nt (Krztalizer) wrote in message ...

Do you think that above is somehow due to that is discussed below?

Michael


from "Notes from a Big Country" by Bill Bryson

There are idiots in every country, Michael, obviously. In my son's elementary
class, there are 22 kids; fifteen of them were tested for the GATE program and
of 22 'average American kids' (five immigres from Eritrea, one from Iraq, four
from Mexico, two from Somalia + six caucasian children and four latinos that
were born in the USA), three qualified for Gifted and Talented programs - none
of these were from overseas. So when you look at Russian schools, where NO
ONE immigrates, and US Schools stuffed to the gills with immigrants, you would
expect the results you get. That said, of course there are dumbass American
kids. I feel better knowing that there are dumb****s in every nation - you do
your best to prove that for us, daily.

Second attempt to illustrate typical dumb US media:

http://www.thepowerhour.com/postings/transcripts.htm

AMERICAN MORNING WITH PAULA ZAHN
'Washington Post' Editor Discusses French Book That Implicates
Government in 9/11
Aired April 24, 2002 - 08:23 ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND
MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, you want your outrage for the day?
We've got it for you. It's about a book that certainly would not make
Oprah's most must read list. The Pentagon calls it a real offense to
the American people, but it has become a runaway best seller in
France. It makes the unbelievable claim that the September 11 attacks
were staged by the American government and says the Pentagon was
attacked using a truck bomb.

The author of "The Appalling Deception," Thierry Meyssan, has
suggested on French talk shows and his Web site that the CIA and rogue
U.S. military officers were behind the attacks in both Washington and
New York.

Max Berley is the assistant foreign editor of the "Washington Post"
and has just written about the book in the "New Republic" magazine. He
joins us now from Washington.

Good to see you, Max.

MAX BERLEY, "WASHINGTON POST," ASSISTANT FOREIGN EDITOR: Good morning.

ZAHN: Who is the man who wrote this book, Thierry Meyssan?

BERLEY: Well, he's a leftist activist. He didn't have a reputation as
a kook until this book came out. He had done some fairly worthy work
on the National Front, the extreme rightist group, and on the Free
Masons and Opus Day. He's -- and some of his work had been picked up
by mainstream newspapers and media.

ZAHN: Let's share with our audience for a moment some of the theories
he advances in this best selling book in France. He writes -- and
we've shortened this quite a bit because otherwise we'd be here for
about four hours -- but he, among other things, he writes,
"Professional pilots interviewed definitely rule out the possibility
this operation could have been carried out by amateur pilots. However,
there is a way to achieve this goal that cannot go wrong, using
beacons. A signal sent from the target attracts the plane and guides
it automatically."

And then he goes on to say, "The terrorists had logistical support
from on the ground teams. They activated one of two beacons, warned
the towers' occupants in order to limit the number of human casualties
and blew up three buildings, all under the eyes of intelligence
services."

So he is essentially saying the U.S. government was behind these
attacks, Max?

BERLEY: That's right. That's his, he never actually comes out and says
that directly. What he does is he strings together a bunch of
truncated quotes and bits of misinformation and leads you to the
assumption that that's what he's saying. For example, he dug up some
document from the Bay of Pigs era and says look, they had a blueprint
for committing acts of terror on their own soil and that's exactly
what they're doing now so that they can hijack the government.

ZAHN: All right, our own Barbara Starr was on the ground shortly after
the attack on the Pentagon. She saw pieces of the fuselage. In this
book he also argues that the reason, part of the reason for his
theory, was that they never found pieces of the plane.

BERLEY: Well, that's just nonsense.

ZAHN: So he's lying here, isn't he?

BERLEY: He's out and out lying. It's just nonsense. This is a, what
the French would call a Google Yahoo! investigation. It's entirely
based on what he saw in photographs that came out in the, say, 12
hours after the crash.

ZAHN: So can you explain to me why this book is selling so well in
France? It's number four on the Amazon list in that country at the
moment.

BERLEY: Well, it did very well. It was number one on the list for a
while. It sold more than 100,000 copies. I think the reason is that
France is at a very fragile time right now as we saw in the first
round of the presidential election when the far right candidate, Jean-
Marie Le Pen, took first place. I think there's a feeling of
insecurity and there's a feeling of almost irrelevance. So they're
willing to believe the worst about us, about the United States.

ZAHN: They really believe this stuff? They really believe what they're
reading in this book?

BERLEY: That's hard to tell. But I think they do believe that the most
powerful nation on Earth would not have been caught unaware like that
or that the most powerful nation on earth would have some control over
all events.

ZAHN: Have you read the book in its entirety, Max?

