2002 q4

Oct

• Spotted in Bristol:
  
• Welsh `Frying Squad' sniffs out drivers using filtered waste cooking oil instead of diesel, charge them with tax evasion. `[I'd] halved my motoring costs since I started running my Subaru on cooking oil. The car runs just as well and even smells a lot better than diesel.' Persistent offenders face 7 a in jail. [JR citing London Times Oct 9] (A similar thing happened in Nova Scotia to my father in the '60s, when he was using furnace oil instead of diesel. But that is nothing more than tax evasion, really. In Wales, they're punishing people using a non-petrol waste oil; very different.)
• 16 years after Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle on Israel's nuclear weapons, Israel's nuclear, biological, and chemical arsenals remain closed to UN inspections. Israel continues to receive M$s in aid per day from the US despite the Symington legislation barring aid to countries with nuclear-weapons programs outside international control and agreement. `The same politicians who now threaten military invasion of Iraq because of suspected nuclear weapons capacities, have not demanded inspection of Israel's known nuclear weapons.' [emphases added] G
• Because the existing one does not support US invasion of Iraq, Richard Perle calls for regime change in Germany. [WT citing Handelsblatt Oct 2]
• Five sniped in Montgomery Co MD. This could be some sort of distraction, although they're not sure on whom to blame it. G Someone points out the shootings arc nicely around CIA HQ. MQ
• Tom Lantos D-CA, to Colette Avital MK: `My dear Colette, don't worry. You won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you. [Then we'll go to Syria] and tell young Assad that's what will happen to him if he doesn't stop supporting terrorism.' [X citing Akiva Eldar `They're jumping in head first' Ha'aretz Oct 2 (5763 Tishrei 26) ICH]
• 1: Chrétien accepts a `Statesman of the Year' from Kissinger, wanted war criminal. The trophy is an eagle clutching the globe in its talons.

  NIE—gold standard of intel reports—says Saddam has never been connected to any terrorism against US, does not work with al Qaeda, would do so only if provoked—eg, invaded by the US—and even then it's unlikely. WND

  Rice addresses Manhattan Institute for Policy Research at Waldorf Astoria. `The Manhattan Institute concerns itself with such things as welfare reform (dismantling social programs), faith-based initiatives (blurring the distinction between church and state), and education reform (destroying public education).' For disorwellianisation of her speech, see CP. (She quotes Shultz: `If there is a rattlesnake in the yard, you don't wait for it to strike before you take action in self-defense.' This is true; but it wants trouble no more than you do, hence its name. The best action is not to piss it off and wait for it to go away. Of course, that's a boring and unAmerican approach. She says `The US will fight poverty, disease, and oppression because it is the right thing to do;' but the US has said this a bajillion times before and never done it. It's not even doing it at home. `[We] resolve to stand on the side of men and women in every nation who stand for…free speech, equal justice, respect for women, religious tolerance and limits on the power of the state' except here and in Saudia Arabia.)

• 3: 72-a-old Pascal Charlot is 6th Montgomery Co sniper victim. G (Dang, no location given.)

  Iraqi VP Taha Yassin Ramadan suggests Bush and Saddam settle their differences with a duel; the Whitehouse declines. CNN (That's not nearly enough expensive shedding of foreigners' blood to appease the US, it would get them no oil, and would their dopefiend drydrunk aspartame-poisoned combat-dodging generally addled Resident have any chance against someone like Saddam anyway?)

• 4: USS Helena collides with fishing boat off South Korea. G

  13-a-old Elizabeth Rangel distributes a few personal effects to her San Antonio schoolmates then puts a 9-mm slug through her head. JR (Couldn't possibly be because her instinct knows perfectly damn well where the world's headed despite the lies of opiate media.)

• GWB threatens end-run around `recalcitrant' UN. R (Remind me again who's trying to make the UN irrelevant?)
• If the Bushmen think whacking Iraq's going to be some sort of cakewalk because the Iraqis will dance in the streets, the Bushmen have misread Iraqis. They may not like/trust Saddam, but they prefer him to Bush. Iraqis: `America is a new colonial power that wants to dominate.' `Americans are not coming to help us, but for our oil.' `I will throw stones at them.' `Maybe I will throw knives.' Reporter: `While I found few people willing to fight for Saddam, I encountered plenty of nationalists willing to defend Iraq against Yankee invaders. And while ordinary Iraqis were very friendly toward me, they were enraged at the US after 11 years of economic sanctions.' [JR quoting International Herald Tribune and NY Times]
• GWB jerks Blair up short about the latter's Middle-East peace talks rubbish. (Blair had some fool thought about Arab resentment maybe being rooted in the Israel-Palestine spat; Bush's Israeli funders will tolerate none of that radicalism.) M · G Israel is also pissed at Blair for thinking UN SC resolutions should matter to Israel. `Blair's perfidy…crossed the line that separates simple political hypocrisy from immorality. A call for Israel to heed UN resolutions is a call for Israel to commit suicide.' [FT citing Jerusalem Post Oct 4]
• Germans report 400000 at the London anti-war rally AF; have you noticed most `respectible' English media claim a much smaller number?
• Arafat signs 2-a-old bill making Jerusalem Palestine's capital. BBC (If the US can do it when it's illegal…)
• Madeleine Albright, chair of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, called recent poll results by the `nonpartisan' Pew Research Center, that the world hates the US JR, `very difficult to absorb.' She who said a half-million dead Iraqi children was `a price the US was willing to pay'* said `clearly, an awful lot of work needs to be done for…Muslim nations to understand what we're about.' IHT (Another couple million dead A-rabs oughta do it.) Her reaction to the ¾ of Canadians, South Koreans, Japanese, and French who said the US `consider[s] others: not much/not at all?' `We think we do,' apparently in deference to the 4/5 of Americans that disagreed. (Which typifies the attitude.) Also on the GAP: Lloyd Axworthy; CFR pres Leslie Gelb; AFL-CIO pres John J. Sweeney; Desmond Tutu; Kenneth Roth of HRW; and—Kissinger. BI · G
  * actually, she may have said it was `worth it.' I must check.

• The Media, never much good at analysis, is more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and friend in its war against our Satanic enemy, Iran. None of that conspiracy stuff, snarled Clancy. Apparently conspiracy stuff is now shorthand for unpeakable truth. [Vidal Dreaming War p50]

• The Liberal caucus aren't too keen on Whack Iraq. John McKay: `Canada should not participate even if the US tortures the UN into sanctioning an invasion.' Jim Karygiannis: `The truth is that the president of the US was elected by only 200 well-placed votes in Florida. The US is going into congressional and senate elections and needs an external evil to rally Republican voters to go to the polls.' Bonnie Brown: `[GWB's] opinions seem to be more reflective of an American movie plot than the real, complex world in which we live.' (I asked her if the sad part is that he can't remember his lines.) Clifford Lincoln on Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld: `scary and frightening for world peace.' TS
• Amnesty International criticises Israel for failing to protect the rights of foreign women smuggled into the country to work as prostitutes, and treated as criminals rather than victims. BBC (Lev 25:44ff, NKJV: And as for your male and female slaves whom you may have—from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves. Moreover you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land; and they shall become your property. And you may take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them as a possession; they shall be your permanent slaves. But regarding your brethren, the children of Israel, you shall not rule over one another with rigor.)
• 6: Brazilian general election `delivers smashing defeat' to globalisation and `free-market' economics. More than 75% cast their votes for candidates calling for a break with the free-market policies of outgoing Pres. Fernando Henrique Cardoso. But nobody got a majority, so a runoff between Luiz Inacio da Silva and Jose Serra is set for the 27th. A LaRouche disciple Eneas Carneiro set a record of most votes for a Bazilian Congressional candidate, in raw count (1.6 million) and fraction (80%); AP and O Globo begin an immediate smear campaign. BI

  Red Cross calls on US to immediately resolve legal status of its Guantánamo prisoners. NM (Almost forgot about them, din't ya?)

  Two more provocations. Minor, Al Jazeera has audio tape of more threats on the US allegedly from bin Laden. Major, explosion and fire on French supertanker Limburg at Yemen. The French seem determined it's Cole-style terrorism (even though it's unlikely a dingyful of conventional explosive floating against the hull could do the damage done to Cole), the Yemenis are sure it's just an accident (but later concede attack MSNBC). Paris seems to be willing to wait for an investigation. [BBC radio] HC

• Jim McDermott (D-WA): `This president is trying to bring to himself all the power to become an emperor—to create Empire America.' Chris Vance, WA Republican Chmn: `It sounds like he has thought about this carefully and really believes that.' ST
• The FBI is reluctant to let Congress talk to the informant that was renting rooms to two supposed 9/11 hijackers. SFC
• (undated): Comverse Infosys, the communications spies, change name to Verint Systems. `[Their] STAR-GATE software allows communications service providers to capture voice, fax, video, and e-mail transmissions, while its RELIANT software (sold to law enforcement and government agencies) is used for intercepting, processing, and analyzing data.' H (School of Americas changes it name... Eugenics League changes its name... Reform party changes its name...)
• I-Pass automated highway-toll system is being used to track. CST
• 7: The Blair gov't makes sudden frantic efforts to cover up `Shaylergate' esp. the k£100 MI5/6 contract with bin Laden/al Qaeda to assassinate Qadaffy, invoking the `national security' smokescreen on the trial while news sites begin removing/whitewashing their content. [SNZ quoting PM] However, the media (specifially, Times, Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express, & BBC) decide not to remain in the completely prone position. G The London Evening Standard article I pulled, `printable' version. See also Shayler:

  Ministers have tried to spin—or indeed lie—their way out of this in much the same way that they misled the press over my disclosure that MI5 had failed to react to reliable intelligence warning of an attack on the Israeli Embassy in 1994. When I made the disclosure in the Mail on Sunday, Jack Straw tried to deny it. It was only when the authorities were obliged to disclose a summary of the report to the Appeal Court that I was vindicated. Where there is the slightest risk of embarrassment and bad publicity, Tony Blair and his government cannot be trusted to protect fundamental human rights like the right to life and the right to security of person, both guaranteed under the Human Rights Act.

  Israel fires missile into crowd of Gazans, killing 10 (14 altogether die in the raid). Israel `regrets the civilian deaths' (But what compensation does it pay?). US continues to mumble `Israel has a right to defend itself.' Y! The attacking helicopters were Apaches. [BBC radio] (And I don't deny anyone the right to defense. But Israel is the invader, and funded Hamas—the probable target, but this article isn't clear on that—in the first place.)

  CBS admits the American people are in no hurry for a war with Iraq. They aren't even keen on preëmption; countries should not be able to attack each other unless attacked first—and less than half of Americans think the US, in particular, has the right to make preëmptive strikes against nations it thinks may attack in the future.

