The Fodder

Americans: Dumber and Now Smaller, Too!
Worrying news out of Germany today. Scientists there report that poor diet, poverty and lack of proper health services are combining to make Americans smaller. That’s right, we’re shrinking.

Europeans, on the other hand, are growing at an alarming rate. In fact, the average Dutchman is now more than six feet tall, nearly two inches taller than the average American. Even the fucking Brits are bigger than us now.

“Much of the difference is due to the great social inequality that exists in the United States,” Munich University researcher John Komlos told The Guardian. “In Europe, there is good health service for most members of society. As a result, children do not suffer illnesses that would blight their growth or suffer problems of malnutrition. For that reason, we have continued to grow and grow.”

Some argue that Chinese and Latino immigrants are lowering our average height though that idea has been roundly dismissed. The U.S. saw huge immigration in the 19th Century, mostly from malnourished and therefore smaller peoples, yet we still remained the tallest, biggest people in the world. So what are we to do?

Researchers suggest the only way to reverse this trend is to focus on high-protein diets and improve health care for low-income and impoverished Americans—especially women. The Dutch cite their excellent support services for pregnant women as a key to their growth spurt. According to The Guardian, quality of life in the womb is a key factor in determining future health and height.

Limeys: Taller and Now Dumber, Too!
Well the Brits may be getting taller than us, but they’re certainly no smarter, especially when it comes to history.

Researchers canvassed the island and asked more than 2,000 people to answer some basic questions about British and world history. The study, published in The Independent found: 57 percent of Britons think King Arthur was a real person while 11 percent believe Hitler never existed. Eleven percent don’t believe in Winston Churchill though 5 percent think Conan the Barbarian once roamed the Nordic countryside. Thirty-three percent of those surveyed think Mussolini is a fictional character but 6 percent think the Martian invasion envisioned in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds really happened. Incredibly, more than 60 percent believe the battle of Helms Deep from The Lord of the Rings actually took place.

So what’s to blame for Britons’ amazing stupidity? Movies. Authors of the study say Hollywood’s tendency to change or alter historic events to make a better movie is the cause for Britons’ misconceptions. That and the fact that history is just plain dull. 3N believes Janet Jackson’s nipple is to blame, which leads us to our next story . . .

Ripplegate
So Janet Jackson’s bare breast Superbowl stunt, what we here at 3N call Nipplegate, continues to have a ripple effect throughout society. The latest casualty: Victoria’s Secret. It was bad enough the lingerie store tabbed Bob Dylan to supply a musical tribute, now company executives say they’re canceling their annual televised fashion show.

The show had garnered criticism in the past for its models and their skimpy attire, but now Ed Razek, Victoria’s Secret chief creative officer, says the political climate post Nipplegate is just not right for the show.

“'We had to make the decision probably six to eight weeks ago when the heat was on the television networks,” Razek told the Associated Press. Men across the nation will now have to go back to Showtime’s “Red Shoe Diaries” for their soft-core fix.

In other Ripplegate news, Howard Stern may be out of a job at Clear Channel, but sidekick Stuttering John is having no such problems. The co-host of Stern’s moronic radio program has landed a gig as the new announcer for Jay Leno’s “The Tonight Show.” Though Fox News broke the story, nobody seems to know how or, more importantly, why “Stuttering” John Melendez got the job. Industry-type people are already questioning whether the FCC or even NBC will approve of this unholy alliance and 3n is betting it won’t last long.

The News

California Screamin’
Remember the great California energy crisis of 2001? Rolling blackouts, energy bills that tripled overnight, etc.? Do you remember that we later found out it was all a scam? Well, you might not remember that last part, mostly because our piece-of-shit, corporate-owned media stinks and refuses to do its job properly. In any case, the fallout from the energy-crisis-that-wasn’t continues, and now the government is finally doling out the fines.

A federal grand jury has handed out indictments against Reliant Resources and four of its employees, charging them with conspiracy, wire fraud and commodities manipulation. And it’s about time. The feds found Reliant illegally increased energy costs by actually shutting down power plants over a two-day period. Reliant shut down four of five generating stations, intentionally withheld power from its customers and illegally purchased power at inflated rates instead of actually producing it.

Several other companies are also being investigated and three Enron executives have already been charged with power-price manipulation, according to The New York Times. Ken Lay, meanwhile, remains a free man and the rest of the country remains (sorry for the pun) completely in the dark when it comes to knowledge of this scam.

So while the feds are doing their job and nailing the energy barons, they’ve failed miserably when it comes to their investigation of gas-price manipulation.

