Friday, March 26, 2010

False-Flag Operations: An Introduction


New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 13 -- March 27, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, program #108, March 30:

False-Flag Operations:
An Introduction

Former MI-5 spy--and now whistleblower--Annie Machon.
Most graphics: Click to enlarge.

In brief:

"False-flag" ops. are incidents used by the authorities to justify war or the revoking of civil liberties. These incidents are staged, or misrepresented, or imaginary. Ex-MI-5 agent Annie Machon discusses the London IRA bombings (1990s) and the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in London (1994). The latter, it turns out, was done by . . . Israel itself--for a purpose. I discuss the faked Polish invasion of Germany (1939), Gulf of Tonkin incident (1964), bombing of 3 Russian apartment buildings (1999), and the Underwear Bomber scam (December 2009). I try my hardest not to call 9-11 a false-flag op. Plus expert Rufus T. Firefly.

Notes and credits

Annie Machon speech of May 14, 2007, courtesy of London Sound Posse. Their recording of the complete speech (1:08:28, 31 MB .mp3) is available here.

Dialogue and song ("We're Going to War") from The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933). See the unedited video segment.

Credit to Wikipedia for several of the facts I relate on false-flag ops in Germany, Vietnam, and Russia, 1939-1999.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "average quality") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Top: the Reichstag fire, the morning after it began. The German parliament building was set ablaze on the night of February 27, 1933, possibly with the connivance of the NSDAP (Nazi party). Newly-installed Chancellor Hitler and cohort blamed the arson on the communists, persuaded President Hindenberg to suspend civil liberties (cf. the USA-PATRIOT Act), unseated and imprisoned left-wing MPs, and consolidated their own power. By removing the communist MPs, the Nazi party increased its lead in parliament from a plurality to a majority.
Bottom: On August 7, 1964--following in imaginary attack on a U.S. naval ship in Vietnam--Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution giving the President carte blanche to wage war against the Vietnamese. A massive escalation of the war followed.

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut date shown:

  • April 6 -- False-Flag Operations, Part 2. K.D. discusses the battleship Maine, the reasons the U.S. started the Spanish-American War, and USAF attempts to provoke the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). Annie Machon explains false-flag terrorism in Northern Ireland (1990s), operations Gladdio and Northwoods, and the great loss of civil liberties in the U.K. following 9-11.

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

In September 1999, Russian state security forces bombed apartment buildings in three cities of the Russian Federation, including Moscow. Blamed on "Chechen terrorists," the incidents were used to justify Russia's invason of the troublesome Republic of Chechnya at the end of September. For some reason, the "Chechen terrorists" chose to bomb only low-rent apartment buildings.
Top: Propaganda photocollage. Note sinister "terrorist" in the center. Doesn't look at all like President Putin. Bottom: First-responders carry one of the 300 murder victims.

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Friday, March 19, 2010

Airport Security and Related Scams



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 12 -- March 19, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #107, March 23:

Airport Security and Related Scams

Precursor and spiritual ancestor of the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA): Mack Sennett's The Keystone Kops. Most graphics: Click to enlarge.

Executive summary

Twenty years ago, airports and commercial aircraft were scenes of Orwellian mind-control (hear George Carlin in this installment). And those were the good old days! After 9/11, the police state--fortunately run by the Keystone Kops--seized our airports (hear Jimmy Tingle, Michael Parenti). As we lead up to the preposterous Underwear Bomber scam of last Christmas (hear me, Jim Hightower, & Jon Stewart), we hear from student Nicholas George, busted for trying to carry "learn Arabic" flash cards onto a plane. It is to laugh--and the show does (between screams of outrage).

Notes and Credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "What, me worry?") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

http://www.jimmytingle.com/
http://www.michaelparenti.org/

Bottom: Maidenform bra ad, apparently from 1963. Somehow, the
extremely long-running "I Dreamed ..." ad campaign never tried, "I
dreamed I blew up an airliner with PETN explosives in my Maidenform
bra ... and panties." A pity.