• The US refuses to share evidence that may exonerate William Sampson, a Nova Scotian sentenced to beheading in Saudi Arabia. G&M (Ooooh I just love them Mercans.) They also nabbed up a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, at JFK and deported him to Syria, aithout informing the Canadian gov't. G&M (This seems to have at last twigged Graham that the US in not much of a friend.)
• 13-a-old wounded at Bowie MD school by the Virginian sniper. ABC CNN reports he was `wounded in the chest and abdomen by a single shot.'
• SEC quietly calls off reforms. WFC
• Moroccans wonder `If they want to save the world from Saddam, then why not save the world from Sharon?' G
• 8: Harry Belafonte likens Powell to a plantation slave who sold out his principles to be let into massah's house. `There's an old saying, in the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and were those slaves that lived in the house…You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master…exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him…Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.' [Y! citing KFMB San Diego]

  Wanted proof Hamas isn't Arafat's? `Gunmen believed to be linked to Hamas reportedly tortured and killed the head of the Palestinian riot police, triggering deadly gun battles between police and supporters of the radical Islamic group which resulted in four deaths…The Palestinian fighting began, according to police, when about 20 armed Hamas members disguised as national security officers set up a road block in Gaza City to intercept Brigadier General Rajeh Abu Lehya, the 55-year-old head of the West Bank and Gaza riot police…Abu Lehya was taken with his two bodyguards to the Nusseirat refugee camp, south of Gaza City, tortured and shot 10 times, police said…Police and witnesses said the Hamas members then announced by loudspeaker that they had killed Abu Lehya in revenge for the deaths of two Islamist demonstrators who died in clashes with riot police in anti-US demonstrations one year ago.' NCAU

  UK support for whacking Iraq reaches 5-week low of 32%, while undecideds increase to 27%. `The slight fall will prove a disappointment to Tony Blair…' (Why? If he's working for the British people, he should just shrug and say `so be it.' If he's disappointed, for whom is he working?) On the other hand, opposition to the war has also decreased, from 46% 3 weeks ago to 41%. And a senior cabinet minister believes Labour could lose ¼ of of its roughly 300000 members if the UK goes with the US. G

  Meanwhile, GWB gives much-hyped big speech in Cincinnatti; nothing new or substantive in it. (eg—Hussein gassed 40 Iraq villages? Names and dates please, Mr. Bush, so we can verify. Satellite photos show whatnot? Coordinates, please.* No, I don't trust you one barleycorn, Mr. Rezeedint. He whines about the US-UK planes being fired upon some 750 times in their 48000+ sorties dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Iraq—of course, omitting to mention that latter part. He repeated the lie that Iraq kicked out the inspectors just before Desert Fox. He claims an al Qaeda leader got medical treatment in Iraq, but fails to remind us of Osama's stay in an American hospital in Dubai a few months before his big scene. `An Iraqi regime faced with its own demise may attempt cruel and desperate measures.' Isn't that a damn good reason not to attack him? Wasn't that the US' own cold-war MAD strategy? Isn't it, indeed, tha main reason noöne's taken out your regime? You want inspectors to go anywhere in Iraq, unannounced, unfettered? Let 'em do as much in the US, Mr. Bush. See also IPA.) LAT · G · SMH Whitehouse apparently had trouble getting coverage; ABC, CBS, NBC refused to carry it live, perhaps because the Bears-Packers game was on and it'd've cut into their audience. Phil Bohman: `This is Wisconsin, and the Packer game is on…[attacking Iraq would be a] waste of time and money. I think our military is spread too thin and there are so many other things we could be spending money on in this country.' Carol Floodstrand would've liked to watch, `but the major networks aren't even covering it live.' (Take that, CNN & FOX.) WI (I caught an interesting thing on CNN Crossfire just before the speech: the Left guy said the inspectors had been kicked out of Iraq; the Right guy corrected him, they'd `left.' Anyhow, as far as I'm concerned, the US and UK created the mess in Iraq, beginning with their paying Hussein to return after that coup attempt, continuing through their supplying his WMD and the sanctions, up to the present bombing runs. They made the mess without the world's help or consent—although we did go along with the sanctions for awhile—if they wanna fix it they can bloody well go it the same way.)

  *I see on CNN, that a couple of photos are going to be released. I'm eager to read what critics say about them.

  24-a-o South Korean's death is blamed on too much internet. SMH (This is way too easily spun into a call for gov't control of the 'net, something the BushBlair wants desperately.)

• 9: Stephen Pelletière: `Bush and Blair want a war in Iraq and they are both prepared to lie if necessary, in order to get one…Blair's so-called dossier is supposed to be based on intelligence, [but] it insults our intelligence by recycling old, discredited propaganda and presenting it as fact. The same canards have recently reappeared in The New Yorker—but The New Yorker is simply a magazine that lives on advertising. When lies appear in an official Government report to a sovereign Parliament, well then you have to ask yourself just what is going on.' JR

  Rep. Pete Stark: `I rise in opposition to this resolution [#114, Authorization for Military Force Against Iraq]…The bottom line is I don't trust this President and his advisors.…It sets a precedent for our nation—or any nation—to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus. Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a President who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence.' PS

  Egypt rebukes Straw for trying to get the rules of the Iraq game rewritten. T

  CNN reports on `training-exercise accident' killing a Marine in Kuwait, soon revises story to `al Qaeda! al Qaeda!' Maine Gambit, or Gulf of Tonkin ploy? Kuwaiti interior minister denies al Qaeda link. BBC (But notice the BBC's spin, continuing blithely to reïnforce the idea aQ did it.)

  Another illegal US attack on northern Iraq, destroying defensive SAM site. TBO

  I have an `aha!' moment—Saddam is merely the Angloamerican `Hitler Project II.' Both were put into and supported in power by powerful but shady angloamerican interests. Both invaded neighbours with clear if false assurances his angloamerican backers wouldn't mind. All for the sake of sparking splendid little wars to make the angloamerican wealthy and powerful more powerful and wealthy while most of the rest of humanity went to hell. Personally, I think it's time the BushBlair types got a taste of what happens to bloodthirsty fascists, by their own people reduced to a ditchful of cinders or disembowelled and hung by their heels at their local gas station. (Hitler and Mussolini, respectively, BTW. The latter I'd find a beautiful irony, since they're doing it all for the gas stations in the first place; but I hope in the former case the cinders are irrefutably identified as a former major evildoer.)

  Speaking of gas stations, Dean Meyers of Gaithersburg MD becomes the sniper's 7th kill at one in Manassas. ABC

• Israel removed 12 illegal `settlements' this week…but only one was inhabited. H
• French poll ranked threats to world peace, in descending order, Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, US, Palestine, Iran, Pakistan, Algiers, Libya, and Syria. H
• Britain is harbouring a terrorist. `The Pakistani government has expressed concern at the decision by the UK Government to allow the leader of the opposition party, the MQM, Altaf Hussain, indefinite leave to remain in Britain…The MQM, once part of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government, is blamed by the authorities for much of Karachi's violence, which claimed some 800 lives last year.' BBC (This is the same Britain not making a peep of official protest over the trumped-up Pakistani death sentence on one of its own citizens, a prime link of the CIA-ISI-al Qaeda money channel.)
• Britain may be harbouring another terrorist, Abu Qatada, accused by the US, Spain, France, and Algeria of being a key influence in 9/11. He's supposedly at a British intel safe house in northern England, which of course is vigourously denied. BBC · T (`We will make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbour them.')
• CIA report denies Iraq can hit the US, Whitehouse says `nyeah nyeah you said that about 9/11 too.'
• US makes naughty-naughty noises at Israel over its Gaza intrusion but no diminution of the river of greenbacks to Tel Aviv Jerusalem is noticed. And so Sharon is unrepentant, praising the attack and promising more, while the commander of the raid BrGen. Israel Ziv acknowledged that none of those killed was wanted by Israel.. C · A
• George Tenet tells Congress that the CIA considers Saddam no immediate threat to the US—probability of [Saddam] initiating an attack…in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low—but on the other hand, if attacked, would exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him. G (In other words, Whack Iraq is a doubly bad idea.)
• 10: Congress grants Bush his blank cheque. Most of those for war, have never experienced it. Vietnam vet Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb): `It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war. They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off.' ST (I repeat: one thing that made Hitler better than Bush, is that Hitler had actually seen combat. Ditto Göring.)

  US bombs Basra International again, destroying a civilian radar system and inflicting damage on the passenger terminals and service buildings. CNA

  Congress announces decision to create an `independent' commission to probe 9/11, then withdraws it after Whitehouse fusses. One demand; that GWB appoint the commission chair and that a majority vote be required to subpoena witnesses or documents. ND Cheney's fine meddling hand is suspected. MSNBC

  Westerners tour the Nassr industrial site, subject of Bush's satellite photos; find nothing untoward. Russia's probably holding out for a guarantee of the G$7 Iraq owes it. S4

  Media showing biases in reporting a Palestinian suicide bombing that kills two (bomber and 71-a-o Israeli). You have to get way down in th article to get any hint this bombing, first since Sep 19, is motivated by the Oct 7 Israeli raid on Gaza.) [ABC quoting Reuters] (My body-count in this one article is 22 Palestinians, 7 Israelis. These things seem to come out consistently about 3-1; yet Israel stills gets away with calling it defense. 'Course the US does 1/3 of the worl'ds military spending, and also calls it defence. C'est la guerre.)

  Frontline premiers Missile Wars. And y'know, watching it, it's so damn obvious the whole missile shield project is a boondoggle to further enrich the likes of Bush, Clinton, Cheney, & Rumsfeld without regard to the true threat modes faced by the people of the US or consideration of the motivators generated by the likes of Bush, Clinton, Cheney, & Rumsfeld for those threats—and that even the clear goal of global dictatorship is secondary to lining the BCCR crowd's pockets with the last tatters of wealth in the people's hands—I dunno. What's it going to take to get the American people to take back their country?

• Snipings prompt call for more gun control—right on schedule. CNS A European `military source with experience in Vietnam' rates them the work of not less than two professional snipers following a `scripted' plan. X Similar analyses have come from the US; eg, that no shot was heard by witnesses in several of the shootings indicates...forgot the technial term...shortloads? Slugs with subsonic muzzle speed. These are less accurate than the usual ammunition, yet the sniper gets long-range single-shot kills. That indicates someone way more experienced than the `lone nut with a good scope' the police have tried to argue it is. Except for those looking for two lone nuts (driver and sniper). FL
• 11: Blast at mall in Helsinki. LF They're blaming this on a loner with Internet problems. [Scandinavian radio, on CBC Radio overnight]

  At the 4-Mile Fork Exxon near Massaponax, Kenneth Bridges becomes 8th kill, within 50 m of a state trooper (who heard the shot). FB

  Putin (a fmr intel officer): `Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data which would support the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received from our partners such information as yet.' G

  Israel restricts access to al Aqsa moaque, `3rd holiest site in Islam.' TI (`Israel restricts access to Lourdes, can't understand Catholic outcry.' No, scratch that; when Israel beseiged the Church of the Nativity there was no outcry.)

  Carter is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (for starting the Afghan War? I grant, he's a more-plausible choice than Kissinger. But at this moment, could it be anything but a US `See? We're the good guys' ploy?) (I wrote that before knowing the Nobel selection c'tee says that's the opposite of what it is. Well, that they deny it just proves it =) Rivero: `Did Dubya really think he had a chance?' (See Feb.)