There is absolutely no evidence that oil companies conspire to run up the price of gas, according to officials from the Federal Trade Commission and reported by Reuters. Officials blame price fluctuations on high demand, low inventories, the rising cost of crude oil and lower output from OPEC. President Bush and other republicans blame Congress for failing to pass legislation that would have allowed drilling in Alaska’s Artic National Wildlife Refuge. California politicians blame Shell’s decision to close a major refinery in Bakersfield, which will stifle competition and boost oil prices up and down the West Coast. 3N blames everyone.

Seriously, if there’s no collusion going on between all these people, why do gas prices go up every year at Labor Day? Do they really think we’re that stupid? Evidently we are—we don’t do anything about it.

The Editorial

Nothing Knew
"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things . . . That's the interesting thing about being president."—George Bush to Bob Woodward, as reported by Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian

I never jumped on the “Bush is an idiot,” bandwagon. I always figured that any guy who could steal the presidency, despite the fact that he profited from an illegal land grab in Texas and snorted cocaine and was arrested for drunk driving, had to have some artful skills—some nascent intelligence. His stupidity, I figured, must be an artful ruse. I liked to think of him as the Teflon president—nothing ever sticks: He falsely led us into war only to now poke fun at the missing weapons of mass destruction, he sends the economy into a nosedive, wages war on Afghanistan while failing to find Osama bin Laden—and this is only the beginning of a long, long list. This takes some skill. Remember, Clinton was nearly impeached over a blowjob.

And then one day last May, I read about the now-infamous August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) and changed my mind. Caving to months of mounting pressure, the White House finally released the document last Saturday night. The title of the brief would have riveted the attention of a preschooler: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” The PDB noted that al Qaeda had an infrastructure within the U.S. which could aid any attack and that the FBI had discovered “suspicious activity . . . consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.” It noted that al Qaeda planned to use explosives—and, of course, al Qaeda had already struck the U.S.S. Cole and a couple of embassies. Yet on Easter, Bush characterized the PDB as containing no significant information. According to Bush, the PDB “said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America. Well, we knew that.”

Nothing new?

Here are a few gems from the newly declassified memo:

According to an Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative, Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

Ahmed Ressam [convicted for the millennium plot in Canada] told the FBI that while it was his idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport, “Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation.” According to Ressam Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack and “Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation.”

An unnamed source reported in 1998 that “a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.”

And finally,

While uncorroborated, the FBI had received information in 1998 that “Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ’Umar ’Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.”

The Bush administration, specifically National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, has repeatedly called this PDB “historical.” Bush, who spent the month of August 2001 lazing around his Texas ranch, felt “comforted” that the FBI was doing its job, although, when asked by reporters just who the temporary director of the FBI was between Louis Freeh’s departure in June of 2001 and Robert Mueller’s arrival in September, Bush said “I don’t think there was a director.” Wrong! The acting director was Thomas Pickard.

Pickard’s boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, you’ll remember, had enough sense to quit flying commercial airlines in July 2001, but not enough sense to prevent him from slashing the counter-terrorism budget by $58 million (ironically he did this on Sept. 10, 2001). Pickard apparently spent the summer writing frustrated memos about Ashcroft’s disinterest in counter-terrorism.

Whereas Bush hung out at his ranch feeling “comforted” that whoever headed up the FBI would alert him to any real threats, Richard A. Clarke, national coordinator for counter-terrorism, told the 9/11 Commission, “I know how this is going to sound but I have to say it: I didn’t think the FBI would know whether or not there was anything going on in the United States.” Clarke, then, along with several members of the commission who nodded at his statement, did not feel “comforted” that the FBI was doing their job.

Meanwhile, the Family Steering Committee, an independently funded commission comprised of family members who lost loved ones in the attacks, has expressed serious reservations about the Commission’s ability to resolve anything. They are concerned about the partisanship of the Committee along with ex-parte communications between the Committee and the White House. They are demanding to know “how a ‘background briefing’ from FOX news was obtained by head commissioner James R. Thompson and also are demanding the declassification of both Clarke’s and Rice’s testimony. They are disturbed by what they see as the over-classification of information and by the letter the White House presented to the Committee, stating that Rice would testify but that “The commission must agree in writing that it will not request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice.”

Meanwhile, Bush ambles along unperturbed, insisting that hey, the White House is open to any new information on how to improve things in the government.

Yeah, right.

See, that’s the thing about being commander. Ultimately, you have to explain to everyone; that’s what makes his job interesting. Considering the swirling confusion within the mass of information, most of it classified, and therefore slightly out of context, most Americans heave a big sigh and write the whole thing off. But that’s the last thing we should be doing. We should be making Bush’s job a little more interesting. --A.M. McNary

For more in-depth information, check out www.thenation.com and www.911independentcommission.org