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut dates shown:

  • March 30 -- False-Flag Operations: An Intruduction
  • April 6 -- False-Flag Operations, Part 2

Terrorist suspect Nicholas George, here cleverly disguised as a harmless
backpacker and college student. The TSA, Philadelphia Police, and FBI
were too smart to fall for that old trick. George was busted for trying to
carry basic-Arabic-vocabulary "flash cards" onto a commercial flight.
Why do you think they call them "flash" cards, eh?! Good work, officers!
Mack Sennett would be proud.

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

Populist commentator Jim Hightower. The former Texas state
official (State Agriculture Commissioner) can recognize a scam--
such as full-body scanners in airports--when he smells one.


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Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Second Coming



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 11 -- March 11, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #106, March 16 & 20:

The Second Coming
(in American Imagination
and Popular Culture)

Nike sportswear ad. All graphics: Click to enlarge

In brief:

Artists & social critics have used the idea of the Second Coming of Christ as a metaphor to highlight social ills. (Bumper sticker: "Christ has come ... and boy, is He p***ed!") We hear & look at 4 works of art that do this: Lenny Bruce's famous "Christ and Moses" routine, a Langston Hughes story featuring the Harlem character "Simple," W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming," and The Police's song "Synchronicity II"--which is pretty much Yeats's poem, updated & set to music.

Is that Dick Cheney, in the brown suit?

This week's song

  • The Police, Synchronicity II (1983)

Notes and credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "aegis") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com .

"Simple Prays a Prayer"--which I condense for broadcast--is from the Langston Hughes anthology, The Best of Simple. Support your public library!

Coming Soon

  • March 23 -- Airport Security & Related Scams
  • March 30 -- False-Flag Operations: An Introduction

Bottom: Irish poet and visionary William Butler Yeats

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

Langston Hughes in Harlem


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Friday, March 5, 2010

Psychopaths With Occam's Razor



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 10 -- March 5, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #105, March. 9:

Psychopaths With Occam's Razor

Exeutive summary

Hierarchies (government, military, & Wall Street) become top-heavy with psychopaths--all of whom are capable of harming others without feeling the slightest guilt, empathy, or remorse. The Official Explanation of each outrage they commit is always convoluted. The principle of "Occam's Razor" posits that (all else equal) simpler explanations are more likely to be true than explanations worthy of Rube Goldberg. An example of the latter is the Official Story of why there was no air defense on 9-11-2001.

Here's a simple, Occam-friendly explanation of U.S. foreign policy since 1990: The psychopaths are running the show for their own benefit.

In this program, various observers discuss the decade-long genocidal sanctions against the Iraqi people (1990s, mostly under Clinton), Jewish Nazi-collaborator George Soros, 9/11, and General S.L.A. Marshall's groundbreaking discovery of soldiers' extreme reluctance to kill other humans, even "enemy" troops.

We even end on a note of hope and optimism. After all, the normals still outnumber the psychopaths 20-to-1, and the psychos haven't yet succeeded in grabbing complete control of the Internet!

Top: The Anti-occam: Rube Goldberg (1883-1970)
Bottom: Goldberg's soup-cooling machine


And the winners are . . .

Rube Goldberg Award-winning byzantine Official Explanations include

  • How 2 airplanes caused 3 steel skyscrapers to collapse, each onto its own footprint, at near-freefall speed, while mimicking every characteristic of a controlled implosion
  • Why, on 9-11-2001, there was no air defense of "the Homeland" and no missile defense of the Pentagon
  • How giving a trillion dollars to private Wall Street corporations--no strings attached--will create jobs and reduce home foreclosures
  • Why U.S. forces are killing people in Afghanistan

Notes and credits

Thanks to James Corbett (http://www.corbettreport.com/ -- episode #113) for the audio on George Soros. Thanks to Tereza Coraggio (http://www.thirdparadigm.org/) for the article by Dr. Kevin Barrett, "Twilight of the Psychopaths." Regular podcasts by both Corbett & Coraggio are archived on radio4all.net.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "counter") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

See last week's installment (#104) for more on psychopaths in power (and the predictable results).