• Annan believes the UN SC may pass the resolution the US and UK want if it's broken in two but the US makes damn clear that if the UN doesn't give it what it wants, free rein to whack Iraq for disobeying th UN, the US will disobey the UN and whack Iraq anyway. And it'll get all its friends to help too, nyeah nyeah. FT
• Arab boycott of US products having effect. LT
• The war isn't (officially) underway and already the US id doublecrossing its support. `Iraqi dissidents and the Arab League expressec dismay at US plans for a postwar Iraq that might involve foreign military control of the country.' TS (Actually, I should say, the US is still doublecrossing its Iraqi support.)
• Rumsfeld orders his minions to prepare the Blitzkrieg. [VOA citing NY Times Oct 13]
• 12: New Spanish Internet law requiring licensing of websites goes into effect. R

  Tremendous blast beneath Sari Nightclub in Bali, wrecks 47 buildings and 100 vehicles, leaves crater. Possibly a µnuke intended to align Aussie public opinion in favour of TWAT. (But will it succeed? 30k protest in Melbourne, express sympathy for Bali, say `the tragedy reïnforced the need for a different approach to conflict resolution rather than further violence and war.' SM) Straw's office had warned `important' Britons about it but kept it quiet from the general public. G (Indonesian officials claim to have found C4 residues BBC which might kill the nuke idea. I don't know if anyone thought to check for radiation. Nor have I gotten around to figuring whether nukes can be made small.) This happened just when Londington wanted it to; Indonesia had been very balky at all levels about TWAT. [LF citing Washington Post] `US ambassador to Jakarta Ralph Boyce had warned the Indonesian government only a few days [ago] that unless it acted against terrorist groups posing a threat to westerners, America would begin to withdraw its diplomatic staff…The CIA had even presented Indonesian officials with evidence of an Al-Qaeda plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri. But US and British officials have openly admitted their frustration as the Indonesians failed to arrest individuals they believe are directly involved in planning and committing terrorism.' [PM citing LT] (If that evidence is of the same quality as that against Iraq…) `The Bush administration's frustration with Indonesia's reluctance to recognize the extent of terrorism in the country boiled over with Saturday night's carnage. We hope this sends a message to the Indonesians that terrorism is not just an American problem, but an Indonesian one as well, a senior Bush administration official said.' BA `World oil prices stayed firm Monday, hovering just below $30 a barrel, as brokers speculated the weekend bombing in Bali would bolster international support for President George Bush's stance against Iraq.' R And from the other direction: `Just what sort of Muslim Terrorist threatens to bomb the persons and interests of people who are basically for Human Rights in Palestine and against the US Dubya Bush plans for an invasion of Iraq? What sort of idiot would then do so and thereby ruin this genuine grass roots support for their cause within Germany, France, Britain, Holland etc, and Australia? Strangely unlike the Northern Irish or Basque terrorist actions these latest bombings of people and assets have not been followed by any public claims of authorship.' CSO Indeed, the Indonesian Muslim militants are blaming it on the US; `The incident could be used as reason for the US and its allies to justify their accusations that Indonesia is a terrorist network base.' JP · I Some `mainstream' already doubt the story: `a Bali nightclub is an unlikely target for al-Qaeda. It has no strategic value, it does not hurt a Western government, and it was not a favoured haunt of al-Qaeda's preferred targets: Americans and Jews.' BBC The FBI and Scotland Yard, with no jurisdiction, immediately muscled into controlling the investigation, outraging the natives SM and leading to a deadend. G Taiwan had warning, but the US asked it to be keep secret. `According to Lee [Chuan-chiao], the worst part is that the government did not issue a warning because the US government asked it not to disclose the information.' [SNZ copying ETN] `A report in the Washington Post [Oct 15] quoted intelligence officials who said Bali was mentioned in an intelligence report warning of the possible attack. The US previously denied receiving any intelligence of a specific plan to target Bali. [Australia's] Federal Government has refused to say what it was told about possible attacks against tourist sites in Indonesia, repeating that it had no warning of a specific attack in Bali.' TA Educated Balinese think it was CIA; US ambassador says `Nono, look over there!' NYT Think. Who has the motive and the means?

  And just in time for the mid-term Congressional elections we were presented with the [Bali Bombing]. It seems likely that this was the work of the same people who carried out the attacks of September 11th. It was a psychological operation directed mainly against the people of Australia, most of whom were opposed to their government's shameful support of America's plans to wage war on Iraq. S

  The fact is that only six US citizens were killed in the Kuta bombing, not because there were so few Americans in Kuta but because the Americans there tended not to hang out at the Sari Club…Everyone in Kuta knew where the Americans preferred to gather [eg Peanut Club] and where the Australians did, or if not, could find out in five minutes…Most of the population of Australia was opposed to the intentions of the leading Australian politicians to participate in America's plans for an invasion of Iraq. From the Arab point of view it would be foolish to inflame anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment among the Australian people, thereby strengthening the hand of those politicians. But from the point of view of those who wanted America to wage war on Iraq (i.e., Israel and the Neocon clique) it made good sense to try to turn the Australian people against Arabs and Muslims. S

  Iraq seems willing to give inspectors unlimited access. R US stubbornly refuses to take yes as an answer. ABC

  This Gurdian piece is very like a call to Americans to rein in their madman.

• 12 (scheduled): U of MI shows the courage absent at Concordia, hosts `Zionism is Racism' conference. JP
• Rumsfeld calls for US military dictatorship. `America should never allow the concerns of allies or worries of the public to dictate its military aims, according to Donald Rumsfeld.' [emphasis mine.] LT
• After weeks of being undernoticed, bin Laden is being prepped for a comeback. JP
• Zionists continue to try smearing the antisemite label on people who dislike Sharon's grinding semites into pâté. IHT (Jews have received death and violence threats, it says. Which is probably true, and not a good thing; however, the fact that the same thing is happening to Palestine supporters goes unmentioned and largely unprotested.)
• 13: Israeli bulldozer `suddenly…without giving the dwellers a chance to escape' razes a shack housing a family of six, makes pâté of Palestinian toddler. `Israeli troops rampaging the West Bank and Gaza killed at least five Palestinian civilians during the past 48 hours.' IRNA
• 14:

  Authorities in Baltimore, meanwhile, seized a white van and found an assault rifle, sniper manual, and ammunition similar to the .223 bullets used in attacks that have killed eight people and wounded two others. A tarot card was found in the van and a sign on the dashboard read Gihad in America. The van's owner was questioned Monday night by police and released with no charges filed. [Y! citing WBAL-TV and MSNBC]

• President Bush seems to think bullying is the only way to deal with dissent. Bush has so much trouble articulating a defense for his own policies, so little capacity to formulate a reasoned response, that he resorts to shibboleths, name-calling, or, worse, using authorities to shut down his critics. Classic Bush was his attack on Senate Democrats who refused to go along with his plan to strip workers at the new Department of Homeland Security of civil service rights. He quipped that senators were `not interested in the security of the American people.'…Daschle made quick work of Bush's scurrilous claims, pointing out to the former Texas National Guardsman that a number of Senate Democrats were actually injured fighting for the security of our country. StPT

• 15: US-UK bombs residential area of Kut. Total of 43669 sorties since '98 Dec 17. INA
• [unfortunately this gap does no indicate a lack of news; but that I'm getting tired of keeping track]
• 19: Car bomb explodes `in' crowded Moscow McDonald's. `Everything but the license plate was destroyed.' ABC (Wasn't that handy. Ask yourself who would provoke countries resisting TWAT to join it?)
• FBI manages to extract scent from the year-old anthrax letters and get three bloodhounds from CA to meander eventually to Steven Hatfill's apartment. ABC (No chain-of-evidence problem there. How, for instance, has it been shown that this supposed scent-extraction process pulls out something that smells precisely the same to a bloodhound!??! Were the handlers ignorant of the suspect and where he lived?)
• Clinton:

  I'm neither fish nor fowl. That is, I believe that [Saddam Hussein] is very bad. We have a lot to answer for, and he is basically partly our creature. I'm not criticizing President Bush on this because I did the same thing. I've sat there and pontificated about how [Saddam] is the only guy to use chemical weapons on his own people.* Yeah he did it, and the Reagan Administration was for him when he did it. Nobody raised a peep then, because he was against Iran. We now know that he got his anthrax strain from an American company while we looked the other way.

  …So I think we have to try to give the sanctions one more chance. He's not going to live forever, there are options for regime change short of bombing the living daylights out of them. [ICH citing Atlantic Monthly Oct 21]

  * An interesting claim, considering his gov't gassed and immolated a small church congregation in southern TX.
• 20:

  …many dentists who oppose fluoridation fear American Dental Association reprisal if they say so publicly, according to a poll conducted by the Unified Health Alliance of Reno, Nevada, and reported by Unified Health Alliance former editor Lois Eckroat in the Reno Gazette-Journal [today]…The following, as reported by Eckroat, lists reasons given for objecting to mandated fluoridation in this poll:

  1. Violation of freedom to choose: Most felt that sodium fluoride is a poisonous chemical and strongly expressed having a choice in what to put in their bodies.
  2. Health threat: In general it is believed that limiting daily sodium fluoride intake to 1 ppm (parts per million) is impossible, since collectively, cereals, canned/bottle juices, other foods, toothpaste etc. easily exceed the danger level of 4 ppm.
  3. Most believed the overfluoridation leads to fluorosis, brittle bones, I.Q. lowering and cancer.
  4. Frustration with elected officials, who seem to represent the views of industrial power, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), AMA (American Medical Association) and ADA (American Dental Association) rather than the people of Nevada.
  5. Cost: Most felt mandatory fluoridation to be an unnecessary tax burden.
  6. Bad personal experiences with fluoridation: Many included horror stories with their responses, some from local dentists.
  7. Feeling of deception: Many questioned the integrity and motives of health professionals in not explaining the difference between calcium fluoride and sodium fluoride. Calcium fluoride occurs naturally in water in minute quantities and is believed to be beneficial or at least harmless. Sodium fluoride, most felt, is a dangerous toxic by-product of chemical processing.

  S101 citing RGJ

• 21: Israeli bus carbombed, killing at least 16. SH

  Four Canadian `journalists' get a we-like-you-type award from B'nai B'rith. Guest speaker World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah. BB (One is Marcus Gee, whom I already marked as unreliable for his attempt to convince us the US would stop at Iraq.)

• 23: Merck lowers price of an AIDS medicine ±30%, to ±95¢/day. Glaxo did similar a few days ago. [ABC news] (Anyone know the average African income?)
• John Allen Williams and John Lee Malvo are nabbed as sniper and accomplice, in blue Chevy Caprice `the favored undercover car of police departments across the country,' purchased a month ago from Sure Shot Auto Sales, NJ. CBS The Gulf-War vet had conveniently changed his name from Williams to Muhammad so Islams and Eh-rabs could get the slander. WND But the tip was called in by a man in a white van. HR It's claimed the trunk had been adapted as a sniping platform, boring two holes in the rear panel for gun and scope. But if this was used a lot, how come expended shells got left behind?
• 25: Sen. Paul Wellstone and family die in plane crash. (It happens that twice as many Democrat officials as Republican die in planes.) He was a major annoyance to the Bushmen. `There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone. This one is political and personal for them.' N He'd been edging ahead in the straw polls. ST One of his first votes was against Gulf War I; one of his last was against Gulf War II. [ABC World News Tonight]

  The Duluth News Tribune featured a column by Jim Fetzer, a University of Minnesota-Duluth philosophy professor and author, [who] wrote that an FBI recovery team headed out to investigate the Wellstone plane crash before the plane went down. I calculate that this team would have had to have left the Twin Cities at about the same time the Wellstone plane was taking off, Fetzer wrote. [He] also noted that Wellstone's plane was exceptional, the pilots well-qualified, and the weather posed no significant problems…An abrupt cessation of communication between the plane and the tower took place at about 10:18 am, the same time an odd cell-phone phenomenon occurred with a driver in the immediate vicinity. This suggests to me the most likely explanation is that one of our new electromagnetic weapons was employed. CP

