[guess who] name them and rate them

Who were your favourite companions here? Can you give their original names [no answers supplied - check the comments section]:

[recycled texts] only half the job in china

At least they seem to be thinking the right way on one issue:

Statistics from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) show China used up 5.24 million tons of paper last year, up 7.9 percent on 2004, with 11.38 percent of this used for textbooks. Textbooks are being printed more than ever before and their prices lead all book charts. However, among 4,858 kinds of textbooks registered, only 1,676 kinds are first editions.

"The number of Chinese students currently in their nine-year compulsory education period stands at 177.74 million. If calculated at 2,500 grams of textbook paper per student per year, more than 450,000 tons of paper are needed annually, or the felling of 9 million trees. If half of all textbooks could be reused for three to five years, this would lead to a vast saving of trees and energy."

According to Prof. Zhu Yongxin, re-using textbooks over a period of years has been comprehensively implemented in many countries. For example, in the United States and Australia, textbooks are considered school property and carefully maintained while in the UK, the process of printing them on recycled paper is far more-energy saving.

That augurs well. Now, what about the coal burning?

[sex] more education or just saying no

The gently satirical Jonathan Swift is known for his tongue-in-cheek blogging and so one must read his posts carefully to see what he is, in fact, getting at. Take this, for example, from where I have lifted his diagram:

If these programs have in fact been a failure, I don't think it is because kids were being given too much inaccurate information. I think the real problem was that they were given any information at all. We need more ignorance about sex, not less. The word "abstinence" itself is probably too explicit.

Once you tell kids to abstain from sex until marriage, you have already told them too much. When kids start experimenting with abstaining, it should be no surprise that things can get out of hand and that they will move on to actually having sex.

I commented on this:

We always had well formed anatomical ideas what we'd like to do with our girlfriends but the stumbling block was that the girls, as a speices, usually said no. Mostly. We knew the ones who didn't.

So did their fathers, who prevented them coming to visit us. We were neither purer nor more ignorant - it was a question of access and supply.

Education, in this context, has no meaning.

Some notes on the last post on 911 and 7/7:

It's all speculation, could be's and maybe's

Any time before the fact is, by definition, speculation or extrapolation. The burden in this preventative situation is to follow "indicators". The French interpretation, naturally, was of a European theatre but the evidence was still sent to the U.S.

Not to follow up these indicators because they do not constitute iron clad proof or came from a politically unpopular country at the time, is neglect of duty.

Unsourced references e.g. "the agent from Arizona" is hardly proof on the record.

And how could an agent of the FBI, in the subsequent light of the FBI's slackness in following up leads, go on the public record at the time? The Watergate affair began just this way, with people such as Hugh Sloan refusing to go on the record, even Dean. However, when no longer part of the team, Dean indeed went on the record.

The only suppression and cover-ups were alleged by Democratic sympathizers.

And who else is going to allege things? Are the Republicans? It is always the detractor and the natural sceptical who start these things. Clinton was not pursued by Democrats.

Without definitive proof, dates, times etc., it's all conspiracy theory.

The CT labelling is the time worn tactic of denialists. By definition, the weight of evidence indicates certain things happened. This is the nature of investigation and the stuff of police departments and special prosecutors the world over. Things like modus operandi, alibis, motive and so on come into play.

Sherlock Holmes came to conclusions on the strength of cigarette butts, nail parings and tracks on the ground. In the case of 911, there were ample tracks on the ground.

Refusal to authorize an investigation hardly constitutes proof. It could be that there was no time or that the White House felt there were not sufficient proofs of shoddy work to warrant investigation. Just as Nixon felt at the time.

It's not the defendant's burden or right in this situation to block an investigation of his own volition. It's the justice department's but even here the bench is packed. This is also what congressional committees are for.

There's not one piece of clear evidence stating time, date etc.

And how could there be if all damning evidence, such as the 11 second warning I referred to in 7/7 and the Israeli warning is either erased, suppressed or ignored? Even last evening the WP changed its story whilst I was in the middle of quoting from it. Why would they change their story?

And how many times has conviction been on the strength of one single, irrefutable piece of evidence? Real life doesn't work this way. It works on 'reasonable doubt' or 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Where is the reasonable doubt when the White House chose not to investigate a major disaster after allegations had been made?

Shoddy work by government departments hardly constitutes White House guilt.

Bush and Cheney acted to suppress. Why? If nothing could be sheeted home to them, then why not, as Calvin Coolidge said in the Teapot Dome scandal: "Let the guilty be punished?"