On the show I've condensed--and in the process toned down --Kevin Barrett's essay, "Twilight of the Psychopaths." Here's the full text (in .pdf).

As Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeline Albright (then a brunette) famously
defended, on TV, the Administration's murder of 500,000 Iraqi children by
its oppressive regime of sanctions. The equal number of adult civilians
murdered didn't bear mentioning. Here, in February 2004, she arrives in
Berkeley to plug her published memoirs. And no, the sign on the window
isn't exaggerated, inflammatory rhetoric. Even so, the buck stops with her
boss, the Psychopath-in-Chief. Apologies to Sassacus, Black Elk, & Sitting Bull.

Coming Soon

  • March 16 -- The Second Coming (in American imagination & popular culture)
  • March 23 -- Airport Security & Other Scams

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

Could a teenaged Jew in Hungary, ca. 1944, actively assist the Nazi
Occupiers in robbing other Jews of their wealth and shipping them off
to extermination camps . . . and--decades later--feel not the slightest
guilt or remorse? Easy as goulash to a psychopath!


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    Saturday, February 27, 2010

    Hannibal Lecter To Replace Dodd in Senate


    New World Notes News
    Vol. 3, No. 9 -- February 27, 2010

    This Week on New World Notes: Radio pgm. #104, March 2:

    Hannibal Lecter To Replace
    Dodd in Senate,
    or:
    Psychopaths: An Introduction

    The Ford Pinto, 1971-1980 (1979 model shown)
    All photos: Click to enlarge.

    Executioner's summary:

    Psychopaths are quite common. Most are not hands-on killers. They differ from us in their lack of conscience, inability to imagine others' pain, and total lack of remorse for harm they cause. With these advantages, they rise to the top of hierarchies; and hierarchies become top-heavy with psychopaths. Which explains a good deal of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Drs. Susan Rosenthal, Michael Parenti, K. Dowst--& redneck social commentator Joe Bageant--explore the implications.

    Pinto gas tanks would explode from a 28-mph bump on the rear, jamming
    the doors and incinerating the occupants. Ford designed a fix that would
    prevent this at a cost of $6 per car. Then Ford did the numbers, calculated
    it would be cheaper to settle with the deceased's next-of-kin, and decided
    not to employ the fix. Susan Rosenthal tells more, in this installment.
    (Photo: skoblin,     photobucket.com)

    This week's song

    • James McMurtry, Dancin' in the Ruins of the Realm

    Notes and credits

    The passage by Dr. Susan Rosenthal is read by Lyn Gerry, rebroadcast from an installment of her Unwelcome Guests radio program (see link under "Worth a Look," in the gray sidebar; the URL is below). Thanks to Lyn & the Unwelcome Guests Collective.

    The passage is from Chapter 2 of Rosenthal's 2006 book, Power and Powerlessness. The book is available--in some cases without charge--in 3 ways: (1) printed & bound, (2) by Internet download, (3) read aloud over several installments of "Unwelcome Guests."

    http://www.susanrosenthal.com/

    http://www.unwelcomeguests.org/

    Joe Bageant's "Bass Boats and Queer Marriage" is here: http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant01152010.html

    The hour-long "Corbett Report" podcast has a couple of interesting installments on the same subject: #90 ("Our Leaders Are Psychopaths") & #113 ("Meet George Soros").

    For more fun, see LA Weekly online's "12 Consumer Products That Should Not Have Exploded But Did: Recall-a-rama" (April 1, 2009). Of course they include the Pinto, a.k.a. "the barbecue that seats four."

    New World Notes     is produced under the auspices (Latin for "Freedom of Information Act") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

    Free weekly NWN email newsletter on request.