• Russians end the Moscow-theatre hostage situation with a dawn raid; the terrorists had threatened to begin killing at dawn. It's later admitted the gas used to subdue the terrorists actually killed about 100 hostages; an honourable admission. (PS: Even later they say the agent was an aerosol fentanyl, a common surgical anaestheic in the US. This seems to stifle the antirusskie noise the US media had been making, possibly because of evidence the Pentagon is studying fentanyl for its own nefarious purposes. [M quoting Village Voice Nov 14])
• Since the Americans are now fingerprinting visiting Saudis, the Saudis are now fingerprinting visiting Americans. Some are blasé about it, some have pique of righteous indignation. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA): `[I]t reflects an attitude on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government that perhaps they are in some way being threatened by the people of the US or we are no longer their friends. At a time when their people attacked us they should be bending over backwards to appeal to our friendship.' [JR quoting FOX]
• Reporters sans frontières ranks press freedom in 139 countries.
  • 1: Finland, Iceland, Norway, Netherlands
  • 5: Canada
  • 6: Ireland
  • 7: Germany, Portugal, Sweden
  • 10: Denmark
  • 11: France
  • 12: Australia, Belgium
  • 14: Slovenia
  • 15: Costa Rica, Switzerland
  • 17: USA
  • 40: Italy
  • 82: Palestine
  • 92: Israel
  • 130: Iraq
  • 134: Cuba
  • 139: N. Korea
  Voice of America: `The top 11 countries are all in Europe.' (See #5.)
• 29: GWB: `The vitality of America's democracy depends on the fairness and accuracy of America's elections.' Meanwhile, he was signing a bill to give the states nearly G$4 to eliminate the embarassing paper trail of American elections. RMN (Hitler's method for eliminating elections was too obvious.)
• 30: Ætna continues quaking and spewing lava. Y!
• The US is telling Arab countries what they may/may not put on their TV broadcasts. No criticisms of Israel, in particular. R · JT
• London's mass-transit company tries a poster campaign to reassure passengers the crooks are being watched; but its Orwellian overtones backfire. Simon Davies `thought it was a powerful piece of political satire from a disruptive citizen's group, but then it dawned on [him] that they were real. It's acutely disturbing.' W
• US Boy Scouts threaten to give atheist Eagle Scout Darrell Lambert the boot if he doesn't discover religion. CNN (I never liked those paramilitary Anglophiles, myself.)
• US declares it has no obligation to Canadian passports issued to immigrants; so Canada warns its foreign-born citizens aginst travelling to the US. GO Pat Buchanan calls us `Canuckistan,' saying we should kiss their asses for giving us all our defense. MyBC (The US has dragged Canada into more wars than even Britian, epecially considering how hard US interests worked to start WW2. Their `defense' has consisted of not invading for 190 years and being a 1000-fold bigger global bully, drawing all the fire. Buchanan is mostly upset because we're clueing into the US' game.)
• Joe Biden (D-Del) tables bill for bribing Iraqis with green cards to talk about WMD sites.
• 31: Since 2001, when only 81 did so, 191 Americans have sought political refuge in Canada. But `Only one American has ever been accepted as a refugee by the [Immigration and Refugee] board, and that was overturned by a federal court.' C Meanwhile, sorta, Australia accepts a fmr FL bigwig Joe Gersten. SMH

November

• Crichton Prey

  They didn't understand what they were doing.

  I'm afraid that'll be on the tombstone of the human race.

• The ossuary of Jacob son of Joseph [brother of Joshua?] being presented as James son of Joseph brother of Jesus JW is fractured en route to Toronto.
• 1: Full-page ad in USA Today calling for restoration of the Constitution. GML
• Report on the inspection plans for Iraq places `dual-use sites' at the top of the list. IVC (Don't you think if the US knew any real weapons sites, those would top the list?)
• 2: 7.7 quake in Sumatra. Y!
• US continuing to harass travelling foreign-born Canadians—and they're doing it on our own ground! G&M
• 3: US incinerates 5 Yemeni and one of their own in a car in the desert with a Hellfire from CIA drone; a multiple extrajudicial summary execution wrapped in an act of war. G · NYT (According to EIR's sources, Yemen approved it, so it's not an act of war. It's still f*cking scary and wrong.) (This is apparently what Mr. Graham means by our neighbour that loves international law and human rights.) Incidentally, this demonstrates US remote-piloting capability…not to say was how 9/11 was done or anything. =P Furthermore, notice how, once again, shortly the US accuses someone of doing something nasty without any evidence, the US proves it also does that nasty. In this case, recall GWB's big speech and the mention of Iraqi drones.)

  7.9 quake 66 km ESE of McKinley Park AK. USGS (US seems to be cranking up its Tesla seismotoy.)

• GWB makes campaign swing through Aberdeen SD. SS commandeers block of hotel rooms, leaves belongings in the hall—guess they didn't make reservations. Lineups form at Barrnet Center ~5am; supposed to open 7am; SS doesn't begin security checks until 9am. GWB arrives ~9:45, SS locks all the doors, rapping some people in a hallway. ~18°F weather lands one woman in hospital w/frostbite. `Groton's school class on government had tickets. They had a good 1½-hour drive to get here, never got in. They now have a taste of how government is being run here in the US.' RMN
• 4: Irv Rubin found with slashed neck after falling over railing; he later dies. Ruled a suicide. ICH · CNN (Have you ever tried to slash yourself with one of those flimsy blades from a disposable razor? Well, probably not, but it's just about impossible to do any significant damage, which is why jails provide them.)
• 5: US elections. Remember, remember the fifth of November gunpowder treason and plot. Republicans take over the Hill while Britons burn Dubya guys. (If y'dunno WTF is Guy Fawkes Day, PoisonedMinds had a purty good synopsis last year.) Hitler made away with elections, and so have the Bushmen. They had to be a littler subtler about it, but the effect is the same. To stop a repeat of the 2000 mess, all-digital machines were introduced—there's now no potentially embarassing hardcopy trail. The proprietary software cannot be inspected. Even the exit polls were done away with, probably because they diverged too far from what the machines were saying for even statisticians to explain. JR

  Watching the television coverage of Jeb Bush's victory in Florida was stomach-turningly unpleasant. George senior, `Poppy,' embraced his son in a godfather-like embrace. The gangster comparison would be apt but for its unfairness to organised crime. At least the mafia's drug-dealing murderers do not pretend to be anything else. In the images off the satellite from Florida, Sludge could see arguably the most ruthless and successful drug-dealing murderer of all time—former CIA don, Iran-Contra architect, and bin Laden's recruiter—Poppy Bush embracing his second small-minded, bigoted, deceitful, and corrupt son. And all the time posing as the defenders of democracy and world peace. You only need to look at Jeb's squinty eyes and slimy grin to know that he is a person who deserves about as little trust as any politician alive.

  Which begs the question, how could the people of Florida and America have done this? Again? SNZ

  A sampling of how `they' did it: Broward Co FL `lost' 104000 votes through programming `errors' and other shenanigans. Although this was 10% of the electorate it `didn't affect the outcome.' MH (In Canada, votes are marked on paper and counted by hand.*) Over 90000 Floridians, mostly black Democrats, improperly blocked from the 2000 election were still blocked despite an NAACP lawsuit. (It is alleged the problem will be fixed sometime next year.) JR · GP (In Canada, you don't have to be on a list to vote.* It speeds things up if you're on the enumeration, but so long as you can satisfy the clerk, the DRO, and the agents that you have a vote you get one.) Elsewhere, there were ballot shortages in San Francisco: it was over 3 hr past closing when some got a ballot, and they were then told it wouldn't be counted. KRON (In Canada, if you got in the poll before the doors were locked, and are otherwise eligible, you get a vote and it counts.* In polls I've worked, the initial ballot supply met at least 90% of the enumeration.) In MI, `printer's error' caused severe ballot shortage. Z4 Mess in Pulaski Co. Arkansas prompts Democrats to petition for extended hours, granted by local judge, overthrown on Republican suit to supreme court. And somehow Pulaski knows which votes to discard. KARK `A switch of roughly 29,000 votes in Minnesota, 11,500 in Missouri and 9,500 in New Hampshire would have produced a Democratic Senate and gobs of stories about how the White House blew it.' WP (Did WP pick those states simply because they're close? NH is infamous in Bush history. [GBUB]

  Perhaps the greatest vote-fixing story of the computer age occurred in the 1988 Republican primary in New Hampshire, where it is likely that a notoriously riggable collection of `Shouptronic' computers `preordained' voting results to give George Bush his "Hail Mary" victory in New Hampshire. Nobody save a small group of computer engineers, like John Sununu, the state's Republican governor, would be the wiser.' D

  MN was Wellstone: Wellstone absentee ballots were ignored EZB; persons in line past 8pm were turned away, contrary to law CTV · UPI; 100000 absentees were required to hand-deliver their Mondale replacemenet ballots, assuming they even recieved them DNW; `faulty, unreadable' ballots, some with both Wellstone and Mondale, were rewritten by election workers TC. In MO, state law requires certified software (it wasn't); absentee ballots must be publicly counted (they weren't) EZB; 1 in 6 voters turned away because of precinct changes KC; Black/Democratic St. Louis had punchcard shortage CNN; counting could take days. KOLR · SLT In Baldwin Co. AB, a GOP stronghold, Democrat Siegelman suddenly lost 7000 votes and the election to a `computer glitch.' Supposedly the GOP DA in charge threatens to jail anyone attempting a recount; none is ever done. CNN Sequoia Voting Systems executive Phil Foster is under indictment for money laundering and corruption, and the simpleservant that signed the contract, Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore, didn't think it was relevant. SPT Now go buy Votescam and read it.

  *Me, speaking as sometime agent, poll clerk, and deputy returning officer. The victory statement from JEB that I found most interesting, caught in passing on CNN, was something like `we'll find ways to protect Americans you never even dreamed of.' In Comal Co TX, three races were won by exactly the same margin: county judge Scheel, Sen. Wentworth (R), and Rep. Casteel (R) all won by 18181 votes. ABC

  A Texas-sized lack of curiosity about discrepancies: The uncanny coincidence of three winning Republican candidates in a row tallying up exactly 18,181 votes each was called weird, but apparently no one thought it was weird enough to audit. Conversion to alphabet: 18181 18181 18181 ahaha ahaha ahaha

  No one at the voting machine company can explain the mystery votes that changed after polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama governor's race. Something happened. I don't have enough intelligence to say exactly what, said Mark Kelley of ES&S. Baldwin County results showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however, 6,300 of Siegelman's votes inexplicably had disappeared, and the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but denied.

  Voting machine tallies impounded in New York: Software programming errors hampered and confused the vote tally on election night and most of the next day, causing elections officials to pull the plug on the vote-reporting Web site. Commissioners ordered that the voting machine tallies be impounded, and they were guarded overnight by a Monroe County deputy sheriff.

  Election officials lost their memory: Fulton County [GA] election officials said that memory cards from 67 electronic voting machines had been misplaced, so ballots cast on those machines were left out of previously announced vote totals. No hand count can shine any light on this; the entire state of Georgia* went to touch-screen machines with no physical record of the vote. Fifty-six cards, containing 2,180 ballots, were located, but 11 memory cards still were missing two days after the election: Bibb County and Glynn County each had one card missing after the initial vote count. When DeKalb County election officials went home early Wednesday morning, they were missing 10 cards. SNZ

  *Heavily favoured Democrat Roy Barnes outspent his Republican opponent, Sonny Purdue, six to one. Diebold's AccuVote, with its potential paperless, virtually inauditable system, helped Purdue pull an upset victory and become the first Republ;ican governor of Georgia in 130 years…we'd like to know why Diebold parked sensitive election computer files on an unprotected Web site, then changed the code on 22,000 machines in Georgia right before the vote. LF

  Riverside County (CA?) has 4250 machines for 650000 voters. [BBV quoting AOL] (153 voters per machine. In Nova Scotia, we run about 400 voters through a single, paper, human-counted poll. And DRO+PC costs about $215. NSG You can get an awful lot of DROs+PCs for what one of those machines costs.)
• 7: Ashcroft announces Canadians will be treated with the same suspicion as everyone else. CBC (I just wish he'd treat all Canadians with the same suspicion he treats some Canadians. And then we, in turn, should treat Americans with equal suspicion.)
  
  (This American, however, I'd leave free to roam as he pleases =)
• 8: UN SC passes new Iraq resolution, #1441. FtW Much US arm-twisting is suspected. CNSN (It does not automaticaly authorise force, although Bushblair is spinning it so.)
  
• 11: Bill Gates, with investments in AIDS pharmochemical makers, snubbed by Indian gov't for exaggerating its AIDS problem. [SoD citing G]

  I'm in a choir; I refuse to sing `Land of Hope and Glory' at the Remembrance Day service. 1) it promotes expansionist empire, which causes all the big wars. 2) it promotes the British empire, which was heavily involved in starting WW2 and probably WW1. 3) it contains a line about freedoms built on truth, which I felt to be inconsistent with the UK's present attempt to suppress MI5/6's funding of al Qaeda. (Setting aside the fact British imperial freedom for most subjects is freedom to pay tax and die in the expansionist imperial conquests.)
  