BERLEY: I have, yes.

ZAHN: As an American, what did you think when you put it down?

BERLEY: I was revolted, frankly. I was amused and I was disappointed
because if the French have one thing going for them it's their
Cartesian minds, their rational mind. And this is just so shoddily put
together that I can't believe anyone would take it seriously.

ZAHN: All right, well...

BERLEY: It's a cut-and-paste job of the, you know, of the lowest
standard. Even by the standards of conspiracy theories it's pretty
poor stuff.

ZAHN: Well, Max Berley, we appreciate your shedding some light on this
this morning.

Thank you very much for dropping by A.M.

BERLEY: Thank you.

ZAHN: Take care.

But unfortunately it's not just France. Particularly over the past few
weeks, as seen in demonstrations against U.S. Mideast policy, against
-- all across Europe, it is clear that the U.S. has some P.R. problems
all over Western Europe. They are our allies and supposed to be our
friends. But why do they love to hate us so much?

Well, joining us right now is CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield --
good morning.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

ZAHN: So you just heard Max Berley talk about this outrageous new book
that's out. He's talked about the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen coming
in second in the runoff elections in France. This is a guy who, what,
preaches anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism. He's just about against
everything, right?

GREENFIELD: He is...

ZAHN: Why does a candidate -- why are these candidates and an author
like this flourishing in France?

GREENFIELD: Let's first put something in perspective. Jean- Marie Le
Pen got very, he got almost the same percentage of the vote that he's
gotten the last times. The reason he made the runoff was because a lot
of people moved to the extremes. That is, the normal liberal left
alliance that would go for the socialists, who were supposed to come
in first or second, they went to the Trotskyite left and gave them 10
percent of the vote and Jean-Marie Le Pen squeezed in.

Nonetheless, it is an alarm bell because this guy, this guy has to be
thought of not as a kind of traditional conservative, but as a kind of
populist rightist, a man whose fundamental appeal is to resentment and
suspicion. The same kind of appeal that made this lunatic book a best
seller in France, also helped Jean-Marie Le Pen get, I think it was 16
percent of the vote. It's resentment against them.

ZAHN: And we happen to be part of them? GREENFIELD: The United States
is definitely part of that. The European Alliance is them. The
immigrants in France, who Jean-Marie Le Pen says are getting the crime
rate up, is them. You know, we've seen it in America. I mean the
George Wallace appeal in 1968, he got 13 percent of the vote, was
based on a kind of resentment against everybody from big fat cat
foundations to the blacks in the cities and what they were up to, to
outsiders. Anti-Semitism is often a component of this. To some extent
Pat Buchanan in 2000 had this appeal. Nativist, anti-immigration,
don't trust the World Trade Organization. And parts of this come to
appeal to the left, as well, you know, the anti-globalization
movement. So it's around.

ZAHN: And then add into that mix all of the demonstrations that have
been spawned by U.S. policy in the Middle East.

GREENFIELD: That's right. And that, to me that has a lot of different
components. One, sadly, but you have to put this on the table, there
has been a dishonorable tradition of anti-Semitism. France has had it.
You go back to the Dreyfus affair.

ZAHN: Oh, sure.

GREENFIELD: You go back to the fact that despite the fact that the
French now tell us that in WWII they were all behind DeGaulle's
resistance...

ZAHN: Yes, right.

GREENFIELD: ... a lot of the French lined up behind the Vichy
government that was pro-Nazi. Israel has been seen in a lot of
European intellectual circles as a colonial outpost in the Middle East
and there's a kind of reflexive anti-Israeli belief that spills over
anti-Semitism.

And then there's the United States, the lone superpower. I mean how
many times has the United States gone over to Europe and bailed their
chestnuts to of the fire and...

ZAHN: Well, sure, and then get slapped, you know, two weeks later.

GREENFIELD: So you have all of those things in this mix and it's
produced a pretty combustible element, I think.

ZAHN: And what can the United States do about any of this?

GREENFIELD: Well, we can just...

ZAHN: We're not going to change our policy in the Middle East.

GREENFIELD: No. We're not going to pull out of NATO and we're not
going to boycott...

ZAHN: We're not going to take away our McDonald's and our Disneys
and...

GREENFIELD: We just have to make a better point of selling the, of
saying fellahs, let's look at this in a broader context.

ZAHN: All right, thanks for the voice of reason this morning. We give
the French credit for liberty, equality and fraternity.

GREENFIELD: Yes.

ZAHN: I'm going to credit Jeff Greenfield with that this morning.

GREENFIELD: And good red wine. So we've got to be careful.

ZAHN: All right.