    Top and bottom: New Orleans rooftops, 2005. The authorities knew the
    flood was coming, did nothing to prevent it, and took no steps to evacuate
    the (mostly poor and black) citizens. Somebody explain why ethnic
    cleansing     isn't the best term for what happened. Michael Parenti has
    more to say on it, in this installment.

    Did I mention that--for the first time in 32 years--New Orleans now will have
    a white mayor? Scion of the statewide ruling-elite Landrieu family? Son of the
    city's last white Mayor (Moon) and brother of a U.S. Senator (Mary)? Mitch
    takes office on May 3, 2010, God willing.

    Coming Soon

    • March 9 -- Psychopaths With Occam's Razor. The Official Explanations of, say, why the U.S. is invading Afghanistan ... or of what happened on 9-11-2001 ... are of baroque complexity. The principle of "Occam's Razor" suggests that simpler explanations are more likely than Rube Goldberg fantasies to be true. Could "psychopathocracy" be part of a simpler & better explanation?
    • March 16 -- The Second Coming (in American consciousness & popular culture)

    Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

      Semantics 101: In a disaster, white folks scavenge for food. Black folks
      loot. No officials were available to help evacuate the city's poor & infirm.
      Few were available to rescue the stranded; feed, clothe, & shelter the
      victims; or provide medical care to the injured or ill. Plenty of officials
      were available to protect property (already flood-damaged!) from
      "looters." Incompetence? Or       Heckuva job, Brownie! ?

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    Saturday, February 20, 2010

    Resisting Violence: Kathy Kelly (R) + LIVE on WWUH




    New World Notes News
    Vol. 3, No. 7 -- February 20, 2010

    This Week EXCEPT on WWUH: radio program #103, Feb. 23:

    Resisting Violence: Kathy Kelly


    Last week's installment, "Not ALL Christians Are Evil," started off by whacking the Institutional Church--Protestant Division. This week's starts off by whacking the Roman Catholic Division. Outraged Catholic listeners are asked not to turn off the radio the instant they hear the late Cardinal Spellman described as a "fascist warmonger." Please wait for the "However, . . . ."

    This "encore presentation" (with minor revisions) celebrates and features the great American and Catholic antiwar activist Kathy Kelly. She tells a touching and funny story about ordinary citizens who fought against the U.S. War Machine . . . and won. The hero(ine)s of the story happen to be ordinary citizens of Ireland. But who's to say it wouldn't work just as well at home?

    Kelly says almost nothing about her religious beliefs--which, however, clearly underlie her antiwar crusade. Imagine! Two weeks in a row, we've managed to turn up some people (two of them still alive!) who believe that Christianity requires something other than killing "evildoers," stealing oil, and persecuting homosexuals! Who'd a' thunk?

    (l. to r.:) Kathy Kelly, Australian Catholic Worker activist Ciaron O'Reilly,
    and the five Pitstop Ploughshares, outside the courthouse, Dublin, 2006.

    For details and more photos, please see the blog entry for the original incarnation of this installment: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com/2008/11/resisting-violence-kathy-kelly.html . Note that the links to the audio file on that old page are to the unrevised, lower-audio-fidelity version (installment #39), of December 2008.

    Listeners in central Connecticut--and all others--who wish to hear the updated version of the program (installment #103) can listen online or download an MP3 audio file for later listening. You'll find the download links at the top of this blog page.


    This Tuesday, noon to 1 PM, on WWUH 91.3 and wwuh.org:

    Special Hour-Long Live Show

    In this special broadcast for Pledge Marathon Week, regular but brief appeals for money will punctuate a potpourri of insightful political/social commentary by a range of voices. You'll hear none of these voices on corporate-controlled radio or TV stations--neither the overtly commercial stations nor the ones dependent on grants from Cargill, Exxon Mobil, and other social ils. Plus we'll have a reflection or two by me and two or three songs (not by me).