• 12: Medact reports Whack Iraq could kill 4 million. JR

  NYT claims Saddam trying to buy atropine, a nerve-gas antidote, from Turkey; Turkey denies it. KXAN

  UN GA votes 173–3 against the US embargo of Cuba. (US, Israel, Marhall Is against. Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Malawi and Uzbekistan abstain.) F

  Feds begin random vehicular stop-n-search in MI. DFP

  USDA quarantines M$2.7 of soya beans found mixed with maize GMed by Prodigene to produce a pharmaceutical. The mélange is later destroyed. AA

• Saddam overrides his parliament and agrees to the new UN resolution. Having made much fanfare about the parliament's rejection of the resolution, the media are notably untrumpetive of his pro-Western dictation.
• Al Jazeera presents audio tape purported to be bin Laden issuing new threats. Vancouver paper runs a story that Powell will provide Graham a list of Canadian targets of al Qaeda; Powell does not, and denies the existence of any such list. But much scare is manufactured by the media and the Reform-Alliance lunies. All this just as Canada's senate recommends taking the forces out of foreign service for awhile. How convenient. (Aside that bin Laden probably still works for the CIA, the US has been fabricating audio of Saddam for years. VV There's no reason to think they're not doing the same now. [VNY—voxnyx taken out by SS in '03 Jan])
• Much talk of al Qaeda `chatter' reaching `all-time high' NM · JR—an assertion that is totally impossible to verify independently, and the US was duped into attacking Libya on faked chatter—while at the same time the people who can read such `chatter' are being fired for being gay. SMH (On the other hand, it's quite plausible the Bushmen think homosexuals are more dangerous then terrorists. Their protégé Hitler supposedly did.)
• That Québecer, Michel Jalbert, who nipped across the border for a tank o' gas in ME as the whole town of Pohénégamook has done for years, and got thrown in jail? His father shelled out `most of his life savings' as bail and got nothing for it. G&M · G&M · CNN · G&M Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry gives up his US book tour because the treatment at airports was consistently rude, racist, and humiliating. G&M Meanwhile the US still purports to love globalism andthinks we should give it help in whacking Iraq and love doing it. Izzy I told Powell (or his mail minions) he could go fuck himself, and asked Parliament why this convicted, unpunished war criminal was allowed on our soil.
• Corporate citizenship: Andrea Boyes, student at West Salem High (Salem OR) has bright idea of selling bottled water as a fundraiser. PepsiCo, claiming a 10-a exclusive contract to sell Aquafina in that school district, trounces the plan. LS
• Hubbub at Chicago media rally over Zionist infiltra[i]tors. CR
• 13: Immigration Minister Denis Coderre suggests that a national identity card might be a solution to the problems Canadians are having at the border. G&M (I suggest that kind of thinking is just what the Bushmen are hoping for. Ease of crossing the US border is insufficient excuse to introduce such a thing.)
• 14: INS arrests Canadian doctor Ricky Chadda for having a name like one in some goddamn kaputey. `Somebody has to do something about this stupid American government.' G&M
• 15: US releases Jalbert. G&M (They musta figured out there'd be little chance of our figleafing whack-Iraq with BS like this going on.)

  Concordia obtains an injunction against MP Svend Robinson and Judy Rebick speaking there re the Palestine-Israel conflict. Rebick (a Jew) points out that Zionist organisations do not speak for all Jews; Robinson suggests Concordia's afraid of losing money from Zionist sources. TS · G&M (A sample of `open society' according to Netanyahu, see Sep 9)

  Concordia students, the university's staff, the faculty, and the administration conducted a vote through the university's senate and voted to lift the moratorium. The Board of Governors, all corporate appointees dancing the jig of corporate donors, overruled. BI

  (G&M runs straw poll `Is free speech losing ground in Canadian universities;' I vote Yes, along with about 64% at the time. IMO Acadia's getting oppressive, too. I've heard about the chaplain, perhaps, making a straight-arm salute in reference to the dictatorial behaviours of the BoG or Ogilvie, and some Zionists demanded an apology for the Nazi reference. Or something. Anyhow, Ogilvie's been a petty (small-domain) fascist (big-business-loving) dictator and the sooner he's gone the better. Under his leadership Acadia's been no more a unversity for education and personal growth than is an automobile assembly line.)
• FBI tortures Saif Alwahid (son of important al Qaeda member Saif al Adil) to death in Kabul jail. JU (Way to show us all you're the good guys, guys.)
• Islamic jihad claims the killing of 12 armed Israelis in Hebron; Israel (or somebody) lies about them being worshippers. [JR citing Ha'aretz, Israel Radio] · I · I Palestinians fear massacre of a reprisal. PC
• 16: Bushmen begin complaining that Iraq's defending itself from US bombing in the imaginary so-called no-fly zones violates the new resolution. UPI (I'll repeat: the UN accepts no responsibility for those zones; UPI's `The US and British aircraft that fly these patrols are carrying out UN resolutions' is false. Times of India has it right, except for omitting France: `the US-British unilaterally declared flight exclusion zones over Iraq.' And not even the Brits are supporting this interpretation: `Jeremy Greenstock…told the council before the vote that paragraph 8 referred to any personnel that the inspectors might ask to help them and not the no-fly zones.' TI)

  I dunno if the US is going to hand over the evidence, but they're sending celebrity lawyers like Johnny Cochran to Saudi to see what they can do for W'm Sampson. CTV (I'd love to know what Graham told Powell the other day.)

• Ramsey Clark writes to Annan, elaborating four points:
  1. President George Bush Came to Office Determined to Attack Iraq and Change its Government.
  2. George Bush Is Leading the US and Taking the UN and All Nations Toward a Lawless World of Endless Wars.
  3. The US, Not Iraq, Is the Greatest Single Threat to the Independence and Purpose of the UN.
  4. A Rational Policy Intended to Reduce the Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction in The Middle East Must Include Israel.
  JR
• Italy locks up a couple dozen antiglobalisation protestors as terrorists, sparking new protests. AN
• 17: National Canadian no-whackIraq protest. (I'm ashamed to say I didn't get to this; I didn't even carry a sign into choir that morning, the weather was so bad.)
• 18: Almost two weeks after the election, trailing by 3117 out of 1.3 million ballots (0.24%), AB Gov. Siegelman gives up trying to get a recount from the GOP attorneys and cedes to Riley. He had been leading until `correcting a computer glitch' in a GOP county dropped him 7000 votes. CNN

  Inspectors arrive in Iraq. A

  Rumsfeld exhorts South Americans to help combat terrorism and drug trafficking, S apparently forgetting he's talking to the very people enduring the Ft. Benning GA-trained terrorists and death squads, and the Langley VA-based drug runners. Gladys Marin of Chile: `The main goal of the so-called war on terrorism is to guarantee the US hegemony over mankind.'

• Amazon.com denies backing Israel. BBC (Prediction: `antisemite' mudslinging will erupt, and Amazon will be dead within two years.)
• Bill HR5710 permitting forced smallpox vaccination rammed through the Hill…without any science showing smallpox inoculants have been made safe or effective since Jenner pulled his scam 200 years ago. Or even any evidence that the current vaccines will work on weaponised smallpox. WND · NM (It's most likely the Bushmen's latest plan to reduce the population.)
• BBC fairly explains the no-fly-zone matter. UNSC Res 1441 `does not mention the no-fly zones, but does stipulate Baghdad should not take or threaten hostile acts directed against any member state taking action to uphold Security Council resolutions.' This is probably what Washington is trying to leverage into a war. But, `the no-fly zones were not authorised by the UN and they are not specifically sanctioned by any Security Council resolution,' which is probably why Washington is not pushing the matter very hard; they fear the publicity of this fact would unravel their frail domestic support.

  Oho: they do try to press the matter; Annan blows his top (for Annan) and the US gets no support on the Security Council, not even from Britain. Meanwhile, the inspectors have had full cooperation from Iraq and expect no diffculty meeting the Dec-8 deadline. G (Washington Times spins it as a softening of the US `0-tolerance' position.)

• 19: Something for US youth to remember as they march off to their dictators' latest conquest: A federal appeals court ruled 9–4 that the US government does not owe free lifetime medical care to World War II and Korean War veterans who agreed to serve 20 years in exchange, despite promises made to them when they were in the armed forces. `[W]e hold that the Air Force Secretary lacked the authority[,] in the 1950s when plaintiffs joined[,] to promise free and full medical care.' CNN
• Israelis beat up journalist. NZH
• Protestor sneaks up behind Mulrooney at unveiling of his parliamentary portrait, waves tiny US military flag over the former PM's head (he's the one sold us out to NAFTA); is bustled from the room, handed over to the RCMP, and released without charge. Some overreaction about security. (C'mon people, if he'd wanted to shoot him or something, he could've stood in the crowd. But he hadda pass a metal detector to get where he was.)
• Microsoft recommends removing Microsoft from the Trusted Publishers list. M$
• Depending on who's doing the spinning, either Iraq is overwhelmed by the exhaustive list of demands from the inspectors I, or the inspectors are overwhelmed by Iraq's exhaustive response. I (Mattress and slipper factories?!? Actually, I just noticed the same person wrote both articles. !?!)
• Dutch speekeen, which I'm told says `woman with Bush=Hitler flyers arrested.'
• 20: John McCallum tells Dubya to pound sand with his criticisms of Canada's military spending. `I think a number of Canadians were a little bit ticked off when the ambassador keeps pushing…while Mr. Bush may be asking for what I am asking for [more money], I am not asking for his help.' (Yesss! `You guys got a shitty military, oh by the way, please help us whack Iraq.' No, that isn't going over real well up here.) Officials close to Chrétien say he's reluctant to approve a substantial boost in spending for Canada's Armed Forces, preferring to pump money from the federal surplus into social programs and infrastructure improvements for cities. (Imagine, wanting to spend taxes at home. What kinda bleedin-heart commie is he, it's not even decent corporate welfare! Seriously though, this is the kind of thinking the US has violently suppressed all over the planet; we've been lucky to get away with it and I doubt we'll get away with it much longer.) And some aide called Dubya a moron in private, that's getting blown all out of proportion too. (She offers her resignation; Chrétien declines.) C (So what's the list, now: `total asshole,' Japanese; `Hitler,' Germans; `bear of little brain,' British; `moron,' Canadians. Have I all?)

  Most informed people on the planet would classify her observation in about the same category as "sugary cereal makes a terrible breakfast," but it is so rare to hear even the slightest truth expressed regarding America's pathetic chief executive that a bit of a flap has arisen…Any politician with some effective intelligence would allow the matter to pass, calling upon a quality variously called grace or largesse or class, but don't waste your time looking for that quality in America's `neocon' crowd. YT

  The remark was supposed to be off the record, but the greasy yellow Asper-owned National Post broke the rules and printed it, US officials and media acted very childish and moronic, and other Asper-owned rags badgered Canadians into making Chrétien accept her resgination. (Why is it we must foster good relations with them, but never vice-versa? Why is every little bit of criticism of the US, no matter how well-grounded, is `anti-Americanism' while their perpetual snottery on us—Communists, socialists, laughingstocks,* wimps, etc—is never anti-Canadianism? And if we're such laughingstocks, why in the world does the US want us to play in Iraq?) The American at U of T that made the Bushisms book figures he's not a moron—but a sociopath, incapable of empathy with an inordinate sense of his own entitlement (which is consistent with Tarpley and Chaitkin's read of Poppy, and these things tend to be inherited). `He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge…It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes.' Does that make you feel better? CD · OLJ
• Richard Perle tells British Labour MPs the US will attack Iraq regardless of the outcome of the inspections, insisting particularly a `clean bill of health' would not stop US war machine. [WT citing Daily Mirror Nov 21, 22]
• CBS is going into the business of producing fake news—Video News Releases, PR stuff disguised as news stories. The frightful things have been around for years; what's news is major media becoming the manufacturer as well as promulgator. GN (But of course we're supposed to think people like Chomsky are just paranoid.)
• Greenspan and Fed Res Gov Bernanke pronounce death sentence for the buck.

