system; there's noöne to blame; whaddyagonnado,funded by the Ford Foundation which appears to front for the CIA.In January of 2002, Noam Chomsky was asked the following question by an audience member at a speaking engagement for FAIR in New York:*This is an obviously sleazy copout. If it's so hopelessly implausible as all that then it'd be trivial to outline, to sketch, its great deficiencies. But pretending it's that far below contempt must be treated as an admission that he can't poke serious holes in it. IMO (despite the Bird's claims), in other words, as in so many things, Chomsky is one useful point of view which it'd be a grave mistake to treat as the POV, because there is good reason to think Chomsky's an establishment-endorsed dissenter, probing and theorising within acceptable boundaries.Is there credible evidence that some part of the US government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks?His answer:That's an internet theory and it's hopelessly implausible. Hopelessly implausible. So hopelessly implausible I don't see any point in talking about it.*As a matter of fact, the accusation of evidence for USG complicity had been made just days before by former top German minister and widely recognized intelligence expert Andreas von Buelow in an interview with Tagesspiel, adding weight to a number of independent investigations that had already been very effectively raising serious questions for several months. No, not quite an
internet theory.For those who had spent every spare minute of their time for months studying the issue of 9/11 prior knowledge and discovering the utter absurdity of the official narrative, Chomsky was obviously out to lunch. But, you can't fault him for not being consistent. His attitude, post-9/11, is in many ways a repeat of an episode a decade ago, when he and a handful of other
leftistfigures signed onto a savage establishment media attack on Oliver Stone and his film JFK… LGK[Chomsky] has avoided other outrages in the wake of the JFK assassination, such as the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Quite logically given his approach to things, he and all the other important opinion molders of the academic left have avoided more recent ongoing outrages like the Foster murder, the Oklahoma City bombing frame-up, the Waco massacre, TWA 800, Pan Am 103, and on and on. One gets the impression that they will still be keeping their powder dry while we are all led off in handcuffs. If Professor Chomsky and his ZNet crew were all fake left opposition it's hard to see how they would behave any differently…I simply do not believe that Chomsky genuinely believes what he has said and written about the Kennedy assassination. He can't be that stupid…Of course it is not necessarily wrong to agree with the government. But when
radical dissidentsagree so completely with the government, on such important questions, and the reasoning employed is so clearly wrong, the warning bells should sound. TB- A purely red heifer is calved in Israel. TI Who cares, right? Nobody should. Unfortunately Numbers 19, a religious text shared among the big three religions interested in that area, has some sort of prophecy about a red heifer bringing on the end of the world. (ach that's not especially accurate but i'm in a hurry.) Such prophecies, like many of those about a messiah two millenia ago, are all-too-easy to fulfill. (Is there another kind? Of course. If I were to say an asteroid would impact the visible but dark part of the moon sometime in the summer of next year, that would be a prophecy hard to cause to happen but also hard to deny if/when it happened.) Fortunately she can't be used for three years yet; and the last one sprouted a few white hairs before she was of age. AW · NR
- For almost a year, the only major American institution that had publicly and unequivocally condemned Israeli human rights violations (particularly acts of censorship directed against Palestinian journalists, universities, and libraries) has been the American Library Association. Israel's going to change that. WS [This article may be relatively old…blast undated stuff. But it's still telling.]
- AOL-Time-Warner-Sun-Netscape-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc lost some G$50 this quarter. `On paper.' I think they're saying the post-Enron reörthodoxed accounting methods have shown it was overvalued that much… LAT
- Charles Dana Rice found dead of a gunshot wound to the head, in the midst of questions about the accounting practices of energy company El Paso Corp, of which he was senior VP and treasurer. BK