    Black Agenda Report Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley

    Pledges of support to any noncommercial, alternative, community-based radio station are always in good taste. Pledges of support to WWUH made by telephone while New World Notes is broadcasting--noon to 1 PM (Eastern) this Tuesday, February 23--are even nicer, as I'll be able to thank you on-air . . . unless you prefer to remain anonymous. A tally is made of the amount pledged by phone during each show--and the loser has to buy beer and pizza for the other 67 volunteer staff members. No, just kidding about the beer and pizza.

    The phone number for pledges is 1 - 800 - 444 - WWUH ( - 9984). You can also pledge online at http://wwuh.org/ or else print out a form and mail in a check (same Internet address).

    Words and voices included in this Tuesday's show come from people including

    • the late the Rt. Hon. Robin Cook, MP--a high official in Tony Blair's Labour government--denouncing the U.K.'s imminent invasion of Iraq and resigning from the Government (March 17, 2003). Ends with the first-ever standing ovation in the House of Commons. Then the next day they voted for war. Cook died in 2005
    • Margaret Cook--Robin's estranged divorced wife at the time of the resignation--in a stunning new appreciation marking the Chilcot Inquiry, titled, "I'm So Proud of You, Robin Cook" (February 7, 2010)
    • Margaret Kimberley on the Obama administration claiming the right--and attempting--to assassinate U.S. citizens (Don't the 5th and 12th Amendments sort of discourage this sort of thing?)
    • Jello Biafra, in the summer of 2008, predicting almost exactly what an Obama presidency would be like. Jello's batting average: .980. He failed to imagine assassinating American citizens or the magnitude of the strings-free giveaway of the nation's wealth to Wall Street
    • Michael Parenti, from a phone interview with me last October, discussing the real agenda of U.S. foreign policy
    • comedians Jimmy Tingle and George Carlin, proving that you can be serious and funny too. And that even the darkest tragedy can use a little Comic Relief. Yes, we do lighten up from time to time . . . at frequent intervals!
    • 3 Vietnam Veterans--Greg Payton, Susan Schnall, and David Kline-- recalling their and other GIs' rebellion against an evil and unnecessary war
    • urban poet Benjamin Zephaniah, showing the ill effects of bad media choice, in "(I've Been Listening to the) Rong Radio Station"--performed in the back of a cab driving around west London. Listener, beware! Don't let this happen to you!*

    Robin Cook, denouncing the imminent Iraq War and resigning from
    Blair's Labour Government, March 17, 2003. His speech prompted
    the first-ever standing     ovation in the House of Commons. "Principled
    resignation" is another bit of eccentric British behavior unknown in
    the upper ranks of American government. Compare Colin Powell.

    Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):


    * Thanks to fellow radio guy Tereza Coraggio (http://www.thirdparadigm.org/) for finding & sharing the Zephaniah video from which I'll broadcast the audio.


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    Saturday, February 13, 2010

    Not ALL Christians Are Evil!


    New World Notes News
    Vol. 3, No. 6 -- February 13, 2010

    This Week in New World Notes, radio program #102, Feb. 16:

    Not ALL Christians Are Evil!

    How to destroy a religion: Establish it as the official religion
    of your empire, elect yourself Pope, then appoint the
    bishops yourself. Worked for Constantine (shown), ca. 313.
    Detail from mosaic at Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, ca. 1000.
    Click graphics to enlarge.

    Executioners' summary

    Organized Religion (O.R.) has served Mammon & Mars well, while diverting its customers from virtuous thoughts & actions. ("Episcopal" does mean "overlook"!) What killed O.R. for me--by age 10--was the Required Weekly Perjury, a.k.a. reciting the "Apostles' Creed." A few Believers, though, actually try to enact the teachings of their religion's founders and thereby do much good in the world. We'll hear two speak: veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern and Martin Luther King, Jr. (from the Riverside Church antiwar speech, April 4, 1967).