  In mid-November, Greenspan stated that, `there's virtually no meaningful limit to what we could inject into the system were that necessary'. He commented that he would release unlimited dollars into our banking system by acquiring among other things, long term Treasuries if he deemed it advisable. About a week later, Governor Bernanke confirmed and reinforced Greenspan's testimony. He stated that, `the US government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of US dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the US government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services.' He went on to say that, `If we do fall into deflation, however, we can take comfort that the logic of the printing press example must assert itself, and sufficient injections of money will ultimately always reverse a deflation'. KC

  (Did this work for Gernamy c1922?)
• London is stealthily eroding the hallowed no-double-jeopardy principle. ES
• Israelis shoot Palestinian child at checkpoint; Netanyahu renews `his total rejection to the foundation of the Palestinian state.' AN
• 21: Palestinian officials welcome Israeli opposition's call to restart the peace talks. AZDS The `Quartet' (US, EU, Russia, UN) proposes new peace plan calling for `unconditional recognition' of a Palestinian state. WT So Hamas (Arafat's Israeli-funded competitor) blows up an Israeli bus. BBC

• The scene? The recently-concluded NATO meeting in Prague.

  The news item: US war planes circled the city throughout the two-day gathering.

  Yes, the President of the US showed up at an international meeting with the ability to obliterate the gathering (not to mention the city) at a moment's notice. Just a little accompanying luggage, that's all.

  Imagine if the news were Iraqi war planes circle New York throughout the two-day UN debate. No big deal, right?

  By the way, good luck finding the citation (deliberately not given here) on the genuine story from Prague. Seems that the newsminders finally realized that this was (duh) something not to publicize, even deeply buried in reports on the NATO meeting. A six-pack of Leinenkugel for anyone who can unearth the original in less than 15 minutes. SR, PA

• `Christian' Aussie politician stirs controversy, saying Muslim women should be banned from wearing traditional costumes. `A terrorist could wear that chador that would conceal either explosives or weapons. It's not a fairytale.' [FM citing BBC] (He has a small point, actually; the very thing happened in the US civil war. `Not legs, but arms are sought under hoopskirts; and, I am sorry to say, found.' [Mary Chestnut(?) in Burns' docco])
• Bushmen will continue harassing Canada to grant them war-crimes immunity, and may demand Ottawa sign ad hoc pledges of immunity before joint operations are approved. NP (I wonder if they'll demand an ad hoc pledge if we decide to play along with Whackiraq? `Your military sux, now come help with our butchery and furthermore grant us immunity for it.' Fcuk you, Bush.)
• KB Toys seems to have picked up that travesty JCPenney dropped. Better price, too. (Oop! my mistake. JCP still has it. Their URLs are flaky; look at toys | action figures | military | page 2 or thereabouts.) (Not listed on Dec 26. Orwell's Peacekeeper's Battlestation was still there.)
• 25: South Koreans biff Molotov cocktails at US military base in Seoul, upset over the predictable acquittal of US soldiers that killed two girls. JR
• Full inspections get underway in Iraq. Immediately the US overflies Baghdad, which is not even in the bogus no-fly zones, triggering an airraid warning and disrupting the inspections.
• Skint states and cities ask for money from feds FT but the GWB admin sez `tough noogies, the Israeli's pogroms are more important and our last spare G$14 is going there.' FT · H So the states begin hacking up Medicaid. NW
• US now trying to blame us for their bombing us. WT (The audio shop was apparently too busy cooking up Osama tapes (see also 1999 Feb 1) to bring this out in a timely manner. So now it's `Your military sux, it's your fault our dopey pilots bombed you, now come help with our butchery and furthermore grant us immunity for it.' The commander and aerial-weapons officer of the Vincennes got medals for blowing 290 out of the sky on a regularly-scheduled commercial flight on course in Iranian airspace. Do I think the US is gonna do justice for 4 Canadians? Hell no. The US does justice for nobody.)
• 26: The Initiative for Software Choice (a grade-2 Orwell-Huxley name; grade-1 would be false in every word, eg Holy Roman Empire) files comments decrying open-source software. `Proprietary software companies such as Microsoft [ISC member] have labeled open-source software as a serious threat and have begun to oppose its use by governments [a very large cutomer segment].' NCC

  Dubai customs officer fires on US military helicopter. `…trying to determine the motive' which obviously has nothing to do with `anti-American sentiments are running high in the Middle East over US support of Israel and the standoff with Iraq.' USAT (Just as Chomsky says, the media must act totally befuddled as to why `they hate us' even when the answer is in the g*d*n article.)

• WorldNetDaily tries to claim it's `laid to rest' an `Internet rumour;' the recorded Brokaw-Kenney interview, raising suspicions WND is being pressured. JR (C'mon people, the man didn't `get his days of the week mixed up,' he got two major events in the wrong order and was then told to keep his mouth shut. He wasn't trying to remember whether he donned his left shoe ahead of his right. Don't you think he'd remember where he was when this happened? The only other purported compos mentis who can't remember is GWB. I'll grant, on its own it isn't much; but put together with, say, the CIA-NRO exercise, and all the other crap, it begins to get hard to ignore. And apologists examine the pieces in isolation for exactly this reason; only in isolation is dismissal possible.)
• `UN struggles to explain away presence of weapons inspector with S&M fetish,' Harvey John `Jack' McGeorge. I (A: so what? B: he's an SS agent w/o `specialised degree in any of the relevant sciences' nominated by the US gov't, thus obviously one of their ploys to smear27: GWB appoints Kissinger to chair the 9/11 Coverup Commission. Hitchens: `The Bush Administration did not want an objective inquiry into the disastrous intelligence failures, and having an inquiry chaired by Henry Kissinger is the next best thing.' SMH
• 28: Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya blown up while US cruise ship in port. `The previously unheard-of Army of Palestine claimed responsibility…in a faxed statement via a Lebanese media organization. There was no confirmation.' [W quoting Reuters] `Die kenianische Polizei hat nach den Anschlägen auf israelische Touristen in Kenia zwölf Verdächtige festgenommen, darunter ein Paar mit amerikanischen Pässen.' 20m (Kenyan police arrest 12 including 2 with US passports…police instructed the hotel to inform them if guests try to leave; only the arrested pair tried to leave.' G) There are claims about missiles being fired at an Israeli jet; but there's apparently nothing about it on the ATC tapes, the supposed launch tubes have no propellant residues, and the Israeli pilot's statement of seeing something `behind us' is patently bogus, the 757 not having tail radar or rearview mirrors. SS (Those launch tubes—why would you want to abandon such valuable weapons if you had a getaway vehicle, which they supposedly did?) The Kenyans doubt the links to al Qaeda despite US-Israeli pressure. FB
• 28:

  The Lausanne-based Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence said it is 95% certain the tape [first aired two weeks ago on Al-Jazeera] does not feature the voice of the long-absent terrorist leader. TS

  (Note tha in both that article and this BBC one, the US blithely continues to claim it's him, it's him.)
• November US trade deficit (import-export) was G$40.1, up 13.9%. 2002 (G$390.5) already beats 2001 (G$378.7) ATT

Dec

• Vidal Dreaming War: blood for oil and the Cheney-Bush junta (Good book. It was out for a year before I read it, but he's got the case cold.)
• Nuclear material stolen from Halliburton Nigeria. [JR quoting CNN]
• Phony Tony resubjects England to mandatory fluoridation! [GO quoting Observer] Peter Mansfield, UK physician: `No physician in his right senses would prescribe for a person he has never met, whose medical history he does not know, a substance which is intended to create bodily change, with the advice: Take as much as you like, but you will take it for the rest of your life because some children suffer from tooth decay. It is a preposterous notion.' RFW
• ISS finds interesting 15-a-old bug in sendmail that allows any program to be run. It's not known to have ever been exploited; an example of open source enabling proactive security. NCC (Myself, I prefer exim for MTAs—although it's been a few years since I drove one. Exim was written from-scratch and supports only modern protocols, unlike sendmail which is an antique shop; and it's generally wiser to run smaller programs as root than larger.)
• 1: UN World Food Program accuses Israel of blowing up 500 Mg of food in Jabalya refugee camp. UPI US `deeply troubled' by the report, asks Israel to explain it away. [AN quoting Reuters]
• 2: GWB signs G$393 defense authorisation, a 7.6% increase, the `largest in a generation.' FOX

  Amnesty Int'l accuses Phony Tony of hypocrisy re Iraq's human-rights record. G AI sec'y gen'l: `This selective attention to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists.' Meanwhile Tony's PR stunt to generate war support blows up in his claws; dissident Hussain al-Shahristani denounced the war and pointed out Iraq's British-made torture instruments. T

• 3: The Texecutioner's secret EO, granting himself droit du seigneur—right to summary execution—over all people, surfaces. Rice `stretched credulity more than usual,' claiming `no constitutional questions are raised here.' Y! (Perhaps by `here' Rice meant `at the Whitehouse.')

  IDF shoots 95-a-old Palestinian woman. AN (After all, she could remember that Palestine existed before Israel.) Shooter gets a whole 65 days' sentence. JR

  UN staff petition Israel to stop beating and killing them. I

  US one of the handful of votes against 6 UNGARes against Israel. TB · JP (Notice how JP is raking US over the coals for merely abstaining in previous years.)

• 4: GWB: We'll do everything we can to remind people that we've never been a nation of conquerors. WH (We should do everything we can to remind him of the Spanish-American War, Mexican-American War, the War of 1812, the conquest of Hawai'i, the attempt on Vietnam. The Marshall Islanders, who've had a few of their islands vapourised and their genes ruined under the *cough cough* protection of the US, might also have a few things to tell Shrub Dubya on the subject.)

  Lt.-Gen. Mike Jeffrey, commander of Canada's army, tells Commons defence c'tee we should pull out of Bosnia and temporarily halt all overseas deployments. CBC

  I discover Canada is also planning smallpox inoculations for `frontline emergency workers.' P If this expands to include me, and no science is forthcoming to show effectiveness and reasonable safety, I'm gettin me a gun, 'cause they aren't sticking me (again that is, since I already survived one; and if they work, why do I need another one?).

• USUK begin opening Xmas presents early, blitzing Iraq to disrupt the inspections and prepare for all-out war. SMH · G
• Disney's Treasure Planet so dismally received the share price drops 8%. S
• The Hitachi µ-chip. (It's a little over 3 wavelengths across.) Some suspect the push for universal smallpox vaccine is really about injecting these chips. CP
• FAIR: To say `thousands' have died because of the sanctions on Iraq `is like saying that dozens of people died in the World Trade Center attacks.'
• There is so much skepticism about the US' motives re Iraq BBC that even US media are noticing. WP
• 5: McDonald's blown up in Indonesia. MSNBC (Disgust with the US is running so high I'm not yet betting what breed of terror it is.)
• US continues to claim it has `solid' evidence of Iraq's WMD, but refuses to let the inspectors verify it. CBC Even though that new resolution requires them to. A (Don't you think if the evidense were `solid', the US would be demanding the inspectors go prove it?) This behaviour is starting to piss off the inspectors. TOL This is a big-news rift in protocol. P
• Feds raid Arab-owned software firm alleged to have backdoors, Trojans, etc. in gov't software. CBS (Israeli firms proven to have such backdoors (eg Comversys IIRC) are ignored.)
• Howard refuses to say he's sorry for the idea Australia has the right to kill anyone anywhere anytime for no reason. TA
• 6: Paul O'Neill and Lindey get the axe (are asked to resign). CNN O'Neill possibly for calculating a T$44 fiscal hole. MSNBC · HT · SN Whitehouse, naturally, denies it. DN

  O'Neil instructed his team, led by Jagadeesh Gokhale, Federal Reserve senior economist, and Kent Smetters, then deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury, to answer the following question: Suppose the government could, today, get its hands on all the revenue it can expect to collect in the future, but had to use it, today, to pay off all its future expenditure commitments, including debt service net of any asset income. Would the present value (the value today) of the future revenues cover the present value of the future expenditures?