People act to suppress because even if not guilty of one specific action, they may have been guilty of others and that would come out in the course of the investigation. In this sense, Liam Murray's and Cityunslicker's non-acceptance of White House skulduggery has substance vis a vis 911 itself.

However, the whole nature of this thing is not that No 10 and the WH actually did anything but that they failed to do anything. That's much harder to sheet home and in this case, it hinges on "Did the White House know ahead of time?"

An August briefing of the President constitutes "know".

As in Nixon's case - did he really know absolutely nothing of what his underlings and the FBI were doing? The President knew zero about sensitive issues of state? Why not?

[foreknowledge] did bush and blair know

I made references in an earlier post today to Bush having his 911 and Tony Blair needing one himself, it coming in the form of 7/7. I know many readers are tired of my constant reference to the criminal power behind the puppets at the top but this news today # is the sort of thing that my jaundiced view is based on:

French secret services produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the al Qaeda threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft, the French daily Le Monde said on Monday.

Le Monde said the French report of January 2001 had been handed over to a CIA operative in Paris, but that no mention of it had ever been made in the official U.S. September 11 Commission, which produced its findings in July 2004.

A side issue was that family members and senior officials in Saudi Arabia knew as well. Some time back I ran a poll here on this site asking if Blair knew ahead about 7/7 and the overwhelming majority said "Yes".

It might be wrong - popular opinion has been wrong before. They might not have known. But it certainly seems that way and if it is indeed so, then this is not corruption. It is murder of one's own people, made doubly worse by being in a position of trust and protection at the time.

These are not idle blogger words, flung around with abandon but I really can't see what else to call it.

In G.K.Chesterton's Father Brown story "The Sign of the Broken Sword", General St Clare was taken by his surviving men and lynched after he had deliberately led them to their deaths by creating a "field of corpses" to cover his own crimes.

Why have the people not taken Mr. Bush and Mr Blair and lynched them? The answer is that there is a power protecting them.

The family and friends of the victims of 911 and 7/7 could be forgiven for calling the actions of these men "genocide".

# UPDATE:

The Washington Post article has been pulled 30 minutes ago and has been re-posted in a different form, quoting George Little for the CIA and pooh-poohing the idea. This has happened in the last 30 minutes. Now why would this have happened?

This was not the complexion on the matter in the first report. My commenters clearly read the second version.

While that happened, a Houston Chronicle article heavily critical was posted in its place, then removed once the revamped Post article came back.

This is interesting enough in itself.

There were six airlines mentioned in the reports, including the two eventually hijacked.

The intelligence came out of Kabul and was not mentioned in the official U.S. September 11 Commission report.

Going back further, there is evidence that no one really knew they'd fly into buildings. Intelligence felt it would be a traditional hijacking. However:

"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.

The report was written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for various federal agencies under contracts.

And it's come out that an agent in the FBI's Arizona office also speculated about using planes as weapons, writing in his case notes about Zacarias Moussaoui that Moussaoui seemed like the type of person who was capable of flying an aircraft into the World Trade Center.

It was the observation of an agent taking notes as he thought about his case - an observation whose significance simply did not register at the time.

Separately, the New York Times reports that an FBI agent in Arizona warned his superiors last summer that bin Laden might be sending students to U.S. flight schools.

According to Fleischer, [White House spokesman Ari Fleischer], after the information was presented to President Bush in August, the administration put domestic agencies on alert in the summer, just months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

FBI Special Agent and Minneapolis Chief Counsel Coleen Rowley wrote: "The Minneapolis agents who responded to the call about Moussaoui's flight training identified him as a terrorist threat from a very early point." Rowley's memo confirms the FBI knew enough to arrest the terrorists before 9-11. Rowley fears a cover-up is underway: "I feel that certain facts ... have, up to now, been omitted, down played, glossed over and/or mischaracterized ... perhaps even for improper political reasons." Agent Claims FBI Supervisor Thwarted Probe, Washington Post: 5/27/02. And Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Time Magazine: 5/21/02.

Senate Leader Tom Daschle said "I can tell you on January 24th, first, and on January 28th second, and on other dates following, that request [by Cheney and Bush not to conduct any Sept. 11 inquiry] was made." Daschle: Bush, Cheney Urged No Sept. 11 Inquiry, Reuters News Service: 5/26/02. This story has now been pulled too.

[bunny breakout] rabbits litter highway

Hungary's busiest highway was closed after a truck carrying rabbits crashed, letting 5000 loose. One woman told reporters: "There are thousands of them on the road but they're not using their new-found freedom well - they're just sitting around, eating grass and enjoying the sun."