    A few more details

    McGovern lucidly shows the oily roots of the Bush-Obama invasion of Afghanistan. Parts of his talk are funny--for instance when he recreates a discussion he had with a burgher of a rich Milwaukee suburb, on whether saving a dollar a gallon on gas is worth a half-dozen dead American soldiers a week. And on how many Commandments the State Department and Pentagon have broken by the time the gasoline reaches the pump.

    Martin Luther King's hour-long speech contained, among other delights, a lucid history of the Vietnam conflict (not rebroadcast here), a fine discussion of how a Christian should respond to Communist revolutionaries, and a stirring denunciation of the Administration's policies of defunding programs that helped the poor ("both black and white") at home in order to pay for more bullets, napalm, bombs, and bombers to kill (primarily) innocent peasants abroad. Does any of this sound at all familiar?

    One sign of the quality and power of King's speech: it was strongly denounced by almost all of the corporate-controlled American media. "Life magazine called the speech 'demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,' and The Washington Post declared that King had 'diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people'" [Wikipedia].

    Notes and Credits

    New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "table") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

    Thanks to Seattle's Mike McCormick for the talk by Ray McGovern--which I yanked from a half-hour interview on Mike's radio program, Mind Over Matters (November 2009).

    Owing to time constraints, only Christians reached the mic today. They don't hold the patent on virtue. Just to toss off a few names that come immediately to mind, let's acknowledge the faith-based good works of Jews Howard Zinn, Rabbi Michael Lerner, journalist Amira Haas, and the hundreds of "Refusers" in the Israeli military, among many others.

    Moslems--apart from "terrorist suspects"--receive scant attention in America, but two that come immediately to mind are Malcolm X (see the final photo caption, below) and the Grand Ayatollah Sistani. The latter was responsible more than anybody for bringing to Iraq whatever measure of democracy it enjoys today--bringing it in the face of determined opposition by the U.S.-installed Coalition Provisional Authority, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the administration named after W Bush.

    Free weekly NWN email newsletter on request.

    Top: 27-year veteran CIA analyst--now social activist--Ray McGovern.
    Bottom: Detail from "Expulsion From the Garden of Eden." Artist: Bolton
    Morris (1920-2004); Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Media, Pennsylvania.

    This week's song

    • Bye Bye Birdie (Original Cast), Hymn for a Sunday Evening (1960)

    Coming Soon

    • February 23 (except WWUH) -- Resisting Violence: Kathy Kelly (R)
    • February 23 on WWUH -- Special hour-long live show for Pledge Marathon week

    Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

    Martin Luther King, Jr.
    Top: Delivering his address, "Beyond Vietnam," at a "Clergy and
    Laymen Concerned ..." antiwar rally, Riverside Church, Manhattan,
    April 4, 1967--one year, to the day, before his assassination.
    Bottom: With Malcolm X, March 26, 1964--11 months before Malcolm's
    assassination. The two leaders' paths had already begun to converge.
    Following his conversion to Sunni Islam and his pilgrimage to Mecca,
    Malcolm adopted the racial inclusivenesss of King's approach. For his
    part, King came to adopt more of Malcolm's willingness to oppose and
    confront established power including the national government--as we
    can plainly hear in his great speech at Riverside Church. IMHO, this is
    King's finest speech.
    Each man died at age 39.     In each case, elements of the National
    Security State either connived in the assassination (Malcolm) or else
    pulled the trigger (MLK).



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    Thursday, February 4, 2010

    The Top Ten



    New World Notes News
    Vol. 3, No. 6 -- February 6, 2010

    This Week in New World Notes, radio program #101, Feb. 9:

    The Top Ten

    Top quotation of the decade #5

    Executive summary

    Let the corporate media fret about the Top 10 fashion blunders, TV bloopers, waist-trimming foods, tennis players, and the like. We'll read or play recordings discussing the Top 10

    • quotations, 2000-2009
    • reasons to visit New Zealand
    • high-level political sex scandals (Bill & Monica didn't even make the list!); and . . . this ya gotta hear . . .
    • military combat rifles.