  The answer is no, and the fiscal gap is the $44 trillion. Now, that is big bucks by anyone's definition. It's four times current GNP and 12 times official debt. Imagine everyone in the country working for four years and handing over every penny earned to pay this bill, and you'll grasp its size. BG

  Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei says a US attack on any Islamic country harms Islam. IRNA (Whatever you may think of his logic and/or rhetoric, it's not seriously different from NATO's Article 5(?) which was used to make 9/11 an attack on all NATO.)

• Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz DMD MA MPH re vaccine: Wake up fools! Declare religious and medical exemptions from this mechanism of mass murder. Go into hiding, quit valued jobs, run the other way. Do anything and everything you need to do to avert this catastrophe. Do I make myself clear? T
• Plane flown into Miami Fed Res building, 2 bodies found. M · Y!
• At least four Canadians have gone to Iraq as human shields. CBC
• The Caspian Basin is not paying off; the Afghan pipeline project is `foundering' because there may be nothing to put in the pipe. So 9/11 was all for nothing. This also explains why the Washington Oilers are so keen to conquer the Gulf. FTW (Take particular note that the much-hyped H is not a an energy source, but a distributor, like electricity; and an impotent, cantankerous distributor besides. The other thing `amusing,' is H advocates talking in `too cheap to meter' terms, while at the very bottom of the article it's clear the petrocos see the writing on the wall and are moving in to control the next big thing, whatever it is. G&M)
• Concordia student union votes to suspend privileges of the main Jewish club, claiming thier distributing pamphlets seeking IDF volunteers violates federal law. Hillel members reported feeling `ambushed' (good, now they know how the Arabs feel). `Canada's Foreign Enlistment Act makes it illegal for anyone in the country to recruit or induce someone to enlist or to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state or other armed forces operating in that state. ' Adam Slater, the Jew who wrote the motion against Hillel, said `It's morally outrageous to recruit people into an occupying army.' G&M
• UN inspectors find some WMD! Or rather, a dozen shells of former WMD, still with the '98 inspection tags on them, and only traces of mustard gas. NYP · DW
• Andreas Addicted to War: why the US can't kick militarism
• Gemany starts cutting off the Israeli military supply, refusing to sell them the new Fuchs armoured vehicle. DW · CNN
• Only 38% of Canadians have figured it out (that GWB is a bigger threat than Saddam). CBC
• Alan Ralsky, who made his million with internet spam, is suddenly flooded with junk mail after an article leaked his address. `These people are out of their minds. They're harassing me.' Oh boo-hoo. FP
• 7:

  Sen. Landrieu retains Louisiana in runoff, 642974–603160, despite massive Republican campaign. TO

  Israel refuses to extradite Solomon Morel to Poland as a possible war criminal (commander of prison camp at Swietochlowice, 1945 Feb to Nov) claiming the statute of limitations had run out.

  The Canadian government can denaturalize and deport people without even proving that these individuals committed any crime. But Israel has a statute of limitations for war crimes. Shame on Canada and shame on Israel, wrote Mary Radewych of Etobicoke, whose father Vasyl Odynsky faces deportation even though the government has not brought any charges of war crimes against him, in a letter to The Toronto Star.

  How shocking that Israel would not allow for the extradition of a communist mass murderer but insists on the rest of the world bringing alleged Nazi war criminals to justice, echoed Dr. Jerry Grod, whose wife Olya is another daughter of Odynsky's, in another letter to The Star.

  What a surprise to read about the double standard in Israel with respect to the extradition of alleged war criminals, wrote Stefan Lemieszewski of Coquitlam, BC in yet another letter.

  Israel demands the extradition of Mr. John Demjanjuk from USA and proceeds with a show trial in a theatre court in Israel. But when it comes to alleged war criminals living in Israel, like Solomon Morel, Israeli statute of limitations result in harbouring alleged war criminals. And the Canadian government is pressured into spending millions on commissions and deportation and denaturalization policies because of alleged Nazi war criminals living in Canada. It just doesn't make sense! he said. UCCLA

  (see JR citing Eye for an Eye)
• 8: First inspection deadline imposed on Iraq by UNSCR 1441. Apparently the game is: the US makes a list. Iraq makes a list. If Iraq doesn't make the same list as the US, 4 million die. USAT (`Think of a number.' `Okay.' `Wrong, you lose.' bang) Only the UN's weapons experts will read it—the US won't get access to it. (Otherwise they'd use it to plan their bombing runs. Or maybe it's just 'cause the US won't share what it `knows.') NJ
• Israel threatens to nuke Mecca, Medina, and Qom. `It is an irony of our time Iraq has been suffering for a decade because it is accused of having some capabilities of unconventional weapons, while Israel announces that it possesses nuclear weapons, but there is not any international action against it.' [TT citing Ha'aretz]
• CNN/Reuters bashes Germans for not giving Israel military toys. CNN
• 9: On US tipoff, Spain intercepts North Korean ship So San bearing Scuds, conventional warheads, and drums of fuel; hands it over to US, who trumpets abouts North Korean villainy and plays up Iraq as the likely recipient. Then Yemen steps up to claim the cargo as its own purchase; the US, apparently unwilling to irk one of its few allies, and caught with its stories crossed, stumbles all over itself trying to explain away the botched frameup. G The Spanish aren't too happy about having put themselves on the line for this kind of thanks. [WP citing Financial TImes, Guardian, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Liberation, La Stampa, Die Presse, Stuttgarter Zeitung] US apologises for that—someone check Hades' thermometers! BBC (They are desperate for allies.) G

  United Airlines announces Ch11 filing. SMH

  US manages to steal the sole copy of Iraq's declaration. `Deputy Russian Ambassador Gennady Gatilov said the US had taken the council's lone copy to Washington where it would make duplicates for distribution to the four other powerful council members.' AP/X! · AP/SFC This is supposedly because Washington has the best photocopiers. M · T Isn't it amazing how it went from something the US was never supposed to see to something only the US will see? It may be because Iraq listed its suppliers R and we all know the US was once Iraq's big supplier&mdahs;right though the Gulf War, according to a House C'tee investigation. Maybe the Bushmen need to cover some tracks. Like Reuters said, `names…that may be embarrassing for nations on the UN Security Council.' (US wanted to be only nation to get the uncensored declaration MD; I guess it got its wish.) Annan eventually admits letting the US steal the documents was an `unfortunate' f*kup. [JR copying SH]

• Just when Dubbya needs a public distraction from Iraq's weapons declaration (which would have `US' near the top of the Suppliers list) and total failure to have any WMD, a sex scandal erupts. Just like Wag the Dog prescribed. Just like Clinton–Lewinsky to bury the Whitewater drug-money laundry. Just like Condit–Levy to bury the planning for invading Afghanistan. NFB
• Palestinian claims Mossad or Shin Bet tried to get him to set up al Qaeda cell. PINA · H
• N. Korea pushes the envelope, promising to fire up its nookular reactor. M Oil embargoes have left it short of power. O (Oil embargoes were the provocation for Japan's attack on Pearl. Even the flamingly pro-Amerika New American Century acknowledges the possibility.)
• Hatfield isn't working out as an anthrax suspect. Leonard Horowitz (sample), Michael Ruppert (FTW), and Stewart Webb believe it's the famous Ken Alibek (Kanatjan Alibekov). T (This will be a blow to Michael Rivero, who votes for Philip Zack.)
• Britain's trade deficit is the worst since records began in 1697. G£2.7 in September, G£3.6 in October; G£9.8 in 2002q3. G (In case you wondered why Phony Tony is so keen on war.)
• SS assists RIAA in busting 156 CDRs (claiming 421). R
• 10: Coral Springs FL kindergarten teacher Fabiola Mehu-Pelissier says there's no Santa. Parents want her disciplined, fret about how to rebuild the bubble. School board said she broke no rules, will instead wreck her credibility by sending in a natural-bearded `Santa' on Friday. ST (Imagine the furor if she'd told the truth about something important, like US fascist imperialism.)
• 11: Sen. Graham tells PBS' News Hour w/Jim Lehrer that foreign governments were involved in 9/11; but which is going to be kept secret `for 20–30 years.' PBS (Now which governments would Washington protect to that extent? I can think of only a few, Arik `the Red' Sharon topping the list and Phony Tony Blair second.)

  Mitchell resigns vice-chair of 9/11 panel. CS

• Three WTC missing found alive; count down to 2792, with 1439 identified. CS
• 13: Kissinger resigns chair of 9/11 panel. CS

  If Bush and the rest were standing on firm ground, they would fully support [a rigorous civilian investigation of 9-11]. Instead, they have worked to thwart both its formation and its progress, using every resource within their reach. [At some time] they seem to have realized they were only fueling suspicions this way, so Bush grudgingly approved an independent investigation. The arrogance of this bunch is so disabling, however, that they actually [named] Henry Kissinger to lead it. This is a man whose dedication to US interests verges on [sic] homicidal psychosis…Ironically, even Henry had the sense to admit he was an inappropriate choice, thus resigning from this duty, whereupon Bush immediately returned to his original tactic… NYCI

• Lawrence MA manufacturer of Polartec is in bankruptcy court. `What may save Malden Mills is the American military.' [NBC Nightly News, 2002 Dec 14] (See how war props up business?)
• US accuses Iran of developing nukular weapons. K So Iran invites nukular inspectors to come see for theyselfs. MSNBC (Didn't we see this bunfight already? What, Iraq's not working out, so Iran is next?)
• Canada bans the other wing of Hezbullah, probably inspired by quotes attributed to its leader but probably fabricated by a sleazy London journalist. EI
• Cheney's PR strategist Mary Matalin, `wife of Democratic consultant James Carville,' quits. WP (That should tell you something about how little difference there is between Reps and Dems. `Pepsi' and `Coke' is what Chomsky calls them, very aptly if you think about it.)
• Another JCPenny action-figure offering, the Orwellian World Peace Keepers Battle Station, $24.99, 2 AA batteries [sic] included. `40-pc. accessory set…includes everything needed to stage a battle.'
• 80% of Palestinians killed in IDF curfew enforcement, have been children. B'Tselem
• Phony Tony flip-flops again, says it's ok to attack without UN consent. AN
• 14: USUK bombs civilian sites in Iraq provinces Wasset, Missan, Zi Qar. N24 `Without a specific UN resolution, US and British aircraft have enforced no-fly zones…' CNN (The media are beginning a slow leak of the truth re the zones. `Ya, 'k, the UN didn't authorise the zones, but hell, we're the USUK, we rule, right?')
• 15: International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan convenes its first public hearing in Tokyo to try W. [ICH citing ZM]

• The concept of `human rights' melts away when convenient. Even an assiduous reader of the US press would be surprised to run across some key provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN more than 50 years ago and theoretically in force today. For instance, the document declares without equivocation that `everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment.'

  Perhaps the Universal Declaration passage least likely to succeed with US news media appears in Article 25: `Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and the necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.'

