Another Angle 6 - February - 2006

ANOTHER ANGLE
News others won't tell you



NATIONAL:



Won't say whether non-terror suspects being tapped
Asked before a Senate panel whether he could promise that no one besides suspected terrorists were being eavesdropped upon under the Bush Administration's domestic wiretap program, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today remarked that he could not promise that agents were not listening in on non-suspects' calls.



COINTELPRO
GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE FBI.



Burning Bush: Counting on Crowds to Impeach
Before the first bomb dropped in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Rep. John Conyers was already looking to impeach George W. Bush for leading us into an undeclared war of aggression, and three years later we have no-show WMDs, the yellowcake forgery, Abu Ghraib, the Plame Affair, unauthorized wiretapping, and (why not?) Hurricane Katrina to add to the charges.



Vonnegut's Blues for America
...the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today – jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on – is derived from the blues.



INTERNATIONAL:



Johnston: On the Road to Apartheid? Japan and the Steve McGowan Case
On January 30th, the Osaka District Court turned down a racial discrimination suit filed by Steve McGowan, a 41 year old African-American designer and Kyoto resident, against Narita Takashi, an Osaka Prefecture store owner. The suit charged that, on September 4th 2004, Narita denied McGowan and a black South African friend entry into his eyeglass shop because of their skin color.



Paper rejected Jesus jokes, ran Muhammed
Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten. Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."



Why Russia caved-in on Iran
The Lukoil transaction should prove to skeptics that Washington is prepared to give up anything to prevent the opening of Iran’s oil exchange. The UN Security Council is just the last step before military operations begin.



Palestinian Authority 'may have lost billions'
"There are 50 cases of financial and administrative corruption. The amount of money that was squandered and stolen is more than $700m."



IRAQ:



Little Testimony Ties Saddam to Crackdown
The evidence to date mostly testimony from people who were arrested and allegedly tortured has pointed to a brutal crackdown but has not showed that Saddam played a direct role.



BUSH CRIME FAMILY:



Buzzflash: Gonzales should be investigated
Many moons ago, when George W. Bush, was governor of Texas, Alberto Gonzales replaced James Baker as the Bush family consigliere. Gonzales will tell the Judiciary Committee that the program was entirely legal. He will be the loyal consigliere. He has no choice; he helped create the program.



ECONOMY:



Amtrak Picks Black-Owned Ad Agency
Atlanta-based IMAGES USA (No. 12 on the BE Advertising Agencieslist with $41 million in billings for 2005) was tapped in January to handle advertising and marketing for Amtrak's mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions, an assignment that could be worth up to $4 million over four years.



Will Iran's 'petroeuro' threat lead to war?
The United States depends on the dollar foreign-currency reserves in order to sell the Treasury debt that sustains budget deficits. What if foreign-exchange portfolios from oil sales fell to 60 percent being held in dollars – would that cause a crisis in the U.S. economy? Or would it take 55 percent? Most Americans are completely unaware of this threat Iran represents to the U.S. economy.



Why do blacks spend more and save less than whites?
In 2002, the year the economy nose-dived; we spent $22.9 billion on clothes, $3.2 billion on electronics and $11.6 billion on furniture to put into homes that, in many cases, were rented.



OP-ED:



Iran and Venezuela Plan War on Israel
Ahmadinejad said Iran was attempting to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Chavez replied that he was "solidly with the President and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Sharon." Ahmadinejad told Chavez he: "thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups in Israel following its takeover by Iran."



The misplaced defense of free speech
Free press? How come we hear so little from the same free press about European governments helping the US ferry people - on no fewer than 800 flights over four years, according to Amnesty International - to be tortured in places where it is legal to do so? How is it that nobody in the European free press is talking much about the fact that Iran stopped any further discussion of its nuclear program because the three EU leaders who were parleying with them reneged on their side of the bargain, by not ensuring Iran security in the event of a foreign invasion?



FOOD&DRINK:



GRANNY'S HOMEMADE VEGETABLE BEEF SOUP WITH HOT WATER CORNBREAD
It is a very simple recipe and anyone can make it. The Hot Water Cornbread is a snap as well. If you can make a pancake, you can make this bread.



REVIEWS/INTERVIEWS:



History by the Numbers: Literacy and Lynchings
Richard Sutch and Susan Carter are the editors of a new five-volume work called Historical Statistics of the United States. Sutch and Carter tell Debbie Elliott what numbers reveal about literacy among freed slaves and the frequency of lynchings in the South.



HUMOR?:



Bill Cosby - Noah´s Ark
Cosby became a star after appearing on Paar’s Tonight Show. This is his first appearance on the show…a very young Bill Cosby!