    I add a few footnotes here and there, but--honest!--I didn't make any of this stuff up.

    This week's song

    • Jeanne C. Riley, Harper Valley PTA (1968)

    Top: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key (2009).
    Bottom: Top high-level sex scandal #5: JFK & Marilyn Monroe.
    Is that Dean Martin on the far left? The President also enjoyed the
    favors of Angie Dickinson (actress), Inga Arvad (journalist),
    Blaze Starr (stripper), Judith Exner Campbell (mistress to Mob
    boss), two White House secretaries affectionately called
    "Fiddle" and "Faddle," and possibly Jacqueline B. Kennedy--though
    who could blame her for having a headache? And they
    complained about Clinton!


    Notes and Credits

    New Zealand and combat rifles from videos available on YouTube. David Rosen, "America's Top Ten Sex Scandals," CounterPunch, August 1, 2007. David Sirota, "A Decade's Top Ten Quotations," Common Dreams, January 1, 2010.

    New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "gun") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

    Each site has its quirks and blind sides . . . but for consistently fine analysis, commentary, and (in the latter case) news--all from a Progressive perspective--you won't go wrong with CounterPunch (www.counterpunch.org) and Common Dreams (www.commondreams.org). Each updated daily, each free, each with very unobtrusive (CP) or no (C.D.) advertising.

    Fearless Prediction (a propos de rien), here placed on the record: Venezuela gets it next. Before Iran. You read it here first!

    Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request.

    Top sex scandal #6: Two prominent politicians and diplomats of the mid-
    19th century--     James Buchanan and William Rufus King--were house-
    mates and long-term intimate companions ... intimate enough to attract
    the mockery of their peers. After serving six weeks as Vice President
    (1853, under Pierce), King died of tuberculosis and hence was unable to
    act as First Lady during Buchanan's presidency (1857-1861). Historians
    still hotly debate who was the worst President ever: Pierce or Buchanan?
    For a century and a half after Buchanan, Americans have resolutely
    refused to elect another homosexual or another Pennsylvanian as President.
    Daguerreotype of King by     Matthew Brady.

    Coming Soon

    • February 16 -- Not All Christians Are Evil
    • February 23 on WWUH -- Live, hour-long program (Pledge Marathon)
    • February 23 elsewhere -- Resisting Violence: Kathy Kelly

    Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):



    Top: Top combat rifle #4: M-1 Garand. The M-1 talks, nobody walks.
    The WWII-era soldier holds a "clip," which holds eight .30-'06
    cartridges for the rifle. By now, armies have largely replaced big,
    heavy, powerful     battle rifles such as the M-1 (Garand is the name of
    the model's inventor) with smaller, handier, and less-powerful
    "assault rifles." While     assault weapon is a meaningless if scary-
    sounding term concocted by the Gun-Ban Lobby to frighten the
    uninformed,     assault rifle is a real type of rifle.

    Bottom: April 17, 2004. Flanked by NRA Executive VP Wayne
    LaPierre (left) and NRA President Kayne Robinson, Vice President
    Cheney admires the new Model 2003A2 U.S. Army Assault Rifle. The
    '03A2 is slated to replace the current standard, the ageing M-16, by
    the end of 2011. A Marine Corps sniper version now in late
    development--the Model 2003A3--features a longer barrel, collapsible
    ramrod, and a telescopic sight engraved with verses from the New
    Testament.
    Yes, I'm pulling your leg about the Model 2003A2 & 'A3. The rifle
    shown is a new flintlock "Kentucky long rifle"--the sort of gun used
    by Daniel Boone's uncle. In 2004, the Vice President accidentally
    shot and injured a friend and hunting partner. Why the NRA would
    give the man a firearm escapes me!




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