  Words expressing those kinds of ideas are scarce in our media lexicon. GO

  (Well, you gotta remember the UN UDHR was written by one of those liberal bleedingheart commie socialist kooks from terrorist-loving Canuckistan.)
• I would say I pray daily for God to lance with fire the boil that is Washington; but that would imply faith in God. Like the few Jews who survived the Nazi camps, or Schaffer's Salieri, I've come to conclude God is either impotent or a monster, or He'd've already done the job.
• `The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of America over many years, in all parts of the world.' T (This was pretty much my feeling when I first heard of 9/11. I think my exact thought was `it's finally happened.' In the meantime I've come to conclude it was a setup, a Reichstag fire, another Pearl Harbour—as the persons who became the GWB administration wrote was needed to accomplish their conquest of the globe; or at least the last of the globe's vanishing petroleum resources. P `Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.' PNAC)
• FEMA director Joe Allbaugh, `one of the Iron Triangle of aides who helped GWB win [sic] the presidency,' quits. [I quoting R]
• McDonald's warns of (and eventuall posts) its first quarterly loss. MSNBC
• Reformed American white-supremacist patriotic navy brat apologises for her country. GO

• For decades Americans have worried about nukes falling into the `wrong' hands—as if there were `right' hands for weapons of mass murder. Well, those weapons are in the wrong hands now: Bush's hands. Washington is in an uproar about Trent Lott's offhand compliment at Strom Thurmond's birthday party, but it has taken Bush's mad-dog threat in stride. What sort of `war on terrorism' is this, which terrorizes the whole world? S

  (The Lott kafuffel is probably distraction from Graham's revelation. HT)
• Chirac `slaps down' Phony Tony about pushing Washington's lust to railroad Turkey into the EU. Pascal Lamy, French trade commissioner: `It's classic US diplomacy to want to put Turkey in Europe. The further the boundaries of Europe extend, the better US interests are served. Can you imagine the reaction if we told the Americans they had to enlarge into Mexico?' CD · M
• DARPA Info Awareness Office drops its logo, `denounced far and wide as being Orwellian, Masonic, and just plain creepy as hell.' (see also TT and TT)
• `US is expected to declare next week that Iraq's flawed [sic] declaration of its arms programmes is in material breach of UN resolution 1441.' S (Ya don't need Ms Cleo to predict that.)
• 21: Am in truly grumpy mood today. Betlem canceled Xmas weeks ago, but here we in the west continue on with our la-la-la while our governments conspire to kill a few million more A-rabs for fossil fuels. (I presume you've noticed Iraq's full and total cooperation never happened as far as USUK are concerned.) No f*ing wonder they hate us; we're despicable.
• Israel celebrates US' veto of another UNSCRes by gunning down an 11-y-o Palestinian in Gaza. HS
• Even Kuwaitis are turning on the `liberators.' T
• That the US pilots who bombed us in Afghanistan were `under the full influence of amphetamine' finally makes it to 20/20. 20/20 · TS
• 19: Lebanon bans the US' `it's not a war on Islam' TV propaganda. Info Minister Ghazi Aridi, to AP: `The TV spots were banned because they contained words contrary to truth. The spots say that America is treating the Arabs and Muslims well. This is not true…[To improve its image] America ought to abandon its policy of complete bias toward Israel and stop its pressures on Arab and Muslim countries.' CBS
• Bolivia's Social Defense undersec'y, Ernesto Justiniano, reports authorising shipment of 350000 bricks (&plusm;160 Mg) of coca leaves for Coca-Cola production. Coca-Cola denies cocaine has ever been an ingredient. NN `The drink undeniably contained some cocaine in its early days.' S (My thought is—hey, isn't McDonald's a Coca-Cola holding? or vice-versa? Aren't profits slipping? Wouldn't boosting the addictive properties help?)
• 24: PA police shoots Michael Ellerbe, 12, in the back while fleeing the car he'd stolen. [Washington Post Dec 25]
• `Dr. Laura' Schlessinger once wrote, `God's commandment of honoring parents is basically the message that parents are a conduit of God. By honoring our parents, we learn to honor God. By honoring God we become decent human beings.' Her mother spent two months rotting in her condo before anyone figured out she was dead.

  The `Dr. Laura' show typifies the dangerous hypocrisy of those who build profitable and politically potent empires on the basis of claiming a monopoly on simplistic answers to complex problems. The guilt and shame they induce in those who might resist their nostrums is loathsome, made more so when they themselves so casually ignore them. LAT

• Members of Likud figure Sharon's claim Syria is hiding Iraqi weapons is just a distraction from the bribery scandal. INN
• 25: Russia boots US `Peace Corps' for spying. CNN (Is the idea of a `US Peace Corps' credible anymore?)
  
  (Apologies for not being able to link to the exact page; grimmy.com has some of the worst website programming I've ever seen.)

  Said the night wind to the little lamb,
  do you see what I see
  Way up in the sky, little lamb,
  do you see what I see
  A missile there, dancing in the night
  With a tail as big as a kite
  With a tail as big as a kite

  Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,
  do you hear what I hear
  Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy,
  do you hear what I hear
  A lie, a lie, high above the trees
  And the voice says let's go to war!
  And the voice says let's go to war!

  Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,
  do you know what I know
  In your west wing warm, mighty king,
  do you know what I know
  A Child, a Child shivers in the cold
  War will only tear down his home
  War will only tear down his home

  Said the king to the people everywhere,
  with me or against me
  Pray for peace, people everywhere!
  with me or against me
  The war, the war, for the sake of peace
  It will bring us goodness and light
  It will bring us goodness and light UKN

• 26: Israel reöccupies Bethlem, truncating Xmas to only one day. SH

  GWB goes to China. He dismisses his family's scandalous past re China with `That's old news. It's in the past.' USAT (So's grandpappy's megasupport for the Nazis, but its age doesn't comfort me one jot.)

• US continues to block drugs for Africa. BBC (Whether or not the US created the pathogens, that it desires genocide is undeniable given its actrions and documentation like the NSSM200 report.)
• Russia signs deal to build more nuclear plants for Iran. GWB chews horseshoes. MD (GWB's public objection is nookular proliferation; his private objection is probably more like energy independence. My own objection is, nuclear anything has exceedingly nasty, essentially insurmountable risks.)
• Phony Tony's pastor, Fr Tim Russ, takes him over the jumps for warmongering. M
• Russia calls on USUK to stop bombing Iraq. VoA
• US gov't debt is at G$6.28 of the G$6.40 ceiling; Treasury appeals to have ceiling raised. FOX (The debt is now too large to erase except by starting WW3.)
• Dr. Vivian Virginia Vetrano: `Smallpox is about as contagious as stumbling over a rock.' W · T
• • Bush's approval/disapproval numbers back to mid-2001 levels: 55%/37%. (All he gained by 9/11 is gone; expect another big event.)
  • Bush a trustworthy leader: 50% yes, 48% no.
  • Cheney a trustworthy leader: 42% yes, 51% no.
  • Bush's accomplishments are mainly his advisers': 55% yes, 35% no.
  • The US should first-strike nations w/terrorists or WMD: 43% yes, 46% no.
  [IT quoting Time] (Not exactly shouting this little turn of opinion, are they?)
• Fmr US Marine and Gulf War vet' Kenneth Nichols leads a convoy of American and European human shields to Iraq. `I understand that I will likely not survive a US invasion. Part of the reason I want to go back is to apologise to the Iraqi people for what I was doing there the first time.' G

• The anti-science movement has also extended itself into the classroom. Last fall, the Texas Board of Education rejected several environmental science textbooks, including one entitled Environmental Science: Creating a Sustainable Environment. Critics forced the book ban primarily on ideological grounds, calling the text vitriol against Western civilization and its primary belief systems. Another science book was approved only after the publisher agreed to remove entire sections on climate change. HA

• Despite `uncorroborated' info of 'suspect credibility,' GWB orders the FBI to seek 5 who entered US illegally via Canuckistan. ST · CNN (He's real desperate, you see; very little of the world sees any need to whack Iraq.) No, wait, 5 isn't scary enough, try 19. 19's a scary number since 9/11. NYP But 19 doesn't seem to take. Canadian officials deny the 5 were in Canada [no prime source] (and apparently refrain, tactfully, from pointing out US border patrol is not our job). Then it turns out one of the men is still in Pakistan. C · F Another is nabbed in WA, but the list is never shortened. SI (Yeah I know the IDs were described as false; it goes to show how useless publicising the information is except for scaring the public.) In fact the FBI threatens to expand the list. VoA The Akwesasnes (see 1980) are painted as assisting in the crossing. Eventually the FBI admits the Canuckistan connection, the American connection, the terrorism connection, the general reality connection, are complete speculation. Senior RCMP official: `It was a slow week at the White House. They needed something to stir the pot because nothing was happening in Iraq.' G&M Then things take a bizarre turn; the FBI blames it all on a tip from Michael Hamdani, held on fraud charges in Toronto and sought for extradition by the US. The fraud charges are dropped, the files sealed, and the extradition goes ahead. Something really stinks here. CBC · IA · R But: `The photos of the five men flashed before me on the evening news. To my surprise were the two men who had stopped me illegally in Montréal four years earlier posing as Mossad agents.' GO
• The mideast's `only functioning democray' moves to bar three Arab MKs and their parties. `The knesset has previously banned extreme rightwing Jewish parties and politicians.' (Names? Were they nonZionists, perhaps?) G
• GWB names Thomas Kean chair of the 9/11 whitewash investigation. Kean is a director of Amerada Hess, which in '98 partnered with Delta Oil to develop Azerbaijan oilfields. A Delta backer is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi patriarch married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters, suspected of funding charities linked to al Qaeda, and named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by 9/11 families. (The Delta Hess partnership ended 3 weeks ago.) Mahfouz has also dealt with Carlyle and BCCI. F (I assume by now you've noticed it's far easier to make connections from Osama and al Qaeda back to Washington than to Baghdad?)

• In late December 2002 the Australian Prime Minister confirmed his low opinion of the intelligence of the average Australian by running TV and newspaper ads urging them…to call a national hotline if they see anyone acting suspiciously. What counts as suspicious is not explained [beyond] the catchy slogan, If it doesn't add up, call up. The PM is thus urging all Australians to start spying on their neighbors…This is the sort of thing that happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and in post-war communist East Germany under the Stasi secret police. Up until now, according to all reports, Australians have been an easy-going and friendly lot. Now that they know that their neighbors may call the federal police at the slightest hint that something doesn't add up in their neighbours' eyes you can be sure that social and personal relations are going to become corrupted by mutual distrust. Australian society is going down the tubes quicker than you can say 1984. It is no longer a place where a freedom-loving person would (if they had the choice) choose to live. S

• Palestinian terrorists (left, flinging their shoes) and helpless Israeli victims (right, wearing portion of ¾ million Americans' unemployment benefits).
  
• Rep. Charles Rangel (D NY) vows to introduce compusory military service bill while accusing GWB and fellow legislators of being too keen to whack Iraq. CNN
• 29: Turkish protesters torch stars-n-stripes, union jacks, and zionist banners. G

  Nobel laureate Günter Grass names GWB a threat to world peace. IO `He compared the US president to a Shakespearean character who wants only to appear before his father, a dying king, and tell him: Look, I have accomplished what you wanted. ' 9MSN

• 31: Afghan/US-Pakistan border skirmish ends with US bombing Pakistan although `Pakistan is a close US ally in the war on terror.' AN (This is how the US treats allies. Is it any wonder it has so few?)

  This year's US corporate bankruptcies set a new record: G$386 in assets, up 42% over last year. BBC

  British business failure at 8-year high; according to the former Dun & Bradstreet, 43500 went into liquidation or bankruptcy, 7.2% over last year. G

  US Dep't of Labour terminates the Mass Layoff Statistics program.

  This is the final news release for the Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program. Since 1994, the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration has funded the program. That funding will end on December 31, 2002. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been unable to acquire funding from alternative sources and must discontinue the MLS program. BLS

  (The news got so bad they decided to stop producing it?)
• Assoc Press tallies 115 unarmed Palestinians under 18 killed by Israel this year, 50% more than last year. WT
• 11.1% of American households had food insecurity this year, up from 10.7% in 2001. Food insecurity with hunger, 3.5% up from 3.3%. USDA and 2001's numbers were higher than 2000's. G